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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:And in many cases these are just word-replacements of older BS emails. Who starts these things, anyway? I wish I had the link because there was an interesting study done on this in relation to the Proctor & Gamble satanism chain mail, that claims that the CEO came onto Oprah or something and loudly proclaimed he was a satanist and that the company was into satan and all that. One of those that are obviously not true by the the third sentence. But P&G couldn't kill it over 20 years, and it got attention from serious people. It turned out these things are sent on mostly by people who know they are false but want others to believe they are true. In other word the vast majority of political email senders know they are sending out lies. Most of them are willful lies. I think the study linked the behavior to the (well-known and not always terrible) high value conservatives place on conformity and loyalty to authority. The idea was that conservatives value being on the right side more than telling the truth, so it feels okay to them to send these things out knowing they are lies. It gets a little hinky when sending on the email is also a way to demonstrate conformity so there's this feedback thing going on I guess. So I guess it's somewhat comforting that all the people who send these things on aren't as ignorant as liberals might assume; they're just lying because it feels good to lie about the right things. There was also this really interesting confidential study of evangelical Christians that hits the same sort of psychological notes, where a large majority reported having doubts about their faith at some point in time, but also reported that no one else in their community would ever possibly have doubts about their faith. It painted a picture of a huge community of normal people with doubts about their doctrine, but so convinced that everyone around them was a zealot that they all act like zealots to fit in.
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Jun 22, 2012 06:52
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Arglebargle III posted:I wish I had the link because there was an interesting study done on this in relation to the Proctor & Gamble satanism chain mail, that claims that the CEO came onto Oprah or something and loudly proclaimed he was a satanist and that the company was into satan and all that. One of those that are obviously not true by the the third sentence. But P&G couldn't kill it over 20 years, and it got attention from serious people. It turned out these things are sent on mostly by people who know they are false but want others to believe they are true. In other word the vast majority of political email senders know they are sending out lies. Most of them are willful lies. I would like to read that study. You don't have any more details about it do you?
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Jun 22, 2012 07:16
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Did you know that native Africans were sometimes involved in the initial slave collecting? You see, this completely excuses the white mans part in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade because Those poor lost sailors, just wandering onto the shore and having the devil negro just shove slaves at them. It was all they could do to take as few as they did, with the way those
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Jun 22, 2012 07:16
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Sir Charles posted:I would like to read that study. You don't have any more details about it do you?
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Jun 22, 2012 07:23
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Arglebargle III posted:I wish I had the link because there was an interesting study done on this in relation to the Proctor & Gamble satanism chain mail, that claims that the CEO came onto Oprah or something and loudly proclaimed he was a satanist and that the company was into satan and all that. One of those that are obviously not true by the the third sentence. But P&G couldn't kill it over 20 years, and it got attention from serious people. It turned out these things are sent on mostly by people who know they are false but want others to believe they are true. In other word the vast majority of political email senders know they are sending out lies. Most of them are willful lies. I always think of that story as well (the Proctor and Gamble one). I recall, though, the guy who wrote that had a follow up wherein he addressed that he might have been a bit too cynical with "stupid or lying" analysis. People have a strong desire to be the one to tell other people something new. It's why we have to resist the urge to spoil movies, and why people clamor over who gets to recount a story. This desire to tell other people something new often precedes the part of our thought process that actually even thinks about it. There's no shortage of things that we deal with all the time that we never give any thought to, even without the excitement of spreading news. Things like crossing a black cat's path. No one who believes that actually sat down and worked out what constitute's the cat's path--they just accept it and advise others. Or with things like those "Obama is a bad leader because he took his jacket off in the Oval Office, NO RESPECT!!" emails. No one in the world actually logically thinks the President should sit fully dressed, with perfect posture, for 4 years nonstop. They completely skipped thinking, in their haste to spread the news that Obama Sucks. Just like they completely skipped the part about how a Fortune 500 detergent company can dedicate itself to Satan, and got to "Evil is out there, be careful!" and spread the news.
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Jun 22, 2012 07:24
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There are two or three PhD theses in Psychology and Sociology just waiting to be written in the past few posts. Fascinating stuff.
