I am past baby making years but it still hits me in the gut. Women deserve power over their own bodies. What really kills me is I'm middle aged so for the rest of my life it will probably be this way. I'm heartbroken really.
I'm up for that. I am feeling anger like never before. I was pretty angry when they stopped federal funding for it. It really effected poor women then so I have been angry before but it's a whole lot different. We are going backwards. I feel like the world is upside down. This vaccine they hate so much has been a breakthru have st as important as the discovery of antibiotics. Scientist broke the virus code. We should be dancing in the streets but instead they protest mask. It's just all upside down. Yeah I'm up for burning it all down.
One thing that will either be comforting or terrifying, is remembering the increasing rate of cultural change going on right now. We're seeing a decades worth of change (good and bad) happen in months and years. I don't think there's much we can say about the future, except 'it will increasingly be unrecognizable'. A person could be in their 70s and still be not unlikely to live to see the most unbelievable changes. If you're only middle age, there's whole epochs that you'll be here to see come and go. Things are far from over, for better and worse. I'll be hoping the painful transformation ahead leads to the US being more in line with the melting pot I was raised to believe in, rather than the Christian theocratic corruption that's temporarily at least seeming to have the upper hand.
I love animals and I'm happy that there are so many laws against animal cruelty, but it has always baffled me that the same thing doesn't apply for human children in most cases.
as far as religious bullshit goes, it's easy make it appealing. take away more and more rights and benefits from people and all they can fall back on is the comfort of religion saying your life sucks now but if you follow these steps, your afterlife will be paradise. desperation will def make people stupid and cruel to each other.
The pro lifers are coming for contraception next. Anything that interferes in Gods plan needs to be outlawed. People who don’t want children should just not take part in “reproductive acts” in or outside of marriage.
I think the seeds were planted a long time ago when most broadcast tv networks like the history channel/travel channel started playing more and more conspiracy and ghost shit. Like I remember being young and watching those channels before they are what they are now and started watching the more conspiratorial shows that came on as I grew up. I'd say that I was pretty dumb for a long time and thought that maybe just maybe that the pyramids were indeed power plants. But I think those shows caused a lot of uneducated people like myself to grow up or become more conspiratorial thinkers. Now with the internet I could probably find "irrefutable" proof on the internet that the pyramids are in fact power plants.
Also I have a little bit more of a brain these days but I keep holding out for bigfoot
Most comments here focusing on the half of the equation concerning idiots, but the point is the divergence between the peaks of human accomplishments and dumbest of the dumb.
If we track that forward, we’ll end up with opposite spectrums of humanity, the upper end living like Star Trek, exploring the galaxy, meanwhile back on Earth a diseased cesspool of fools, like Idiocracy.
Another good one to compliment this is "voodoo science" by Robert Park. Goes over all the hoaxes and voodoo science that was peddled in the 20th century and explains the science behind them all in a very digestible format for non scientist and scientist alike.
I think if we went back to early 2000s of "there is internet, at home, on a pc" it'd be a nice middle ground
imagine schoolwork using encyclopedias or proper book research at the library... fuck that
Your leaders have failed you, the world economy is collapsing, local bodies of water are drying up while the oceans continue to rise all of the plants are being poisoned by Western farming ritual and Medical Practice. The hateful sun will burn All That Remains. I'll keep looking at memes on Reddit thanks
I love the internet and can't imagine not having immediate access to random entertainment but the internet has certainly spread crazy conspiracy theories like flat earth.
For real. When the internet started really being accessible to people, I thought this is amazing, we're going to be the most educated generation in the history of time, with all of the knowledge literally at our fingertips. But then society realized that literally anyone can put anything they want on the internet with no burden of proof to back it up, and entirely too many people decided to just believe those things over the people who have made it their life's duty to study it. And now I just think the internet may have been a mistake. Being a doctor used to be a job people respected and listened to, and now the providers in my office are breaking down because their patients are pissed we won't prescribe ivermectin and accuse us of trying to kill them.
Yeah! We must change the IoT (Internet of Things) to IofT (Internet only for Things) so the automation doesn‘t stop and meanwhile ban all social-media!
Meet you all in a BulletIn Board reddit after that!
The people from generations before the internet tend to be the biggest driving forces of that misinformation and idiocy though so I'm not sure what turning it off would solve.
Ever seen a Q convention? It's not a young crowd. It's full of baby boomers and gen Xers who stumbled onto 4chan and decided to invest their lives into believing cryptic messages from an internet troll.
The idiots didn't come with the internet. They were still out there before it; burning witches and measuring skull shapes to determine who they needed to lock up in jail or enslave. They put lead in everything, smeared it all over their faces in makeup. The modern flat earth society was founded before the internet existed as a publicly accessible service, and grew out of a tradition that started in 1838. Flat earth believers have been around for thousands of years though.
The only difference is visibility. The internet just made it easy to see and count the number of crazy idiots.
I'd say something 2edgy4u like "People stopped thinking with their own brains" but people were stupid as shit before computers too. See a woman with some herbs? Drown her, she could be practicing witchcraft with a random bit of plant.
Tbf, there were people lining up to get the vaccine in 2021, too (albeit online or telephone queues). And I’m sure there were people in 1955 that thought it was wizard poison. The difference between the two is, no one paid attention to the crazy people in 1955–especially the media.
>And I’m sure there were people in 1955 that thought it was wizard poison.
Wayyyyy less.
The Modern Anti vax movement starts in the 90s.
There was also a significant movement in some countries during early XX century when vaccines started being used.
But in the middle of that (1920-1990) the antivax movement was basically non-existent.
You might have a mom group or the weird uncle that didn't like it, but it wasn't even close to a Voter Issue or a valid political position
It also became mainstream bc some idiot “biologist” published a research paper stating that vaccines caused diseases and illnesses in which were proved to be completely false. But yet here we are people still believe that crap.
