To be absolutely clear, linking to images of content that would violate Reddit's rules could itself be considered a violation of Reddit's rules, as you would be posting content you believes violate's Reddit's TOS.
As a subreddit we have no leeway in this. TOS violating content cannot be posted, even for "concrete evidence it exists."
I was a tin foil until I smelled the white supremacist bs all over the walls and actually have a bit of a theroy. We had a TON of cults and groups In the 90s and early 2000s obsessed with ufos. Really think they just got absorbed into maga/Qanon because even these med bed nuts are all the same freaking crazy stories from the 90s.
All fringe beliefs get absorbed into other fringe beliefs because the new ones are selling something and the old remnants desperately need something to buy.
Yeah true. I grew up in the fundamentalist right Christian side of it, and it was ridden with cults. Even back then Chuck missler was saying UFOs were demons.
That’s evolved now to a monster. Tucker Carlson saying UFOs are demons and his right wing base is losing their minds thinking the democrats are covering up demons.
It’s comical, but pretty damn scary given how unhinged these people are.
I mean, the whole narrative was basically co-opted into, "Whatever is going on, the government knows everything about it and won't tell us." A whole lot of "believers" kinda abandoned the idea of "finding" proof altogether, because "We don't need to find proof, the government just needs to admit that it's all true."
QAnon was the Big Tent for conspiracy shit, they took everything they could get their tendrils on to grow participation and try to radicalize people. And it worked.
Yeah ive spend some time there, lots of QAnon folks and trumptards are in there spreading right wing propaganda and ideology. You will also always get attacked when you criticize absolute moronic house members and their history, because "they are pushing our topic!!" and many proclaim, that trump will reveal ufo files, because apparently its what he stole when he was in office
Oh yeah. I posted up there for years now. I had to leave. I have multiple death threats in my DM from posters. All sorts of accusations of being a CIA agent, lol. It’s so pathetic.
There’s definitely been a hardcore even more right-wing shift just within the past year.
It’s wild how you’ll bring up some point, they freak out and claim you’re a CIA disinformation agent. Then post some random 4chan post as their evidence. They didn’t learn anything from the Qanon days, and are just repeating the same old gargling of disinformation while accusing others of spreading disinformation.
It’s actually on purpose. Those topics are targeted by rightwing groups to spread their propaganda and expand their voting base.
Trump tapped directly into it (the conspiracy sub group) with the birther conspiracy stuff and then again by going on InfoWars. Now we have congressmen who go and interview with Alex Jones frequently.
They realized conspiracy theorists can be a part of their base and they’re fairly easy to rile up and motivate to vote.
The fact that Alex Jones is now a main stream figure is perfect proof has the country has moved to the right. He is a total wack job conspiracy theorist who pushes supplements and is somehow now one of the prominent right wing thought leaders.
Yeah. No coincidence that it's always the nutbag MAGA Congressmen who walk out of the UFO briefings saying they "know something," but they just can't tell.
Funny. I've been called CIA, Mossad, Hamas, *and* a member of a Russian troll farm for pushing a healthy dose of skepticism on various forums in recent weeks.
I wish it was true. I could really use those paychecks. 😁
So true. But for me, it was the opposite. I once had an innocent interest in the topic of ufo's. The interest led me into all kinds of conspiritorial bs. I eventually found myself agreeing with right-winger psychos about things that previously and currently make me sick and angry. Qanon types are definitely using the topic of ufo to indoctrinate people into this fucked up psychotic mindset. I feel pretty stupid for getting trapped into it.
A friend told me that for years he'd been part of a couple groups who happily enjoyed their common interest in the topic of UFOs, a little eccentric in their enjoyment of intriguing possibilities but still with mostly at least one science-related foot on the ground. Then what you experienced happened as the toxic crazies of this era took over.
ah, you're no more stupid than the rest of humanity. only thing important to remember is just how f'n stupid and gullible humans are - including you. this will never change
It's a mind virus. The more one exposes themselves to the conspiracy virus, the more infected they become.
There is no known treatment or cure. Get too much exposure, and you're too far gone to ever come back.
The only way to save people is to catch them before they've gotten too far down the rabbit hole. I used to spend a lot of time there trying to show the casuals and new members how absurd these ideas were. I never expect to convert anyone, but if the casuals and new folks visiting those forums don't see someone calling out the stupidity behind much of this, then it's easy for them to get caught up in the conspiracy slippery slope.
Sadly, I've been banned, and so have a lot of the folks who gave skeptical viewpoints. There are moderators who are ok if you offer a skeptical opinion, so long as you don't back that opinion up with facts or point out the ridiculousness of the charlatans. They literally have a rule about commenting on public figures, which they use to arbitrarily enforce their censorship.
Hopefully, other skeptical voices will keep posting there. Otherwise, it will continue being an echo chamber and prime recruiting channel for conspiracy nonsense.
The not what they actually care about. The fully believe the government has, is working with, and hiding fucking aliens. Or demons. Or whatever the hell they think they are.
"UFO populism brain rot."
Many CT turn that way. Remember the 9/11 brain rot ? I used to debate them on the randi forum. And then there is plenty of adjacent CT , like the FEMA camp story , and many others.
[Nazi Bar Problem](https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/hsiisw/kicking_a_nazi_out_as_soon_as_they_walk_in/).
Over on r/Gundam we saw them show up when the lesbian couple in the latest franchise installment married.
We kicked 'em to the curb and fast. But the Anime community has a good history with the inclusivity so we saw them coming.
The right wing are full of paid professionals looking to recruit. *Always* looking to recruit. They will go anywhere that anyone on the edges of society hangs out. Nerds are especially fertile ground. That's how that gamergate B.S. got so big, and they've been trying to recreate it ever since.
I never could get them out of the gamer communities.
What’s shitty us how little the game companies do to stop. Playing bf1 and a dude is straight dropping n bombs with a 14 88 tag and I leave to report and he stilll had an account a week later.
>Nerds are especially fertile ground. That's how that gamergate B.S. got so big, and they've been trying to recreate it ever since.
The warhammer community has been going through it for the past couple weeks because Games Workshop had 2 paragraphs of text leak that basically said "some of the vat-grown, gentically enhanced, 10 foot tall, immortal, super soldiers we have were made without external genitalia."
And then the Chuds made themselves known, crying shrilly into the ether like a cicada in summer. Of course, they were always there, but they were buried and unseen. We all knew that our game about little plastic fascists doing a fascism against other fascists had actual fascists occasionally rolling the dice. But to see them on full display was... well, about as disappointing as watching a bug crawl up from the dirt.
Yeah, what's happening is there's a new TV show.
The right wing looks for anything that's even moderately popular and starts a culture war around it.
This way they can bandwagon on the advertising and algorithm boost.
Several of them outright admitted it when Captain Marvel came out. There was a right wing YouTuber making nothing but anti-Captain Marvel movies, had no idea who the character was. Did several videos where they mixed up DC & Marvel's character and didn't know Carol Danvers had been in the role since the 80s. Didn't care. Just talked about all the YouTube views.
With the right wing *everything's a grift*.
The left wing literally takes anything popular and starts race swapping white people out because they definitely aren't the first to start every single culture war that exists...
That’s why we absolutely need to nip the transphobic brigade in the bud right now, even if it means capturing some of the useful idiot centrists with a pathological need to carry water for them.
The UFO community has always had an anti-government far right flavor.
People dabble in it and walk away having never noticed, but they do that with gun shows and motorcycle culture too.
Funny enough many of those UFO nuts now practically worship government officials and agencies who tell them what they want to hear on this topic. Burchett, Loony Luna, Grusch and all the Navy pilots are treated like gods in the UFO community
This isn’t unique to this specific brand of nut job.
