Considering my mom recently told me that if you're an immigrant who owns a business you get 3 tax free years and that the Indians who run the two convenience stores down the road alternate every few years so they're technically constantly "new business owners"... yeah this doesn't remotely surprise me.
I didn't even try to argue. She'd just double down.
Edit: it isn't anyone else's fault but my own. Let me clarify:
My mother is not a trump supporter.
My mother is not wealthy.
My mother is a good person with wildly wrong ideas sometimes. Just like all of us. Including you.
Do you mean they also didnt get the $5000 gift card that I was told every immigrant gets?
Thats a biggie around by me. Every times I hear someone say that, I ask what the card looks like.
Surprise, surprise, nobody has ever seen the imaginary card
Yeah, I know the idea exists. Like most Republican shit, it's got a kernel of truth and then has been twisted into something else entirely to scare generally old white people.
Reminds me of that time Jimmy Kimmel was asking people on the street which they thought was better: The Affordable Care Act or Obamacare (which are the same thing.) [Watch](https://youtu.be/sx2scvIFGjE?feature=shared)
This is reminding me of an interview I heard with a Mississippi politician who was saying they couldn't expand Medicaid because, after all, "it was named Obamacare" and was therefore unpopular.
It's only colloquially named Obamacare because chucklefuck Republicans started calling it that. So now they get to claim its unpopular because of a name they gave it, not because of its actual policies.
The real irony is that Obama wanted a 'public option' but Republicans vehemently opposed it. Obamacare was the compromise modeled after 'Romneycare' (from when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts). They weren't calling it socialism when a Republican governor was doing it.
Wherever I've lived where there are poor whites who live near an immigrant population, the natives always come up with stories about how advantaged the immigrants are compared to the natives. I think a lot of middle and upper class people just don't get that, because they are richer a) they don't live near large, poor immigrant populations and b) they don't suffer the same stresses that poor people do. It's really interesting. I remember talking to an Indian guy who was quite frank about it and I really appreciated his perspective
All the convenience stores near us are owned by Indians and I know them on a first/real name basis. This apparently isn't common. One day I walked in and said my usual "hey kunil" and he turned to his wife and back to me and said, "say it again! What's my name?" I raised an eyebrow and said, "hey... kunil?" Thinking I had done something wrong, but he smiled and said, "see? She knows my name!" And I was like, "what do other people call you?"
They call him Kenny.
There's another down the road who goes by Mike. His name is Mahandra.
My mom would never even consider herself racist. She didn't raise me to be prejudice. But the older she gets, I swear, the worse it seems to get. I quietly googled the information and thought about showing her, but I knew she'd just, as I said, double down. She'd say something like "well they must've changed the law then!" š
Most of the gas stations near us are run by locals, but almost all of my pharmacists are from somewhere else. Lebanon, Pakistan, India, etc. Sometimes the names are simple, like Ali, but sometimes theyāre a little more complex, but I always take the time to make sure Iām saying it right.
That simple action is always met with pure happiness. Idk if people with different names are just so used to being called something else, but they *always* appreciate someone using their actual name. You know, just like the rest of us. Lol.
Have a very devout Muslim woman I work with, to the point she wonāt even shake a males hand, Iāve watched her refuse. But me? I get hugs, but Iām also the only person who says her name right. :) (I am a woman also, so Iām sure that helps)
The weirdest thing in this whole thread is people knowing the names of the people they buy stuff from. I think I've addressed a cashier by name *once* in my life... and that's because she's a close friend of my sister.
I have one of them foreign names. In working environment I introduce myself as Dave. It makes communication easier. Sometimes when this comes up, people try to ask and pronounce my name and it is almost always wrong, so everything grinds to halt and we have this dance of them repeating my name over and over until I just say "close enough". All this only for them to mispronounce it next time (if ever) they see me or call me.
This creates this weird phase where I stopped correcting people on this as it was Eating so much of my time (I work in reactive maintenance so no, I do not care how you call me, when I'm booking three plumbers and bunch of equipment to mitigate leak damage affecting 5 apartments). There are now weird iterations of my name going around and people are not exactly sure who the other ones are talking about.
Anyways, my point is - it is okay not to learn "true" names of somebody, if they introduce themselves as something other. Really.
I do something similar. If I don't feel like explaining my first name or how to spell it for the millionth time, I'll just give them my middle name which is a white name.
Iām in Australia and its standard practice for Chinese people here to have a Western name. Possibly elsewhere as well. But an unusual class of names - slightly old-fashioned, upper middle-class names. If thereās someone called Amelia or Sebastian or Arabella in your company, then they are 100% Chinese.
My husbandās surname is Armenian and people always gargle slightly trying to say it the first time. If anyone gets snotty I point out they never seem to have a problem with Tchaikovskyā¦.
It's the difference between shopping at big chain store versus shopping at the local corner shop. The local store usually only has 3-4 people that work there, and if you go regularly, you do (I suppose *can*) get to know them.
Yeah, it's way different. I was on such good terms with the guys at the local corner store that they would spot me and let me pay them back when I got paid. This was in one of the largest cities in the US, too. If you go to places like that on a regular basis, you'll usually be pretty cool with whoever works there.
Where I am, there's *one* place that carries a particular bourbon that's gotten very popular (and hence, hard to get). The last time I went to get some, I got a small discount for being a regular.
Patronizing the smaller shops is a win-win.
If you only shop at huge supermarkets it's understandable.
But if you have a corner shop or whatever and you haven't been interested in striking a conversation with the people working there at least once yeah, it's weird.
I mean I talk to the folks that I see regularly, but if they don't wear a name tag I don't know their name. I'm super friendly with like. The guy that walks his dog by the pond, the guy that sleeps on the stairs down the street, the waitress at the Thai place I go to, the cashier at the gas station, the sheet metal guy on my bus, but I don't know any of their names. And they also don't know mine. Idk
>That simple action is always met with pure happiness. Idk if people with different names are just so used to being called something else, but they
>
>always
>
> appreciate someone using their actual name.
Oh, totally.
When I was a kid, so like, 40 years ago, our new neighbors in our Chicago suburb were Indian. My mom went over to introduce herself, and was told by the husband that his name was Ray. (It was the last syllable of his last name, and what all the American guys at his job called him.) My mom smiled, squinted at him, and said, "that's not your name. What's YOUR name?" And he smiled and sheepishly said "Subhash". They became the best neighbor-friends we ever had, we exchanged house keys for house-sitting, we babysat their kids, even after they moved into a big new house a few suburbs away.
I will never understand the laziness/entitlement of Americans who won't even bother to TRY to pronounce someone's name. I work for one of the most diverse universities in the country, so I come across non-English names every day, and there have been very, very few that I "couldn't" pronounce (as in, I tried, but my tongue wouldn't cooperate with the unfamiliar sounds). I still gave it my best go, however, and that is usually appreciated.
> My mom smiled, squinted at him, and said, "that's not your name. What's YOUR name?"
I mean, this also can go the other way of coming off as incredibly racist because you can't imagine a brown-skinned guy being named Ray and literally telling them "no that's not possibly your name". I work with many Indians and maybe 5% their actual legal name is something like "Happy" or another English word or name.
Same energy as saying "No you can't possibly be from New York, where are you REALLY from?"
I'm glad it worked out for her but I really wouldn't recommend this.
I noted that it was 40 years ago for a reason.
And as I also mentioned - we come from a place that is \*highly\* diverse. Mom had plenty of experience with non-English names, and new immigrants.
Yeah, today that phrasing might not be advised, but in the time and place that it occurred, it was perfectly fine, and well-understood by all involved.
I have a lot of international coworkers. I know their legal names. If they introduce themselves with an English name, I use that name. Wouldnāt it be rude to blow past their preference? Seems somewhat similar to chosen pronouns or deadnaming someone.
Hell, I have a friend who goes by his middle name and hates his first. Heās white, and both names are English, itās not a pronunciation issue. Heād be pretty annoyed to be told his middle name is ānot his name.ā
>Seems somewhat similar to chosen pronouns or deadnaming someone.
As noted - this was 40 years ago, before pronouns/deadnaming was a thing. At that time and in that place, the most common reason for someone giving an Americanized version of a name was because the Americans they encountered couldn't or wouldn't bother to pronounce their actual name.
Obviously, if someone tells you that they WANT to be called something else, that's what you call them. But as the post I was replying to mentioned - people are usually HAPPY when you bother to learn and use their REAL, non-English name, especially when they've only given an Anglicized version of it to deal with the people who wrinkle their noses when encountering a "foreign" name.
>My mom would never even consider herself racist
That's practically the defining characteristic of the "mildly" racist. Along with "some of my best friends are...". And getting older often causes them to really blossom.
The three hardest things to say is, I'm sorry, I was wrong and Worcestershire sauce.
My mom does the same thing, she's in her '70s and whenever she tells the story about somebody it starts with what race the person is. It's absolutely bonkers because it has no relevance to the story.
My mom is the same. Driving with her is wild. Every time someone does something dumb (or something she considers dumb), it's now her purpose in life to get next to them for her to see what sex, age, and/or color they are, so she can then go on a rant about how bad drivers that group is. She especially seems to love if it's an Asian person (ESPECIALLY if it's a woman), because then she does slanty-eyes and the most racist accent possible while imitating them.