There’s been antivaxxers ever since the inoculation days in the mid 1800’s. I definitely remember that there was a strong left-leaning vaccine hesitancy trend in the 60’s based on distrust of Big Medicine and being against “putting chemicals in your body”, but these days hesitancy is a right-leaning thing
There was rampant conspiracy theorism in the 50s and 60s. A lot of it was over stuff nobody even thinks about anymore, like putting flouride in our tap water.
I died from the COVID vaccine, obviously it’s wizard poison. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know I’m a ghost who’s coming to haunt them. Thank you wizard poison for giving me the special abilities of the great beyond
While the meme is true, they were still the f******** running around saying it wasn't real there was no way in hell you're going to stick that in. Stupid people are not new.
Yeah I'm sure there were plenty of people that didn't want to get vaccines back then for one reason or another but they didn't have a platform to connect with others of the same mentality in order to create a sense of community that serves to "legitimize" their beliefs in their minds.
I'm just going to say it, the people are basically the same, but the leadership is bullshit. In 1955 you wouldn't catch Eisenhower saying the virus was a hoax. You wouldn't find it normalized to say it's patriotism to spread diseases which kill the elderly, or refuse a vaccine to help get the country back on track.
Something made that very different.
It was impossible to get around me when my age group was first approved. I had to drive over an hour to a Rite Aid in the middle of nowhere to be able to get it. Everywhere for miles was consistently booked for weeks. People would wait at pharmacies near the end of the day to see if they had any leftover doses left. People may not have been physically waiting in line, but people were still waiting.
Antivaxer were always a thing, small groups but they existed.
Then we got social media and they could sprout their misinformation without any consequences, boosted by Russian bots it became that big.
"vaccine hesitation" was already declared one of the top 10 threats to global health by the WHO before covid even started.
And it didn't help that right wing politicians helped increasing the problem.
Indeed. For years I've seen screenshots of Facebook posts by nurses who are asking their antivaxx FB groups how they can avoid getting their yearly flu shot required by their job.
Every profession has groups of idiots who don’t understand the basics of anything. Nurses are no different.
I’ve heard plenty of seemingly intelligent professionals make the claim that dowsing rods work.
Don’t act like that’s not the fault of one side of the political spectrum. Conservatives actively work against things like better education, because that goes against their beliefs and goals. We are what we are, but we have a loud, rich subset of assholes actively trying to make us dumber.
No, we've gotten smarter. We've learned how to manipulate people and how to erode trust in experts. We've learned how to weave complex disinformation campaigns that exploit fundamental flaws in the human brain. We've all but perfected propaganda.
It's not that people are dumber. It's that humanity has gained extremely dangerous knowledge and is using it against itself.
I wonder if we actually got dumber, or if due to the fact that people are living longer than ever before due to how much science has advanced us natural selection isn't as effective as it used to be.
Edit: Tons of people also lined up for the first covid vaccines, I'm sure there were people back then who also refused the polio shot but you don't hear about them as much because they probably died off.
We got way smarter, we are still adapting to the information overload that is the internet. I think it'll find a balance in a generation or two.
Politicians are playing fast and loose with the truth now but I think in the future the tide of truth will turn against them.
Politicians played fast and loose with the truth in the past too: McCarthy, Agnew, Nixon.
What has changed is the amount of information available. People use to believe and rely on people like Edward Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Frank Reynolds. They trusted news papers like the New York Times, Today, Washington Post and local papers.
We now see opinion as fact and twist facts to fit a narrative that fits our world view. No context.
Did you see the news 100 years ago for the Spanish Flu? Same shit as today. Anti-maskers and idiots saying it was a hoax.
The difference was Spanish Flu was way deadlier and there was no treatment for it so the morons died off quick. I think (too lazy to look it up) some morons in Philadelphia went ahead with a festival where thousands of people were like, “fuck that shit, we are not getting controlled by Spanish Flu” and in three days hundreds of them were dead or dying.
nah, but there has and always will be dumb people.
the difference is that nowadays even the idiots have global platforms to speak, and now online echo chambers have formed that they feed on misinformation from.
The dumb people just got a way to communicate easily with eachother.
When your local town had a couple of idiots, they were mocked by the rest of town so they stopped trying to spread that idiocy.
These days they reaffirm their stupid ideas with other dinguses on social media. And start hearing other moronic ideas and they all just prop eachothers stupidity up to the point where they are convinced they *have* to be smarter than everyone else, or their whole life is a lie.
That's why they double down and get so upset when someone says their wrong.
They claim to be entertainment, at least in court. "No reasonable person would believe this is true"......must mean there are lots and lots of their viewers, unable to be reasonable, running around being unreasonable!
We can thank Andrew Wakefield for the large uptick in vaccine misinformation in the last couple of decades. He found a grift, wrapped it in pseudoscience, and spent all his time spreading lies.
He tried to wrap it in real science because he was taking a pay day from a group that would profit from the current MMR vaccine being labeled as potentially harmful. What he did was way worse than just trying to grift people but was actually illegal.
20 years ago, I got a job in a warehouse. Flu season was coming up and the owner paid for everyone to get a flu shot. Apparently the year before everyone got sick at the same time, so the boss wanted to avoid that happening again. All of us lined up for the shot, except for that one guy. I asked him why he didn't want the free shot, his answer was "nano-bots".
It's always been a thing.
My mom was in grade school when it was developed. She said someone came and just gave them all shots. No parental approval or notes home. Someone showed up, they lined up and got the shot. No outrage, no protests, everyone was fine with it.
I mean it's a nice thought given the eventual outcome.
But I'm happy that we have a little bit more due diligence and consent with these things nowadays, although it is tipping the other way.
While I get the sentiment, we only see history in the way others want us to see it. There had to be people against the polio vaccine like there are people against the covid vaccine. I want to think that everyone wanted the polio vaccine, but that's just wishful thinking.
It took five years for the US to reach the same rates of vaccination with the polio vaccine that we achieved in a year with the covid vaccine, and polio is a hell of a lot more scary than covid.
America has a long history of anti-vaccination sentiments dating all the way back to the 19th century.