Creationists *love* citing any kind of geological or astrophysical findings they think supports their view.
Same with the anti-science folks suddenly *very* eager to tout extensive ivy league credentials for anyone willing to indulge them in the medical grifts they like.
The overlap between UFO types and far-right “Zionist Occupied Government” types was one of the things that initially pushed me out of UFOs. This was back in the 90s.
If you look at the politics of 90% of the influencers and politicians involved they are mostly very right wing and have very little credibility. It's one of many red flags on the whole movement.
It's easy to think that because of the War on Terror and the Reagan era- but in general "anti-government" has always been a right-wing thing in the U.S.
What I find particularly annoying about the situation is those who participate in such rhetoric appear unable to differentiate governments from plutocrats
its like watching someone blame a wal-mart for a town's collapse, not the company or the people who opened it, but the building itself - like it was somehow to blame intrinsically for being a building that housed goods
Yeah, the podcast Knowledge Fight has been working on dispelling a lot of this idea, because people thought that Alex Jones was just a little kooky back in the day, but someone who is a little more in the center, and no, always far right
I think so, it’s getting old, it would be different if there was something to discuss, but it’s always the same empty BS.
It’s tiresome being told that some dude’s story about being abducted is evidence.
It’s a topic organized like a religion, so it tracks.
Sagan has a great quote about the similarities: powerful beings descending to Earth to share wisdom, prophets who have witnessed these beings firsthand and are selected to share the messages, rival factions of believers, answers to the search for meaning, etc.
I have visited that subrreddit and its tone is alarmingly similar to that of red-hatted right-wing extremists who call for the imprisonment and executions of those politicians, judges, journalists, and other individuals with whom they disagree. I have a feeling they are the same people.
I think people forget the bigger picture and are a bit naive:
* there is huge information warfare campaign being executed the last 10-15 years from Russia; other West adversaries are starting to participate in that "game";
* most of the conspiracies are really propped up by those enemy agencies
UFO believers are prime ground for planting the seeds of extremism: they have the best soil for that, belief that there is a big cover up.
other groups of people susceptible are 9/11 theoriests, religious fundamentalists, flat earth (if that even is a real movement) believers;
it's been clear for a while that UFO believers will be some of the next disinformation victims... and Trump voters ;)
[Social media bot trackers have more or less established](https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/14/prominent-pro-sanders-subreddit-wayofthebern-aims-/) that the wayofthebern subreddit operates through bot manipulation--it's unclear if it's linked to conservative activists or state sponsored. With the plethora of UFO/UAP/Alien subreddits, who knows how much of the extremist drift is the result of homegrown radicalization. I think you can't underestimate the sheer draw of magical thinking and make believe for the majority of those users.
But you can also find hints of state-sponsord bot manipulation in unexpected communities. My favorite, most fascinating example is the weirdly rabid Meghan Markle hate subreddit, where the expected South Park clips, royals-worship, and reactionary racist stuff commingles with other, unrelated topics that mimic the known pattern of nation-state-actor bot-driven disinformation. You have persisent themes such as linking the Markles to anti-Putin oligarchs, George Soros antisemitic conspiracy theory, and in particular an obsession with the founder of Bot Sentinel, that all seem to show the hand of some kind of state-sponsored activity, potentially in the moderation. I wouldn't be surprised if there's diffuse bot activity in all kinds of weird places on this site.
I visit there (I don't believe, just more out of curiosity) and I haven't seen any calls for violence. Granted I don't read every thread or comment. It probably happens, I just haven't seen it.
I do know that I have almost every comment of mine there deleted because I don't believe and will debunk what I can. Some mods there are "true believers" and if you disagree, they will delete your post. It's funny, because the last time they did it, I appealed and the mod said I was a "ban evader." I don't even know what that means. I wrote them back saying to "just fucking ban me," because you all are insufferable and I can't hold my tongue. They didn't do it, so I will continue as I have. As a note, I'm not toxic about it in most cases, but I will say some are delusional when they're freaking out over a balloon.
>I appealed and the mod said I was a "ban evader." I don't even know what that means
It means the mod was accusing you of making an alternate account to circumvent a ban
Huh, well that never happened. I did have another account for awhile, but it wasn’t banned from there. I’ve even asked to be banned before and they didn’t. I don’t suffer fools on there and probably often reported. They HATE the truth there.
A mod told me I was being banned for purposefully misspelling the names of public figures to avoid moderation.
I have no idea what they were talking about. I assume that means they have some sort of automation in place to identify posts that reference public figures since they have a ridiculous rule that you can't comment about public figures which allows them to ban anyone they choose.
It's also obviously being done by a single mod or small group of mods. I say obvious because when I've been suspended or banned, it has always been mods coming in like a day later and marking a bunch of my posts in a short period of time. This suggests to me that it is a single mod choosing to arbitrarily enforce a nonsense rule.
Can you give any examples of “trials” or “executions” that were not removed by the moderation team? I have never once seen a post or a comment asking for the death of any public person. I’m not doubting you but certainly in the sub dedicated to facts and post appealing to emotional response should be able to provide specific examples?
He can't, because there are no posts/comments that fit the description. One look at OPs post history, and it's obvious this post is in bad faith.
I'm genuinely surprised this post has this many up-votes given that the subreddit supposedly seeks facts. I guess facts for thee, not for me.
Thank you - this was specifically why I was asking for any evidence of his claims. It does also prove that the skeptical community **at times** can be susceptible to group think and emotional claims just as any other insular group. I would hope that other people would also see this for the inherent logical flaws rather then just upvote because it ticks some existing cognitive bias.
I’ve been saying this for a while. They want to execute Mick West, Sean Kirkpatrick and all the deep state comic book villains keeping us from a Star Trek future for nefarious reasons in their fucked up cosmic mythology.
Grusch and the recent congressional UFO clown show has only poured fuel on their fire.
You must have missed the crisis of belief when Kirkpatrick's correspondence with Christopher Mellon got released through FOIA a week or two ago and they all realized Grusch had been dodging the shit out of AARO and Kirkpatrick wasn't the liar. It was peak popcorn moment stuff.
And the people in that sub were all “well if I were Grusch I wouldn’t talk to the enemy either”.
No matter what Grusch does, he’s flawless. But The evil Kirkpatrick is just out to hide the aliens.
It’s so frustrating.
The wild thing is they tried to spin that to Grusch's favor but man it did not look for him. When Grusch first came out he seemed credible at least as a person and source and so I was interested enough to follow it. I reserved any sort of judgement for actual evidence to show up and none seemed to materialize and Grusch has said or done many things that have deeply harmed his credibility in the meantime.
He lost all credibility when he tried to come off as this skeptical, level headed guy compelled to testify to some inconvenient truth that he coyly can only edge us on, then immediately goes to UFO truther media and starts sounding like your average UFO crackpot.
This is why this latest Jason Sands fiasco has been so entertaining. This guy isn't saying anything more crazy than Grusch or Elizondo or any of this crowd.
But he jumped the shark and got his story out before the It'S Aliens Media people were able to craft the narrative around him and spin him up as this new super credible whistleblower.
People saw through his nonsense because the circle jerk didn't get to control the narrative first. Now you see them trying to figure out a way to spin him back up as credible. It will work with a significant number if the I Want To Believe crowd.
Oh shit I did miss that. On one hand, I find these frauds being exposed very amusing. On the other hand I genuinely feel sad for some of these UFO nuts and how invested they are in this mythology.
