I don't know how much easier his muslim analogy could be. The left doesn't want us changing laws or blaming an entire religion or holding an entire religious populous responsible for curtailing the fanatics*, because of the actions of a small minority of muslim fanatics. He is saying the same about gun laws and responsible gun owners needing to do anything because of the actions of criminals. He seems to hold a much more libertarian view on it than you. Im in agreement with you that gun owners should craft the legislation over letting the opposition do it. Im afraid to that the lefts demonization is at the point where the non gun owning general public, who had been ambivalent in the past or generally supportive of keeping government out of the issue, will bend and they'll throw their weight behind the left's ideas if massacres go on unabated. I think the NRA realized this after Sandy Hook and thats why the supported gun removal protection orders. I split with the absolutist on this issue. I think these laws could be the answer to the suicide and mass killer, at least be the way to reduce either by a good portion. Problem is, I wouldnt be willing to give an inch on an Assault weapons ban, theyre useless, but it has become rallying cry and a non negotiable to the opposition. I don't know how you wheel and deal with an opposition that demands you give up any/everything for nothing in return. I mean silencers being delisted off the NFA and nation wide reciprocity could easily, easily, be sold to the absolutist for Universal Background checks. But you get the same demonization on these issues, the gun industry trying to find a new avenue as the merchants of death, nationwide reciprocity would lead to the lowest common denominator laws winning out NEIN! Are there any serious legislators who advocate for gun control that would ever accept anything like this? They have to answer to their most vocal constituents jut as the right does with the NRA. It is a stalemate I don't see a way out of. *(the only notable leftie preaching this Ive seen is Bill Maher and he gets excoriated by his cohorts for it)
The analogy doesn't make sense for a variety of reasons, mostly in that there is no one claiming "all gun owners are murderers" or whatever. The argument isn't "gun owners need to be punished for a criminal minority", the argument is how do we have fewer people getting shot. If that's not a universal goal, then please fuck the fuck off. The first step to having fewer people getting shot might be some way of figuring out who is buying guns legally and where. If we know that, we can then start to assess the risks of individuals buying guns and good insight into who is acquiring guns illegally. Also, the majority of Americans seem to be in favor of gun control. This isn't a liberal/left issue anymore....that weight has already shifted. Responsible gun owners need to take responsibility, before it's taken from us. I think it's that simple.
Actually a lot of people are calling all gun owners and the NRA children killers and terrorist, and don't support our hobby that is getting children killed. It's become one of the nastiest debates in the political realm.
First I've heard it. I don't believe that just because something is shown on CNN or FOX or some other show that it's the mainstream thought, or even widely adopted.
Just FYI, Michael Moore has over 6 million followers, and this Tweet got 51,000 likes and 18,000 retweets. https://twitter.com/MMFlint/status/967019524187934720 These comments are pretty typical of him. His sentiment is quite often shared and stated as such across social media.
I was responding to this: Personally, I think the NRA has done more harm than good for gun ownership, in that they've taken a hard-line stance about any kind of gun control... for them it's always been "all or nothing", no compromise or dialogue, and they've actively lobbied against anything that even hints at it. In that sense, yeah, I can see some people making a wild claim that they're "terrorists". But really, 51k likes and 18k retweets... out of how many hundred million people? What do those numbers even mean? Are they bots? Real? Part of the problem with social media is that it doesn't provide meaningful context... you're getting a pinpoint, narrowly focused view. That's like saying in a full, 70k capacity football stadium there are 10 people saying, "FOOTBALL SUCKS AND SHOULD BE ABOLISHED!" (If you go on the 350 million people vs 50k likes, and assume that they're all real accounts and people on the other end). I don't see that being a problem... until the "news" focuses in on those 10 people and everyone thinks it's like half the stadium saying it. They don't give you the other 69,990 interviews. Social media "numbers" are vastly overrated and don't mean what people think they mean.