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Jun 22, 2012 07:35
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I'd also like to address that conservatives or Evangelical Christians are more likely to believe/pass on this stuff. The Daily Mail is infamous for doing this, but not just with right-wing stuff: stupid celebrity gossip, scary "Everyday Thing Gives you Cancer!" tripe, and reactionary idiocy appeals to everyone. I have a number of friends who are life-long Democrats, in the same way that we all know tribalistic lifelong Republicans. The unimaginably dense stuff that was forwarded about George W. Bush literally having an IQ below 80 or about him not actually knowing how to read or write was all over the place 10 years ago. When the Fukushima disaster went down, an environmentalist Harvard lawyer friend started posting Daily Mail articles proclaiming that radiation was causing people to grow 5 arms or some bullshit that doesn't make any sense if he'd just thought about it. I pointed out that that's impossible and that Daily Mail makes poo poo up wholecloth and gave him a link explaining why that's not possible, he got so angry that I was attacking him and insisted that I must be some kind of brainwashed moron. It's not really about left-vs-right or evangelical-vs-atheist.
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Jun 22, 2012 07:50
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CarterUSM posted:Edit: I also love that Snopes is so threatening to these imbeciles that there's been a sort of meta-forward going around about how Snopes is anti-Semitic or a tool of the leftists or whatnot. I've also seen references in emails that say "Snopes verifies this!" when it does nothing of the sort. Those make me laugh. "Yes, because this email that's full of lies and other false information SAYS that Snopes vetted it, it must be the case!" Holy gently caress, how these relatives haven't lost every cent of their money to con men I'll never know. The funny thing is that the Mikkelsons, who run the site, are privately fairly right-wing (albeit on the paleoconservative/old-fashioned libertarian side, with a distrust of the modern Southern Strategy/Tea Party Republican Party), but freely admit that they have lots more right-wing myths than left-wing myths because the right wing just makes up a shitload more stuff. (They also care more about truth than about political lines, which shouldn't be a remarkable thing, but unfortunately is pretty rare these days)
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Jun 22, 2012 07:58
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Aeka 2.0 posted:My Facebook feed just gets more silly: If none of our other rights "cost money," then where's my free gun (2nd Amendment) and free legal representation (6th Amendment)? Snarkiness aside, this guy is a loving moron. That crap about "If housing is a right, then why don't I get a mansion like Bill Gates" is stupid and a completely obvious misunderstanding of what "rights" are. Take the Bill of Rights, it protects certain rights like freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and the right to legal counsel, but doesn't address the quality of those rights on an individual level. This is why indigent defendants end up with extremely overworked public defenders (including those funded by federal programs which conservatives have been trying to destroy since at least the Reagan Administration), while rich defendants like OJ Simpson end up with "dream teams" of lawyers, jury consultants, etc. All the Bill of Rights cares about is that you have access to some form of legal representation if you request it, whether you take the bottom of the barrel for free or pay to resurrect Johnny Cochran's corpse. The stuff about "I don't care if you smoke, drink, weigh 400 lbs., and ride a motorcycle without a helmet, I'm not paying for your healthcare, you are!" is also not accurate. If he and this fictional idiot are both customers of the same health insurance company, he sure as gently caress is paying for that idiot's healthcare, that's how insurance works. Insurance companies gather premiums from customers and, after they take their cut of the premiums, use that money to pay for the healthcare costs of the customers. Sure, that idiot is going to pay his share of co-pays and deductibles, but if he gets cancer, liver cirrhosis, high blood pressure, broken bones, etc., the bills are mostly going to be paid for with money paid by the rest of the customers as premiums. The idiot's paltry premium contributions pale in comparison to the healthcare costs his idiotic behavior will likely bring. But this is besides the point, because Douchezilla's also wrong that helmet laws and smoking regulations only exist because of shared economic burden caused by negative externalities from certain behaviors like smoking. Smoking regulations don't exist because of some nanny-state socialism, they exist because smoke wafts around and away from the smoker, and other non-smokers don't want to be breathing in that secondhand smoke and potentially get cancer. It's the same reason we have environmental regulations on water and air quality, food and drug purity, etc., it's about tangible harm to other human beings, NOT some economic calculus that you should do what I say because you're partially using my tax money. Things like helmet laws exist