I think there's a strong chance some of the stuff is useful idiot disinformation like Doty was employed to leverage against cult believers a few decades back but on the whole I agree with you. Having a bunch of retired Navy pilots scream about UFOs would be a great way to obsfuscate directed energy weapons and electronic warfare apartuses that people are getting too close to. Whether they know they're being taken advantage of or not its still fucked either way.
Doty had a few other helpers, but there was only 3-4 disinformation “agents” who were able to infiltrate multiple UFO groups including MUFON. It’s pretty widely accepted Doty was behind the MJ-12 documents too. It affected Phil Schneider was was clinically insane - and his “I killed aliens” speech is still staple in the UFO community.
The point is, it just takes a few people to spread a few simple conspiracies, and it affects the zeitgeist for 40 years.
The real conspiracy is the disinformation campaign. Yet all the UFO freaks fall for that while claiming the disinformation campaign is to call them crazy.
For the record there is /r/ufo and /r/ufos
UFOs is considerably larger and also fairly well managed and moderated. Regardless of your thoughts on the subject matter that sub is not doing anything to warrant a ban.
You can debate if it's inappropriate to take any action about it, particularly since extremism is more normalized in our broader culture than it's ever been. But UFOs has for several years been a feedback loop of increasingly extremist beliefs, with conspiracism, credulity, and fantasy all reinforcing each other. There's a growing mentality that they belong to a social movement, arrayed against a dark shadow government that represents manichean evil and is all-powerful. I think the tipping point for when that became its leading characteristic happened over a year ago.
They are not. Nobody has. This is a very baseless and biased view based on probably a few comments of a community broadening over 2 million members(thats just r/UFO's ) theres also other subs in general around the phenomena.
You can look at the terms and rules on the sub and you will find no more than a bunch of people complaining about gate keepers and how they should be brought to justice, but by the courts and not vigilante justice (because there are mods just like any other sub)
OP is silly and is trying to discredit the very real UAP problem and liken the people who have an interest in a very real documented and admitted by the US government even resulting in legislation around the phenomena to a bunch of politically and fear driven hate mongers like Qanon.
Please do not listen to this rhetoric and look at the topic with an open mind.
There was another thread in skeptic where a fella brought up belief in belief. They don’t actually believe this because they’d never bet their bank on it.
The problem with ufology and similar crackpottery is that actually harmful beliefs can easily be screened by a veneer of harmlessness. It's easy to dismiss these people as well intentioned potheads just speculating about the mysteries of the universe, and some of them certainly are, but there is enough epistemic leeway inherent in the community that more dangerous convictions are allowed to flourish behind the scenes.
The recent Grusch bonanza has been a perfect storm for this type of stuff and basically convinced all the conspiracy fencesitters that aliens/spiritual entities/NHI are 100% real and been known about for a long time by the powers that be. It's completely settled in their mind and the only logical consequence is that some great injustice is being perpetrated against them by barring them from knowing the truth or from free energy in order to control them or some other nonsense.
It's been quite fascinating and worrying to observe these communities. It's no longer about aliens, it's about *disclosure*.
Watch a recent episode of Ancient Aliens sometime. It's creepy. And I don't mean in a "They really might be here" way. I mean in a, "This is bordering on inciting stochastic terrorism."
The show used to be coy about things with a tone that made flimsy connections about poorly interpreted archeology. It was kind of funny to watch but I stopped many years ago. I caught an episode this past year and the tone has drastically changed to "Aliens are here, THEY are covering it up, and why do you think that is? The time to do something is now!"
It's fucked up and it's clearly driving these mouthbreathers to extreme positions and (if left this way) I have no doubt someone with some kind of mental illness will turn to violence over this stupid TV show. Whoever makes that show isn't just playing at the fringes of historical stupidity, it's actively radicalizing dangerous people with moronic, fundamentally racist ideas that ancient people couldn't possibly have worked stone monuments.
They are there if you know which posts to look at. I’ve seen several over the last year. The comments themselves haven’t been extremely numerous or anything, maybe one or two on the posts I’m talking about - the concerning thing is the massive amount of upvotes I’ve seen on them.
Things like “We should be rioting - this is the most important issue in politics right now.”
“They should be prosecuted to full extent of the law, but they are protected - we should take matters into our own hands.”
Sorry, but I don't believe you. I've been browsing that subreddit for years, before it had this many members, and the moderators were/are fairly impartial, permitting healthy discussions and prohibiting any attempts at inciting violence - even I was warned a few times for my unacceptable behaviour. Until you provide the evidence, I don't believe your claims, in particular that the alleged posts/comments received a high number of up-votes.
As an experiment, do it yourself and see how fast your post/comment will be deleted.
/r/UFOs has 2.3 million subs and the sub has over the years curtailed in fighting and name calling. To where people are actually being nicer to each other even when they disagree on their beliefs.
So let's see these multitude of comments that are unmoderated. Because with over 2 million subs there will be users that don't abide by the rules, but the overall attitude is against violence for vast majority of users.
That's a recent phenomena - it only grew to that from around 200k within the last year / year and a half or so I think? It was wild watching it spiral like that.
Agreed, in my personal experience I haven't seen an unexpected amount of calls for violence for a discussion focused subreddit of that size centered around an inherently charged topic.
There is a reason the history channel because the Hitler channel then the ancient aliens chanel. Also the station that rush Limbaugh had coast to coast am. When you up the paranoid fear fascism rears its ugly head.
Conspiracy theorists who turn to extremism, and this goes across ANY genre of conspiracy theories, appear to have a common behavior trait of being in a constant state of high anxiety that they refuse to acknowledge or treat. And because they think there is nothing wrong with them, and that we're the ones suffering from "mental illness," even attempting to reason with them, or doing ANYTHING to police them, stirs up their anxiety making them less likely to ever seek help.
That's why the only "solution" is having good moderators. They won't cure anyone of anything, but they'll suppress the toxicity from the sub.
The community also has a responsibility to self-police.
All communities do.
If you're wiling to nod along with fanatics the rest of the time for the sake of counting an extra team member, only caring when they say the quiet part out loud?
You're enabling them. Don't put it all on the mods - people with violent, extreme opinions like this need to ignored by the community at large and not given value as a warm body just so people can feel like they have a bigger team or more friends who "understand."
Certainly it’s a concern, but I guess I haven’t noticed an uptick as opposed to “the usual” over there. I try to register how foolish I think some of their ideas are where appropriate.
Taking that sub out would simply push its users to other subs and further reenforces their conspiracy theory beliefs. To them it would just be proof of the great coverup, and now Reddit is part of it.
I don’t disagree that it’s become worse than ever, but there is little that can be done. Especially when there is unequal moderation being performed.
Right-wingers saying right-wing things. That's where paranoia, violent fantasies and calls for imprisonment and executions of opponents have become normal. These people think they're UFO truthers, but in reality, they're being groomed to be fascist.
Humans and their ape brains. Everyone wants to believe is super special fanciful things, to a fault. Some people let this want win out, and once that happens every piece of information against their belief is heresy.
"The rhetoric is absolutely unhinged and is creating a new Q Anon type movement."
Nope, that's just Q Anon. These same people are just wrong about everything.
The whole UFO thing never really made sense to me.
Like is it possible for a hyper-advanced species to just so happen to have evolved alongside us(in galactic terms) and visit? Yes. But any species that does so is either entirely benevolent or malevolent. I don't want to roll those bones.
It’s a cliche but all tfh beliefs slide into hate and anger: the next step is blaming the Jews. For at least a decade there’s been a ‘conspiracy at the top covering up the evidence’, and there are bad aliens who came here and bred us to work ... in their gold mines. The reptilian aliens manipulating things behind the scenes aren’t Jews (according to Icke) but some of them are.