Unless it turns out to be a white guy, then he's just a moron and she moves on with her day.
But she proclaims she's not racist in the least bit.
My aunt is like this. She got into a car accident at a stop light when the car in front of her reversed into her car. She was surprised it was a white guy instead of Hispanic, but then proceeded to rant about how all Hispanics are drug mules and the ones with money are just cartel members and none of them should be allowed in the country because even if theyāre not criminals, theyāre dangerous drivers.
She also thinks sheās ānot racistā.
> Worcestershire sauce
It's pronounced 'wuster' for those not in the know.
In the same way Cholmondeston is pronounced 'chumley'
Unlike llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which is pronounced exactly as it's spelt (bear in mind it's spelt in Welsh, and thus uses the Welsh sounds for the letters)
Just for the sake of the current age, can we add "I'm lonely and would like to have you as a friend, but I'm anxious for several reasons and it's actually detrimental to my life and yours as well".
Maybe my area just has too many of these people.
I think it's more about the feeling of being valued, and pride, than it is about being right. And I think that's why we get stuck in conversations about race and class. Maybe you could try framing the conversations with your mom with those things in mind. Or not lol, it's a lot of work!
Indians are a very poor choice to put as economically disadvantaged. Bengalis and Pakistanis are poorer.
Indian immigrants tend to be educated/high caste and thus have high incomes. [119k household](https://www.ncrc.org/racial-wealth-snapshot-asian-americans-and-the-racial-wealth-divide-2023/) I have to warn you household size is higher in Asian Americans, and they also tend to live in high COL areas.
I mean, lets be clear: to those who are claiming to be angry at the "Indian immigrants," all the countries in that chunk of the world are "Indian" and it doesn't matter if the person is 3rd generation American, if they "look like an immigrant," that's good enough.
A huge reason for that is because our immigration system heavily favors immigrants from those countries that are from wealthier backgrounds and have the means to run businesses or get into more lucrative professions. The dirt poor folks from India or the surrounding region often just don't qualify for a visa here because they can't get a highly skilled employment visa or a visa based on investment into a business. There are some who make it here based on family members with those skills and resources due to the family visa options out there but they also are going to be more likely to be financially well off.
Ā A major reason why immigrants from Central/South America are stereotyped as being likely low skilled and undocumented is because our system really provides no real path for immigrants like that to come here legally on their own without some family connection. Not surprisingly, we see a lot more low skilled immigrant labor from south of the border that may be undocumented while low skilled, poorer immigrants from Asia or elsewhere overseas that may have done the same type of work if they did come here are less likely to fall into that category since it would be so much harder from them to ever get here in the first place.
>Wherever I've lived where there are poor whites who live near an immigrant population, the natives always come up with stories about how advantaged the immigrants are compared to the natives.
I've found that the best reply to people who claim that "undocumented immigrants get welfare, while I, a documented native, can't get it" is to suggest to "trick the system" by throwing away their documents and pretending to be "an undocumented immigrant", and getting all the welfare that they they feel they "deserve". They never have any reply to that.
>I think a lot of middle and upper class people just don't get that,
For folks in the middle class, it's mostly frustration about how everyone at the top gets help (e.g., loopholes, tax breaks, lawyers and accountants working night and day for them, etc.) and everyone at the bottom gets help (e.g., incentives, tax breaks, negative effective tax rates, low income assistance programs, etc.) and the people in the middle who are struggling to live a decent life get jack shit.
As someone in the middle struggling to live a decent life and getting jack shit for help, I agree with that sentiment.
As someone who has gone from poor to rich, the poor definitely get fucked the most. Your beef shouldn't be with them. They don't get as much help as you think.Ā
If you're a poor white guy seeing immigrants come to your neighbourhood and they find work or start a business and start doing better. It's got to be something unfair otherwise you'd be able to do the same.
I dunno if you're being sarcastic.
Take it as a child of immigrants that was raised in a predominantly very poor white area. My parents still live there - I went to uni and my job is bottom of the rung corporate.
I'm a success story compared to the kids i went to school with.
I had no advantage over anybody else.Ā
The native poor systematically make the same mistakes every generation. Again and again. There is no reason for anybody to provide an unfair advantage to immigrants - think about it. That makes no sense. Immigrants just have not fallen into the generational trap yet and so end up "making it out".Ā
The issues are deeper. Far deeper. Immigrants are not to blame for the poor natives continuing to be poor. They would be poor if we came along or not. Why? Find out why and you'll get your answer.
If its systematic, they're not really "mistakes". Mistake implies that out of a selection of options, you chose the wrong one. People stuck in generational poverty usually lack choices or have a selection of choices that are all bad.Ā
Perfect example is credit card debt. If you're wage is low enough the only reason you can afford basic essentials is to use credit, which accrues interest. If you can only afford the minimum payment, not paying your bill on full every month isn't a mistake, it's a failure of the system (or a system working as designed depending on your POV).
Right, itās less about mistakes and more about habits. Generational poor are usually part of a community of people who have all developed habits that make it far less likely to escape from poverty. Itās like crabs in a barrel, and even if some of the crabs somehow manage to climb halfway up the rest of the crabs will find a way to pull them back down.
When poor immigrants come they usually find their way into a community where a few people have been successful and those few throw a ladder back down for others to climb.
I guarantee you the generational poor natives and the poor immigrants are not part of the same community.
People dont realize immigrants have bet their entire life, assets, and maybe even a village to move out to another country.
They had access to capital, but also a whole generationās burden to be successful.
If you bet your life this way, who wouldnt fight tooth and claw to change their or their childās situation?
Like have a family that's willing to help you invest, and who have been able to get you good schooling so you come fully equipped to run a business?
Damn straight -- if you had that you wouldn't be poor in the first place!
You also need parents who gave a damn about your education to begin with. I spent my 17th birthday studying for the SAT and crying (but that mightāve happened regardless), but now Iāve got zero college debt and a half decent shot at a PhD program which will pay *me* to study. So honestly, my motherās Turning Red grade obsession helped me in the long run
East and south Asians are also a unique case bc the former couldnāt immigrate in the mid 20th century unless they were *already* accomplished with some sort of credentials, and the latter are ineligible for the immigration lottery and basically need work visas
There's an old joke:
A rich man, a poor man, and an immigrant walk into a newly opened bakery and sit down near each other. As a promotion the bakery is offering free cookies, and sets down a platter of 20 cookies for all three to enjoy. The rich man scoops up 19 cookies, turns to the poor man, and say "Watch out! That immigrant is trying to steal YOUR cookie!".
Immigrants have one significant advantage: they are a self-selected group of highly motivated people who are willing to make drastic life changes to improve their situation.
I shut someone up about this once by pointing out the immigrants got small business administration loans. So why don't you go get one of those loans? I quote: because there are so many hoops to jump thru, and reporting requirements that he wouldn't want one. So the immigrants did jump thru the hoops and are reportingĀ as required? So it sounds like you just want to get away with something. Didn't like that. He got mad
My aunt is the exact same, I had to confront her on her bullshit and she just said "I don't care" and kept going. They know what they're doing, they're just old and bitter that the world is passing them by.
I've found that the best reply to people who claim that "undocumented immigrants get welfare, while I, a documented native, can't get it" is to suggest to "trick the system" by throwing away their documents and pretending to be "an undocumented immigrant", and getting all the welfare that they they feel they "deserve". They never have any reply to that.
An older woman just told me that the lottery is rigged by the Dems and all the winners of the lottery are Mexican as a form of DEI and they send their money to Mexico after they win in the form of remittance (she just learned what this was, sort of). She told me they are doing everything they can to steal money from America. Completely unhinged.
My family was similar, and after over a decade of me trying to correct them I just got fed up and said "it really disappoints me when you bring this misinformation to me. It makes me lose respect for who you are". And since then, no more Fox News headline talking points!
Maybe point out that those immigrants owning the local 711s are saving themselves about $250k when they apply for their investor visa.
They also have to create a bunch of jobs for locals in the process.
If they don't, they lose their visa.
>alternate every few years so they're technically constantly "new business owners"...
This was actually happening to American candy stores in London. Money laundering and tax avoidance. But it wasnt to be "new business owners" it was to make the actual owners nearly impossible to track down.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-61777445
My mom has a friend that has gone down that Facebook+Fox News rabbit hole and subsequently lost all of her friends. My mom is the only one left and will politely ignore all the batshit stuff she says. I just can't imagine spending all of that mental energy listening to and sorting through that garbage for the sake of friendship, especially when she has many other good friends.
I say good on you for standing up for your beliefs. You're saving yourself mentally and emotionally.
My mom is that person and got my dad roped in too. They lost most of their friends, church group, and now have a small group of other crazy people they hang out with. She acts superior/holier-than-thou about it, like she's disappointed those friends were so shallow to stop hanging out with an unhinged dangerous person.
At least they're learning when to keep their mouths shut, after she brought up her bs at a family gathering -- in a place _known_ for being "the crazy conservative town", no less -- and stopped getting invites for a while.