This whole "news" thing pisses me off more and more as I get older. It's not "news", they're trying to "build" a story... hell, in a lot of cases, they're trying to fabricate something out of nothing to get eyeballs so they can sell marketing. THEY ARE SELLING VIEWS, so they are going out of their way to sensationalize shit to get people to watch. For instance, in my home town, there's been a fight over summer patio music. The story has been blown up way out of proportion, and every time it comes up, the local "news" talks about how "critics have issues with it" like they're some official, large group. No, it's not... it's one crazy lady who bought a fucking condo downtown over a bar one winter without realizing it had an outdoor patio in the summer, so her life goal is now to shut it down so she doesn't have to hear it any more. This is a major fucking news story, that should go on for weeks? No. It's not. Even when the local town council basically says, "shut up, you're nuts and the only one bitching about it", unanimously vote to remove her complaint, and tell her to go away, it then becomes a "news" story how she's going to appeal it. But to hear the news talk about it, it's a big fucking deal that we should all stop and pay attention to these "official critics" to the downtown core business development plan.
To put it into perspective we can understand... this is what 72k people look like (Live Aid at Wembley)... now imagine 10 of them throwing a hissy fit about guns:
I have no idea. But, when he has +6 mm followers and ends tweets with #NRAKillsKids, that's more than nothing. imho And, I'm not picking on Michael Moore. There are certainly tweeters out there with equally incindiary hashtags that oppose him.
I think the thing I'm trying to say is that the news and social media are not representative of the world. The numbers look scary, but in this day and age, there is a huge social media number arms race going on... everyone is trying to get the bigger numbers, and I think it's all bullshit. Silicon Valley venture capitalists and Hollywood producers give a shit about various metrics when it comes to users... the bigger they are, the more money a VC can resell the company for... or the more likely you are to get that starring role in a movie. It is well within their best interest to inflate those numbers. In my own personal experience, we artificially inflated and manipulated numbers to try and lend credibility and raise perceived value. Our PR agency told us that our latest marketing spend got over 200 million views, and yet we saw 18 new sign-ups. (their numbers were shit) We'd tell our VC that we had a million users, when really there were about 80k active users. We bought twitter and facebook followers for pennies to make it look like everyone was into us, so "you should be too!" Don't want to be left out of what the cool kids are doing, do you? Anyone you're reading about in public social media is doing the exact same thing, for the exact same reason... so you can claim to be way more important and influential than you really are. And then there's the whole "what does a like actually mean?" conversation... What are the actual results from someone clicking "like" on a "ban guns" tweet or facebook message? Are they going to go out and protest? Are they going to call their rep to try and get some legislation enacted? Are they going to vote at all? Or are they just going to go on to the next "Kanye and Kim's family pic" and like that too?
Somewhat tangential - Redlettermedia did a pretty good analysis of what Nett is talking about regarding the 2016 Ghostbusters and the whole "Patriarchy/Angry White Men" angle. It's pretty good: As the amount of effort on the user side increases, the level of action drops pretty significantly. And they show that progression from video views to likes to actually commenting on the video to however that actually translated to people seeing the movie. It's pretty interesting to look at.
That whole thing is so stupid. And the free press prints this “poll” stating only half the city wants live music outside. Bullshit. Everybody wants it except that psycho.
One hand you say social media can influence people with ridiculously obvious troll ads and swing elections. On the other hand you say social media metrics and influencer marketing on social media doesn’t add up to shit. With more politicians on every level being more vocal about gun restrictions and assault weapons bans and millions marching across the nation I don’t think your dismissiveness is justified.
In short. The worst thing that ever happened to “news” is that in the end it is a business. They need viewers. Nuance doesn’t do that and therefore you get people increasingly trying to outdo each other. And we buy into it, because they’re getting the viewers. It’s the same thing as sports talk. As much as everyone complains about people like Stephen A Smith and Skip Bayless, there is a reason they’re getting paid millions of dollars per year to scream at you on tv. I don’t know what you do to fix it but revenue drives content for all the major news organizations.