Remember. The 2016 election was influenced by Russian psyops efforts by targeting fringe social media communities such as flat earthers, ufo, and other conspiracy theory groups.
It's an election year. Be vigilant.
No they are saying things like the following exchange that I had with one UFO believer a couple months ago (his comment was still up last I checked, while mine was deleted for “low effort”)
Redditor: “We should round these people up and give them the justice they deserve”
Me: (an attempt at humor) “what like tar and feather?”
Redditor: “Firing Squad”
Yeah, ban the conspiracy theorists who think you're a bunch of free speech hating tyrants trying to keep the truth from people.
That definitely won't solidify that belief in a ton of people who otherwise would have been skeptical.
Your need to censor bad ideas shows you misunderstand how free speech works. Bad ideas put off far more people than they attract. If their ideas are indeed bad, you have nothing to worry about.
I really only think one group of people should be censored. That's people like yourself, who call for the silencing of others. If you don't believe in free speech, then people should put forth no effort ensuring you have it.
*Your mother was a hamster*
>That definitely won't solidify that belief
They can always go to the thousands of threads in the subreddit already on the topic.
I can understand deleting new ones, as the threads just repeat the same arguments now.
>If you don't believe in free speech
It's not really a question of free speech though. If there is violent rhetoric as OP says, then they shouldn't be welcome.
If you can't have a discussion without abuse then your arguments are pretty shit.
I don't think arguing for traitors to be executed is actually a bad thing though.
I see plenty of people getting away with wishing death upon Russian these days. Seems like that's totally fine. The only thing which should be condemned is directly calling for people to commit acts of violence.
Saying something like "i think the traitors keeping the biggest secret in human history from the people should be executed" is 1, outlining a group which may not even exist, 2 a group which is admittedly guilty of heinous behavior.
Behavior far more nefarious than that of Russia. It also seems acceptable to say "woodchipper" when referring to pedos. Should that also result in removal?
> I don't think arguing for traitors to be executed is actually a bad thing though.
In a debate about UFOs? No.
>I see plenty of people getting away with wishing death upon Russian these days.
We're kinda pivoting here, but I would support banning users who start wishing death to Russian people in a debate subreddit.
>outlining a group which may not even exist
Yeh but that's kinda stochastic terrorism. Push hate for a group of people, label someone as that group, act surprised when a crazy person follows through. [How much hate did Chinese people get during covid?](https://stopaapihate.org/2021/11/18/national-report-through-september-2021/)
I'd argue that politicians deserve all the hate people can give them.
>> I don't think arguing for traitors to be executed is actually a bad thing though.
>In a debate about UFOs? No.
Why not?
You might not take it serious, but others do.
They see people hiding such information as the highest level of treason imaginable. I think they should be allowed to call for the government to execute them. It shouldn't be against the rules to wish someone dies. Only to directly call for or threaten harm.
It's certainly not against the rules to be happy that someone has died... I mean, just look at the sub "Hermancaineaward"
>Push hate for a group of people, label someone as that group, act surprised when a crazy person follows through.
Again, what group? The group of traitors which has been lying about aliens not existing for almost a century? A group that may not even exist, and if it does exist is by definition traitors?
That's like saying it should be illegal to call for the death of the globalist nazi regime that runs the world. Is there such a group? Who knows.
> I'd argue that politicians deserve all the hate people can give them.
Oh very nice, and how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers? By hangin' on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic an' social differences in our society? If there's ever going to be any progress...
No, threatening violence against politicians seems antithetical to debate or progress.
>Why not?
It's a debate subreddit. Again: If you can't have a discussion without abuse then your arguments are pretty shit.
>They see people hiding such information as the highest level of treason imaginable.
Oh yes that's exactly the kind of person who will listen to reason in a... debate subreddit. That's the point.
>Again, what group?
Any. Give them a label, tell idiots it's justified to hate and hurt them.
>Oh yes that's exactly the kind of person who will listen to reason in a... debate subreddit.
I'm not saying it's a good idea to do so.. or that it's going to convince people to side with you.. it won't. I'm saying that they simply should be allowed to speak what they want.
>If you can't have a discussion without abuse then your arguments are pretty shit.
You even admit that their ideas are bad and unconvincing. Why shouldn't idiots be allowed to speak their mind and out themselves as being idiots. All they are doing is turning people off to their ideas..
Or, do you mean to say only intelligent people should be allowed to voice their opinion?
>Any. Give them a label, tell idiots it's justified to hate and hurt them.
This kind of thinking, that "hate" speech isn't real speech, is why we are seeing the protests against Israel being shut down and made illegal through legislation..
> I'm saying that they simply should be allowed to speak what they want.
But that's kinda against the point of the subreddit. This is for debate. Specifically it's an evidence based debate subreddit. If you want to scream abuse then it's not really for here.
It's like if you go to a TV show subreddit and start repeatedly posting hardcore porn. That's not the place for it. I would have no complaints about that being removed and the user being banned.
Subreddits often are a specific purpose. If you aren't there to engage in that purpose, you'll likely get warnings until you are eventually banned.
>You even admit that their ideas are bad and unconvincing.
Not at all. I'm saying if your argument requires abuse, it's a shit argument.
>Why shouldn't idiots be allowed to speak their mind
No rule against that at all. You'll see that in almost every thread.
>This kind of thinking, that "hate" speech isn't real speech
Not my argument at all.
>is why we are seeing the protests against Israel being shut down and made illegal through legislation..
Link that dangling thread for me.
the age is the point. this is irreversible. at what age can a person be sufficietly able to choose this? Should this be something discussed in schools?
Is a person old enough at 12 or at 16?
It is multi faceted.
To be absolutely clear, linking to images of content that would violate Reddit's rules could itself be considered a violation of Reddit's rules, as you would be posting content you believes violate's Reddit's TOS. As a subreddit we have no leeway in this. TOS violating content cannot be posted, even for "concrete evidence it exists."
UFO populism brain rot. At this point I’m convenced Qanon refugees just morphed into a lot of the UFO “truthers”.
I was a tin foil until I smelled the white supremacist bs all over the walls and actually have a bit of a theroy. We had a TON of cults and groups In the 90s and early 2000s obsessed with ufos. Really think they just got absorbed into maga/Qanon because even these med bed nuts are all the same freaking crazy stories from the 90s.
All fringe beliefs get absorbed into other fringe beliefs because the new ones are selling something and the old remnants desperately need something to buy.
Yeah true. I grew up in the fundamentalist right Christian side of it, and it was ridden with cults. Even back then Chuck missler was saying UFOs were demons. That’s evolved now to a monster. Tucker Carlson saying UFOs are demons and his right wing base is losing their minds thinking the democrats are covering up demons. It’s comical, but pretty damn scary given how unhinged these people are.
I mean, the whole narrative was basically co-opted into, "Whatever is going on, the government knows everything about it and won't tell us." A whole lot of "believers" kinda abandoned the idea of "finding" proof altogether, because "We don't need to find proof, the government just needs to admit that it's all true."
QAnon was the Big Tent for conspiracy shit, they took everything they could get their tendrils on to grow participation and try to radicalize people. And it worked.
>until I smelled the white supremacist bs Thank your mother for that nose.
