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cat botherer posted:Oh yeah, it'll completely fall apart. It's like how a big Rube Goldberg machine stops working when you remove the toaster. It will still run, just like all the companies that don't replace people when they quit and make everyone work 2-3 roles. It will just run way worse and stupider.
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Nov 3, 2022 17:47
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cat botherer posted:Eh, I'm not sure you really need thousands of people to run twitter. The moderation and such sure, but that's not what dominates the present headcount as it stands. Needing that many people for a website and lovely phone app is just because of snoballing complexity of the intertwined social and technological bullshit, which begets yet more bullshit. The absolute alienation of labor from end product is completely insane but also the natural endpoint of the path people like Musk are on. The problem is that if you spend 44 billion to inherit a company that is way down this path of needing to bring loads of people on for political favors and venture capital pitches, just firing almost everybody only makes it worse because it's a lot of work hours to get back out of it, and anybody thinking like that in the first place isn't going to cut the sort of positions that potentially could be cut with a minimum of disruption.
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Nov 3, 2022 17:48
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Yeah, unless 50% of the company was "that old dude in the basement who's still on payroll for some reason" and everyone knows that's the 50% that was laid off, it seems very much like A Not Good Thing for many factors.
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Nov 3, 2022 17:50
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Oxyclean posted:Yeah, unless 50% of the company was "that old dude in the basement who's still on payroll for some reason" and everyone knows that's the 50% that was laid off, it seems very much like A Not Good Thing for many factors. The saying I've heard about layoffs - and this is primarily for companies that truly do need to lay people off for financial reasons but otherwise have a viable business model - is to cut once, cut deep, and be generous with severance packages/support. Basically, let everyone that remains know that their jobs are safe for X months (ideally 12+) and that because you care about the folks that were let go, you were as generous as possible. An old employer of mine recently went through their fifth round of layoffs in <12 months. Nobody there feels safe, and I'm assuming everyone smart is already gone or is actively looking to jump ship ASAP.
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Nov 3, 2022 17:55
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the people that don't want to (or can't afford) to live within striking distance of SF will be exterminated and slowly replaced with Accenture "consultants" from the latest outsourcing hotspot - the Phillippines.
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Nov 3, 2022 18:04
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evilweasel posted:so here's the thing about loading $13b of debt onto a company that has $1b of interest payments per year: suddenly you don't have an option except to be short sighted. it turns the company's cashflows into something like blood: it doesn't really matter if you have more than enough blood today, and more than enough blood a week from now, if tomorrow you don't have enough. you die. As the owner, Musk's fortune is Twitter's fortune. If Twitter is going to go under, it's in Musk's interest to make sure he doesn't lose the value of the company by failing to have the company meet its cashflow requirements. He doesn't have to order all of Twitter's workforce to flip over couch cushions to make Twitter self-sufficient next week, if that isn't in the long-term interest of Twitter. Musk cannibalizing the long-term prospects by chasing short-term Checkmark dollars isn't some grand business vision, it's just the side effect of Musk implementing his previously stated policy preferences, which it turns out the long-term profit sources *hates*.
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Nov 3, 2022 18:11
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I recall reading at least one article that said that Silicon Valley tech CEOs think the entire sector is way over staffed and that most companies should be cutting their headcount by 50% or more in their opinions. I suppose that's good for housing prices in the Bay and Austin but there's probably a lot of consternation coming for people took the whole "learn to code" thing to heart
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Nov 3, 2022 18:18
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I'm not too concerned with what happens after twitter collapses. I am concerned about what will happen to all that information that flowed from twitter. While I imagine anything remotely important will be remembered on a wiki somewhere, the details that existed on twitter might be lost. That sort of information erodes in time as people grow up or forget, and a new generation comes with only a story told of what happened before. Without the literal context, it gets harder to believe the past existed the way it did.