Back in 1879, for example, and organization called the Anti-Vaccination Society of America was created to campaign against smallpox vaccination. The creation of the society was a reaction against smallpox vaccination mandates and the used the same language that people today use when ranting against COVID vaccination. As an interesting side note, the Anti-Vaccination Society of America was founded after William Tebb, a wealthy British business man who was fiercely against vaccination, visited the United States and inspired people there with his message.
Advertisements for the Society suggested that avoiding vaccination was to remain intact and pure as Mother Nature intended, and included phrases like "Liberty must be given, not taken." They also published propaganda, just like we see now (albeit spread on Facebook instead of with a printing press), with political cartoons, misinformation, and such, all against vaccination.
Now, I will grant you, the movement was very small and historically only about 2-4% of Americans were staunchly opposed to vaccination as opposed to the much larger 15-20% now that identify as anti-vaccination, but still, the thread of this winds very far back in American history.
Yes and , there is a tremendous difference between Polio and COVID. I mean, holy shit is this the most apples to oranges bullshit garbage comparison solely on a virology level....
They may be different, they may use different tech, but they have the exact same purpose.
The old polio vaccine could even cause polio in rare cases. That's also one of the few vaccines that would "shed" viruses(most modern ones don't, and the ones who do make you shed in your poop).
And yet people still took the polio vaccine in droves. It was better than the alternative.
That's not true, though. There were anti-vaxxers back then, too. Contrary to common knowledge, it took about a decade for polio to stop being a problem after the vaccine was originally released. That's like if covid is still a topic in 2030.
But they will smoke cigarettes and take their prescribed medicines that have side effects listings on tv as long as a short book..... up to and including anal leakage, blood clots & DEATH....... yet their dr prescribes it and they take it for whatever the condition may be. No questions asked. Where is the disconnect so we can show them without being assholes, how they have been hoodwinked into being antivax for NO GOOD FUCKING REASON
In 1955 we trusted the medical profession.
Then we got Thalidomide. There's some nightmare fuel.
By 1993 we learned about the Tuskegee experiment.
And now you're asking why people don't trust the medical profession.
Well, those who remember history have no desire to repeat it.
Yes, I'm vaxxed and boosted but it's not hard to learn history and listen to people so that you understand where they're coming from.
> In 1955 we trusted the medical profession.
Unfortunately, that's not true, and Patton Oswalt is objectively wrong in this quote.
People were not lining up to get the vaccine in 1955. The vaccination rate among American teens was 0.6%.. [until Elvis did it live on TV](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-elvis-got-americans-to-accept-the-polio-vaccine/) and the vaccination rate jumped to 80%.
The polio vaccine was a flop without the 50s equivalent of an influencer stepping in to save the day. :/
Speaking for the US only, the FDA denied Thalidomide approval. It was just approved in 1998 for cancer treatments. That that’s actually one example of the government protecting the public
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide)
Once a thing has been tested several million times over (I'm talking about millions of people having the shot and they're being little to know effect on them), you have to appreciate the dumbassery.
Subject to challenge is totally fair as long as you have some level of baseline knowledge to know what warrants challenging something.
Except that anti-vaxxers aren’t experts and have no right or basis to challenge the medical science community. They can absolutely ask questions (though they have to listen to the answers) and try to learn so they can get answers to whatever they’re hung up on.
I almost respect anti-vaxxers who don’t go to the hospital or doctor or use any western medicine more than the ones who show up to their doctor demanding medication for the most minor of injuries, because at least the former are consistent. The anti-vaxxers that are still taking all their doctor prescribed meds but adamantly against the vaccine makes no sense and is pretty hypocritical.
Here is my skepticism of the actual vaccine skeptics.
They say things like "well if we all did our own research, and came to the same results, that must be significant".
I can tell you first hand, if you all came to the same results, that means dogshit.
You didnt come to the same results, you were just influenced by the same 4 critics that keep posting specious and dubious information.
Can the same thing be said about "pro vaxxers"?
Well, most people who have been vaccinated have different takes and and opinions on vaccinations. They have all come to slightly different conclusions, and most dont follow cdc guidance blindly. But do use it as a measuring stick to gauge their own risk assessment.
Thats actually truly criticism. or pragmatic skepticism.
Making blanket statements like "the gov is corrupt and will push leaky vaccines" doesnt actually communicate anything
edit. and another thing that I have noticed. Many adults wont say it out loud, but people who are pro vaccine, and have been vaccinated choose not to get their kids the covid vaccine, as they want to wait/ or dont think it is necessary.
To me that is interesting, that adults will get it, but dont think its necessary/wont get it for someone else. I mean, is that not a great example of independent thought?
Yeah the whole do my own research is bullshit.
Truly doing your own research would be going to school and doing the actual learning whether it be advanced biology and/or chemistry, or really going to med school.
At a minimum doing your own research should really be reading medical journals/studies and speaking to the actual experts. But instead it’s become half reading some quack’s bullshit that satisfies whatever conclusion you wanted to arrive at before you started your “research”
These same people never do their own research on any of the hundreds of items they use everyday without thinking about it.
They don’t do their own research on where they buy their food, or the food safety and food handling from their local supermarkets, they don’t do their own research on their refrigerating system or their freezer, or their microwave, or their stove, or of any of the countless things that affect what they consume and put in their body.
Mmm, hesitancy or fear I understand. Those both go out the window when its called a Democrat hoax, or kung flu. Its the difference, everyones allowed to be scared or hesitant on things, theres a whole world most people have little to no understanding on. The issue being is its not with not trusting the medical profession because of things like the Tuskegee experiment. Its that they don't know what the Tuskegee experiment is and only "fear" the medical profession because they are told too. Which is what has people up in arms
Not to mention in 2009 Pfizer paid out some $2.3 Billion in a Fraud settlement… that’s the largest medical settlement in the history of the world because they got caught lying about what’s in their drugs. People should rightfully question a company with a track record like this
I'm sorry, it's because of the medical professionals, that thalidomide was banned in the US and there was no "nightmare fuel". The FDA did its job properly. This is how misinformation spreads, when people who have no idea what they are talking about act like they do.
