> Five people died either shortly before, during, or following the event: one was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three succumbed to natural causes
Please cite your sources, in particularly for the "a cop was murdered", or please stop spreading lies and misinformation.
Sicknick died of a stroke the next day, apparently of natural causes. There are claims (originally presented by all media channels as foregone conclusions) that he was beat in the head with an extinguisher the day before, but the medical examiner’s report doesn’t corroborate that.
When people have an ideology that has some kind of immorality as one of its fundamentals (like most far-edges political ideologies do), and they attempt to manifest that ideology, calling it "cosplay" can either be a derogatory term (implying "they failed"), or it can be a defensive term (implying "they're just trolling, they don't really feel that way") to draw attention away from the immorality. That ambiguity has made the term less useful.
Without access to any privileged information, I would call it a protest that turned (or was instigated to turn, if you prefer to phrase it that way) into a mob, and there’s never any telling what could happen after that. Read Lord of the Flies - mobs do crazy things.
Just look at the summer of 2020. There were many many examples of protests that turned into riots. Some included federal buildings too. Dozens of people were killed and billions of dollars in damages. It's obvious partisanship to frame these events so differently.
Former president Bush called the people involved “insurrectionists”. President Trumps chosen CIA director - someone with decidedly privileged information - said “we are on the way to a right wing coup”.
Whether you find such a perspective compelling, you would probably be wise to open yourself to the possibility that the events of January 6th is more than mere mob behavior.
I’m open (unpartisan but the names you listed would make me apt to distrust what they had to say) and can believe insurrectionists were behind the instigation of the mob. I also like to think for myself and also understand that randos showing up to protest can end up mobbing without having come with a specific agenda (all it takes is someone to throw the first punch, break the first window, whatever - and sure, that someone instigating the crowd (or setting someone else up to do it for them) might have been there with a very clear agenda and should be labeled as an insurrectionist).
I think the first order of business was to protest that their candidate lost. I’m sure they have a long list of grievances to share with you, if you like (especially since you seem to be asking oh so innocuously).
What really blows my mind is "progressives" point at GW Bush as some sort of pariah, nearly saint now. He was hated then, rightfully so. The guy, and his cohorts (Cheney, Rumsfield, Powell et al) lied repeatedly to get us into wars to fund Big Oil.
Please "progressive" from MN, stop pointing to Bush as some sort of ally for your cause.
> If your friends are yelling fire, you might be foolish to deny the smell of smoke.
I’m bothered (not personally but at the state of things) by the fact that you thought if I didn’t share your opinion that meant I held those two in high regard. Why can’t we just think for ourselves and not take direction from one party or the other?
Fair enough. I certainly know nothing about you, and we are both making assumptions about the other. Lacking context, it’s easy to stumble on our tongues.
A protest, or maybe a field trip. They had signs, not weapons. The FBI and capitol police waved the protesters into the building and held the doors open for them -- its on video. Now all the participants are suffering in a gulag without representation, they are literally begging to be transferred to gitmo.
Next up... "covid is fake and just a government control tactic", "vaccine a hoax", "the earth is flat", "sandy hook is a hoax", "global warming is fake and unsettled science .. spoiler: its settled science" ... add any and all conspiracies here.
Sorry to break it to you I honestly really cares if you read it or not.
Considering the fake pee pee dossier originated on 4chan one can attribute the disgraced FBI probes and ultimately the Mueller debacle more to SA than the "insurrection". I suppose if one were to further make these insane conjectures, one could argue if not for SA then Trump would not have been elected via the power of dank memes.
SA always has struck me as self-important normies who don't think they're normies. If anything can claim to be the catalyst for modern internet culture it's irc + 2chan (for actually birthing 4chan).
Worth recalling is the "primordial ooze" contained UnderNet, QuakeNet, TribalWar, PlanetQuake, 2ch and so forth; to this day, the likes of SA, 4ch, 8ch, Twitter and reddit are heavily influenced by gamer and anime culture.
Some of it is a desire for socialization mediated by a computer. Some of it is that PC gamers were getting online to play games and necessarily ended up having to talk about it (servers, patches, mods).
I like how "memes" got laundered through these sites. Taking memes from adversarial communities and making them your own. Or blaming your own memes and campaigns on other communities.
There was, and still is, an admiration of the "hidden hand". Manipulating a newspaper poll, without their readers finding out about it, or blame hitting eBaumsWorld.