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Nov 3, 2022 18:24
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Freakazoid_ posted:I'm not too concerned with what happens after twitter collapses. People will just move onto something of equal or greater convenience. I think someone upthread mentioned TikTok. There are plausible alternatives that even right now make more sense than Twitter. The tweet format is already long in the tooth. Tweet threads are loving obnoxious and feel like we are moving backwards in Internet communication. Celebrities have largely moved away from Twitter because it's mostly just a way to damage your brand at this point (keeping it real goes wrong!), and people left over are mostly posting two-line jokes or screeds. I don't know, to me it's been a lumbering undead curiosity for a while. It's never been profitable, it was considered ludicrous that Musk would even buy it at the share price. Name Change fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Nov 3, 2022 |
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Nov 3, 2022 18:32
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Freakazoid_ posted:I'm not too concerned with what happens after twitter collapses. Aren't all tweets stored in the Library of Congress?
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Nov 3, 2022 18:32
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@drill tweets lost...like tears in the rain.
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Nov 3, 2022 18:45
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Devor posted:As the owner, Musk's fortune is Twitter's fortune. If Twitter is going to go under, it's in Musk's interest to make sure he doesn't lose the value of the company by failing to have the company meet its cashflow requirements. He doesn't have to order all of Twitter's workforce to flip over couch cushions to make Twitter self-sufficient next week, if that isn't in the long-term interest of Twitter. musk has limited liquid cash and, uh, just burned $31 billion of it. financing twitter's interest payments is...rough for musk. and remember: if it can't generate enough to pay off the debt it's not actually worth the debt and each billion dollars musk sinks in is another lost billion dollars. also, remember that he is the richest person in the world because he has a massive tesla stake, and tesla trades at like 70 times earnings when normal companies trade at 15-20. in other words, in a market correction caused by the end of free money (imagine, say, the fed dramatically and repeatedly hikes interest rates) he's in for his wealth taking a massive beating. i don't want to suggest musk isn't doing immensely stupid things. he is, much worse than the leverage is forcing him to. like the entire philosophy behind his planned 50% layoffs appears to be that someone texted him (a) the revenue per employee for apple and google; (b) the revenue per employee for twitter (about half); and (c) the suggestion that if he cuts employees in half the revenue per employee will be the same as apple and google, voilà, instant profit. you might be thinking "thats insane, that can't possibly be right, this is obviously a joke" but no, we have the text messages on the subject from the trial but the financial hole that twitter is now in is also delightful because it means even if musk suddenly wises up he's still hosed and it means either he relentlessly drains his cash/sells down his tesla stake, or he lets it collapse, or he does self-defeating and stupid things even if he doesn't want to
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Nov 3, 2022 18:47
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rscott posted:I recall reading at least one article that said that Silicon Valley tech CEOs think the entire sector is way over staffed and that most companies should be cutting their headcount by 50% or more in their opinions. I suppose that's good for housing prices in the Bay and Austin but there's probably a lot of consternation coming for people took the whole "learn to code" thing to heart Silicon valley tech CEOs have never run companies in a way that didn't seem like the furher bunker, right down to the Adderall and vitamin d deficiency. Most of them burn out or explode and either sink there company or get handed a cardboard box by their shareholders in favor of someone with the banks mindset from their most senior staff. Universally they are fairly bad at product and project management, and they expect tech workers to confirm to their idiot whims. A lot of them managed to get money for business plans that require no one else turning around and building a better service off the lessons you paid to learn, outright monopoly, or for things where they were offering a worse more expensive option. These people got rich off free money flowing through VC, so it's not surprising there razor edge business plan collapses when belts tighten and money gets expensive. Barrel Cactaur fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Nov 3, 2022 |
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Nov 3, 2022 19:04
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rscott posted:I recall reading at least one article that said that Silicon Valley tech CEOs think the entire sector is way over staffed and that most companies should be cutting their headcount by 50% or more in their opinions. I suppose that's good for housing prices in the Bay and Austin but there's probably a lot of consternation coming for people took the whole "learn to code" thing to heart Silicon Valley tech CEOs thinking a thing doesn't really say anything about whether or not it's true. I don't have any special information or even the article that you read so take my opinion with a huge grain of salt, but it's hard for me to interpret that statement as anything other than 'Silicon Valley tech CEOS think they shouldn't have to pay as many employees".