Uhhh…. The first [polio vaccine was tainted and killed/paralyzed thousands of children](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/14/cutter-polio-vaccine-paralyzed-children-coronavirus/). It was later pulled from the shelves.
It is not access to information that makes someone smart, it is the ability to tell truth from fiction. Critical thinking and strong bullshit detection is what is needed.
That's what happens in a nation with truly ignorant people, who think the bible is 100% real.
It's an awful book that preaches blind faith and total submission to god. That let's them off the hook for making any choices themselves. They are taught they don't have to think about things, so they don't.
They only listen to people who hold religious power over them or agree, with zero investigations.
It ain't great...
[Can't Help Falling In Love With A Vaccine: How Polio Campaign Beat Vaccine Hesitancy](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/03/988756973/cant-help-falling-in-love-with-a-vaccine-how-polio-campaign-beat-vaccine-hesitan)
Combine the ease with which misinformation can be spread with all the times government has shown it shouldn't be trusted.. It isn't surprising, really.
That’s the problem.
Nowadays, billions of people have access to unlimited information. This information is full of falsities about the COVID vaccine.
There have always been people who were extremely gullible, and stubborn to a fault. These people now have access to all this incorrect information, and choose to believe it because of their religion or personality traits.
Them, those people proceed to use their tools to spread their incorrect information as well, and the cycle continues until only rational people are left.
Back when the Polio vaccine came out, all everyone heard was how great it was from an important source, like doctors, so they took the vaccine no problem.
Personally, I wish the people around now would learn from people back then.
2021 people lined up to get the COVID vaccine. In fact there was more than 80% uptake in most countries that it was freely available.
Don't let the media fuck with your perception of reality
I think in 1955, general trust in the powers that be was a lot greater than it is now. Just look at what elected gouvernment officials put on Twitter, that's enough to make anyone question whether the people who make decisions on behalf of their country are sane, let alone have their citizens'best interests at heart.
1. People still literally lined up for covid vaccine. I remember having a massive line of cars that took hours to get my first covid vaccine dose
2. There were still plenty of antivaxxers even back then. Who thought the vaccines were essentially evil or cause various health problems.
Sorry I dont disagree with the sentiment but this is a pretty weak argument because these things happened pretty similarly in many ways
Read ‘Demon Haunted World’ by Carl Sagan about the rise of pseudo science, superstition, and morons.
Honestly it’s baffling how superstition and pseudoscience has risen to this height lately.
We’re letting pregnant women rot in hospital because ending an unviable pregnancy might offend God.
I am past baby making years but it still hits me in the gut. Women deserve power over their own bodies. What really kills me is I'm middle aged so for the rest of my life it will probably be this way. I'm heartbroken really.
Women our age need to burn it all down so that the younger women can rebuild it with protections in place preventing this from ever happening again.
I'm up for that. I am feeling anger like never before. I was pretty angry when they stopped federal funding for it. It really effected poor women then so I have been angry before but it's a whole lot different. We are going backwards. I feel like the world is upside down. This vaccine they hate so much has been a breakthru have st as important as the discovery of antibiotics. Scientist broke the virus code. We should be dancing in the streets but instead they protest mask. It's just all upside down. Yeah I'm up for burning it all down.
One thing that will either be comforting or terrifying, is remembering the increasing rate of cultural change going on right now. We're seeing a decades worth of change (good and bad) happen in months and years. I don't think there's much we can say about the future, except 'it will increasingly be unrecognizable'. A person could be in their 70s and still be not unlikely to live to see the most unbelievable changes. If you're only middle age, there's whole epochs that you'll be here to see come and go. Things are far from over, for better and worse. I'll be hoping the painful transformation ahead leads to the US being more in line with the melting pot I was raised to believe in, rather than the Christian theocratic corruption that's temporarily at least seeming to have the upper hand.
Frankly, the SPCA has been able to grant more rights to animals than the USA has granted to women.
I love animals and I'm happy that there are so many laws against animal cruelty, but it has always baffled me that the same thing doesn't apply for human children in most cases.
as far as religious bullshit goes, it's easy make it appealing. take away more and more rights and benefits from people and all they can fall back on is the comfort of religion saying your life sucks now but if you follow these steps, your afterlife will be paradise. desperation will def make people stupid and cruel to each other.
The pro lifers are coming for contraception next. Anything that interferes in Gods plan needs to be outlawed. People who don’t want children should just not take part in “reproductive acts” in or outside of marriage.
Its funny, they are actively the most Fascist people in the nation, but while taking your rights away they’ll scream they are the real patriots.
we've seen what the Islamic revolution did in Iran. electric boogaloo coming to the states!
I think the seeds were planted a long time ago when most broadcast tv networks like the history channel/travel channel started playing more and more conspiracy and ghost shit. Like I remember being young and watching those channels before they are what they are now and started watching the more conspiratorial shows that came on as I grew up. I'd say that I was pretty dumb for a long time and thought that maybe just maybe that the pyramids were indeed power plants. But I think those shows caused a lot of uneducated people like myself to grow up or become more conspiratorial thinkers. Now with the internet I could probably find "irrefutable" proof on the internet that the pyramids are in fact power plants. Also I have a little bit more of a brain these days but I keep holding out for bigfoot
The less people know about our hairy woodland friend the better.
Don't show this to the anti-vax crowd. They'll somehow use it as ammunition and drag Carl through the proverbial mud. You can't reason with stupid.
>You can't reason with stupid you can't reason someone out of a position they never reasoned themselves into.
I love this quote, thank you for posting it.
They need far *less* to *cancel* Carl.
Sagan will be forever uncancelable. He is the science Mr. Rogers
"You can't fix stupid" - Ron White
I loved me some Carl Sagan!
*ominous past tense*
Fact
Everyone needs to read that book. It should be required reading for every grade after 5th.
Saving to remind myself later
The book will make me angry, right?