What I am saying is that the numbers that people use to evaluate the "correctness" or volume of an opinion stated in social media ("he's got 6 million followers") is bullshit, but that people are buying into it and are therefore being influenced by those numbers. I think that the focus that the news companies give to topics are shaping opinion. They're not just reporting on what people are thinking, but are actively shaping opinion based on how they are presenting it to people, and how people are perceiving it. Hell, half of the "news" these days is guessing what the outcome will be if ____. That whole line of thought it meant to form an opinion in someone who may otherwise be on the fence. "Here's a story about a kid running with scissors. Now, we don't know what happens after that, but with us are 4 experts on scissors... what do you think happens? Well, it's really easy to have a kid fall down and stab themselves in the face with scissors... There you heard it, we should ban scissors because kids will fall down and stab themselves in the face." They can take a non-issue and turn it into an issue. And get this... on the news about 2 weeks ago, there were a few kids out protesting, to "make it safe to go to school again... stop gun violence in our schools!" In London, Ontario. Where there IS NO gun violence in schools. Then the news showed clips of their bullhorn speeches... "We need to change the 2nd amendment, and therefore are exercising our 1st amendment right of free speech to get you to take action!" WE'RE IN FUCKING CANADA, YOU RETARDS... WE HAVE NO 1ST AND 2ND AMENDMENTS. And yet the news spent 10 minutes praising their courage to protest a problem that we don't have, with the teachers there "so proud of them standing up for what they believe in".
This is the problem with the education system today. Kids are taught what to think and to listen to authority, not how to think. Good little lemmings, do as your told. Too bad they don't get it.
I don't know, maybe I should've just put this in the WDT, but I am asking this seriously: https://www.apnews.com/d06d54593188...ow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=APEastRegion The guy who provided the photos for The Fappening (I think) pleaded guilty. Is there more than that? Or, is that really what he did? Like, did all of these people really respond to an email, and include their password in their reply? Surely it was more elaborate than that.
Nope... it's really that simple. PEOPLE ARE STUPID. They are programmed to think that things are as they seem, not to be skeptical old fucks like me. The biggest problem with technology, and the internet in particular, is that the engineers that designed and developed it did so from a "trust everybody" headspace. They didn't take into account that people might pretend they are someone they aren't. This is a huge problem. Then you have shitty email clients and servers that allow for some shitty behaviour, and you have problems. For instance, I can send an email to you that says it's from "support@apple.ca", but it's not, so you click on the link in the email that LOOKS like it goes to "apple.ca", but really it goes to "theidiotboard.com", but it looks 100% like the apple site, and you feel like you're really dealing with apple. It then says, "for your security, please enter your username and password", so you do. But it fails... so you try it again, and again. "Sorry, there's a problem with your account, please try again later". But they already have your username and password for the REAL Apple web site. And boom... they have your apple ID account that controls your iCloud. Even on this site, when you log in, I could be logging your username and password. And how many people are using the same username/password for EVERY site they go to, because it's "too hard" to remember more than 1 username/password? And then how many people have activated 2 factor authentication? It's fucking easy to shear the sheep.
On that note... every site I go to has its own freakishly long password... some of them 48 characters or longer. I use a password manager that works on all my computers and tablets/phones: https://www.lastpass.com/ I then use a FIDO U2F usb key for the really important stuff that needs 2 factor authentication, like my AWS or Google Cloud accounts, github, etc: https://www.amazon.ca/HyperFIDO-Tit...=UTF8&qid=1523568892&sr=1-4&keywords=fido+u2f Security is hard. People are lazy, don't want to learn it, or don't understand the need to learn it. The social hack is the oldest and hardest hack to prevent. The Hawaii missile alert fiasco? Dude has the main password on a post-it note on his monitor... in a pic that was published online. Yeah... it really is that easy.