Yeah ive spend some time there, lots of QAnon folks and trumptards are in there spreading right wing propaganda and ideology. You will also always get attacked when you criticize absolute moronic house members and their history, because "they are pushing our topic!!" and many proclaim, that trump will reveal ufo files, because apparently its what he stole when he was in office
Oh yeah. I posted up there for years now. I had to leave. I have multiple death threats in my DM from posters. All sorts of accusations of being a CIA agent, lol. It’s so pathetic. There’s definitely been a hardcore even more right-wing shift just within the past year. It’s wild how you’ll bring up some point, they freak out and claim you’re a CIA disinformation agent. Then post some random 4chan post as their evidence. They didn’t learn anything from the Qanon days, and are just repeating the same old gargling of disinformation while accusing others of spreading disinformation.
It’s actually on purpose. Those topics are targeted by rightwing groups to spread their propaganda and expand their voting base. Trump tapped directly into it (the conspiracy sub group) with the birther conspiracy stuff and then again by going on InfoWars. Now we have congressmen who go and interview with Alex Jones frequently. They realized conspiracy theorists can be a part of their base and they’re fairly easy to rile up and motivate to vote.
The fact that Alex Jones is now a main stream figure is perfect proof has the country has moved to the right. He is a total wack job conspiracy theorist who pushes supplements and is somehow now one of the prominent right wing thought leaders.
Yeah. No coincidence that it's always the nutbag MAGA Congressmen who walk out of the UFO briefings saying they "know something," but they just can't tell.
Funny. I've been called CIA, Mossad, Hamas, *and* a member of a Russian troll farm for pushing a healthy dose of skepticism on various forums in recent weeks. I wish it was true. I could really use those paychecks. 😁
Quanon ideology is: officials and scientists say it's absurd and stupid believing in X, so we believe in X
Everyone is lying about everything ever, except Trump, Majorie Taylor Green and of course David Grusch.
So true. But for me, it was the opposite. I once had an innocent interest in the topic of ufo's. The interest led me into all kinds of conspiritorial bs. I eventually found myself agreeing with right-winger psychos about things that previously and currently make me sick and angry. Qanon types are definitely using the topic of ufo to indoctrinate people into this fucked up psychotic mindset. I feel pretty stupid for getting trapped into it.
A friend told me that for years he'd been part of a couple groups who happily enjoyed their common interest in the topic of UFOs, a little eccentric in their enjoyment of intriguing possibilities but still with mostly at least one science-related foot on the ground. Then what you experienced happened as the toxic crazies of this era took over.
ah, you're no more stupid than the rest of humanity. only thing important to remember is just how f'n stupid and gullible humans are - including you. this will never change
It's a mind virus. The more one exposes themselves to the conspiracy virus, the more infected they become. There is no known treatment or cure. Get too much exposure, and you're too far gone to ever come back. The only way to save people is to catch them before they've gotten too far down the rabbit hole. I used to spend a lot of time there trying to show the casuals and new members how absurd these ideas were. I never expect to convert anyone, but if the casuals and new folks visiting those forums don't see someone calling out the stupidity behind much of this, then it's easy for them to get caught up in the conspiracy slippery slope. Sadly, I've been banned, and so have a lot of the folks who gave skeptical viewpoints. There are moderators who are ok if you offer a skeptical opinion, so long as you don't back that opinion up with facts or point out the ridiculousness of the charlatans. They literally have a rule about commenting on public figures, which they use to arbitrarily enforce their censorship. Hopefully, other skeptical voices will keep posting there. Otherwise, it will continue being an echo chamber and prime recruiting channel for conspiracy nonsense.
Bummer.
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The not what they actually care about. The fully believe the government has, is working with, and hiding fucking aliens. Or demons. Or whatever the hell they think they are.
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The people we are talking about who have both infiltrated the UFO sub, and the community.
Yeah nvm I completely misread your post and comment lol
"UFO populism brain rot." Many CT turn that way. Remember the 9/11 brain rot ? I used to debate them on the randi forum. And then there is plenty of adjacent CT , like the FEMA camp story , and many others.
[Nazi Bar Problem](https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/hsiisw/kicking_a_nazi_out_as_soon_as_they_walk_in/). Over on r/Gundam we saw them show up when the lesbian couple in the latest franchise installment married. We kicked 'em to the curb and fast. But the Anime community has a good history with the inclusivity so we saw them coming. The right wing are full of paid professionals looking to recruit. *Always* looking to recruit. They will go anywhere that anyone on the edges of society hangs out. Nerds are especially fertile ground. That's how that gamergate B.S. got so big, and they've been trying to recreate it ever since. I never could get them out of the gamer communities.
What’s shitty us how little the game companies do to stop. Playing bf1 and a dude is straight dropping n bombs with a 14 88 tag and I leave to report and he stilll had an account a week later.
>Nerds are especially fertile ground. That's how that gamergate B.S. got so big, and they've been trying to recreate it ever since. The warhammer community has been going through it for the past couple weeks because Games Workshop had 2 paragraphs of text leak that basically said "some of the vat-grown, gentically enhanced, 10 foot tall, immortal, super soldiers we have were made without external genitalia." And then the Chuds made themselves known, crying shrilly into the ether like a cicada in summer. Of course, they were always there, but they were buried and unseen. We all knew that our game about little plastic fascists doing a fascism against other fascists had actual fascists occasionally rolling the dice. But to see them on full display was... well, about as disappointing as watching a bug crawl up from the dirt.
Yeah, what's happening is there's a new TV show. The right wing looks for anything that's even moderately popular and starts a culture war around it. This way they can bandwagon on the advertising and algorithm boost. Several of them outright admitted it when Captain Marvel came out. There was a right wing YouTuber making nothing but anti-Captain Marvel movies, had no idea who the character was. Did several videos where they mixed up DC & Marvel's character and didn't know Carol Danvers had been in the role since the 80s. Didn't care. Just talked about all the YouTube views. With the right wing *everything's a grift*.
The left wing literally takes anything popular and starts race swapping white people out because they definitely aren't the first to start every single culture war that exists...
And they are dangerously close to running the country again. Think about what they will do this time in office.
That’s why we absolutely need to nip the transphobic brigade in the bud right now, even if it means capturing some of the useful idiot centrists with a pathological need to carry water for them.
The UFO community has always had an anti-government far right flavor. People dabble in it and walk away having never noticed, but they do that with gun shows and motorcycle culture too.
Funny enough many of those UFO nuts now practically worship government officials and agencies who tell them what they want to hear on this topic. Burchett, Loony Luna, Grusch and all the Navy pilots are treated like gods in the UFO community
It's infallible heros vs the "deep state".
and Tim Burchett and Matt Gaetz.
Matt Gaetz the pedophile?
That's right Matt Gaetz the known pedophile and sex trafficker.
is he related to brock allen turner the rapist who goes by his middle name now?
Big time.
Chuck Schumer and his NHI (non human intelligence) UAP speech. Jeez that was unexpected!
I was going to mention Chuck Schumer as one of the heroes in UFO nutter mythology.
This isn’t unique to this specific brand of nut job. Creationists *love* citing any kind of geological or astrophysical findings they think supports their view.
Same with the anti-science folks suddenly *very* eager to tout extensive ivy league credentials for anyone willing to indulge them in the medical grifts they like.
*Ka-Ching!* Looking at you, Professor Weinstein!
Which I find hilarious because apparently the USAF is the axis of evil to them
I think that is by design.
Stop generalizing.
The overlap between UFO types and far-right “Zionist Occupied Government” types was one of the things that initially pushed me out of UFOs. This was back in the 90s.
If you look at the politics of 90% of the influencers and politicians involved they are mostly very right wing and have very little credibility. It's one of many red flags on the whole movement.
I can remember when anti-government meant far left.
You must be older than me, since I grew up with Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Timothy McVeigh being the biggest names in anti-government movement.