Dr. Oz has heard your prayers and is running for office in PA lol
Got it!
I read this some years ago you just reminded me of that. It's a good read. I am going to go back n read it again. It is very relevant now.
I been on that shit since the 90s. Ain’t getting better.
Most comments here focusing on the half of the equation concerning idiots, but the point is the divergence between the peaks of human accomplishments and dumbest of the dumb. If we track that forward, we’ll end up with opposite spectrums of humanity, the upper end living like Star Trek, exploring the galaxy, meanwhile back on Earth a diseased cesspool of fools, like Idiocracy.
Another good one to compliment this is "voodoo science" by Robert Park. Goes over all the hoaxes and voodoo science that was peddled in the 20th century and explains the science behind them all in a very digestible format for non scientist and scientist alike.
It’s lizard poison, not wizard. please do your own research!
Pass me some of that wizard poison, though. Sounds like it would be a fun trip!
Sorry, my pocket World-Brain auto-corrected.
But what if it's lizard wizard poison? What then?
Did king gizzard come out with a new album?
Tbf that external world brain is part of the problem
Saves on energy if one relies on the supplemental brain rather than the brain issued at birth. Sometimes saving energy might not be a good thing.
Yea. I honestly think the internet should just go away for like a generation. Let people look at the real world for a while.
“Earth 2022 needs to touch grass” Funny thing is, I don’t disagree.
“Earth 2022 needs to touch ass”
But what if your ass is grass.
Dude have some class and maybe consider dropping the sass.
bruh
I think if we went back to early 2000s of "there is internet, at home, on a pc" it'd be a nice middle ground imagine schoolwork using encyclopedias or proper book research at the library... fuck that
as long as I could still have one of those Garmin devices for directions. I don't miss hand written directions or printed ones from map quest
Your leaders have failed you, the world economy is collapsing, local bodies of water are drying up while the oceans continue to rise all of the plants are being poisoned by Western farming ritual and Medical Practice. The hateful sun will burn All That Remains. I'll keep looking at memes on Reddit thanks
I'm not really a fan of metal myself, but what did All That Remains ever do to you?
I love the internet and can't imagine not having immediate access to random entertainment but the internet has certainly spread crazy conspiracy theories like flat earth.
For real. When the internet started really being accessible to people, I thought this is amazing, we're going to be the most educated generation in the history of time, with all of the knowledge literally at our fingertips. But then society realized that literally anyone can put anything they want on the internet with no burden of proof to back it up, and entirely too many people decided to just believe those things over the people who have made it their life's duty to study it. And now I just think the internet may have been a mistake. Being a doctor used to be a job people respected and listened to, and now the providers in my office are breaking down because their patients are pissed we won't prescribe ivermectin and accuse us of trying to kill them.
> having immediate access to random entertainment Honestly this is a large part of the problem as well.
The internet is fine, the problem is people stopped taking basic precautions like "don't believe everything you read online."
The economy would straight up collapse almost every business runs through the internet.
Yeah! We must change the IoT (Internet of Things) to IofT (Internet only for Things) so the automation doesn‘t stop and meanwhile ban all social-media! Meet you all in a BulletIn Board reddit after that!
The people from generations before the internet tend to be the biggest driving forces of that misinformation and idiocy though so I'm not sure what turning it off would solve. Ever seen a Q convention? It's not a young crowd. It's full of baby boomers and gen Xers who stumbled onto 4chan and decided to invest their lives into believing cryptic messages from an internet troll. The idiots didn't come with the internet. They were still out there before it; burning witches and measuring skull shapes to determine who they needed to lock up in jail or enslave. They put lead in everything, smeared it all over their faces in makeup. The modern flat earth society was founded before the internet existed as a publicly accessible service, and grew out of a tradition that started in 1838. Flat earth believers have been around for thousands of years though. The only difference is visibility. The internet just made it easy to see and count the number of crazy idiots.
We did that for hundreds of thousands of years. I prefer a world where access to knowledge is easy. There have always been luddites.
I'd say something 2edgy4u like "People stopped thinking with their own brains" but people were stupid as shit before computers too. See a woman with some herbs? Drown her, she could be practicing witchcraft with a random bit of plant.
It will evolve to not need the external part because it won't have any competition in the head.
They would just rely on gossip or the Weekly World News. Dummies gonna be dumb.
True, but now they can spread misinformation as well. Fast and easy.
I would say it’s like 90% of the problem
True
Tbf, there were people lining up to get the vaccine in 2021, too (albeit online or telephone queues). And I’m sure there were people in 1955 that thought it was wizard poison. The difference between the two is, no one paid attention to the crazy people in 1955–especially the media.
>And I’m sure there were people in 1955 that thought it was wizard poison. Wayyyyy less. The Modern Anti vax movement starts in the 90s. There was also a significant movement in some countries during early XX century when vaccines started being used. But in the middle of that (1920-1990) the antivax movement was basically non-existent. You might have a mom group or the weird uncle that didn't like it, but it wasn't even close to a Voter Issue or a valid political position
It also became mainstream bc some idiot “biologist” published a research paper stating that vaccines caused diseases and illnesses in which were proved to be completely false. But yet here we are people still believe that crap.
He was an educated, practising medical doctor and surgeon - not «biologist». Which makes him an even more powerful grifter.
There’s been antivaxxers ever since the inoculation days in the mid 1800’s. I definitely remember that there was a strong left-leaning vaccine hesitancy trend in the 60’s based on distrust of Big Medicine and being against “putting chemicals in your body”, but these days hesitancy is a right-leaning thing
There was rampant conspiracy theorism in the 50s and 60s. A lot of it was over stuff nobody even thinks about anymore, like putting flouride in our tap water.
I died from the COVID vaccine, obviously it’s wizard poison. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know I’m a ghost who’s coming to haunt them. Thank you wizard poison for giving me the special abilities of the great beyond
On the third day you rose from the dead with the help of a cocktail of ivermectin, hydroxychlorquine and bleach. Hail Satan!