because most rational humans actually have empathy for their fellows humans and don't want them to get hurt even if they are too stupid to do something as simple as wear a loving helmet. Ralph Nadar didn't campaign for car seatbelt regulations because he was sick of paying his share of medical bills for idiots getting hurt in car accidents, he did it because he actually gives a gently caress about other humans and realized it was a simple and noninvasive fix that would save millions of lives. These kinds of regulations are balancing acts where we consider how onerous and burdensome a regulation is compared to the benefits of those regulations. For things like helmets and seatbelts, the benefits (i.e. not dying) far outweigh the costs. As for "93% of Americans had healthcare before Obamacare and it was the best healthcare in the world," total crap. 50 million Americans were completely without any kind of healthcare insurance or coverage, and since the US population is about 300 million, (50/300 = 0.16666) almost 16.7% of Americans without healthcare coverage, not to mention the millions more with insufficient coverage. Even if American healthcare was "the best in the world (which is nonsensical because every other first-world nation has access to the same drugs, procedures, equipment, etc. as the US)," these tens of millions of Americans either don't have any access to it, or they can only afford to utilize it in the most dire of circumstances, like strokes and heart attacks. This is because our healthcare system cost-payment structure disincentivizes routine care (through the individual deductibles and co-pays of our for-profit system) which would catch these problems before they occur or before they progressed into severe conditions, meaning they would actually be cheaper to take care of (e.g. taking care of moderately high blood pressure and cholesterol before they develop into full hypertension and potential expensive, life-threatening conditions like heart attacks and strokes). Overall, my favorite part of all is the entire conceit itself, that somehow the armchair theorizing about rights is more important than what actually happens in the real world, it's just like Austrian School economics. Take his bullshit about "If everyone has a right to food, housing, etc., why would anyone work?" If Douchey McGee's "theories" were correct, then no one in the US would work because we have federal and state programs that provide free and/or discounted food (e.g. TANF, WIC, and shelter (e.g. Section 8 housing) and we'd have long ago "enslaved" all the farmers, construction workers, architects, city planners, and everyone else that works in the agricultural and housing industries. The problem with his "theory" relates back to his misunderstanding of the quality of rights not being addressed by the government and Constitution, only that you have the most basic form. Yeah, if people wanted to be welfare queens, they could totally just find a way to game the system for years on end and rarely, if ever, have to work, but in reality most people don't want to subsist on food stamps and live in tiny, cramped public housing. They want better for themselves and their families, so they get jobs and work hard to provide better lives for themselves and all those that they love, but they rely on that safety net being there so if something terrible happens (recession/depression, severe illness and/or death of the breadwinner, home burning down, environmental disaster, etc.) their entire family won't die simply because they are wealthy and powerful enough to weather any conceivable catastrophe. This douche is also failing to understand more subtle psychological and sociological phenomena related to working. Sure, people who work at Walmart probably loving hate their jobs, but there are still millions of people who not only enjoy their work, but find great personal fulfillment in working, from socializing with likeminded people interested in the same work, to completing some project that can stand as tangible evidence of their skill and hard work, to just keeping themselves physically busy and mentally active. This douche can't think beyond his own "beep-boop, every human is an economics robot" theories and see how the real world actually works.
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Jun 22, 2012 09:34
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It's the exact same man who did a video about how the Occupy movement is actually Italian fascism. Don't bother with him.
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Jun 22, 2012 12:31
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Bruce Leroy posted:*lots of words about Bill Whittle* This guy is an enormous rear end in a top hat and as one might imagine most of the right wingers I know love him. His videos usually get posted with a "HA, this will piss those liberals off!" message, which is true but not at all for the reasons they think it will. It's difficult to even argue with because everything is argued with certain assumptions that are so far from reality that anyone who isn't immediately repulsed by him is probably too far gone to be reasoned with.
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Jun 22, 2012 12:39
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:
Obviously the government should step in and force them to sell coffee to the troops at cost.
