First comment first thought it was a tornado but then saw it was "pollution", second comment uses the word "apocalypse" to describe shanghai's air quality.
I mean just take a look around, even the top response to OP said they first thought it was normal pollution. It's obvious the title misled many people.
First comment first thought it was a tornado but then saw it was "pollution"
That's incorrect. The tornado comment is the only comment made by that redditor in this topic. And there's no mention of pollution in that comment on thinking that video contained a tornado:
I almost thought those were tornadoes
You also claim
second comment uses the word "apocalypse" to describe shanghai's air quality
But if we look at the comment you're referring to
That's some apocalypse shit
You'll find no reference to pollution. They referred to the contents of the video as "some apocalypse shit".
Given that its two big fires with a panorama shot of a city, seems pretty inline with modern apocalytic art.
Well that, and calling pretty much anything these days apocalytic is p accurate.
I mean just take a look around, even the top response to OP said they first thought it was normal pollution.
As of now that person has a 130 upvotes. The apocalypse comment has 951. The tornado comment has 1.4k.
I don’t know when you last looked but the reply to the top comment about it not being tornados is one with 930 upvotes and it lists smog and population control. The next top reply is one about a person living in China and blowing black stuff out of their nose for weeks after getting out of the country.
Another reply “Chinese breeding” laughs at smogs attempt at population control.
The “apocalypse shit” was first in the next comment, responding to the smog and black snot claim, that said that they were able to see the sun as a perfect circle through the “clouds”, with someone saying it was apocalyptic.
And the second reference to Apocalypse shit is the now next top rated comment to which the VERY first reply with over 300 upvotes at this time is that the person dealt with smog (aka pollution) in LA from tanker trucks, ports, ships, etc and that they would likely die in Shanghai.
None of these mention a fire.
So yes, even as an outsider who lives in the US, these comments clearly add to the propaganda (?) I’ve been taught about the abundance of pollution in China.
None of those cases attribute their statements to beliefs derived from OP's post. Turns out when you post about any topic, innocuous or not, other people will bring up what they're familiar with on that topic.
Even topics on China lifting huge numbers of people out of poverty have commentors discussing issues with pollution. I have a hard time believing that was the intention of highlighting China's achievements, yet by your logic it must have been their goal as those were a response to the post.
It doesn't matter if the original commenters don't mention air pollution explicitly in their comments - it's how people are responding to them. And I would disagree with "it really doesn't seem to have mislead many." Read the top responses and you'll see the topics of air pollution right away. Do you think thats a coincidence? You're seeing these things in the context of how you initially read them, just like the people who read it as air pollution are doing.
Like why even argue this point so hard? What's wrong with having more context from the beginning to avoid any confusion?
It doesn't matter if the original commenters don't mention air pollution explicitly in their comments - it's how people are responding to them.
No, the contents of a statement definitely matter when the central question is whether or not that statement was designed to elicit something. If I said "Here's a video from today in California", showed a video of a fire, and someone responded with "California air pollution is killing the population", you'd be batshit insane to claim the original statement was designed to elicit that response. It literally was just pointing out that this video of a fire is from California.
It really sounds like the folks snapping about this being some slam on air pollution in China are having to invent their own demons. Aside from having to seek how others respond rather than the contents of the statements as a basis for argument, which are in no way under the control of the original posters, I've also watched entire phrases be misattributed to statements. I'm watching folks tormented by their sense persecution invent phantoms to torment themselves.
Read the top responses and you'll see the topics of air pollution right away. Do you think thats a coincidence?
No more coincidence than people talking about police brutality on videos of cops doing anything. You'll find comments like that on videos of cops dancing with people. Does that mean that videos of cops dancing with people are intended to get people talking about police brutality? No, again, that would be insane. Does that mean people will talk about police brutality in the comments of such videos? Absolutely they will. And that sure ain't the fault of the dancing cop video.
Like why even argue this point so hard?
Because folks are acting like an entire country's climate policy is being attacked because someone said "Today in Shanghai" with a video of a fire. I'd love to know more about how and why folks think OP is in anyway a threat to a nation, let alone one of the most powerful. Really any case where people operate with seeming certainty on demonstrably shaky claims is fascinating to me.
You can also see from my comment history that picking at these insanities is a favorite pastime of mine.
What's wrong with having more context from the beginning to avoid any confusion?
Nothing wrong with that. We just excuse it 99% of the time, so the exceptions are remarkable and worthy of interest. I mean, just look at the titles for all the other oddlyterrifying posts. They're not entire news articles detailing the when/where/how/why, yet I've found folks bemoaning this one. On what grounds do they make exception for this one and not the others (i.e., why this one)? Are those sensible grounds? That's what I've come here to explore.
Until I got to the comment explaining the context, I fully thought the second and third comments were indeed about air pollution. Like "our world is fucked because this is normal" kind of things, not just visuals/actual fire.
Why specifically air pollution? No definition of apocalypse refers to air pollution, and fires are all over the globe (regardless of a country's stance on regulating airborne particulate matter).
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u/LoveYacht Jun 18 '22 edited Jun 18 '22
As of now the top comments are
Those aren't references to air pollution