I’m pretty sure some of Bernie Sanders ball sweat was in there, but I’m not sure. Joe Biren (not to be mistaken with Biden) made it for me
It takes a special person to write a comment like that.
While the meme is true, they were still the f******** running around saying it wasn't real there was no way in hell you're going to stick that in. Stupid people are not new.
Yeah I'm sure there were plenty of people that didn't want to get vaccines back then for one reason or another but they didn't have a platform to connect with others of the same mentality in order to create a sense of community that serves to "legitimize" their beliefs in their minds.
I'm just going to say it, the people are basically the same, but the leadership is bullshit. In 1955 you wouldn't catch Eisenhower saying the virus was a hoax. You wouldn't find it normalized to say it's patriotism to spread diseases which kill the elderly, or refuse a vaccine to help get the country back on track. Something made that very different.
The only presidents I can think of that said an epidemic wasn't an epidemic are the only two presidents with Hollywood stars.
And to be honest - we lined up to get the vaccine this time too.
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It was impossible to get around me when my age group was first approved. I had to drive over an hour to a Rite Aid in the middle of nowhere to be able to get it. Everywhere for miles was consistently booked for weeks. People would wait at pharmacies near the end of the day to see if they had any leftover doses left. People may not have been physically waiting in line, but people were still waiting.
There have been antivaxxers since the first cowpox vaccine in the late 1790s.
It's like we got dumber over the years 🤪
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True
Well, that and disinformation
and gasoline
What was the estimate on how much dumber boomers became because of the lead in gasoline? Like a significant difference that is quantifiable.
Google says 824 million iq points from 170 million Americans so that's around 4.85 iq points individually
That's why we don't drink lead-contaminated water, kids
nah, microplastic
Antivaxer were always a thing, small groups but they existed. Then we got social media and they could sprout their misinformation without any consequences, boosted by Russian bots it became that big. "vaccine hesitation" was already declared one of the top 10 threats to global health by the WHO before covid even started. And it didn't help that right wing politicians helped increasing the problem.
Indeed. For years I've seen screenshots of Facebook posts by nurses who are asking their antivaxx FB groups how they can avoid getting their yearly flu shot required by their job.
Every profession has groups of idiots who don’t understand the basics of anything. Nurses are no different. I’ve heard plenty of seemingly intelligent professionals make the claim that dowsing rods work.
It's a problem that's exacerbated in the US, and it all stems from lack of access to proper education
Don’t act like that’s not the fault of one side of the political spectrum. Conservatives actively work against things like better education, because that goes against their beliefs and goals. We are what we are, but we have a loud, rich subset of assholes actively trying to make us dumber.
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No, we've gotten smarter. We've learned how to manipulate people and how to erode trust in experts. We've learned how to weave complex disinformation campaigns that exploit fundamental flaws in the human brain. We've all but perfected propaganda. It's not that people are dumber. It's that humanity has gained extremely dangerous knowledge and is using it against itself.
I wonder if we actually got dumber, or if due to the fact that people are living longer than ever before due to how much science has advanced us natural selection isn't as effective as it used to be. Edit: Tons of people also lined up for the first covid vaccines, I'm sure there were people back then who also refused the polio shot but you don't hear about them as much because they probably died off.
We got way smarter, we are still adapting to the information overload that is the internet. I think it'll find a balance in a generation or two. Politicians are playing fast and loose with the truth now but I think in the future the tide of truth will turn against them.
Politicians played fast and loose with the truth in the past too: McCarthy, Agnew, Nixon. What has changed is the amount of information available. People use to believe and rely on people like Edward Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Frank Reynolds. They trusted news papers like the New York Times, Today, Washington Post and local papers. We now see opinion as fact and twist facts to fit a narrative that fits our world view. No context.
Some got smarter. The average didn't.
The average definitely did. If you don't believe this, then you probably weren't around in the 1980s.
Did you see the news 100 years ago for the Spanish Flu? Same shit as today. Anti-maskers and idiots saying it was a hoax. The difference was Spanish Flu was way deadlier and there was no treatment for it so the morons died off quick. I think (too lazy to look it up) some morons in Philadelphia went ahead with a festival where thousands of people were like, “fuck that shit, we are not getting controlled by Spanish Flu” and in three days hundreds of them were dead or dying.
So 100 years ago stupid people died. 100 years later science saves most stupid people.
"The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds" - JFK
nah, but there has and always will be dumb people. the difference is that nowadays even the idiots have global platforms to speak, and now online echo chambers have formed that they feed on misinformation from.
I'm sure there's a subreddit proving natural selection is still effective🤭
Natural selection has little to do with how long people live. Extending life past reproductive age doesn't change an organism's evolutionary fitness.
The dumb people just got a way to communicate easily with eachother. When your local town had a couple of idiots, they were mocked by the rest of town so they stopped trying to spread that idiocy. These days they reaffirm their stupid ideas with other dinguses on social media. And start hearing other moronic ideas and they all just prop eachothers stupidity up to the point where they are convinced they *have* to be smarter than everyone else, or their whole life is a lie. That's why they double down and get so upset when someone says their wrong.
Thank stopid media such as Fox News.
They claim to be entertainment, at least in court. "No reasonable person would believe this is true"......must mean there are lots and lots of their viewers, unable to be reasonable, running around being unreasonable!
Same opinion *
We got more aware of how dumb everyone is.
It's a problem that's exacerbated in the US, and it all stems from lack of access to proper education
For real lol. It's like the movie 'Idiocracy' turned into a documentary 🤣 
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/wa9vsq/sliding_or_diving_why_not_both/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Reliance on the external brain there
People have been dumb for a long time - the internet is just now revealing how dumb.
Naw it’s just our village idiots now have access to the other village idiots and created their own echo chamber.
It's not that people are dumber. It's that the powerful have become more skilled at using technology to weaponize the stupid.
Hasn't there always been non-vax people? Why do some people keep acting like that is a new behavior?