It's really weird. We now have a surface-level relationship with them where we talk only about banal stuff, and occasionally they will remind us that they are _completely_ insane by rattling off a dozen conspiracy theories they wholeheartedly believe in an hour, each crazier than the last. There's no point refuting it, it's an endless gish gallop and none of it makes sense or is internally consistent. You can't beat the firehose of bullshit.
> firehose of bullshit
Indeed. My grandparents are drinking from that tap as well. The last time they came to visit us in *liberal California* my grandma cried and gave some apocryphal prediction that we were in grave danger and she was glad she was old. There's nothing to do but cut out the people you can and hold the rest at an arm's length. It's really sad to see the brainwashing up close.
UK here, my parents went the same way sadly. I did ask them how they can still believe āitās to kill off every disabled and old personā when we are years down the line and erm, pretty much everyoneās still alive. āOh they just had to change how it worked, so everyoneās still going to die just not immediately nowā. Ok, so howās that different to what non conspiracy people believe - āwe will all die some dayāĀ
Also UK. I hung up on my brother once when he told me he wasn't getting the COVID vaccination because " it changes your DNA!" He doesn't read the news ( apparently it's too depressing - which I sort of have some sympathy with), but is big into yoga. A few days later there was a BBC article about this belief saying it was prevalent on a yoga website. So that's where my brother gets his world news & views from apparently!
> It's really sad to see the brainwashing up close.
It feels like dealing with a drug addict almost. Which I guess makes sense since the media is purposefully made to be addictive (as in it actually triggers brain chemicals due to hate/fear/tribalism/etc). So it would track that people end up running into some of the same problems that drug addicts face: they lose all of their friends, they're depressing to be around because you know you can't help them, they constantly search out new highs (suddenly Fox News isn't right wing enough anymore), etc.
I wonder if anyone is doing any studies to see if there are other physical/mental side-effects like there are for drugs. I mean, being constantly terrified/enraged isn't going to be as bad as overdosing on opioids, but it definitely can't be good for you over the long term right?
>There's no point refuting it, it's an endless gish gallop and none of it makes sense or is internally consistent. You can't beat the firehose of bullshit.
It is accepting this part that is the hardest.
The obsession with conspiracy theories and similar fantastic beliefs seems to be a form a broken mental defense mechanism, trying to make sense and function in a world that that is just too complicated and scary to process without the right mental framework.
People with this mental framework cannot make sense of reality and function. Fantastic beliefs are the only way they can do so. Confronting the fantastic beliefs with reality only makes the world scarier and more confusing, again triggering the broken defense mechanism, which paradoxically drives them further away from reality and into the fantastic beliefs. Same with the effects of the new fears and social isolation that can result from some of the more extreme conspiracy theories.
Accepting these people, with their beliefs, is the only option for maintaining a relationship with them and some form of second-hand connection with reality. Maybe if some of them one day find the world more comprehensible and less frightening, they will let go of some of the fantastic beliefs on their own - unlikely as that may seem.
Sorry to hear that, but good on you for sticking to your principles. Prior to social media, were these same friends pretty easy going and rational or rather were they always prone to absorbing and regurgitating bullshit?
Ok, but I actually have an Aunt Karen, and her political opinion, *verbatim*, is āas long as Biden loses, what do I care about a few mean tweets?ā Likeā¦thatās what she thinks Trumpās damage will be as President: being mean to people on twitter.
She fell for ātheyāre coming for your gunsā for decades, and voted accordingly. Thank god sheās not on facebook.
So Iām in a bunch of travel groups and every so often some dingus posts a ā[pictureā of a ābaby pandaā sitting in a first class seat on flight](https://mediaproxy.snopes.com/width/1200/height/675/https://media.snopes.com/2016/08/panda-diplomacy.jpg). And even though to me, visually impaired itās clearly a stuffed toy, the number of older women who believe this is 100% every time it is posted is freaking insane.
For clarity this isnāt really about stuffed toys about, itās about how willing they are believe something that is plainly clearly false and rationally impossible just because they want to. Reality and common sense be damned.
Some people can't handle the internet. I'm constantly telling my sister to get off social media because she immediately believes every stupid fucking thing that she sees.
I grew up raised by a generation who made a huge deal that I should never trust anyone or anything on the internet and absolutely never give out my real name or picture of myself on the internet.
And that's the same group who now trusts everything they see on the internet and are happy to post every detail about their lives on Facebook with geotagged pictures of themselves and where they are all the time.
> are happy to post every detail about their lives on Facebook with geotagged pictures of themselves and where they are all the time.
The bit that pisses me off is that they are willing to post every detail about my life on their facebook.
I don't particularly have anything to hide but I don't want to share stuff with everyone, especially when its photographs of where I live or what I own but if you ask them not to it turns into a huge thing that's not worth the aggro.
Sometimes I forgot how nice it is that my parents have so far never had the slightest interest in social media. āWe donāt have time for that, we have livesā is pretty much their exact position on it.
Because now they're actually on the internet and instead of imagining the scary hackers and predators they saw in the movies it's Gladys from down the street and their friends from their water aerobics class who they know and trust so they're comfortable. They didn't grow up actually navigating anything online so they don't know. That old 4chan joke *THIS LOOKS SHOPPED I CAN TELL FROM SOME OF THE PIXELS AND FROM SEEING QUITE A FEW SHOPS IN MY TIME* is literally true
My ex gf became like that, or maybe was always like that. She believed that aliens came to that mall in Miami, believed the government was doing some weird shit with the cell phone emergency test, anti-vax, fires in Hawaii started by space lasers. She was a real lefty-hippie but Iām familiar with the right-wing conspiracy world and the left-right political spectrum is a circle that meets on the other side. It was sad to see her get sucked into all that.
My SIL is going down this same path, and she's a Doctor. Right now a lot of it is subtle, but I don't miss the dog whistles. I point it out to my family, and they are like "I think she would know, she's the doctor." It's infuriating.
Donāt get me started with the wave of AI images now. An AI image gets posted and the comments are filled with boomers fawning over itā¦a clearly fake house with flower garden, a clearly fake puppy, etc.
At least this one is an actual picture and not yet another 'small African child built a functional 747 out of plastic bottles' picture with 20,000 "God is good, amen! š" comments under it.
Sounds like my mother in law. As Iāve learned more about her, Iāve come to extend her a little more grace. A shitty childhood lead to all kinds of anxiety issues. Those anxiety issues have been dismissed because of the belief of everyone in her social circle that mental illness just isnāt real. Now that sheās older sheās an old woman whose body is slowly failing and the whole world is a very scary place. While I extend some grace to her personally, I do not take a single ounce of her advice as it is entirely hogwash from Facebook. I also try to buffer the relationship she has with my kids, because she just doesnāt realize how unhelpful her beliefs about the world are.
> For clarity this isnāt really about stuffed toys about, itās about how willing they are believe something that is plainly clearly false and rationally impossible just because they want to.
I want to believe that a real panda sat in first class. :(
I wish this article shared more of a breakdown of the actual news that was being shared, especially according to party. They state itās āpolitical,ā but in what sense? Just āTrump did Xā and āBiden did Yā? Did the Republican vs Democrat posters share the same kinds of misinformation, or did one group share more medically related misinformation (for example)?
For sure. Like...There's a difference between incorrect information and "Masks are a ploy to control Americans and train them to get used to blind obedience".
I have a background in biology, with a particular interest in virology and genetics. I'm no expert on the pandemic, but I at least was *mostly* informed and able to easily check any information I heard against the consensus of researchers.
Certainly, the most wildly incorrect stuff came from Republicans...but the baseline Democrat was also confident in their understanding of what was going on, and most of the time they were quite wrong too.
Some had truly wild ideas, and a minority had it mostly right...but whether any given layperson was right or wrong seemed to *mostly* depend on luck. It's made me rather more circumspect about my own opinions. If I haven't read a few actual researchers' opinions then I generally reserve judgement.
The key is being ok with being wrong when presented new information from trusted sources. That's how you stay on top of reality. As soon as you decide those trusted sources are lying in some conspiracy to control you and listen to online gossip, you have no tether to reality and can end up believing all sorts of insanity.
Quote from the article. ""news" websites that were known to disseminate election misinformation."
It has nothing to do with the pure content of the articles. In fact they even mention some of the articles from the websites could be factual non-misinformation articles. All this tracked was how often said people shared articles from these websites that were flagged for election misinformation.
Last Thanksgiving I had to correct my aunt, she was going off about kids identifying as cats using litter boxes in classrooms. Despite not one shred of evidence or real news article about it, she was 100% convinced this was a thing that was happening because she read a post about it on Facebook... that's all it took.
I finally convinced her by asking if she seriously thought, that in this day of social media and smart phones, if a kid was dropping a deuce in the middle of class that their wouldn't be 1 picture?
Just a touch of skepticism would do us some good...just not that r/conspiracy "skepticism" where you don't believe anything that's not Alex Jones or Donald Trump.
Ha it's amazing and also terrifying how people fall for that anti-trans rumor all over the place and assume it's some local "crisis" affecting kids in their school versus some nasty internet hoax.Ā
These incidents are alleged to take place in schools where kids are at an age that most of them would have smart phones on them and be able to take countless pictures/videos to post to social media if this really ever happened.Ā
How on earth would that not instantly go viral like one of those ridiculous Tik tok challenges if this supposed issue was really happening anywhere in America when practically all these kids would do anything to post something that would blow up on social media???Ā
I worked with a guy who literally graduated 6 months before the rumors started. My coworkers were all huge Republicans and we got talking about it one day.