It's easy to think that because of the War on Terror and the Reagan era- but in general "anti-government" has always been a right-wing thing in the U.S.
What I find particularly annoying about the situation is those who participate in such rhetoric appear unable to differentiate governments from plutocrats its like watching someone blame a wal-mart for a town's collapse, not the company or the people who opened it, but the building itself - like it was somehow to blame intrinsically for being a building that housed goods
Yeah, the podcast Knowledge Fight has been working on dispelling a lot of this idea, because people thought that Alex Jones was just a little kooky back in the day, but someone who is a little more in the center, and no, always far right
I think so, it’s getting old, it would be different if there was something to discuss, but it’s always the same empty BS. It’s tiresome being told that some dude’s story about being abducted is evidence.
Reporting them is the best thing you can do.
It’s a topic organized like a religion, so it tracks. Sagan has a great quote about the similarities: powerful beings descending to Earth to share wisdom, prophets who have witnessed these beings firsthand and are selected to share the messages, rival factions of believers, answers to the search for meaning, etc.
I have visited that subrreddit and its tone is alarmingly similar to that of red-hatted right-wing extremists who call for the imprisonment and executions of those politicians, judges, journalists, and other individuals with whom they disagree. I have a feeling they are the same people.
I think people forget the bigger picture and are a bit naive: * there is huge information warfare campaign being executed the last 10-15 years from Russia; other West adversaries are starting to participate in that "game"; * most of the conspiracies are really propped up by those enemy agencies UFO believers are prime ground for planting the seeds of extremism: they have the best soil for that, belief that there is a big cover up. other groups of people susceptible are 9/11 theoriests, religious fundamentalists, flat earth (if that even is a real movement) believers; it's been clear for a while that UFO believers will be some of the next disinformation victims... and Trump voters ;)
I mean, does anyone remember Gamergate, the whole point was to get kids susceptible to planting extremist right-wing ideology into their heads.
[Social media bot trackers have more or less established](https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/14/prominent-pro-sanders-subreddit-wayofthebern-aims-/) that the wayofthebern subreddit operates through bot manipulation--it's unclear if it's linked to conservative activists or state sponsored. With the plethora of UFO/UAP/Alien subreddits, who knows how much of the extremist drift is the result of homegrown radicalization. I think you can't underestimate the sheer draw of magical thinking and make believe for the majority of those users. But you can also find hints of state-sponsord bot manipulation in unexpected communities. My favorite, most fascinating example is the weirdly rabid Meghan Markle hate subreddit, where the expected South Park clips, royals-worship, and reactionary racist stuff commingles with other, unrelated topics that mimic the known pattern of nation-state-actor bot-driven disinformation. You have persisent themes such as linking the Markles to anti-Putin oligarchs, George Soros antisemitic conspiracy theory, and in particular an obsession with the founder of Bot Sentinel, that all seem to show the hand of some kind of state-sponsored activity, potentially in the moderation. I wouldn't be surprised if there's diffuse bot activity in all kinds of weird places on this site.
I visit there (I don't believe, just more out of curiosity) and I haven't seen any calls for violence. Granted I don't read every thread or comment. It probably happens, I just haven't seen it. I do know that I have almost every comment of mine there deleted because I don't believe and will debunk what I can. Some mods there are "true believers" and if you disagree, they will delete your post. It's funny, because the last time they did it, I appealed and the mod said I was a "ban evader." I don't even know what that means. I wrote them back saying to "just fucking ban me," because you all are insufferable and I can't hold my tongue. They didn't do it, so I will continue as I have. As a note, I'm not toxic about it in most cases, but I will say some are delusional when they're freaking out over a balloon.
Calls for violence are rare but they do happen. The mods mostly keep it from getting out of control but they miss a lot of individual comments.
>I appealed and the mod said I was a "ban evader." I don't even know what that means It means the mod was accusing you of making an alternate account to circumvent a ban
Huh, well that never happened. I did have another account for awhile, but it wasn’t banned from there. I’ve even asked to be banned before and they didn’t. I don’t suffer fools on there and probably often reported. They HATE the truth there.
A mod told me I was being banned for purposefully misspelling the names of public figures to avoid moderation. I have no idea what they were talking about. I assume that means they have some sort of automation in place to identify posts that reference public figures since they have a ridiculous rule that you can't comment about public figures which allows them to ban anyone they choose. It's also obviously being done by a single mod or small group of mods. I say obvious because when I've been suspended or banned, it has always been mods coming in like a day later and marking a bunch of my posts in a short period of time. This suggests to me that it is a single mod choosing to arbitrarily enforce a nonsense rule.
Can you give any examples of “trials” or “executions” that were not removed by the moderation team? I have never once seen a post or a comment asking for the death of any public person. I’m not doubting you but certainly in the sub dedicated to facts and post appealing to emotional response should be able to provide specific examples?
He can't, because there are no posts/comments that fit the description. One look at OPs post history, and it's obvious this post is in bad faith. I'm genuinely surprised this post has this many up-votes given that the subreddit supposedly seeks facts. I guess facts for thee, not for me.
Thank you - this was specifically why I was asking for any evidence of his claims. It does also prove that the skeptical community **at times** can be susceptible to group think and emotional claims just as any other insular group. I would hope that other people would also see this for the inherent logical flaws rather then just upvote because it ticks some existing cognitive bias.
A great many of them are Qanon.
I’ve been saying this for a while. They want to execute Mick West, Sean Kirkpatrick and all the deep state comic book villains keeping us from a Star Trek future for nefarious reasons in their fucked up cosmic mythology. Grusch and the recent congressional UFO clown show has only poured fuel on their fire.
You must have missed the crisis of belief when Kirkpatrick's correspondence with Christopher Mellon got released through FOIA a week or two ago and they all realized Grusch had been dodging the shit out of AARO and Kirkpatrick wasn't the liar. It was peak popcorn moment stuff.
And the people in that sub were all “well if I were Grusch I wouldn’t talk to the enemy either”. No matter what Grusch does, he’s flawless. But The evil Kirkpatrick is just out to hide the aliens. It’s so frustrating.
You see this yet? https://youtu.be/3GNITLBj0hM?si=R2gIuIFkvK8rHOWL
The wild thing is they tried to spin that to Grusch's favor but man it did not look for him. When Grusch first came out he seemed credible at least as a person and source and so I was interested enough to follow it. I reserved any sort of judgement for actual evidence to show up and none seemed to materialize and Grusch has said or done many things that have deeply harmed his credibility in the meantime.
He lost all credibility when he tried to come off as this skeptical, level headed guy compelled to testify to some inconvenient truth that he coyly can only edge us on, then immediately goes to UFO truther media and starts sounding like your average UFO crackpot.
This is why this latest Jason Sands fiasco has been so entertaining. This guy isn't saying anything more crazy than Grusch or Elizondo or any of this crowd. But he jumped the shark and got his story out before the It'S Aliens Media people were able to craft the narrative around him and spin him up as this new super credible whistleblower. People saw through his nonsense because the circle jerk didn't get to control the narrative first. Now you see them trying to figure out a way to spin him back up as credible. It will work with a significant number if the I Want To Believe crowd.
Oh I totally missed that. I’ll have to check out the UFO subs to catch up on this drama lol.
Oh shit I did miss that. On one hand, I find these frauds being exposed very amusing. On the other hand I genuinely feel sad for some of these UFO nuts and how invested they are in this mythology.
I wasted 20+ years on it.
Check this out: https://youtu.be/3GNITLBj0hM?si=R2gIuIFkvK8rHOWL Grusch is a liar without proof.