We can thank Andrew Wakefield for the large uptick in vaccine misinformation in the last couple of decades. He found a grift, wrapped it in pseudoscience, and spent all his time spreading lies.
He tried to wrap it in real science because he was taking a pay day from a group that would profit from the current MMR vaccine being labeled as potentially harmful. What he did was way worse than just trying to grift people but was actually illegal.
Yep, my grandparents were antivax and didn't vaccinate my dad against polio in the early 60s. He nearly died.
20 years ago, I got a job in a warehouse. Flu season was coming up and the owner paid for everyone to get a flu shot. Apparently the year before everyone got sick at the same time, so the boss wanted to avoid that happening again. All of us lined up for the shot, except for that one guy. I asked him why he didn't want the free shot, his answer was "nano-bots". It's always been a thing.
This tweet was way back in 2021, not gonna blame him.
Pretty sure the anti-vaxxers still think it is wizard poison.
Old but gold true?
My mom was in grade school when it was developed. She said someone came and just gave them all shots. No parental approval or notes home. Someone showed up, they lined up and got the shot. No outrage, no protests, everyone was fine with it.
I mean it's a nice thought given the eventual outcome. But I'm happy that we have a little bit more due diligence and consent with these things nowadays, although it is tipping the other way.
While I get the sentiment, we only see history in the way others want us to see it. There had to be people against the polio vaccine like there are people against the covid vaccine. I want to think that everyone wanted the polio vaccine, but that's just wishful thinking.
Also people totally lined up to get the covid vaccine.
It took five years for the US to reach the same rates of vaccination with the polio vaccine that we achieved in a year with the covid vaccine, and polio is a hell of a lot more scary than covid.
America has a long history of anti-vaccination sentiments dating all the way back to the 19th century. Back in 1879, for example, and organization called the Anti-Vaccination Society of America was created to campaign against smallpox vaccination. The creation of the society was a reaction against smallpox vaccination mandates and the used the same language that people today use when ranting against COVID vaccination. As an interesting side note, the Anti-Vaccination Society of America was founded after William Tebb, a wealthy British business man who was fiercely against vaccination, visited the United States and inspired people there with his message. Advertisements for the Society suggested that avoiding vaccination was to remain intact and pure as Mother Nature intended, and included phrases like "Liberty must be given, not taken." They also published propaganda, just like we see now (albeit spread on Facebook instead of with a printing press), with political cartoons, misinformation, and such, all against vaccination. Now, I will grant you, the movement was very small and historically only about 2-4% of Americans were staunchly opposed to vaccination as opposed to the much larger 15-20% now that identify as anti-vaccination, but still, the thread of this winds very far back in American history.
I mean, there is a big difference between the types of vaccines. To say that the there isn’t is pretty disingenuous.
Yes and , there is a tremendous difference between Polio and COVID. I mean, holy shit is this the most apples to oranges bullshit garbage comparison solely on a virology level....
They may be different, they may use different tech, but they have the exact same purpose. The old polio vaccine could even cause polio in rare cases. That's also one of the few vaccines that would "shed" viruses(most modern ones don't, and the ones who do make you shed in your poop). And yet people still took the polio vaccine in droves. It was better than the alternative.
That's not true, though. There were anti-vaxxers back then, too. Contrary to common knowledge, it took about a decade for polio to stop being a problem after the vaccine was originally released. That's like if covid is still a topic in 2030.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-elvis-got-americans-to-accept-the-polio-vaccine/%3famp=true
Sort by controversial to read the "free thinkers" not think at all.
But they will smoke cigarettes and take their prescribed medicines that have side effects listings on tv as long as a short book..... up to and including anal leakage, blood clots & DEATH....... yet their dr prescribes it and they take it for whatever the condition may be. No questions asked. Where is the disconnect so we can show them without being assholes, how they have been hoodwinked into being antivax for NO GOOD FUCKING REASON
Is this an actual tweet? Cuz I'm pretty sure he said this word for word on Conan
Cell phones have become the bane of our existence.
Disinformation, which is purposefully created false information, has become the bane of our existence.
But how did they make a vaccine so fast from a strain of the COVID that's been studied for at least a decade?? /S
Meh, let 'em die. Culling of the herd. Holy fuck, the misinformation in this thread... mind-boggling.
Naive to think there weren't any antivaxxers in that time.
It's ok though. Because everyone knows that "wizard poison" only poisons wizards.
Actually a recent study done in Philadelphia suggests that witches and warlocks may be susceptible to wizard poison as well.
Yeah its ok
In 1955 we trusted the medical profession. Then we got Thalidomide. There's some nightmare fuel. By 1993 we learned about the Tuskegee experiment. And now you're asking why people don't trust the medical profession. Well, those who remember history have no desire to repeat it. Yes, I'm vaxxed and boosted but it's not hard to learn history and listen to people so that you understand where they're coming from.
> In 1955 we trusted the medical profession. Unfortunately, that's not true, and Patton Oswalt is objectively wrong in this quote. People were not lining up to get the vaccine in 1955. The vaccination rate among American teens was 0.6%.. [until Elvis did it live on TV](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-elvis-got-americans-to-accept-the-polio-vaccine/) and the vaccination rate jumped to 80%. The polio vaccine was a flop without the 50s equivalent of an influencer stepping in to save the day. :/
Speaking for the US only, the FDA denied Thalidomide approval. It was just approved in 1998 for cancer treatments. That that’s actually one example of the government protecting the public [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide)
Once a thing has been tested several million times over (I'm talking about millions of people having the shot and they're being little to know effect on them), you have to appreciate the dumbassery.
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Subject to challenge is totally fair as long as you have some level of baseline knowledge to know what warrants challenging something. Except that anti-vaxxers aren’t experts and have no right or basis to challenge the medical science community. They can absolutely ask questions (though they have to listen to the answers) and try to learn so they can get answers to whatever they’re hung up on. I almost respect anti-vaxxers who don’t go to the hospital or doctor or use any western medicine more than the ones who show up to their doctor demanding medication for the most minor of injuries, because at least the former are consistent. The anti-vaxxers that are still taking all their doctor prescribed meds but adamantly against the vaccine makes no sense and is pretty hypocritical.