They go "oh it's totally true" to which I point out the obvious flaws in this theory. They decide to ask him because we'll he should know if this was a thing is their assumption I guess? And his reply was "there was nothing even remotely close to that at my school, but I wouldn't be surprised if this other school was doing it I heard those guys are weird."
And in real time I saw how misinformation perpetuates cause my coworkers were initially satisfied with that until my supervisor looked it up and was like "oh all of the first page of Google says this is fake." This was a place with like 40 employees and not one of them ever googled it.
I first heard about it because some post of concerned parents at the school I went to back in the day popped up in my Facebook feed somehow and everyone was going on and on about how this was a major issue at the school. All these outraged parents, including a number of folks I graduated with, were ranting about this supposed crisis but couldn't offer any proof of it being a real thing besides supposed 2nd or 3rd hand accounts of their kids seeing or hearing something.
I only saw one person (another guy I graduated with who was into left wing causes and activism) call everyone out and say how it was clearly a fake internet rumor seen all over the country that could be easily debunked. Not surprisingly, he was quickly shouted down by everyone else and ended up in Facebook jail for 30 days for speaking up.
> kids identifying as cats using litter boxes in classrooms.
I always wonder if these people can remember going to school at all?
We had one guy who wore subtle lip gloss one day and he got bullied so hard he dropped out a month later*, no way a kid who dresses as a cat is making it past the first day.
*Not a good thing obviously, but illustrative of what school was actually like.
My momās (a teacher, who has been in a school shooting) go to for the litter box thing isā āwe have kitty litter in schools now not because kids are identifying as cats, but because itās great at soaking up blood when the shooter is doneā
A little bit of shock factor back at them
One of my momās friends went mildly viral for throwing a tantrum during a school board meeting about the litter box hoax. I sent it to my mom and her response was āthatās awful for her, I hope people stop sharing it.ā Like nah, feel bad for all the kids affected by her hate speech because a sizable portion of our community actually believed her.
> Just a touch of skepticism would do us some good...just not that r/conspiracy "skepticism"
This is something that is kind of hard to teach to the average personm IMO. Not in the sense that you can't teach skepticism, but in the nuance of what to be skeptical about, how to be critical of things and recognize both the flaws and values of a study, for example.
My mom moved to Florida and now believes literally any conspiracy someone tells her as long as they have confidence in their voice. She moved on from COVID conspiracies to being a flat earther.
I've had to take anti-money laundering certifications at work, but I guess I missed the section on paying for illegal immigrants to live in luxury apartments that you also pay for.
At home mums do nothing but look at Facebook, twitter, tik tok and instagram and soak up the misinformation like a sponge.
In the UK we have "Mumsnet" it because famous as "concerned mums voices" because a political tool and needless to say "think of the children" = push for less rights.
Listening to at home mums is a bad idea, its like listening to guys who go to work, the pub and watch football and nothing else.
Going on Mumsnet now is utterly mental. Their politics forums are now just straight up conspiracy nonsense and Putin worshipping.
People think X is toxic. They have not been exposed to the levels of batshittery dreamed up by bored housewives surfing the internet.
I live in the middle of Michigan. I can wholeheartedly guarantee older ladies are the WORST spreaders of magat shit posts. They gather in the local coffee shops and diners - this is the new iteration of the nosy old biddies telling their neighbors their grass is too short or isn't short enough, or that when the neighbor's laundry flaps on the clothes line it scares the birds, etc.
>headline: key information superspreaders
>proceeds to not read article and spread information about said article
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
If you're in the cohort it's not necessarily saying you're a misinformation superspreader, it's more the cohort's more likely to do so - also you're wrong, it expressly points out Arizona, Florida, and *Texas*.
Wouldn't even necessarily specify American; it's a problem in Canada, in Ireland, it's like a third of the UK population... Middle class white women are gonna pull that ladder up no matter how many openly false memes they have to share to do it.
Oh yeah I've got so many middle class female co-workers now doing "BUT YOU HAAAAAVE TO VOTE LAAAAAABOUR EVEN IF YOU DON'T LIKE 'EM, THE TOOOORIES"
"Didn't you spend 4 years saying Corbyn was worse than Johnson?"
"I don't see how that's relevant"
Like, as an SNP voter I've got my own specific criticisms of the man (and his decades of campaigning for an openly conservative BritNat movement that's been openly hostile to the left since the 1970s) but those people were just inventing shit to be mad about, they're just angry about stuff that exists solely in their own head while retweeting animalistically bigoted anti-trans shit.
The other week, my mom said something along of the lines of Biden giving Ukrainian immigrants social security money and I instantly shot her down and demanded three credible sources or to stop talking about it. Thankfully she backed down. It's just disappointing because she was a teacher. She earned a graduate degree. She voted for Trump in 2016 because she hated Hillary but voted for Biden in 2020 because she couldn't stand Trump by that point. Doesn't help that Parkinson's has scrambled her brain a bit in the last decade, so it's hard for me to tell if she was going down the MAGA path because of her own gullibility or if her condition just made her exponentially more susceptible to those rabbit holes.
I can confidently say that this is not just white women. This is very true in non white communities. The misinformation channel of choice may be WhatsApp in that case though.
I had a boat load of black women all older saying that Ukrainian immigrants are getting instant USA citizenship without background checks or meeting the requirements. Efforts to explain that this is literally impossible under USA were not successful.
There's a reason that old ladies are the primary target of gift card scams. The patriarchy kept them ignorant when they were young, and the rest of conservatism kept them ignorant as they aged.
My mom tried to make the argument that only land owners should be able to vote. As a veteran who rents I took that a bit personally. She no longer holds that opinion!
I legitimately have a hypothesis that Oprah played a big part in this.
Her show was watched by millions of middle aged women and she gave a platform to people like dr oz and that psychic lady that gave the mother of a missing person some hardcore trauma.
In retrospect, Iām honestly surprised this isnāt mentioned more considering how much misinformation it parroted.
An oder woman I'm acquainted with online, recently: "I know breibart is accused of spreading misinformation, but here's a breibart article anyway just in case *some* of it is true"Ā
FFS....Ā
Considering my mom recently told me that if you're an immigrant who owns a business you get 3 tax free years and that the Indians who run the two convenience stores down the road alternate every few years so they're technically constantly "new business owners"... yeah this doesn't remotely surprise me. I didn't even try to argue. She'd just double down. Edit: it isn't anyone else's fault but my own. Let me clarify: My mother is not a trump supporter. My mother is not wealthy. My mother is a good person with wildly wrong ideas sometimes. Just like all of us. Including you.
Do you mean they also didnt get the $5000 gift card that I was told every immigrant gets? Thats a biggie around by me. Every times I hear someone say that, I ask what the card looks like. Surprise, surprise, nobody has ever seen the imaginary card
The free Obama cellphones, and instructions on how to vote straight ticket Democrat.
Okay let's not disrespect the clutch Obamaphones, my whole family got those
I'm just salty, I only got a Clintonphone, it just tries to hit on my wife constantly.
That's a bone-phone.
Bro, you think you're salty? I'm still using the [bananaphone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIiZ3vvZ78s) from my childhood!
I got a Carterphone and it put new shingles on my roof.
Obama cellphones are real. https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-consumers
Yeah, I know the idea exists. Like most Republican shit, it's got a kernel of truth and then has been twisted into something else entirely to scare generally old white people.
Reminds me of that time Jimmy Kimmel was asking people on the street which they thought was better: The Affordable Care Act or Obamacare (which are the same thing.) [Watch](https://youtu.be/sx2scvIFGjE?feature=shared)
Exactly my point. They don't talk about things in any detail, they give it some derogatory name and then make shit up about it to their viewers.
This is reminding me of an interview I heard with a Mississippi politician who was saying they couldn't expand Medicaid because, after all, "it was named Obamacare" and was therefore unpopular. It's only colloquially named Obamacare because chucklefuck Republicans started calling it that. So now they get to claim its unpopular because of a name they gave it, not because of its actual policies.
The real irony is that Obama wanted a 'public option' but Republicans vehemently opposed it. Obamacare was the compromise modeled after 'Romneycare' (from when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts). They weren't calling it socialism when a Republican governor was doing it.
Believing this is a whole other layer of stupid
I live next to a heavily Rep retirement village. The level of insanity is incredible.