Memes started/start in small ICQ channels. Were collectively dumped online to seed them. Other communities would adapt, share, replicate, up until the point the real origins were obfuscated the meme was from "the internet".
Small hacker groups on ICQ had applicants write troll-scripts for acceptance. One of these was DuckRoll. DuckRoll consisted of switching out Wikipedia titles and article contents and sometimes adding a picture of a duck on wheels. Bonus points for having someone else run the script (thinking it was a PHP guest-book script, MySpace theme, or innocent link to an answer to their vampire help questions [1]).
Duckroll morphed into RickRoll. RickRoll was seen as more acceptable, since it contained the damage to a single individual. The principle was the same as with linking shock images, such as Goatse: either you knew about the image, and someone "gotcha", or the internet really confused and upset you that day. You probably were taking it too seriously, and the prank did you a favor. The best pranks had a lesson.
99.9% of those Rickrolled won't trace it back and think it started on Reddit or Digg, or simply "the internet".
Before the internet, there was little hierarchy between nerds. Your peers either classified you as a nerd, or not, and nerds welcomed another. They were getting beat up in the school grounds, forced to share it with the jocks, and constantly be reminded of their social standing. The internet changed this. Early internet bullies were keyboard jockies.
The internet gave us nerd heroes like Maddox and Lowtax. These people got credit inside the outcast nerd community. Larger-than-life internet personalities. Critiquing and trolling and scoring points about a subject no other nerds would even find interesting.
You grew in ranks by contributing quality content, such as game guides and humor columns (compare early Cracked). You grew by being an insufferable asshole, by trolling, by hoaxing. Disputes were settled through duel flame-wars. As you were mostly pseudononymous back then and your authority was attached to a username, losing a flame-war could really hurt your standing, or require you to start over.
This also meant that disputes could be lost by the current authorities, if they were successfully trolled or flamed. Lowtax did "lose" many such disputes. He was not allowed to call victory if the community and lurkers saw it differently. You were judged on a weird form of merit only beat-up asshole nerds understood.
I remember Lowtax interviewing a 00's pornstar which every nerd back then knew. The Lowtax-thing to do was definitely to comment about her strange foot (merged toes into a hoof), up until the interview being cut short. I think nobody wanted anything else out of that interview.
Around 2008 the climate shifted. Joe Rogan had opened his own message board, which did not require 10$ to join, but his/his mods approval. A new hero was born: "the jock hero". The jock hero was critical of science, just like he had been critical of his high-school physics teacher: he did not understand very well and this bothered him (being in a digital age relying less on physical authority).
Disputes were about who had the most muscles, showing photos to proof it. You got into a flame-war with a mod or Joe, you would be banned, the people left too afraid to call anyone out for having a thin skin. A weird sort of authority grew, were jocks could show they were king of multiple playgrounds.
Now the internet itself is a closely watched playground. People walk around with permanent real-name identities. Teachers and governments look for ass-holish behavior. Media complains about large-follower playground kids who refuse to get a diploma and join the "real" world. And the nerds are back at their place. A place too low on the totem pole to elect heroes.
Probably depends on the place you're from and the time. I was a kid in the 90s and early 00s. This sort of tracks, but skips over that nerds were that way because they were often subject to some form of consistent shade in school. That's why my friends and I ended up on IRC.
Anyone who was part of the demoscene in the 90's knows that it is indeed as far from the truth as could be imagined.
I wanted to add some clarification to the above statement, but I'm not able to accurately convey the level of elitism could be found in the community back then. Your rank was based on the impressiveness of the demos you created, and if you were a member of the right group you were looked up to by people below you.
I guess similar hierarchies exist within other artforms, but I can't really think of anything that went as far as the demoscene back then.
> Now the internet itself is a closely watched playground. People walk around with permanent real-name identities. Teachers and governments look for ass-holish behavior. Media complains about large-follower playground kids who refuse to get a diploma and join the "real" world.
this is why Discord / IRC2.0 is such an attractive alternative to me
39 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 56.8 ms ] threadI particularly liked this quote: > Imagine if, like, David Brooks had paid ten bucks and wandered onto FYAD: that was Twitter.
When you start with a politically motivated lie, people like me don't read any further. So it's an excellent way to filter out people like me.
> Five people died either shortly before, during, or following the event: one was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three succumbed to natural causes
Please cite your sources, in particularly for the "a cop was murdered", or please stop spreading lies and misinformation.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brian-sicknick-fire-exting...
Edit: used a hopefully unbiased source that includes criticism of both the right- and left-leaning media’s coverage.
