shakahislop

Well-known member
side point: don't disagree hugely here but I think the Iraq war and then the 2008 financial crash were both more important in fracturing the consensus than 9/11, spectacular though it was.
i almost added 2008 to that lineage but deleted it. in affective terms it feels like something less shocking than the others to me. it doesn't have that sense of the impossible taking place, the feeling of reality fracturing. i remember hearing with corona when they announced that the americans had banned europeans from entering the country. and isis attacks all over the world every week in 2016ish. there's a difference i think in that 2008 was something you mostly experienced analytically, through words and concepts
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
levels of casualty footage is growing, normalised and disseminated by ghouls like the DM - drone dropped ordinance cam footage, trench clips which would sicken David Jones, Wagner leader screaming in front of piles of fresh dead he recruited

Syria was rough for beheadings, barrel bombs and huge ordinance but Ukraine is slowly surpassing it for sheer mundanity of seeing an entire tank unit decimated and crews burning alive one day or a drone dropping small shells on men unaware they’re about to be blown apart

a veil usually covers and censors reality, here it seems designed to both repel and ensnare most viewers
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
levels of casualty footage is growing, normalised and disseminated by ghouls like the DM - drone dropped ordinance cam footage, trench clips which would sicken David Jones, Wagner leader screaming in front of piles of fresh dead he recruited

Syria was rough for beheadings, barrel bombs and huge ordinance but Ukraine is slowly surpassing it for sheer mundanity of seeing an entire tank unit decimated and crews burning alive one day or a drone dropping small shells on men unaware they’re about to be blown apart

a veil usually covers and censors reality, here it seems designed to both repel and ensnare most viewers
that's another thing about the internet. that it came about at the same time as ultra-cheap and omnipresent video and photography. the latter is a machine for disintermediation i think (i know it can be manipulated etc). there is a searing reality to it that words in news reports gently cover.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Iraq had embedded journalists and the odd self-filmed moment of woohoo oorah of marines going nuts in Fallujah, it was omnipresent but heavily censored, not to say you couldn’t find or be sent horror clips if you have friends who think beheading videos fell under the scope or equivalent of Rick Rolling

Ukraine it sells both the obvious need to resolve the crisis but click baity “Russian Guards Infantry Vapourised by Sick Calibre Mod” brings a certain sub-thought creeping in of “fuck off with your voyeurism but… wait a minute maybe they get genuinely splattered?”, so click
 

version

Well-known member
i almost added 2008 to that lineage but deleted it. in affective terms it feels like something less shocking than the others to me. it doesn't have that sense of the impossible taking place, the feeling of reality fracturing. i remember hearing with corona when they announced that the americans had banned europeans from entering the country. and isis attacks all over the world every week in 2016ish. there's a difference i think in that 2008 was something you mostly experienced analytically, through words and concepts

2008 seems to have done the most damage of anything, or, more precisely, the English government's response to 2008 has done the most damage in Britain of anything.
 

version

Well-known member
Iraq had embedded journalists and the odd self-filmed moment of woohoo oorah of marines going nuts in Fallujah, it was omnipresent but heavily censored, not to say you couldn’t find or be sent horror clips if you have friends who think beheading videos fell under the scope or equivalent of Rick Rolling

Ukraine it sells both the obvious need to resolve the crisis but click baity “Russian Guards Infantry Vapourised by Sick Calibre Mod” brings a certain sub-thought creeping in of “fuck off with your voyeurism but… wait a minute maybe they get genuinely splattered?”, so click
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
The desensitisation of witnessing death is always evolving/accelerating - more fresh brains to seed the pollution of fresh horrors, “guns go bang”, “this only happens to other nations“, “cartels only exist elsewhere”, “my Amazon order better not be late or I’ll grass the courier up as a thief”. Build up dissociation, build up disconnection, build a focus point for release

A reversal of the perverse is exposure could strengthen people’s respect for the damage certain weapons systems inflict but who would bet on human capacity to see beyond the immediate bells and whistles of voyeurism if they’re not in situ to experience such exchanges

The threshold has tilted monstrously off its axis and in the information wars of recent conflicts everything is/was/has been fair game. A signal change is if you’d said in 1980 you could watch a particularly bloody mma bout like today I’d have said nah never in an uptight country like Britain, yet streamed from wherever, now? Sorted. Sprinkle with alcohol and shit food delivered to your door, don’t even need to walk
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
It's interesting and unsettling how effectively public opinion can be moulded. This is why I think the people who say the American anti-abortion stuff will never take hold in the UK because religion doesn't carry the same weight in our politics are mistaken. If the right really start hammering it through social media, the newspapers, GB News and the rest, their supporters will take it up.
Yeah definitely. Was talking to my friend about the aftermath of the 2020 election the other day. Not the thing as a whole, I totally understand that there are people who will never accept the result. But what's amazing to me is the number of specific falsehoods that are believed as unquestionable gospel truths even though they have been utterly debunked and the facts that do that are absolutely available in the public domain.

To pick one example; someone might point out that a certain issues was tested in court and disproven - then a Trumper will almost certainly insist that it was not tested in court as every single court case was thrown out on a technicality such as standing and the evidence was never looked at. However, not only is this is completely untrue, every single decision is available in the public domain - specifically exactly what happened, when the evidence was examined and why it was rejected can be found easily.

But it doesn't matter one bit, an entire unassailable world of lies - that can be irrefutably demonstrated to be lies - has been created and will never be destroyed. I find that quite fascinating, the existence of a whole indestructible edifice of clear and specific, provable lies - I dunno if I'm saying it very well, but to me this is something quite different from "Trump won Biden cheated" which is so vague as to be meaningless.

So yeah, if that, why not... anything, including whatever is needed for abortion - why not?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I was thinking quite a lot about the flat earth thing. Has anyone done a proper study on why this has suddenly become popular again? I feel a good in-depth study could be useful cos it's pretty much a-political which is the only type of thing that could be properly investigated, as any study of something such as Q-Anon or The Big Lie or whatever will instantly be bogged down in accusations of bias.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Was reading some very depressing tweets earlier about Russia being likely to blow up that power plant, in part emboldened by our relative indifference about the dam attack. Shitty country of fucking sociopath vandals.
 

Leo

Well-known member
I know a far lefty guy who said yesterday "Yeah, Ukraine is getting ready to blow up the nuclear reactor, the same way they blew up the Kakhovka dam."
 
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