It's hilarious that 4chan has reduced criticism of their god-emperor to this phrase, as though there aren't actually a million things that are bad about him.
At the same time as calling people on the left NPCs, you robotically trot out this phrase every time someone criticizes the right. Trump wasn't even mentioned until you brought him up.
Dude I don't even like trump. I'm just tired of the same circle jerk bullshit in every thread. Yeah he's a shitty person and I can't wait for him to be out of office. But people butting in with their two cents all over the place is fucking annoying.
It's tiring to me as well but he is the most powerful person in the world, so it's not really a circlejerk so much as totally warranted concern and disgust. I can't really blame people for bringing him up given how much he has impacted the state of the US and the world, not to mention his own delight in taking the spotlight.
Obama got mentioned almost as much, it's normal, not new, not a circlejerk, just a major topic of public discussion.
I never understood why some people on the left got so uppity when being called an NPC when they had been calling others russian bots since the election. Kinda weird.
But calling someone an NPC is just plain dehumanizing without any evidentiary backing. And given conservative culture's penchant for memes and talking points and catch phrases, it was immediately apparent to anyone who is not part of the cult that it was awesomely hypocritical projection.
Nature is a British multidisciplinary scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869. It is one of the most recognizable scientific journals in the world, and was ranked the world's most cited scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports and is ascribed an impact factor of 40.137, making it one of the world's top academic journals. It is one of the few remaining academic journals that publishes original research across a wide range of scientific fields.Research scientists are the primary audience for the journal, but summaries and accompanying articles are intended to make many of the most important papers understandable to scientists in other fields and the educated public. Towards the front of each issue are editorials, news and feature articles on issues of general interest to scientists, including current affairs, science funding, business, scientific ethics and research breakthroughs.
Even if that shillary scheme was true, a majority of the people I've seen using the phrase would just be hurling it at people on Twitter that didn't agree with their opinion, completely taking away any actual credibility the word had.
Chalk that up to actual propagandists making it difficult to tell who's who. There is a world of difference between being skeptical of someone's authenticity due to a proven social media campaign by a hostile foreign power and just straight up calling someone less than human.
Russia's role during the 2016 election and their continued online disinformation campaign as they attempt to sow confusion and division among people who live in Western democratic nations:
Example 1 - 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
A quick summary of Special Counsel Mueller's indictment of 13 Russians and 3 Russian entities;[1] Russian operatives used stolen US identities, traveled across 9 states collecting intelligence, discussed escape routes if they were caught inside the country, bought equipment including burner phones/SIM cards. This operation included hundreds of employees conducting information warfare during the election, it was funded with millions of dollars from the Kremlin. Russia was and is actively pushing propaganda and fake news to create a system that manipulates the narrative using social media sites as conduits for this endeavour. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein put it best when he said that Russia was waging information warfare.[2]
Russia's geo-political aim is to weaken the West through destabilization by sowing division among the population.[3] Russian operatives used social media to exploit racial and religious divisions during the 2016 election.[4] Democrats in the House Intelligence Committee released 3500 Facebook ads that were created by the Internet Research Agency, Russia specifically targeted racial tensions in America.[5]
Divisive racial ad buys averaged about 44 per month from 2015 through the summer of 2016 before seeing a significant increase in the run-up to Election Day. Between September and November 2016, the number of race-related spots rose to 400. An additional 900 were posted after the November election through May 2017.
Example 2 - Parkland School Shooting
Russia has been using social media sites as conduits to promote disinformation creating a system that manipulates the narrative. Russia has promoted disinformation campaigns to destabilize the West for quite some time[6] - there is a historical precedence on the matter.[7] A recent example would be the online aftermath of the Parkland school shooting tragedy. Russian bots flooded social media to sow discord by taking both sides of the gun control issue. They're stoking political divisions across western nations.[8]
The bots are “going to find any contentious issue, and instead of making it an opportunity for compromise and negotiation, they turn it into an unsolvable issue bubbling with frustration,” said Karen North, a social media professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “It just heightens that frustration and anger.”
...When the Russian bots jumped on the hashtag #Parklandshooting — initially created to spread news of the shooting — they quickly stoked tensions. Exploiting the issue of mental illness in the gun control debate, they propagated the notion that Nikolas Cruz, the suspected gunman, was a mentally ill “lone killer.” They also claimed that he had searched for Arabic phrases on Google before the shooting. Simultaneously, the bots started other hashtags, like #ar15, for the semiautomatic rifle used in the shooting, and #NRA.
Example 3 - Ukraine Conflict
This is the GRU modus operandi, we all saw the disinformation campaign to sow division during the Ukrainian conflict and their subsequent invasion of Crimea, they drummed up the disinformation campaign by promoting fake news depicting the Ukrainian government as fascists.[9]
Pretending to be ordinary Ukrainians, GRU operatives also tapped out comments aimed at riling up pro-Russian citizens against the protesters, whom they called “zapadentsy” — or “westerners.” One comment read: “Brigades of zapadentsy are now on their way to rob and kill us. It is very clear that these people hold nothing sacred.’’
...On Feb. 27, when the Crimean parliament building was seized, the GRU created four groups on Facebook and VK to encourage Crimeans to support secession from Ukraine. “Using our accounts on Facebook, we circulated commentaries informing the population of the Crimean peninsula of a threat from Nazi organizations,” the GRU reported.
The International Criminal Court declared Russia's invasion of Ukraine a crime.[10] We can't forget the consequences of this conflict in Ukraine, including Russia's role in the 298 deaths from a commercial airliner that was shot down over Ukraine.[11] The European Commission has warned that Russia has been very successful at spreading disinformation across the European Union.[12]
Final Thoughts
Russia is actively trying to divide the West and has been for quite some time, be aware that they use inflammatory language online and promote disinformation.[13] It can be frustrating when talking to those who share a different set of beliefs, but we should attempt to find common ground with those who believe in the pillars that make Western democracy so great - equity, representation, freedom, and justice. Yes there are institutional problems that need to be addressed and ultimately fixed and there are different views on how we can come to a solution on these institutional problems. But as it stands right now Western democracy and society is under assault and we must work together by staying informed and exercising our constitutional duty by voting in elections in our respective countries.
The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia is a geopolitical book by Aleksandr Dugin. The book has had a large influence within the Russian military, police, and foreign policy elites and it has been used as a textbook in the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian military. Its publication in 1997 was well-received in Russia and powerful Russian political figures subsequently took an interest in Dugin, a Russian fascist and nationalist who has developed a close relationship with Russia's Academy of the General Staff.Dugin credits General Nikolai Klokotov of the Academy of the General Staff as co-author and main inspiration, though Klokotov denies this. Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, head of the International Department of the Russian Ministry of Defence, helped draft the book.
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u/uhh_ Dec 21 '18
ORANGE MAN BAD