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Nov 3, 2022 19:10
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Freakazoid_ posted:I'm not too concerned with what happens after twitter collapses. Not only that, but there's a HELL of a lot of war crimes evidence on Twitter. I remember during the worst days of the Syrian civil war Twitter was just absolutely full of videos of atrocities. I'm sure it's the same way now with the Ukraine war. What happens to all those videos? What if by some miracle Bashar Assad ends up on trial at the Hague someday? Sure there's plenty of non Twitter evidence but as we've seen in war crimes trials in the past sometimes these dictators still get away with a lot because of lack of solid evidence. I doubt all these videos are stored somewhere else readily accessible. If Twitter goes under there's a lot of very valuable evidence that could be lost forever.
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Nov 3, 2022 19:15
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I don't think it's a lack of evidence that's the reason when someone at the world leader level of power gets away with mega-crimes, but I'm also a pretty through and through coal hearted cynic when it comes to this stuff.
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Nov 3, 2022 19:23
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Content moderators should be contractors with minimal training that are hired from a massive pool of revolving door employment like telemarketers or Amazon warehouse employees. They should be placed in a liminal space like a large, nondescript office floor that is colorless and has pillars, fluorescent lighting but no windows. Give them tablets that can do nothing but access an endless stream of posts and moderation tools. Any conversation between moderators is prohibited. Give them a list of rules that are explicit enough to be defensible to advertisers but vague enough to be interpreted so as to defend any action or lack there of. Managers on the floor have never moderated, do not know the rules and do not answer questions. They are there only to admonish the employees for failing to meet the quota or who are doing anything except scrolling and modding.
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Nov 3, 2022 19:24
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basically this but for computer touchers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hcSd7UqwKw
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Nov 3, 2022 19:31
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Cranappleberry posted:Content moderators should be contractors with minimal training that are hired from a massive pool of revolving door employment like telemarketers or Amazon warehouse employees. They should be placed in a liminal space like a large, nondescript office floor that is colorless and has pillars, fluorescent lighting but no windows. Give them tablets that can do nothing but access an endless stream of posts and moderation tools. Any conversation between moderators is prohibited. I prefer the self selecting autocratic microstates of pseudonymous terminally online voluntees whose motivation is shrouded until they can seize the prime chair due to those above them burning out, dying, or getting a real job that eats all their time. This new group institute a purge of their posting enemies and figures they consider heretical. Got to love Reddits libertarian attitude toward subreddits.
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Nov 3, 2022 19:41
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Epic High Five posted:I don't think it's a lack of evidence that's the reason when someone at the world leader level of power gets away with mega-crimes, but I'm also a pretty through and through coal hearted cynic when it comes to this stuff. You're definitely right but regardless all war crimes evidence uploaded to social media platforms should be stored somewhere safe since as we've seen time and time again social media networks come and go.
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Nov 3, 2022 20:06
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Charliegrs posted:You're definitely right but regardless all war crimes evidence uploaded to social media platforms should be stored somewhere safe since as we've seen time and time again social media networks come and go. A lot of 3rd party NGOs and such grab that stuff as soon as its posted for precisely this reason.