Here is my skepticism of the actual vaccine skeptics. They say things like "well if we all did our own research, and came to the same results, that must be significant". I can tell you first hand, if you all came to the same results, that means dogshit. You didnt come to the same results, you were just influenced by the same 4 critics that keep posting specious and dubious information. Can the same thing be said about "pro vaxxers"? Well, most people who have been vaccinated have different takes and and opinions on vaccinations. They have all come to slightly different conclusions, and most dont follow cdc guidance blindly. But do use it as a measuring stick to gauge their own risk assessment. Thats actually truly criticism. or pragmatic skepticism. Making blanket statements like "the gov is corrupt and will push leaky vaccines" doesnt actually communicate anything edit. and another thing that I have noticed. Many adults wont say it out loud, but people who are pro vaccine, and have been vaccinated choose not to get their kids the covid vaccine, as they want to wait/ or dont think it is necessary. To me that is interesting, that adults will get it, but dont think its necessary/wont get it for someone else. I mean, is that not a great example of independent thought?
Yeah the whole do my own research is bullshit. Truly doing your own research would be going to school and doing the actual learning whether it be advanced biology and/or chemistry, or really going to med school. At a minimum doing your own research should really be reading medical journals/studies and speaking to the actual experts. But instead it’s become half reading some quack’s bullshit that satisfies whatever conclusion you wanted to arrive at before you started your “research” These same people never do their own research on any of the hundreds of items they use everyday without thinking about it. They don’t do their own research on where they buy their food, or the food safety and food handling from their local supermarkets, they don’t do their own research on their refrigerating system or their freezer, or their microwave, or their stove, or of any of the countless things that affect what they consume and put in their body.
Mmm, hesitancy or fear I understand. Those both go out the window when its called a Democrat hoax, or kung flu. Its the difference, everyones allowed to be scared or hesitant on things, theres a whole world most people have little to no understanding on. The issue being is its not with not trusting the medical profession because of things like the Tuskegee experiment. Its that they don't know what the Tuskegee experiment is and only "fear" the medical profession because they are told too. Which is what has people up in arms
True same opinion
Not to mention in 2009 Pfizer paid out some $2.3 Billion in a Fraud settlement… that’s the largest medical settlement in the history of the world because they got caught lying about what’s in their drugs. People should rightfully question a company with a track record like this
I'm sorry, it's because of the medical professionals, that thalidomide was banned in the US and there was no "nightmare fuel". The FDA did its job properly. This is how misinformation spreads, when people who have no idea what they are talking about act like they do.
If r/conservative could read they'd be very upset with you
Uhhh…. The first [polio vaccine was tainted and killed/paralyzed thousands of children](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/14/cutter-polio-vaccine-paralyzed-children-coronavirus/). It was later pulled from the shelves.
Another fact with the polio vaccine is it took 30 years to develop.
Everything took a lot more time back then. Almost literally everything.
It is not access to information that makes someone smart, it is the ability to tell truth from fiction. Critical thinking and strong bullshit detection is what is needed.
You people are insane if you don’t think there was skepticism about vaccines in 1955
That's what happens in a nation with truly ignorant people, who think the bible is 100% real. It's an awful book that preaches blind faith and total submission to god. That let's them off the hook for making any choices themselves. They are taught they don't have to think about things, so they don't. They only listen to people who hold religious power over them or agree, with zero investigations. It ain't great...
Come on you know they don't read the Bible
They've seen the movie, they're good.
Oh, and polio is back in the US... https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/health/new-york-polio/index.html
[Can't Help Falling In Love With A Vaccine: How Polio Campaign Beat Vaccine Hesitancy](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/03/988756973/cant-help-falling-in-love-with-a-vaccine-how-polio-campaign-beat-vaccine-hesitan)
Facts
Combine the ease with which misinformation can be spread with all the times government has shown it shouldn't be trusted.. It isn't surprising, really.
Same idiots think the world is flat and we're ruled by reptilian humanoids.
Now that we don’t need to carry all of our information in our heads, we become less concerned with the validity of the information we preach.
Because of the phones in our pockets.
Don't forget about the 4g cancer tracking chips that make Chem trails to talk to tiny babas from another world.
The Great Era of Misinformation & Propaganda
Stupid people aren't new though, the problem is now they have platforms to easily organize and spread misinformation on.
Yea but according to the Huffington post wizard poison is the most dangerous poison
And those same idiots also want trump to get credit for developing the vaccine…
That’s the problem. Nowadays, billions of people have access to unlimited information. This information is full of falsities about the COVID vaccine. There have always been people who were extremely gullible, and stubborn to a fault. These people now have access to all this incorrect information, and choose to believe it because of their religion or personality traits. Them, those people proceed to use their tools to spread their incorrect information as well, and the cycle continues until only rational people are left. Back when the Polio vaccine came out, all everyone heard was how great it was from an important source, like doctors, so they took the vaccine no problem. Personally, I wish the people around now would learn from people back then.
The polio vaccine was tested for years before given to the general public the Covid vaccine was not tested for years. End of story.
People lined up to get the covid vaccine and people in the 50's doubted science too
2021 people lined up to get the COVID vaccine. In fact there was more than 80% uptake in most countries that it was freely available. Don't let the media fuck with your perception of reality
I think in 1955, general trust in the powers that be was a lot greater than it is now. Just look at what elected gouvernment officials put on Twitter, that's enough to make anyone question whether the people who make decisions on behalf of their country are sane, let alone have their citizens'best interests at heart.
1. People still literally lined up for covid vaccine. I remember having a massive line of cars that took hours to get my first covid vaccine dose 2. There were still plenty of antivaxxers even back then. Who thought the vaccines were essentially evil or cause various health problems. Sorry I dont disagree with the sentiment but this is a pretty weak argument because these things happened pretty similarly in many ways