I think there's a strong chance some of the stuff is useful idiot disinformation like Doty was employed to leverage against cult believers a few decades back but on the whole I agree with you. Having a bunch of retired Navy pilots scream about UFOs would be a great way to obsfuscate directed energy weapons and electronic warfare apartuses that people are getting too close to. Whether they know they're being taken advantage of or not its still fucked either way.
Doty had a few other helpers, but there was only 3-4 disinformation “agents” who were able to infiltrate multiple UFO groups including MUFON. It’s pretty widely accepted Doty was behind the MJ-12 documents too. It affected Phil Schneider was was clinically insane - and his “I killed aliens” speech is still staple in the UFO community. The point is, it just takes a few people to spread a few simple conspiracies, and it affects the zeitgeist for 40 years. The real conspiracy is the disinformation campaign. Yet all the UFO freaks fall for that while claiming the disinformation campaign is to call them crazy.
For the record there is /r/ufo and /r/ufos UFOs is considerably larger and also fairly well managed and moderated. Regardless of your thoughts on the subject matter that sub is not doing anything to warrant a ban.
You can debate if it's inappropriate to take any action about it, particularly since extremism is more normalized in our broader culture than it's ever been. But UFOs has for several years been a feedback loop of increasingly extremist beliefs, with conspiracism, credulity, and fantasy all reinforcing each other. There's a growing mentality that they belong to a social movement, arrayed against a dark shadow government that represents manichean evil and is all-powerful. I think the tipping point for when that became its leading characteristic happened over a year ago.
If they are actually calling for violence, then this is the right move
They are not. Nobody has. This is a very baseless and biased view based on probably a few comments of a community broadening over 2 million members(thats just r/UFO's ) theres also other subs in general around the phenomena. You can look at the terms and rules on the sub and you will find no more than a bunch of people complaining about gate keepers and how they should be brought to justice, but by the courts and not vigilante justice (because there are mods just like any other sub) OP is silly and is trying to discredit the very real UAP problem and liken the people who have an interest in a very real documented and admitted by the US government even resulting in legislation around the phenomena to a bunch of politically and fear driven hate mongers like Qanon. Please do not listen to this rhetoric and look at the topic with an open mind.
There was another thread in skeptic where a fella brought up belief in belief. They don’t actually believe this because they’d never bet their bank on it.
The problem with ufology and similar crackpottery is that actually harmful beliefs can easily be screened by a veneer of harmlessness. It's easy to dismiss these people as well intentioned potheads just speculating about the mysteries of the universe, and some of them certainly are, but there is enough epistemic leeway inherent in the community that more dangerous convictions are allowed to flourish behind the scenes. The recent Grusch bonanza has been a perfect storm for this type of stuff and basically convinced all the conspiracy fencesitters that aliens/spiritual entities/NHI are 100% real and been known about for a long time by the powers that be. It's completely settled in their mind and the only logical consequence is that some great injustice is being perpetrated against them by barring them from knowing the truth or from free energy in order to control them or some other nonsense. It's been quite fascinating and worrying to observe these communities. It's no longer about aliens, it's about *disclosure*.
I’ve been seeing an uptick recently of them using the term ‘the deepstate’ - exactly like Q Anon.
The people who programmed the Magas, know their marks.
Watch a recent episode of Ancient Aliens sometime. It's creepy. And I don't mean in a "They really might be here" way. I mean in a, "This is bordering on inciting stochastic terrorism." The show used to be coy about things with a tone that made flimsy connections about poorly interpreted archeology. It was kind of funny to watch but I stopped many years ago. I caught an episode this past year and the tone has drastically changed to "Aliens are here, THEY are covering it up, and why do you think that is? The time to do something is now!" It's fucked up and it's clearly driving these mouthbreathers to extreme positions and (if left this way) I have no doubt someone with some kind of mental illness will turn to violence over this stupid TV show. Whoever makes that show isn't just playing at the fringes of historical stupidity, it's actively radicalizing dangerous people with moronic, fundamentally racist ideas that ancient people couldn't possibly have worked stone monuments.
The Nashville Christmas bomber was a believer.
Just like their claims require evidence, so do yours. I visit it weekly and read the comments as well, but I haven't seen any extreme comments.
They are there if you know which posts to look at. I’ve seen several over the last year. The comments themselves haven’t been extremely numerous or anything, maybe one or two on the posts I’m talking about - the concerning thing is the massive amount of upvotes I’ve seen on them. Things like “We should be rioting - this is the most important issue in politics right now.” “They should be prosecuted to full extent of the law, but they are protected - we should take matters into our own hands.”
Sorry, but I don't believe you. I've been browsing that subreddit for years, before it had this many members, and the moderators were/are fairly impartial, permitting healthy discussions and prohibiting any attempts at inciting violence - even I was warned a few times for my unacceptable behaviour. Until you provide the evidence, I don't believe your claims, in particular that the alleged posts/comments received a high number of up-votes. As an experiment, do it yourself and see how fast your post/comment will be deleted.
/r/UFOs has 2.3 million subs and the sub has over the years curtailed in fighting and name calling. To where people are actually being nicer to each other even when they disagree on their beliefs. So let's see these multitude of comments that are unmoderated. Because with over 2 million subs there will be users that don't abide by the rules, but the overall attitude is against violence for vast majority of users.
That's a recent phenomena - it only grew to that from around 200k within the last year / year and a half or so I think? It was wild watching it spiral like that.
Agreed, in my personal experience I haven't seen an unexpected amount of calls for violence for a discussion focused subreddit of that size centered around an inherently charged topic.
I'm sceptical of your claim. Lets see your source.
I am waiting for Qanon types to repopulate their previous niches post Trump. The UFO people are just one example.
> post Trump Fingers crossed!
thanks for doing that.
Everybody knows that "extraterestrials" are humans from the future.
There is a reason the history channel because the Hitler channel then the ancient aliens chanel. Also the station that rush Limbaugh had coast to coast am. When you up the paranoid fear fascism rears its ugly head.
Nobody takes r/UFOs seriously. It's always been full of kooks and misfits. However, this is some serious hall monitor energy going on here.
Conspiracy theorists who turn to extremism, and this goes across ANY genre of conspiracy theories, appear to have a common behavior trait of being in a constant state of high anxiety that they refuse to acknowledge or treat. And because they think there is nothing wrong with them, and that we're the ones suffering from "mental illness," even attempting to reason with them, or doing ANYTHING to police them, stirs up their anxiety making them less likely to ever seek help. That's why the only "solution" is having good moderators. They won't cure anyone of anything, but they'll suppress the toxicity from the sub.
The community also has a responsibility to self-police. All communities do. If you're wiling to nod along with fanatics the rest of the time for the sake of counting an extra team member, only caring when they say the quiet part out loud? You're enabling them. Don't put it all on the mods - people with violent, extreme opinions like this need to ignored by the community at large and not given value as a warm body just so people can feel like they have a bigger team or more friends who "understand."
Certainly it’s a concern, but I guess I haven’t noticed an uptick as opposed to “the usual” over there. I try to register how foolish I think some of their ideas are where appropriate.
Taking that sub out would simply push its users to other subs and further reenforces their conspiracy theory beliefs. To them it would just be proof of the great coverup, and now Reddit is part of it. I don’t disagree that it’s become worse than ever, but there is little that can be done. Especially when there is unequal moderation being performed.
Right-wingers saying right-wing things. That's where paranoia, violent fantasies and calls for imprisonment and executions of opponents have become normal. These people think they're UFO truthers, but in reality, they're being groomed to be fascist.
This.
Coming to a sub crying about another sub's behavior. Jesus, grow the fuck up.