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Nov 3, 2022 20:12
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NBC news did a deep dive investigation and found out that Kanye has been doing insanely anti-Semitic things for at least the last 4 years, praising Hitler, abusing staff, and having meltdowns/destroying property in the workplace. But, all of it has been covered up by him and a team of his handlers who arranged for settlements and NDAs from all the people involved. TMZ, Tucker Carlson, and at least one other media outlet have video of Kanye going on anti-Semitic rants during interviews, but edited it out and kept it from broadcast. The whole list of things is incredibly crazy and includes Kanye and his staff keeping a list of all the executives that he did business with and marking the Jewish ones down in red ink as a reminder. https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1588236260023406593 https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1588236262590369798 https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1588236436322623490 quote:Ye paid a settlement to former employee who alleged he praised Hitler and Nazis during meetings, documents show
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Nov 3, 2022 20:35
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Back in January, VA governor Glenn Youngkin (who ran on getting the libs out of education) set up a dedicated email tipline for parents to report instances of CRT-teaching and other liberal indoctrination in their kids' schools. And after some public records requests and legal wrangling, the contents of that email account have been made public. Turns out there weren't very many reports, and that it died off very quickly! https://twitter.com/BisforBerkshire/status/1588202072670969856 Not only that, but we have stats and details! The account received 350 emails from roughly three dozen email accounts, all of which came in "the first few months of 2022". Roughly 160 of the emails (about 45% of the total) were from a single person, a single-issue special education advocate who appears to have genuinely thought that Youngkin was going to fix special ed, and filled the tipline with complaints about his failings. quote:Lucas, a former school board candidate who has been involved in numerous lawsuits involving special education and arrested multiple times for her activism, was hopeful Youngkin would deliver on his promise of protecting parents’ “fundamental rights.” She said she voted for him and even helped his wife hold education roundtables ahead of his November 2021 election. One person sent daily emails for more than a month praising individual teachers, apparently to counteract his anti-teacher rhetoric. Another person sent 23 emails complaining that the school district wouldn't let them put their fifth-grader into sixth-grade math classes. Ten people sent emails complaining about mask mandates. In the end, only a few people sent emails complaining about liberal bias in schools. quote:Just a handful of the emails dealt with issues relating to curriculum. One parent in Loudoun County, whose name was redacted, was infuriated that they had to submit public records requests to get copies of the lesson plans and learning objectives for their child’s seventh-grade English, history/social studies and biology classes. Youngkin has been praising the tipline in speeches, but it seems to be just bullshit - hardly anyone used it, and nobody got responses.
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Nov 3, 2022 20:43
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I’m baffled that TMZ of all places decided to cover for Kanye on this in 2018
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Nov 3, 2022 20:58
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TMZ is a gossip site right? Kanye becoming completely radioactive would've been extremely bad for their bottom line even without anything else being considered, and as we've learned from so many tabloids, half the point is being a catch and kill outlet for people ownership likes
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Nov 3, 2022 21:03
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Epic High Five posted:TMZ is a gossip site right? Kanye becoming completely radioactive would've been extremely bad for their bottom line even without anything else being considered, and as we've learned from so many tabloids, half the point is being a catch and kill outlet for people ownership likes Yeah, but despite being a tabloid-tier gossip rag, TMZ is pretty well known for accuracy and probably also have a very talented legal department.
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Nov 3, 2022 21:08
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Honestly, the team of people who are enabling him, creating Jew lists for him, arranging the NDAs and settlements, and working with media companies to prevent his rants and abuse from going public are basically putting in an incredible amount of work to get money from a messed up person. Having bi-polar doesn't make you lose all free will and Kanye is obviously responsible for himself, but it seems like a huge group of people are enabling a really bad lifestyle and abuse of people who work for him just to stay employed. I'm kind of amazed that they have been able to keep a lid on all this stuff for almost half a decade given how prolific Kanye is with his public statements. The Pentagon Papers didn't even stay secret for that long.
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Nov 3, 2022 21:09
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With all the hate and bigotry it kind of makes sense now why Kanye was toying with running for president.
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Nov 3, 2022 21:13
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I don't think it's coincidental that this stuff is hitting the airwaves after his divorce (having lost that network of handlers), or that the media is fixated on his antisemitism hobby compared to his history of weird, inappropriate behavior. Handlers will tolerate a lot for a paycheck, and right-wingers will be supportive no matter what you say.
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Nov 3, 2022 21:15
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Honestly, the team of people who are enabling him, creating Jew lists for him, arranging the NDAs and settlements, and working with media companies to prevent his rants and abuse from going public are basically putting in an incredible amount of work to get money from a messed up person.
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Nov 3, 2022 21:16
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Honestly, the team of people who are enabling him, creating Jew lists for him, arranging the NDAs and settlements, and working with media companies to prevent his rants and abuse from going public are basically putting in an incredible amount of work to get money from a messed up person. It's a decent bet that a few of those people secretly (or openly) agree with at least some of what Kanye has said - and are probably that much better at running interference because they know they won't have the same protection he does.