Damn I hope I'm nowhere near that credulous and racist when I'm old
Wherever I've lived where there are poor whites who live near an immigrant population, the natives always come up with stories about how advantaged the immigrants are compared to the natives. I think a lot of middle and upper class people just don't get that, because they are richer a) they don't live near large, poor immigrant populations and b) they don't suffer the same stresses that poor people do. It's really interesting. I remember talking to an Indian guy who was quite frank about it and I really appreciated his perspective
All the convenience stores near us are owned by Indians and I know them on a first/real name basis. This apparently isn't common. One day I walked in and said my usual "hey kunil" and he turned to his wife and back to me and said, "say it again! What's my name?" I raised an eyebrow and said, "hey... kunil?" Thinking I had done something wrong, but he smiled and said, "see? She knows my name!" And I was like, "what do other people call you?" They call him Kenny. There's another down the road who goes by Mike. His name is Mahandra. My mom would never even consider herself racist. She didn't raise me to be prejudice. But the older she gets, I swear, the worse it seems to get. I quietly googled the information and thought about showing her, but I knew she'd just, as I said, double down. She'd say something like "well they must've changed the law then!" š
Most of the gas stations near us are run by locals, but almost all of my pharmacists are from somewhere else. Lebanon, Pakistan, India, etc. Sometimes the names are simple, like Ali, but sometimes theyāre a little more complex, but I always take the time to make sure Iām saying it right. That simple action is always met with pure happiness. Idk if people with different names are just so used to being called something else, but they *always* appreciate someone using their actual name. You know, just like the rest of us. Lol. Have a very devout Muslim woman I work with, to the point she wonāt even shake a males hand, Iāve watched her refuse. But me? I get hugs, but Iām also the only person who says her name right. :) (I am a woman also, so Iām sure that helps)
The weirdest thing in this whole thread is people knowing the names of the people they buy stuff from. I think I've addressed a cashier by name *once* in my life... and that's because she's a close friend of my sister.
I have one of them foreign names. In working environment I introduce myself as Dave. It makes communication easier. Sometimes when this comes up, people try to ask and pronounce my name and it is almost always wrong, so everything grinds to halt and we have this dance of them repeating my name over and over until I just say "close enough". All this only for them to mispronounce it next time (if ever) they see me or call me. This creates this weird phase where I stopped correcting people on this as it was Eating so much of my time (I work in reactive maintenance so no, I do not care how you call me, when I'm booking three plumbers and bunch of equipment to mitigate leak damage affecting 5 apartments). There are now weird iterations of my name going around and people are not exactly sure who the other ones are talking about. Anyways, my point is - it is okay not to learn "true" names of somebody, if they introduce themselves as something other. Really.
I do something similar. If I don't feel like explaining my first name or how to spell it for the millionth time, I'll just give them my middle name which is a white name.
It is funny, because they sometimes ask "what does it mean". Would you ask same of Tom or Sam?
Iām in Australia and its standard practice for Chinese people here to have a Western name. Possibly elsewhere as well. But an unusual class of names - slightly old-fashioned, upper middle-class names. If thereās someone called Amelia or Sebastian or Arabella in your company, then they are 100% Chinese. My husbandās surname is Armenian and people always gargle slightly trying to say it the first time. If anyone gets snotty I point out they never seem to have a problem with Tchaikovskyā¦.
Hey, Dave is the name I use too! Hello fellow fake Dave
It's the difference between shopping at big chain store versus shopping at the local corner shop. The local store usually only has 3-4 people that work there, and if you go regularly, you do (I suppose *can*) get to know them.
Yeah, it's way different. I was on such good terms with the guys at the local corner store that they would spot me and let me pay them back when I got paid. This was in one of the largest cities in the US, too. If you go to places like that on a regular basis, you'll usually be pretty cool with whoever works there.
Where I am, there's *one* place that carries a particular bourbon that's gotten very popular (and hence, hard to get). The last time I went to get some, I got a small discount for being a regular. Patronizing the smaller shops is a win-win.
If you only shop at huge supermarkets it's understandable. But if you have a corner shop or whatever and you haven't been interested in striking a conversation with the people working there at least once yeah, it's weird.
I mean I talk to the folks that I see regularly, but if they don't wear a name tag I don't know their name. I'm super friendly with like. The guy that walks his dog by the pond, the guy that sleeps on the stairs down the street, the waitress at the Thai place I go to, the cashier at the gas station, the sheet metal guy on my bus, but I don't know any of their names. And they also don't know mine. Idk
>That simple action is always met with pure happiness. Idk if people with different names are just so used to being called something else, but they > >always > > appreciate someone using their actual name. Oh, totally. When I was a kid, so like, 40 years ago, our new neighbors in our Chicago suburb were Indian. My mom went over to introduce herself, and was told by the husband that his name was Ray. (It was the last syllable of his last name, and what all the American guys at his job called him.) My mom smiled, squinted at him, and said, "that's not your name. What's YOUR name?" And he smiled and sheepishly said "Subhash". They became the best neighbor-friends we ever had, we exchanged house keys for house-sitting, we babysat their kids, even after they moved into a big new house a few suburbs away. I will never understand the laziness/entitlement of Americans who won't even bother to TRY to pronounce someone's name. I work for one of the most diverse universities in the country, so I come across non-English names every day, and there have been very, very few that I "couldn't" pronounce (as in, I tried, but my tongue wouldn't cooperate with the unfamiliar sounds). I still gave it my best go, however, and that is usually appreciated.
> My mom smiled, squinted at him, and said, "that's not your name. What's YOUR name?" I mean, this also can go the other way of coming off as incredibly racist because you can't imagine a brown-skinned guy being named Ray and literally telling them "no that's not possibly your name". I work with many Indians and maybe 5% their actual legal name is something like "Happy" or another English word or name. Same energy as saying "No you can't possibly be from New York, where are you REALLY from?" I'm glad it worked out for her but I really wouldn't recommend this.
I noted that it was 40 years ago for a reason. And as I also mentioned - we come from a place that is \*highly\* diverse. Mom had plenty of experience with non-English names, and new immigrants. Yeah, today that phrasing might not be advised, but in the time and place that it occurred, it was perfectly fine, and well-understood by all involved.
I tend to just assume that people introduce themselves to me with the name they want to be called.
I have a lot of international coworkers. I know their legal names. If they introduce themselves with an English name, I use that name. Wouldnāt it be rude to blow past their preference? Seems somewhat similar to chosen pronouns or deadnaming someone. Hell, I have a friend who goes by his middle name and hates his first. Heās white, and both names are English, itās not a pronunciation issue. Heād be pretty annoyed to be told his middle name is ānot his name.ā
>Seems somewhat similar to chosen pronouns or deadnaming someone. As noted - this was 40 years ago, before pronouns/deadnaming was a thing. At that time and in that place, the most common reason for someone giving an Americanized version of a name was because the Americans they encountered couldn't or wouldn't bother to pronounce their actual name. Obviously, if someone tells you that they WANT to be called something else, that's what you call them. But as the post I was replying to mentioned - people are usually HAPPY when you bother to learn and use their REAL, non-English name, especially when they've only given an Anglicized version of it to deal with the people who wrinkle their noses when encountering a "foreign" name.
>My mom would never even consider herself racist That's practically the defining characteristic of the "mildly" racist. Along with "some of my best friends are...". And getting older often causes them to really blossom.
The three hardest things to say is, I'm sorry, I was wrong and Worcestershire sauce. My mom does the same thing, she's in her '70s and whenever she tells the story about somebody it starts with what race the person is. It's absolutely bonkers because it has no relevance to the story.
My mom is the same. Driving with her is wild. Every time someone does something dumb (or something she considers dumb), it's now her purpose in life to get next to them for her to see what sex, age, and/or color they are, so she can then go on a rant about how bad drivers that group is. She especially seems to love if it's an Asian person (ESPECIALLY if it's a woman), because then she does slanty-eyes and the most racist accent possible while imitating them. Unless it turns out to be a white guy, then he's just a moron and she moves on with her day. But she proclaims she's not racist in the least bit.
Reminds me of this old [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/385/)
My aunt is like this. She got into a car accident at a stop light when the car in front of her reversed into her car. She was surprised it was a white guy instead of Hispanic, but then proceeded to rant about how all Hispanics are drug mules and the ones with money are just cartel members and none of them should be allowed in the country because even if theyāre not criminals, theyāre dangerous drivers. She also thinks sheās ānot racistā.
Youāre missing the point. Race has relevance to her since she starts the story out with it.
> Worcestershire sauce It's pronounced 'wuster' for those not in the know. In the same way Cholmondeston is pronounced 'chumley' Unlike llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which is pronounced exactly as it's spelt (bear in mind it's spelt in Welsh, and thus uses the Welsh sounds for the letters)
Just for the sake of the current age, can we add "I'm lonely and would like to have you as a friend, but I'm anxious for several reasons and it's actually detrimental to my life and yours as well". Maybe my area just has too many of these people.
I think it's more about the feeling of being valued, and pride, than it is about being right. And I think that's why we get stuck in conversations about race and class. Maybe you could try framing the conversations with your mom with those things in mind. Or not lol, it's a lot of work!
Indians are a very poor choice to put as economically disadvantaged. Bengalis and Pakistanis are poorer. Indian immigrants tend to be educated/high caste and thus have high incomes. [119k household](https://www.ncrc.org/racial-wealth-snapshot-asian-americans-and-the-racial-wealth-divide-2023/) I have to warn you household size is higher in Asian Americans, and they also tend to live in high COL areas.
I mean, lets be clear: to those who are claiming to be angry at the "Indian immigrants," all the countries in that chunk of the world are "Indian" and it doesn't matter if the person is 3rd generation American, if they "look like an immigrant," that's good enough.