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Jun 22, 2012 12:43
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Boxman posted:This probably isn't quite the right thread for it, but as long as we're talking horrible reality TV shows.... The punishment for his abusive behavior? A reveal lecture in the CEO's office about how "I always say that he would be proud to have my daughters work at Hooters. But I would not want my daughters working at your Hooters." No sanctions, no losing his job, no rewards for the waitresses, nothing. Abusing female employees is ok so long as you don't even THINK about doing it to Colby's daughter I guess.
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Jun 22, 2012 13:20
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Defenestration posted:gently caress Undercover Boss. When they did Hooters, for example, the CEO watched a store manager sexually harass his waitresses and make them participate in humiliating "reindeer games" like competing to eat piles of beans without their hands to see who could leave early. Yeah that was the one I immediately thought of too. I couldn't believe "the boss" didn't immediately break "character" and fire the guy. Not that I was entirely surprised by the behavior. I find Hooters to be really creepy; in a way that makes strip clubs feel less uncomfortable than Hooters. I think its because of the way they're profiting off objectifying women while at the same time giving off a "hey, bring your kids, its fun for the whole family!" vibe. At least, the two times I've gone there were families there with kids in the 5-10 year range.
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Jun 22, 2012 15:42
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:
The Starbucks by my office has an entire bulletin board full of pictures of soldiers in Iraq and Afganhistan with pallets of Starbucks coffee, sent by that branch. You can even buy bags of coffee and donate them to troops. I don't know if this is a company wide policy, but its nice gesture.
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Jun 22, 2012 15:55
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Sarion posted:Yeah that was the one I immediately thought of too. I couldn't believe "the boss" didn't immediately break "character" and fire the guy. Try Twin Peaks
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Jun 22, 2012 16:23
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Your Gay Uncle posted:The Starbucks by my office has an entire bulletin board full of pictures of soldiers in Iraq and Afganhistan with pallets of Starbucks coffee, sent by that branch. You can even buy bags of coffee and donate them to troops. I don't know if this is a company wide policy, but its nice gesture. I got a grinder, a press, and regular shipments of coffee beans sent to me from a home town Starbucks while I was in Iraq. So yeah, shitthatneverhappened.txt
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Jun 22, 2012 16:41
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Your Gay Uncle posted:The Starbucks by my office has an entire bulletin board full of pictures of soldiers in Iraq and Afganhistan with pallets of Starbucks coffee, sent by that branch. You can even buy bags of coffee and donate them to troops. I don't know if this is a company wide policy, but its nice gesture. Literally every military base I've ever been on has had a Starbucks on it.
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Jun 22, 2012 17:57
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Jun 22, 2012 18:19
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The cognitive dissonance here is so staggering that in any sort of sane, just universe, the person who created that would have had a massive aneurysm and died before they were able to send it out.
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Jun 22, 2012 18:33
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Global climate change? Poverty and homelesness? Come on, what is it? 
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Jun 22, 2012 19:27
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I'd be willing to bet  that this bullshit stuff about Starbucks and US soldiers was made up to pit people against the company for its pro-gay marriage stance. The bigots realized that many people either support gay marriage or just don't give a gently caress because it doesn't affect their lives, so they made up stuff about "ARE TROOPS" to get people to join their anti-gay boycott and make it look larger than it really is.
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Jun 22, 2012 20:33
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Bruce Leroy posted:I'd be willing to bet
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Jun 22, 2012 21:01
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Kugyou no Tenshi posted:Didn't Starbucks just recently come out in support of gay marriage? The email in question dates back to 2004. Indeed. This is probably a lot more oriented around the perception of Starbucks as being enclaves of bleeding-heart hippie pothead Apple-usin' LIBRULS than anything else.
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Jun 22, 2012 21:34
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The starbucks thing blew up on my facebook today and I was posting snopes left and right. The best/worst comment on there was the pastor of a local megachurch saying "So sad that our Marines are fighting and dying to give Starbucks the freedom to sell its coffee. Insanity.!!!!" This dude has a PhD and can't even try to verify poo poo?
