• Optional@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    It’s a deluge of the commenters who totally aren’t russian shills but just coincidentally happen to be spreading the same messages (don’t vote! Both sides bad!) in the run up to a presidential election. It’s just the darndest coincidence.

    • Urist@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 months ago

      (disclaimer: I am a leftist and voting for Biden despite his policies)

      It’s just the darndest coincidence.

      It’s not. Go talk to your coworkers, neighbors, or fellow students. It doesn’t matter how they’re going to vote, most of them are like “BOTH SIDES ARE BAD!!! But I’m voting for [asdf] because [qwerty]” or they use it as an excuse as to why they aren’t going to bother voting. It’s very American.

      Source: (Turd Sandwich / Giant douche)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7pfsneLSSM] episode of South Park aired in 2004 (FUCK! that’s 20 years ago). I was there. Everyone was like “HAHA SAME. That’s why I’m completely checked out. I’m so fucking smart.”

      Listen, I’m typing this up because this sort of absolutist rhetoric is just fostering online division and you’ve gotten a lot of upvotes for it. Yes there are Russian shills (especially on Lemmy). But this is a very common opinion, and pretending it’s not isn’t serving anyone or fixing a problem. Calling people you don’t know and can’t know Russian shills is just name calling.

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        It’s not. Go talk to your coworkers, neighbors, or fellow students. It doesn’t matter how they’re going to vote, most of them are like “BOTH SIDES ARE BAD!!! But I’m voting for [asdf] because [qwerty]” or they use it as an excuse as to why they aren’t going to bother voting. It’s very American.

        It’s just not my experience, no. But to be fair I haven’t had fellow students for awhile, so maybe there’s something very confusing about the demented rapist or the experienced statesman for teh kidz that I’m not grokking. I just can’t imagine it though.

        • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
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          8 months ago

          The kids are sick of this shit. Like he said, that episode aired 20 years ago. So for people who are 20, this shits been going on their entire lives and for all they know, will keep going on for the rest of their lives if they give in and accept Bernie. So a lot of people are understandably disenfranchised, and think maybe trump again will be what it takes to shake up the democrats, or make things bad enough that we actually get some revolutionary change. It’s really not that hard to understand.

          • Optional@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            You think it wasn’t exactly the same for us? We were the bungholes who voted Nader in 2000 and brought about the fantastical Iraq War II: Fuckin’ Mushroom Cloud Brah!

            Clinton was all we could get after 12 years of insane right-wing bullshit, and he did some good things but it wasn’t nearly enough. You’d take it too after two reagans and a blood-for-oil war.

            You were, what, twelve the first time trump was illegitimately elected? And now you’re so mad you’re going to push for it again because the Democrats aren’t doing enough? That’s . . . really familiar. If it was anyone else but trump, you might have a point.

            But thinking “maybe trump again will be what it takes to shake up the democrats, or make things bad enough that we actually get some revolutionary change” is - and again, that was us 20 years ago - is insane. And horrible. And Not. A. Real. Plan. Anyway.

            Not only will it fuck us up, we’ll all be so much further away from ‘revolutionary change’ if there ever is another election. Because the mechanisms and institutions that Make Things Go will be very damaged.

            Be mad! But don’t be stupid. Work the system by participating and changing it. Not voting, or letting chaos reign is such a dumb way to think about it and it won’t even work. You ever learned anything from anyone? Well how did they find out anything before Wikipedia? They lived it already. Trust us, we get what and how you’re pissed about Democratic politics, but anything except direct participation WILL fail. And if trump gets in, we’ll be behind square one.

    • drislands@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      It’s also people so lost in the sauce they can’t see reality in front of them.

      Check out this argument I had recently on lemmy. I was saying to someone that voting is important, even if we disagree with Biden on some very important issues, because abstaining is as good as voting for Trump.

      And this person, who I think is the owner of the entire instance they’re registered on if their username is anything to go by, repeatedly and aggressively insisted that voting can never accomplish anything.

      Reviewing their profile showed they’re pretty consistent in this belief. They seem to seriously think the ONLY option is violent revolution, and nothing short of that is worth a thing.

    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      On Lemmy? Do they even know this place exists? Not exactly the world’s most popular social media network here…

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Oh yeah - scroll around they usually dig a couple of pockets in each thread about the “pro genocide party” and other lifted russian mad libs.