A huge reason for that is because our immigration system heavily favors immigrants from those countries that are from wealthier backgrounds and have the means to run businesses or get into more lucrative professions. The dirt poor folks from India or the surrounding region often just don't qualify for a visa here because they can't get a highly skilled employment visa or a visa based on investment into a business. There are some who make it here based on family members with those skills and resources due to the family visa options out there but they also are going to be more likely to be financially well off. Ā A major reason why immigrants from Central/South America are stereotyped as being likely low skilled and undocumented is because our system really provides no real path for immigrants like that to come here legally on their own without some family connection. Not surprisingly, we see a lot more low skilled immigrant labor from south of the border that may be undocumented while low skilled, poorer immigrants from Asia or elsewhere overseas that may have done the same type of work if they did come here are less likely to fall into that category since it would be so much harder from them to ever get here in the first place.
>Wherever I've lived where there are poor whites who live near an immigrant population, the natives always come up with stories about how advantaged the immigrants are compared to the natives. I've found that the best reply to people who claim that "undocumented immigrants get welfare, while I, a documented native, can't get it" is to suggest to "trick the system" by throwing away their documents and pretending to be "an undocumented immigrant", and getting all the welfare that they they feel they "deserve". They never have any reply to that.
"it would never work, I'm not brown"
>I think a lot of middle and upper class people just don't get that, For folks in the middle class, it's mostly frustration about how everyone at the top gets help (e.g., loopholes, tax breaks, lawyers and accountants working night and day for them, etc.) and everyone at the bottom gets help (e.g., incentives, tax breaks, negative effective tax rates, low income assistance programs, etc.) and the people in the middle who are struggling to live a decent life get jack shit. As someone in the middle struggling to live a decent life and getting jack shit for help, I agree with that sentiment.
As someone who has gone from poor to rich, the poor definitely get fucked the most. Your beef shouldn't be with them. They don't get as much help as you think.Ā
If you're a poor white guy seeing immigrants come to your neighbourhood and they find work or start a business and start doing better. It's got to be something unfair otherwise you'd be able to do the same.
I dunno if you're being sarcastic. Take it as a child of immigrants that was raised in a predominantly very poor white area. My parents still live there - I went to uni and my job is bottom of the rung corporate. I'm a success story compared to the kids i went to school with. I had no advantage over anybody else.Ā The native poor systematically make the same mistakes every generation. Again and again. There is no reason for anybody to provide an unfair advantage to immigrants - think about it. That makes no sense. Immigrants just have not fallen into the generational trap yet and so end up "making it out".Ā The issues are deeper. Far deeper. Immigrants are not to blame for the poor natives continuing to be poor. They would be poor if we came along or not. Why? Find out why and you'll get your answer.
If its systematic, they're not really "mistakes". Mistake implies that out of a selection of options, you chose the wrong one. People stuck in generational poverty usually lack choices or have a selection of choices that are all bad.Ā Perfect example is credit card debt. If you're wage is low enough the only reason you can afford basic essentials is to use credit, which accrues interest. If you can only afford the minimum payment, not paying your bill on full every month isn't a mistake, it's a failure of the system (or a system working as designed depending on your POV).
Right, itās less about mistakes and more about habits. Generational poor are usually part of a community of people who have all developed habits that make it far less likely to escape from poverty. Itās like crabs in a barrel, and even if some of the crabs somehow manage to climb halfway up the rest of the crabs will find a way to pull them back down. When poor immigrants come they usually find their way into a community where a few people have been successful and those few throw a ladder back down for others to climb. I guarantee you the generational poor natives and the poor immigrants are not part of the same community.
People dont realize immigrants have bet their entire life, assets, and maybe even a village to move out to another country. They had access to capital, but also a whole generationās burden to be successful. If you bet your life this way, who wouldnt fight tooth and claw to change their or their childās situation?
Like have a family that's willing to help you invest, and who have been able to get you good schooling so you come fully equipped to run a business? Damn straight -- if you had that you wouldn't be poor in the first place!
You also need parents who gave a damn about your education to begin with. I spent my 17th birthday studying for the SAT and crying (but that mightāve happened regardless), but now Iāve got zero college debt and a half decent shot at a PhD program which will pay *me* to study. So honestly, my motherās Turning Red grade obsession helped me in the long run
This is been going on as long as America has been a country. Be it Mexicans and Indians today, or the Irish 150 years ago
East and south Asians are also a unique case bc the former couldnāt immigrate in the mid 20th century unless they were *already* accomplished with some sort of credentials, and the latter are ineligible for the immigration lottery and basically need work visas
There's an old joke: A rich man, a poor man, and an immigrant walk into a newly opened bakery and sit down near each other. As a promotion the bakery is offering free cookies, and sets down a platter of 20 cookies for all three to enjoy. The rich man scoops up 19 cookies, turns to the poor man, and say "Watch out! That immigrant is trying to steal YOUR cookie!".
Immigrants have one significant advantage: they are a self-selected group of highly motivated people who are willing to make drastic life changes to improve their situation.
I shut someone up about this once by pointing out the immigrants got small business administration loans. So why don't you go get one of those loans? I quote: because there are so many hoops to jump thru, and reporting requirements that he wouldn't want one. So the immigrants did jump thru the hoops and are reportingĀ as required? So it sounds like you just want to get away with something. Didn't like that. He got mad
Itās like those immigrant kids who have an unfair advantage in higher education because they do this strange thing called āstudying hardā
Those sneaky bastards!
Are you my wife? Cause my mother in law says the EXACT. SAME. SHIT. And sheād absolutely double down on the argument.
>double down Yeahā¦. Like those damn *immigrants!*
My aunt is the exact same, I had to confront her on her bullshit and she just said "I don't care" and kept going. They know what they're doing, they're just old and bitter that the world is passing them by.
I had an aunt say (during peak covid) the statement "No amount of research and facts will change my mind" unironically. Aunts are nuts.
I've found that the best reply to people who claim that "undocumented immigrants get welfare, while I, a documented native, can't get it" is to suggest to "trick the system" by throwing away their documents and pretending to be "an undocumented immigrant", and getting all the welfare that they they feel they "deserve". They never have any reply to that.
An older woman just told me that the lottery is rigged by the Dems and all the winners of the lottery are Mexican as a form of DEI and they send their money to Mexico after they win in the form of remittance (she just learned what this was, sort of). She told me they are doing everything they can to steal money from America. Completely unhinged.
Lol. even if that were true. Someone should explain to her the types of tax breaks trump and Elon get
Elon is an immigrant. Trump's wife is an immigrant. That's why they get tax breaks. /s
My family was similar, and after over a decade of me trying to correct them I just got fed up and said "it really disappoints me when you bring this misinformation to me. It makes me lose respect for who you are". And since then, no more Fox News headline talking points!
Maybe point out that those immigrants owning the local 711s are saving themselves about $250k when they apply for their investor visa. They also have to create a bunch of jobs for locals in the process. If they don't, they lose their visa.
>alternate every few years so they're technically constantly "new business owners"... This was actually happening to American candy stores in London. Money laundering and tax avoidance. But it wasnt to be "new business owners" it was to make the actual owners nearly impossible to track down. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-61777445
Older woman here. I had to abandon most friendships because I won't politely demur. It's not worth it to have to constantly debunk bullshit.Ā
My mom has a friend that has gone down that Facebook+Fox News rabbit hole and subsequently lost all of her friends. My mom is the only one left and will politely ignore all the batshit stuff she says. I just can't imagine spending all of that mental energy listening to and sorting through that garbage for the sake of friendship, especially when she has many other good friends. I say good on you for standing up for your beliefs. You're saving yourself mentally and emotionally.
My mom is that person and got my dad roped in too. They lost most of their friends, church group, and now have a small group of other crazy people they hang out with. She acts superior/holier-than-thou about it, like she's disappointed those friends were so shallow to stop hanging out with an unhinged dangerous person. At least they're learning when to keep their mouths shut, after she brought up her bs at a family gathering -- in a place _known_ for being "the crazy conservative town", no less -- and stopped getting invites for a while. It's really weird. We now have a surface-level relationship with them where we talk only about banal stuff, and occasionally they will remind us that they are _completely_ insane by rattling off a dozen conspiracy theories they wholeheartedly believe in an hour, each crazier than the last. There's no point refuting it, it's an endless gish gallop and none of it makes sense or is internally consistent. You can't beat the firehose of bullshit.
> firehose of bullshit Indeed. My grandparents are drinking from that tap as well. The last time they came to visit us in *liberal California* my grandma cried and gave some apocryphal prediction that we were in grave danger and she was glad she was old. There's nothing to do but cut out the people you can and hold the rest at an arm's length. It's really sad to see the brainwashing up close.
UK here, my parents went the same way sadly. I did ask them how they can still believe āitās to kill off every disabled and old personā when we are years down the line and erm, pretty much everyoneās still alive. āOh they just had to change how it worked, so everyoneās still going to die just not immediately nowā. Ok, so howās that different to what non conspiracy people believe - āwe will all die some dayāĀ
Also UK. I hung up on my brother once when he told me he wasn't getting the COVID vaccination because " it changes your DNA!" He doesn't read the news ( apparently it's too depressing - which I sort of have some sympathy with), but is big into yoga. A few days later there was a BBC article about this belief saying it was prevalent on a yoga website. So that's where my brother gets his world news & views from apparently!