Whether you find such a perspective compelling, you would probably be wise to open yourself to the possibility that the events of January 6th is more than mere mob behavior.
Please "progressive" from MN, stop pointing to Bush as some sort of ally for your cause.
If your friends are yelling fire, you might be foolish to deny the smell of smoke.
I’m bothered (not personally but at the state of things) by the fact that you thought if I didn’t share your opinion that meant I held those two in high regard. Why can’t we just think for ourselves and not take direction from one party or the other?
Sorry to break it to you I honestly really cares if you read it or not.
> So it's an excellent way to filter out people like me.
curious that is the hill you chose to die on - heh
This blog is trash.
Something about the escapism, perhaps?
There was, and still is, an admiration of the "hidden hand". Manipulating a newspaper poll, without their readers finding out about it, or blame hitting eBaumsWorld.
Memes started/start in small ICQ channels. Were collectively dumped online to seed them. Other communities would adapt, share, replicate, up until the point the real origins were obfuscated the meme was from "the internet".
Small hacker groups on ICQ had applicants write troll-scripts for acceptance. One of these was DuckRoll. DuckRoll consisted of switching out Wikipedia titles and article contents and sometimes adding a picture of a duck on wheels. Bonus points for having someone else run the script (thinking it was a PHP guest-book script, MySpace theme, or innocent link to an answer to their vampire help questions [1]).
Duckroll morphed into RickRoll. RickRoll was seen as more acceptable, since it contained the damage to a single individual. The principle was the same as with linking shock images, such as Goatse: either you knew about the image, and someone "gotcha", or the internet really confused and upset you that day. You probably were taking it too seriously, and the prank did you a favor. The best pranks had a lesson.
99.9% of those Rickrolled won't trace it back and think it started on Reddit or Digg, or simply "the internet".
[1] https://communitymgt.fandom.com/wiki/Help_Vampire
Before the internet, there was little hierarchy between nerds. Your peers either classified you as a nerd, or not, and nerds welcomed another. They were getting beat up in the school grounds, forced to share it with the jocks, and constantly be reminded of their social standing. The internet changed this. Early internet bullies were keyboard jockies.
The internet gave us nerd heroes like Maddox and Lowtax. These people got credit inside the outcast nerd community. Larger-than-life internet personalities. Critiquing and trolling and scoring points about a subject no other nerds would even find interesting.
You grew in ranks by contributing quality content, such as game guides and humor columns (compare early Cracked). You grew by being an insufferable asshole, by trolling, by hoaxing. Disputes were settled through duel flame-wars. As you were mostly pseudononymous back then and your authority was attached to a username, losing a flame-war could really hurt your standing, or require you to start over.
This also meant that disputes could be lost by the current authorities, if they were successfully trolled or flamed. Lowtax did "lose" many such disputes. He was not allowed to call victory if the community and lurkers saw it differently. You were judged on a weird form of merit only beat-up asshole nerds understood.
I remember Lowtax interviewing a 00's pornstar which every nerd back then knew. The Lowtax-thing to do was definitely to comment about her strange foot (merged toes into a hoof), up until the interview being cut short. I think nobody wanted anything else out of that interview.
Around 2008 the climate shifted. Joe Rogan had opened his own message board, which did not require 10$ to join, but his/his mods approval. A new hero was born: "the jock hero". The jock hero was critical of science, just like he had been critical of his high-school physics teacher: he did not understand very well and this bothered him (being in a digital age relying less on physical authority).
Disputes were about who had the most muscles, showing photos to proof it. You got into a flame-war with a mod or Joe, you would be banned, the people left too afraid to call anyone out for having a thin skin. A weird sort of authority grew, were jocks could show they were king of multiple playgrounds.
Now the internet itself is a closely watched playground. People walk around with permanent real-name identities. Teachers and governments look for ass-holish behavior. Media complains about large-follower playground kids who refuse to get a diploma and join the "real" world. And the nerds are back at their place. A place too low on the totem pole to elect heroes.
Neither of those sentences is particularly true.
I wanted to add some clarification to the above statement, but I'm not able to accurately convey the level of elitism could be found in the community back then. Your rank was based on the impressiveness of the demos you created, and if you were a member of the right group you were looked up to by people below you.
I guess similar hierarchies exist within other artforms, but I can't really think of anything that went as far as the demoscene back then.
this is why Discord / IRC2.0 is such an attractive alternative to me
I can 'start over' whenever I want