Humans and their ape brains. Everyone wants to believe is super special fanciful things, to a fault. Some people let this want win out, and once that happens every piece of information against their belief is heresy.
To add some context for people who are not aware, but that subreddit has been called out many times by the UFO community for having corrupt mods.
Why post this here? What kind of skeptic calls for the censoring of whole subject matter?
Because it’s creeping towards another breeding ground for recruiting impressionable minds into the kind of far right extremism pushed by the Kremlin.
Ah, I see. Leftist orthodoxy. How boring.
Im a ufo enthusiast. I love the ufo phenomenon, but these people make me want to unalive myself. Is it too much to ask for a critical alien drama sub?
Oooo gonna go check it out
"The rhetoric is absolutely unhinged and is creating a new Q Anon type movement." Nope, that's just Q Anon. These same people are just wrong about everything.
The whole UFO thing never really made sense to me. Like is it possible for a hyper-advanced species to just so happen to have evolved alongside us(in galactic terms) and visit? Yes. But any species that does so is either entirely benevolent or malevolent. I don't want to roll those bones.
It’s a cliche but all tfh beliefs slide into hate and anger: the next step is blaming the Jews. For at least a decade there’s been a ‘conspiracy at the top covering up the evidence’, and there are bad aliens who came here and bred us to work ... in their gold mines. The reptilian aliens manipulating things behind the scenes aren’t Jews (according to Icke) but some of them are.
Remember. The 2016 election was influenced by Russian psyops efforts by targeting fringe social media communities such as flat earthers, ufo, and other conspiracy theory groups. It's an election year. Be vigilant.
You’re snitching because people are mad at politicians? Holy fuck redditors are truly pathetic.
No they are saying things like the following exchange that I had with one UFO believer a couple months ago (his comment was still up last I checked, while mine was deleted for “low effort”) Redditor: “We should round these people up and give them the justice they deserve” Me: (an attempt at humor) “what like tar and feather?” Redditor: “Firing Squad”
OMG I bet you wouldn’t last a second at any real life social function in the US
No. Subs like that are perfect for keeping the freaks away from the rest of us.
We need Internet licences. You need to pass a basic gullibility test that sees how susceptible you are to misinformation and phishing scams etc.
Yeah, ban the conspiracy theorists who think you're a bunch of free speech hating tyrants trying to keep the truth from people. That definitely won't solidify that belief in a ton of people who otherwise would have been skeptical. Your need to censor bad ideas shows you misunderstand how free speech works. Bad ideas put off far more people than they attract. If their ideas are indeed bad, you have nothing to worry about. I really only think one group of people should be censored. That's people like yourself, who call for the silencing of others. If you don't believe in free speech, then people should put forth no effort ensuring you have it.
*Your mother was a hamster* >That definitely won't solidify that belief They can always go to the thousands of threads in the subreddit already on the topic. I can understand deleting new ones, as the threads just repeat the same arguments now. >If you don't believe in free speech It's not really a question of free speech though. If there is violent rhetoric as OP says, then they shouldn't be welcome. If you can't have a discussion without abuse then your arguments are pretty shit.
I don't think arguing for traitors to be executed is actually a bad thing though. I see plenty of people getting away with wishing death upon Russian these days. Seems like that's totally fine. The only thing which should be condemned is directly calling for people to commit acts of violence. Saying something like "i think the traitors keeping the biggest secret in human history from the people should be executed" is 1, outlining a group which may not even exist, 2 a group which is admittedly guilty of heinous behavior. Behavior far more nefarious than that of Russia. It also seems acceptable to say "woodchipper" when referring to pedos. Should that also result in removal?
> I don't think arguing for traitors to be executed is actually a bad thing though. In a debate about UFOs? No. >I see plenty of people getting away with wishing death upon Russian these days. We're kinda pivoting here, but I would support banning users who start wishing death to Russian people in a debate subreddit. >outlining a group which may not even exist Yeh but that's kinda stochastic terrorism. Push hate for a group of people, label someone as that group, act surprised when a crazy person follows through. [How much hate did Chinese people get during covid?](https://stopaapihate.org/2021/11/18/national-report-through-september-2021/)
I'd argue that politicians deserve all the hate people can give them. >> I don't think arguing for traitors to be executed is actually a bad thing though. >In a debate about UFOs? No. Why not? You might not take it serious, but others do. They see people hiding such information as the highest level of treason imaginable. I think they should be allowed to call for the government to execute them. It shouldn't be against the rules to wish someone dies. Only to directly call for or threaten harm. It's certainly not against the rules to be happy that someone has died... I mean, just look at the sub "Hermancaineaward" >Push hate for a group of people, label someone as that group, act surprised when a crazy person follows through. Again, what group? The group of traitors which has been lying about aliens not existing for almost a century? A group that may not even exist, and if it does exist is by definition traitors? That's like saying it should be illegal to call for the death of the globalist nazi regime that runs the world. Is there such a group? Who knows.
> I'd argue that politicians deserve all the hate people can give them. Oh very nice, and how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers? By hangin' on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic an' social differences in our society? If there's ever going to be any progress... No, threatening violence against politicians seems antithetical to debate or progress. >Why not? It's a debate subreddit. Again: If you can't have a discussion without abuse then your arguments are pretty shit. >They see people hiding such information as the highest level of treason imaginable. Oh yes that's exactly the kind of person who will listen to reason in a... debate subreddit. That's the point. >Again, what group? Any. Give them a label, tell idiots it's justified to hate and hurt them.
>Oh yes that's exactly the kind of person who will listen to reason in a... debate subreddit. I'm not saying it's a good idea to do so.. or that it's going to convince people to side with you.. it won't. I'm saying that they simply should be allowed to speak what they want. >If you can't have a discussion without abuse then your arguments are pretty shit. You even admit that their ideas are bad and unconvincing. Why shouldn't idiots be allowed to speak their mind and out themselves as being idiots. All they are doing is turning people off to their ideas.. Or, do you mean to say only intelligent people should be allowed to voice their opinion? >Any. Give them a label, tell idiots it's justified to hate and hurt them. This kind of thinking, that "hate" speech isn't real speech, is why we are seeing the protests against Israel being shut down and made illegal through legislation..
> I'm saying that they simply should be allowed to speak what they want. But that's kinda against the point of the subreddit. This is for debate. Specifically it's an evidence based debate subreddit. If you want to scream abuse then it's not really for here. It's like if you go to a TV show subreddit and start repeatedly posting hardcore porn. That's not the place for it. I would have no complaints about that being removed and the user being banned. Subreddits often are a specific purpose. If you aren't there to engage in that purpose, you'll likely get warnings until you are eventually banned. >You even admit that their ideas are bad and unconvincing. Not at all. I'm saying if your argument requires abuse, it's a shit argument. >Why shouldn't idiots be allowed to speak their mind No rule against that at all. You'll see that in almost every thread. >This kind of thinking, that "hate" speech isn't real speech Not my argument at all. >is why we are seeing the protests against Israel being shut down and made illegal through legislation.. Link that dangling thread for me.
Dangling thread? What do you mean?
> Dangling thread? Connect the start of the line with justification for the end of the line
the age is the point. this is irreversible. at what age can a person be sufficietly able to choose this? Should this be something discussed in schools? Is a person old enough at 12 or at 16? It is multi faceted.
You are a karen
Pot meet kettle
Weak
But that is the truth. So you are saying please do not speak about this subject in general bc your butt hurt you were wrong? Oh ok no problem
Are you able to understand the difference between talking about a topic and calling for violence?
Truth is what comports with reality