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Nov 3, 2022 21:17
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What did Aziz Ansari know and when did he know it?
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Nov 3, 2022 21:18
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Honestly, the team of people who are enabling him, creating Jew lists for him, arranging the NDAs and settlements, and working with media companies to prevent his rants and abuse from going public are basically putting in an incredible amount of work to get money from a messed up person. Well, there was one person who said something long before anyone else https://twitter.com/Pink/status/3967674746
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Nov 3, 2022 21:43
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Even knowing both the antisemitic bent of online conspiracy theorists / alt-right folks, and Kanyes obvious instability, I still would have assumed this was just a detached celebrity pulling the "no bad publicity" thing trump and musk have so much... "success" with. A cynical move to get attention and tap a demographic. Apparently I'd be wrong and dudes full on anti-semite shitheel bought in on a global jewspiracy. I've met people who should know better defending Kanye (supposedly based on appreciating him as a musician), I wonder what they'll make of this. Also I sure hope such a prominent celebrity going all in on this poo poo isn't used to clamp down on the web in some way, much as I worry about jan 6 and the Pelosi assault helping ramp up a police state that the right already screams for. Imagine both sides of the aisle in a race to "defend freedom" by increasing a police and surveillance state. It... shouldn't be hard, actually.
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Nov 3, 2022 21:45
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Problem Kanye has always been that a lot of response to him was often white people being upset that a black man was successful and arrogant. So a lot of people felt the need to defend him, not knowing about the Nazi poo poo. Also he had a very very good albums, which people have a hard time letting go because people don't like admitting they liked art from a terrible person, like Louie CK or R Kelly
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Nov 3, 2022 21:49
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FlamingLiberal posted:I’m baffled that TMZ of all places decided to cover for Kanye on this in 2018 I wonder if either TMZ was going to blow him up on their own whenever they felt like the time was right or if he was a big gossip leaker for them himself.
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Nov 3, 2022 21:49
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BRJurgis posted:Even knowing both the antisemitic bent of online conspiracy theorists / alt-right folks, and Kanyes obvious instability, I still would have assumed this was just a detached celebrity pulling the "no bad publicity" thing trump and musk have so much... "success" with. A cynical move to get attention and tap a demographic. The opposite seems to be happening, with Musk taking Kanye's side and people like Kyrie Irving broadcasting their own anti-semitism to legions of fans who are now loving everywhere on tiktok and twitter going unchecked.
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Nov 3, 2022 21:50
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Ye has been best buds with Candace Owens for years now, can't say I find the anti-Semitic stuff too surprising in that context
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Nov 3, 2022 21:54
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Failed Imagineer posted:Ye has been best buds with Candace Owens for years now, can't say I find the anti-Semitic stuff too surprising in that context Kareem Abdul-Jabbar made note of this in a substack post today quote:Kareem Note: The problem of antisemitism is much bigger than Irving or Ye. They are merely the unwitting spokesperson for the right-wing political movement that is blatantly taking over the GOP. (For the full story, read “Jewish leaders call on GOP candidates to reject antisemitic comments”). Many Republican candidates running for some of the most powerful positions in their states and in the country—such as Pennsylvania’s GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano—feel perfectly free to publicly spout antisemitic statements without fear of reprisal from their own party or the voters. That should be a very troubling sign for all marginalized groups because fascists always start by demonizing one group—right before they go after the others. "The Jews control the world" has been right-wing mainstream belief for several years now. They're just starting to not bother hiding it behind "globalists" and "Soros" anymore. Kanye's a MAGA-hat-wearing Republican, and the connection to hotep "Blacks are the real Jews" nonsense just adds more appeal to him.
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Nov 3, 2022 22:01
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Youth Decay posted:"The Jews control the world" has been right-wing mainstream belief for several decades/centuries now. None of this is new. And yes they'll go after the other groups too.
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Nov 3, 2022 22:04
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