BadMouse
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Hey all, just a reminder: This influx of shilling on Lemmy posting memes leading to the conclusion “please don’t vote, it’s not worth it, it won’t make a difference, and Biden’s very very bad anyway” – it’s all for one simple reason: Voting works. It is one of the rare opportunities the normal-person population has to influence the people in charge, by some small degree. It’s not enough, but it’s also not to be wasted.
The whole reason there’s all this investment of time and energy into manipulating people’s opinions is the same reason there’s so much energy towards manipulating the impact of their vote after the fact, or their ability to cast it in the first place: It’s worth it to put in the investment of energy and money that it takes to do that. Because voting has power.
Voting’s not enough to change the system, of course. But given the choice between voting or not voting (in this particular election, at least) is like asking “will eating food or not eating help this hungry person to survive.”
This is addressed in the video I posted 16 minutes ago, and is 34 minutes long. Proving you didn’t actually watch the video. Who’s the shill?
Edit: And your upvotes couldn’t have watched the video either. Again, who’s the shills?
I’m not planning on watching the video, no. I don’t want to give it views to push it up the algorithm, and I already know that if the conclusion is “voting is silly,” then it’s wrong and not worth watching.
You’re free to feel that’s unfair if you want, but it’s not.
Just sad that you didn’t give the video a fair review, while calling me a shill for posting a thought-provoking video essay.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
Isaac Asimov
I didn’t watch it either. write an essay if you feel its so thought provoking and post that. Like the other guy im not giving this views.
Why? So, you can refuse to read that for…, reasons? Stay uninformed.
Paradoxoftolerancesayswhat
Incorrect usage. Here’s a video that explains why, that you probably won’t watch.
This looks like one of those weird kids’ Youtube videos that has been in the uncanny valley for so long that it’s gotten settled in and set up a thriving sustainable business for itself there
But it uses the paradox correctly.
I watched some of it, all I saw were specious arguments that I’d expect to hear from goth teenagers at the mall. Maybe tankies find this kind of stuff compelling, rational people probably won’t.
You might like another video from BadMouse, The Problem with Tankies. I don’t know of his predilections towards Goths, so your inferences seem irrational.
If voting is silly than I am a silly little guy
People are misinterpreting this notion. No one is saying not to vote. Everyone should vote, at the very least to effect change locally for your community. The sentiment that some are beginning to realize is that voting alone cannot fix the systemic problems in America. In the beginning of the video, BadMouse says the problem he has is not with voting, it is with electoralism.
I too am a silly little guy
BadMouse says the problem he has is not with voting, it is with electoralism
I mean there is a problem at the core of US voting, that it is First-Past-the-Post. Combine that with the EC and I don’t know how anyone ever can think any 3rd candidate has a chance. People will acknowledge the result but still disagree, it’s like the Patrick wallet meme.
If the incumbent bowed out and endorsed someone else maybe, but even then I could see people not getting the memo and checking the box because it’s there.
Again, this is addressed in the video that no one is taking the time to view. Why is everyone afraid of knowledge? Are they afraid of challenging their assumptions? The video does not say “not to vote.” It just explains the problems with the electoral system.
I got about halfway through this video and then skipped ahead, before kinda just realizing that he was saying a bunch of totally unsourced surface level stuff, and none of what he was advocating for was actually anti-voting. I mean, he says that at the beginning of the video, yeah, sure, right. So like, I don’t find any of it super disagreeable in principle. Oh yeah, we should all do more in our local community and join local political activism groups instead of engaging in electoralism, and especially only engaging in it every four years! Sounds great. One question, where do I start?
Also, another question, right, underneath all this talk of voting and not voting, obviously this shit is referring to like, state and federal level politics, right, and not local politics under which people might actually be able to have a difference? It would kind of be patently absurd to deny that people can have (usually) a larger individual impact on their local political bodies and processes. I don’t really see the problem there in engaging with electoralism at a local level. There’s also like, not a clear alternative or picture in the video of what non-electoralist political advocacy looks like at all. Am I supposed to just kind of assume that I should go out and blow up a pipeline? I feel like you press any of these guys on this, and they don’t ever give you fucking, anything at all that you should actually, tangibly do, anything that you personally could do. They’re just like, oh yeah go to your city council meeting, eventually something will come up. Like no shit dude of course we should all do that if we can, but that hasn’t actually pointed me in a direction.
I also disagree with this idea of blowing up your sails with “not voting”, or, being “anti voting”. I disagree that this is a successful kind of clickbait strategy, for the goals that he seems to support (citation needed). If you gain anyone to your side with this incredibly basic and entry level video, they’re probably not going to be extremely committed to any of the ideas or organizations that you actually support, you’re just getting support in name only. It’d be better off to point people towards whatever local or online organizations they can actually participate in, which are usually what’s extremely lacking in participation.
Sidenote, I repetitively have this problem with breadtube, it just pushes people towards the abstract spectacle over and over because that’s obviously the self-serving thing for all these creators to do, and they’re going to be predisposed to existing in a kind of echo chamber where all their friends are only doing that as well even if their intentions are correct. There’s never even any attempt to utilize the spectacle towards political ends like what you see right wingers do all the time, it’s just like a huge autofellatio vortex. There’s like, this idea in left-tube that the first step is watching a video like this, and the ending steps are, you getting more and more involved in theory. There is no like, conception of the entry level as being like, “oh here’s a local group you can participate in that already exists”. Or, maybe better yet, “here’s how you might form a local group”.
Back to the main points, I think that these sorts of videos and this sort of rhetoric, this misguided attempt to direct people away from voting and towards other forms of political action, I think this is likely to galvanize people against you, as we’ve seen in this comments section full of idiots that won’t even give the video a chance. It also supposes that political action and energy towards political ends is kind of like, a limited resource, rather than a naturally recycling one that gains momentum over time.
So as a piece of propaganda, which is kind of, obviously is, right, I find it to be really bad and unconvincing, and maybe actively harmful.