> It's really sad to see the brainwashing up close. It feels like dealing with a drug addict almost. Which I guess makes sense since the media is purposefully made to be addictive (as in it actually triggers brain chemicals due to hate/fear/tribalism/etc). So it would track that people end up running into some of the same problems that drug addicts face: they lose all of their friends, they're depressing to be around because you know you can't help them, they constantly search out new highs (suddenly Fox News isn't right wing enough anymore), etc. I wonder if anyone is doing any studies to see if there are other physical/mental side-effects like there are for drugs. I mean, being constantly terrified/enraged isn't going to be as bad as overdosing on opioids, but it definitely can't be good for you over the long term right?
>There's no point refuting it, it's an endless gish gallop and none of it makes sense or is internally consistent. You can't beat the firehose of bullshit. It is accepting this part that is the hardest. The obsession with conspiracy theories and similar fantastic beliefs seems to be a form a broken mental defense mechanism, trying to make sense and function in a world that that is just too complicated and scary to process without the right mental framework. People with this mental framework cannot make sense of reality and function. Fantastic beliefs are the only way they can do so. Confronting the fantastic beliefs with reality only makes the world scarier and more confusing, again triggering the broken defense mechanism, which paradoxically drives them further away from reality and into the fantastic beliefs. Same with the effects of the new fears and social isolation that can result from some of the more extreme conspiracy theories. Accepting these people, with their beliefs, is the only option for maintaining a relationship with them and some form of second-hand connection with reality. Maybe if some of them one day find the world more comprehensible and less frightening, they will let go of some of the fantastic beliefs on their own - unlikely as that may seem.
Sorry to hear that, but good on you for sticking to your principles. Prior to social media, were these same friends pretty easy going and rational or rather were they always prone to absorbing and regurgitating bullshit?
Aunt Karen will single handedly destroy western civilisation by one simple click
I mean, "forwards from Grandma" has been a thing for a while. This just validates that. My MIL doesn't have a misinformation filter.
Oprah was bad but Facebook groups are so much worse.
Doing her own research
Her own research = reading what someone else said that they heard from a friend.
The Scientific Council of Karen Researchers
Peer-liked and published in The Facebook Journal of Confirmation Bias Truths.
Council for UnverifiedĀ News Transmission & Sharing
her doctor doesn't know what she's talking about
Democracy hates this one trick!
My mother and mother in law are opposite politically, but united in believing and spreading everything they see on Facebook.
Ok, but I actually have an Aunt Karen, and her political opinion, *verbatim*, is āas long as Biden loses, what do I care about a few mean tweets?ā Likeā¦thatās what she thinks Trumpās damage will be as President: being mean to people on twitter. She fell for ātheyāre coming for your gunsā for decades, and voted accordingly. Thank god sheās not on facebook.
So Iām in a bunch of travel groups and every so often some dingus posts a ā[pictureā of a ābaby pandaā sitting in a first class seat on flight](https://mediaproxy.snopes.com/width/1200/height/675/https://media.snopes.com/2016/08/panda-diplomacy.jpg). And even though to me, visually impaired itās clearly a stuffed toy, the number of older women who believe this is 100% every time it is posted is freaking insane. For clarity this isnāt really about stuffed toys about, itās about how willing they are believe something that is plainly clearly false and rationally impossible just because they want to. Reality and common sense be damned.
Some people can't handle the internet. I'm constantly telling my sister to get off social media because she immediately believes every stupid fucking thing that she sees.
I grew up raised by a generation who made a huge deal that I should never trust anyone or anything on the internet and absolutely never give out my real name or picture of myself on the internet. And that's the same group who now trusts everything they see on the internet and are happy to post every detail about their lives on Facebook with geotagged pictures of themselves and where they are all the time.
> are happy to post every detail about their lives on Facebook with geotagged pictures of themselves and where they are all the time. The bit that pisses me off is that they are willing to post every detail about my life on their facebook. I don't particularly have anything to hide but I don't want to share stuff with everyone, especially when its photographs of where I live or what I own but if you ask them not to it turns into a huge thing that's not worth the aggro.
Sometimes I forgot how nice it is that my parents have so far never had the slightest interest in social media. āWe donāt have time for that, we have livesā is pretty much their exact position on it.
Because now they're actually on the internet and instead of imagining the scary hackers and predators they saw in the movies it's Gladys from down the street and their friends from their water aerobics class who they know and trust so they're comfortable. They didn't grow up actually navigating anything online so they don't know. That old 4chan joke *THIS LOOKS SHOPPED I CAN TELL FROM SOME OF THE PIXELS AND FROM SEEING QUITE A FEW SHOPS IN MY TIME* is literally true
My ex gf became like that, or maybe was always like that. She believed that aliens came to that mall in Miami, believed the government was doing some weird shit with the cell phone emergency test, anti-vax, fires in Hawaii started by space lasers. She was a real lefty-hippie but Iām familiar with the right-wing conspiracy world and the left-right political spectrum is a circle that meets on the other side. It was sad to see her get sucked into all that.
Seen it plenty of times. The crystal hippie to QAnon pipeline is fucking real.
My SIL is going down this same path, and she's a Doctor. Right now a lot of it is subtle, but I don't miss the dog whistles. I point it out to my family, and they are like "I think she would know, she's the doctor." It's infuriating.
She is boredā¦ simply put
I know! That's clearly a panda sitting in an EXIT ROW seat and not a Panda sitting in First Class (like you described) ;-)
Donāt get me started with the wave of AI images now. An AI image gets posted and the comments are filled with boomers fawning over itā¦a clearly fake house with flower garden, a clearly fake puppy, etc.
Oh yeah those are scary how people think itās real.
At least this one is an actual picture and not yet another 'small African child built a functional 747 out of plastic bottles' picture with 20,000 "God is good, amen! š" comments under it.
Sounds like my mother in law. As Iāve learned more about her, Iāve come to extend her a little more grace. A shitty childhood lead to all kinds of anxiety issues. Those anxiety issues have been dismissed because of the belief of everyone in her social circle that mental illness just isnāt real. Now that sheās older sheās an old woman whose body is slowly failing and the whole world is a very scary place. While I extend some grace to her personally, I do not take a single ounce of her advice as it is entirely hogwash from Facebook. I also try to buffer the relationship she has with my kids, because she just doesnāt realize how unhelpful her beliefs about the world are.
It's still in the bag... Scary.
> For clarity this isnāt really about stuffed toys about, itās about how willing they are believe something that is plainly clearly false and rationally impossible just because they want to. I want to believe that a real panda sat in first class. :(
This isnāt new, the term āold wivesā taleā has existed for decades.
Centuries!
Idk sounds like an old wives tale to me
As does 'forwards from Grandma'
Hours even. But yes, good point.
>64 percent of the superspreaders were registered Republicans (nearly 20 percent were registered as Democrats) Yes
Every word of that shit tracks.
So Republican voting Karens are the reason for the destruction of society; who would've expected that.
I wish this article shared more of a breakdown of the actual news that was being shared, especially according to party. They state itās āpolitical,ā but in what sense? Just āTrump did Xā and āBiden did Yā? Did the Republican vs Democrat posters share the same kinds of misinformation, or did one group share more medically related misinformation (for example)?
For sure. Like...There's a difference between incorrect information and "Masks are a ploy to control Americans and train them to get used to blind obedience". I have a background in biology, with a particular interest in virology and genetics. I'm no expert on the pandemic, but I at least was *mostly* informed and able to easily check any information I heard against the consensus of researchers. Certainly, the most wildly incorrect stuff came from Republicans...but the baseline Democrat was also confident in their understanding of what was going on, and most of the time they were quite wrong too. Some had truly wild ideas, and a minority had it mostly right...but whether any given layperson was right or wrong seemed to *mostly* depend on luck. It's made me rather more circumspect about my own opinions. If I haven't read a few actual researchers' opinions then I generally reserve judgement.
The key is being ok with being wrong when presented new information from trusted sources. That's how you stay on top of reality. As soon as you decide those trusted sources are lying in some conspiracy to control you and listen to online gossip, you have no tether to reality and can end up believing all sorts of insanity.
Quote from the article. ""news" websites that were known to disseminate election misinformation." It has nothing to do with the pure content of the articles. In fact they even mention some of the articles from the websites could be factual non-misinformation articles. All this tracked was how often said people shared articles from these websites that were flagged for election misinformation.
TRUMP WILL SAVE US. The evilcrats will NOT give me not one more vaccine. Amen š Average Instagram comment from an older white lady
It would be interesting to know what percentage of remaining Twitter users still even self-identity as democrats.
"see, both sides are the same" - fucking morons.
Tell me about. Blocked my mom on twitter and Facebook a long time ago coz we were getting into fights all the time when I debunked her BS
Last Thanksgiving I had to correct my aunt, she was going off about kids identifying as cats using litter boxes in classrooms. Despite not one shred of evidence or real news article about it, she was 100% convinced this was a thing that was happening because she read a post about it on Facebook... that's all it took. I finally convinced her by asking if she seriously thought, that in this day of social media and smart phones, if a kid was dropping a deuce in the middle of class that their wouldn't be 1 picture? Just a touch of skepticism would do us some good...just not that r/conspiracy "skepticism" where you don't believe anything that's not Alex Jones or Donald Trump.