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Jun 22, 2012 21:39
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The only thing that threatens "OUR FREEDOM" is the government itself. Another country isn't going to invade the U.S. and make laws that you can't do this or that. I'm just so sick of the "they are fighting for our freedom" mantra. Obviously they're fighting for the interests of a select few, and it all boils down to who can milk the most money out of the military machine.
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Jun 22, 2012 21:48
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xwonderboyx posted:The starbucks thing blew up on my facebook today and I was posting snopes left and right. The best/worst comment on there was the pastor of a local megachurch saying "So sad that our Marines are fighting and dying to give Starbucks the freedom to sell its coffee. Insanity.!!!!" Whats his PhD in? Because Biblical Studies from Oral Roberts University doesn't really count against his believing that. Not to mention "really, are Al-Quada going to invade America by ground troops and shut down Starbucks"?
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Jun 22, 2012 21:54
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jojoinnit posted:Whats his PhD in? Because Biblical Studies from Oral Roberts University doesn't really count against his believing that. Haha you're right. Here it is: Bachelor of Arts (BA) from Valdosta State University; Master of Divinity (M.Div) from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary Master of Theology (Th.M) from Reformed Theological Seminary with an emphasis in New Testament Interpretation Doctor of Theology (Th.D) from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary with an emphasis in homiletics and history.
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Jun 22, 2012 21:59
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I'd still go after him with a, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor," with a comment that the company owners and managers deserve him to research such a comment before blindly condemning them.
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Jun 22, 2012 22:38
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 This showed up in my someone's feed. I keep rereading it and I just cant make sense of it. Why the pause? What aren't we doing out of fear? Who are we offending?
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Jun 23, 2012 01:35
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I suspect the fear is just bad formatting. Its also wrong. At least in Texas you stand up and say the Pledge every morning, from kindergarten to senior year.
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Jun 23, 2012 01:42
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1stGear posted:from kindergarten to senior year. And It's loving creepy.
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Jun 23, 2012 01:44
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Have you seen my apex seals? I seem to have lost them.
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For some reason, people like to perpetuate the myth that kids don't say the Pledge of Allegiance in schools anymore. I don't know of a singe place where that's true or why this is A Thing to be outraged about though.
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Jun 23, 2012 01:44
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RagnarokAngel posted:
I'm not American and I'm not offended by it... just very creeped out that people are taught to worship a piece of dyed cloth.
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Jun 23, 2012 01:47
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BattleMaster posted:I'm not American and I'm not offended by it... just very creeped out that people are taught to worship a piece of dyed cloth. I've seen worse. I'm in Indonesia right now and the kids do literal military marches and stuff for their flag at school.
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Jun 23, 2012 01:49
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RagnarokAngel posted:I've seen worse. I'm in Indonesia right now and the kids do literal military marches and stuff for their flag at school.  Okay, then I apologize for everything bad I've ever said about the Pledge of Allegiance.
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Jun 23, 2012 01:50
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Why is that kid holding the flag? HE BETTER NOT LET IT TOUCH THE GROUND, ARE TROOPS DIED SO HE C--wait, wrong outrage button. Sorry.
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Jun 23, 2012 01:51
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myron cope posted:Why is that kid holding the flag? HE BETTER NOT LET IT TOUCH THE GROUND, ARE TROOPS DIED SO HE C--wait, wrong outrage button. Sorry. Obligatory Doonesbury post re: flag worship: 
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Jun 23, 2012 02:13
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Aeka 2.0 posted:And It's loving creepy. It is creepy, but its done just about everywhere. I don't think its required, but it is done. I remember it from elementary and middle school, but not my high school. Our eldest son did it everyday at his elementary school. The outrage is that kids aren't forced to do it, maybe? Or because people have tried to get the practice stopped? Therefore they extend that to its been banned altogether. Its the same logic that states: "no forced prayer in school = no prayer in school at all".
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Jun 23, 2012 02:44
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CarterUSM posted:Indeed. This is probably a lot more oriented around the perception of Starbucks as being enclaves of bleeding-heart hippie pothead Apple-usin' LIBRULS than anything else. 
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Jun 23, 2012 02:54
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