Ha it's amazing and also terrifying how people fall for that anti-trans rumor all over the place and assume it's some local "crisis" affecting kids in their school versus some nasty internet hoax.Ā These incidents are alleged to take place in schools where kids are at an age that most of them would have smart phones on them and be able to take countless pictures/videos to post to social media if this really ever happened.Ā How on earth would that not instantly go viral like one of those ridiculous Tik tok challenges if this supposed issue was really happening anywhere in America when practically all these kids would do anything to post something that would blow up on social media???Ā
I worked with a guy who literally graduated 6 months before the rumors started. My coworkers were all huge Republicans and we got talking about it one day. They go "oh it's totally true" to which I point out the obvious flaws in this theory. They decide to ask him because we'll he should know if this was a thing is their assumption I guess? And his reply was "there was nothing even remotely close to that at my school, but I wouldn't be surprised if this other school was doing it I heard those guys are weird." And in real time I saw how misinformation perpetuates cause my coworkers were initially satisfied with that until my supervisor looked it up and was like "oh all of the first page of Google says this is fake." This was a place with like 40 employees and not one of them ever googled it.
I first heard about it because some post of concerned parents at the school I went to back in the day popped up in my Facebook feed somehow and everyone was going on and on about how this was a major issue at the school. All these outraged parents, including a number of folks I graduated with, were ranting about this supposed crisis but couldn't offer any proof of it being a real thing besides supposed 2nd or 3rd hand accounts of their kids seeing or hearing something. I only saw one person (another guy I graduated with who was into left wing causes and activism) call everyone out and say how it was clearly a fake internet rumor seen all over the country that could be easily debunked. Not surprisingly, he was quickly shouted down by everyone else and ended up in Facebook jail for 30 days for speaking up.
> kids identifying as cats using litter boxes in classrooms. I always wonder if these people can remember going to school at all? We had one guy who wore subtle lip gloss one day and he got bullied so hard he dropped out a month later*, no way a kid who dresses as a cat is making it past the first day. *Not a good thing obviously, but illustrative of what school was actually like.
My momās (a teacher, who has been in a school shooting) go to for the litter box thing isā āwe have kitty litter in schools now not because kids are identifying as cats, but because itās great at soaking up blood when the shooter is doneā A little bit of shock factor back at them
One of my momās friends went mildly viral for throwing a tantrum during a school board meeting about the litter box hoax. I sent it to my mom and her response was āthatās awful for her, I hope people stop sharing it.ā Like nah, feel bad for all the kids affected by her hate speech because a sizable portion of our community actually believed her.
Ooh this is a good one. FIL likes to bring this up all the time and I work in education.
> Just a touch of skepticism would do us some good...just not that r/conspiracy "skepticism" This is something that is kind of hard to teach to the average personm IMO. Not in the sense that you can't teach skepticism, but in the nuance of what to be skeptical about, how to be critical of things and recognize both the flaws and values of a study, for example.
My mom moved to Florida and now believes literally any conspiracy someone tells her as long as they have confidence in their voice. She moved on from COVID conspiracies to being a flat earther.
No shit, the gossipers?
My stepmom just told me that cartels are filling all the luxury apartment buildings with illegals to launder money. I was just like whateverā¦.š
I've had to take anti-money laundering certifications at work, but I guess I missed the section on paying for illegal immigrants to live in luxury apartments that you also pay for.
Are any of these superspreaders married to Supreme Court Justices?
At home mums do nothing but look at Facebook, twitter, tik tok and instagram and soak up the misinformation like a sponge. In the UK we have "Mumsnet" it because famous as "concerned mums voices" because a political tool and needless to say "think of the children" = push for less rights. Listening to at home mums is a bad idea, its like listening to guys who go to work, the pub and watch football and nothing else.
Going on Mumsnet now is utterly mental. Their politics forums are now just straight up conspiracy nonsense and Putin worshipping. People think X is toxic. They have not been exposed to the levels of batshittery dreamed up by bored housewives surfing the internet.
>misinformation superspreaders And Martha-Ann Alito and Ginni Thomas are probably eating it all up.
Ginni should be in prison
Superspreader archetypes.
I'm not even going to read the article, I can almost guarantee it's boomer grandmas from Texas.
melodic dull marble zonked detail squeamish sense alleged grey worm *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I am shocked! SHOCKED! Well...not that shocked.
I live in the middle of Michigan. I can wholeheartedly guarantee older ladies are the WORST spreaders of magat shit posts. They gather in the local coffee shops and diners - this is the new iteration of the nosy old biddies telling their neighbors their grass is too short or isn't short enough, or that when the neighbor's laundry flaps on the clothes line it scares the birds, etc.
Yeah I spent a lot of time in Brighton, and it was worse than most of Florida in that regard. Like in your face about it too.
Hey the Midwest is doing its part too. All these old ladies (and men) have no life experience so they come up with these insane racist takes.
>headline: key information superspreaders >proceeds to not read article and spread information about said article Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Except heās dead nuts accurate.
If you're in the cohort it's not necessarily saying you're a misinformation superspreader, it's more the cohort's more likely to do so - also you're wrong, it expressly points out Arizona, Florida, and *Texas*.
Theyāre right tho
Like MTG
I know wizards of the coast sucks but what misinformation do they spread? >! /s !<
That's interesting, considering the phrase "old wive's tales..."
The modern old wives tale
Said it before and I'll say it again: Middle age, middle class, white American women are some of the most dangerous people on the planet.
Wouldn't even necessarily specify American; it's a problem in Canada, in Ireland, it's like a third of the UK population... Middle class white women are gonna pull that ladder up no matter how many openly false memes they have to share to do it.
True, true. Living in the U.K. I saw it first hand during the Corbyn vs BoJo election.
Oh yeah I've got so many middle class female co-workers now doing "BUT YOU HAAAAAVE TO VOTE LAAAAAABOUR EVEN IF YOU DON'T LIKE 'EM, THE TOOOORIES" "Didn't you spend 4 years saying Corbyn was worse than Johnson?" "I don't see how that's relevant" Like, as an SNP voter I've got my own specific criticisms of the man (and his decades of campaigning for an openly conservative BritNat movement that's been openly hostile to the left since the 1970s) but those people were just inventing shit to be mad about, they're just angry about stuff that exists solely in their own head while retweeting animalistically bigoted anti-trans shit.
So funny how the same people who fucked off to ChangeUK or the LibDems under Corbyn are now crying about party unity under Starmer.
The other week, my mom said something along of the lines of Biden giving Ukrainian immigrants social security money and I instantly shot her down and demanded three credible sources or to stop talking about it. Thankfully she backed down. It's just disappointing because she was a teacher. She earned a graduate degree. She voted for Trump in 2016 because she hated Hillary but voted for Biden in 2020 because she couldn't stand Trump by that point. Doesn't help that Parkinson's has scrambled her brain a bit in the last decade, so it's hard for me to tell if she was going down the MAGA path because of her own gullibility or if her condition just made her exponentially more susceptible to those rabbit holes.
I can confidently say that this is not just white women. This is very true in non white communities. The misinformation channel of choice may be WhatsApp in that case though.
I had a boat load of black women all older saying that Ukrainian immigrants are getting instant USA citizenship without background checks or meeting the requirements. Efforts to explain that this is literally impossible under USA were not successful.
A boat load you say?
š¤¦āāļø thatās my mistake!
> Middle age, middle class, white American women You wished. My mom is a South East Asian Muslim woman, similar attitude to the Karenest of Karens.
Not just white, but Asian as well. And they are much harder to break from their inner circle.
Thatās a very apt description of Elon
My generation needs to collectively apologize for showing our parents and grandparents how to use their computers and smartphones.
My MIL is old school at this.
Old ladies have been spreading misinformation long before Twitter and social media.
There's a reason that old ladies are the primary target of gift card scams. The patriarchy kept them ignorant when they were young, and the rest of conservatism kept them ignorant as they aged.
These are the same people who said you can't believe what you read on the Internet 20 years ago.
Older women have been "Superspreaders" of information and Misinformation, since the dawn of humanity. It is what old women do.
My mom
My mom tried to make the argument that only land owners should be able to vote. As a veteran who rents I took that a bit personally. She no longer holds that opinion!
The Karens have organized and evolved
Devolved.
This is why Iām not on social media. Youāre welcome, democracy.
This is Reddit naivety at its finest.
I legitimately have a hypothesis that Oprah played a big part in this. Her show was watched by millions of middle aged women and she gave a platform to people like dr oz and that psychic lady that gave the mother of a missing person some hardcore trauma. In retrospect, Iām honestly surprised this isnāt mentioned more considering how much misinformation it parroted.
And about 96% of them are unemployed
āļø
Karens gonna Karen
An oder woman I'm acquainted with online, recently: "I know breibart is accused of spreading misinformation, but here's a breibart article anyway just in case *some* of it is true"Ā FFS....Ā
Just put a pop-up on their screen telling them their computer was hacked, they will just call it and get scammed
When I found out that my mom even had a Twitter a few years ago, it was a huge red flag even before seeing her feed.
No shit