Fun ITT post the stupidest thing currently in your FB feed

9/11 is ****ing primetime for this ****, i dont doubt.

in some parallel universe, someone is complaining in this thread about my 9/11 facebook ritual, which is to change my avatar and banner to promote awareness of the US sponsored coup against the democratically elected socialist government of Chile and brought a brutal military dictator to power for 25 years. Incidentally it took place on 9/11 in 1973.

ive been doing this every year since i got facebook (4 years) and every year I've only gotten positive feedback, with several people choosing to share the info and/or thank me directly for bringing these events to their attention. this year my mom sent me an email suggesting that some people might be offended by my remembrance, which i don't doubt, given the hypersensitivity of some americans to perceived insufficient patriotism. i just think the american 9/11 memorial posts are pretty well covered and my friends can stand to accommodate one or two people raising awareness about the other 9/11. furthermore, while i dont begrudge anyone their understandable collective trauma at the terror attacks of 9/11/01, i believe patriotism without conscience is not a patriotism worth having, and i aim to be that conscience in my own small way

for more information on 9/11/73, TeleSUR English has a one-stop shop for news and comparisons on the two tragedies of 9/11

 

holy crap. a particularly unhinged reaction to the NFL kneeling/sitting protests:

 

OOH. OOOH. TAG ME SO I CAN RESPOND ROGUE! PATRIOT FIGHT!

 

This is going to make you feel sick and confused, but my freshman year of college my history prof (who was British) asked us to move to part of the room to indicate whether we strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed, or strongly agreed with the statement, "The United States is an imperialist nation."

Out of 45 students, I was one of two on "strongly disagree". When asked why, I cited all the toppling of democratically elected leaders, especially in South America in the 70s and 80s.


Thanks IB History of the Americas!

 

If you strongly disagreed, citing it as an imperialist hegemony, then you'd be correct.

 

well, we have/had some old school colonial possessions of our own, as well. philippines, puerto rico, hawaii etc

 

He didn't ask whether it was an Empire, just whether it was imperialist.

 

solojones, so did you argue we are an "Empire of Liberty"?

 

Yes but the majority of your influence has come from the proliferation of your culture and economic power, rather than through conquest and dominion over territories. Arguably overt imperialism would have been better for Iraq/the middle east than this method, but here we are.

 

no thanks. im not going to piss off someone who knows where i live, almost certainly has a firearm, and adopts such a masturbatory tone fantasizing about being able to kill people for insufficient patriotism

 

I'd read a paper last year that suggested that the US created "commercial imperialism" as opposed to traditional imperialism, and it's a practice that has achieved incredible success without the need for military conquest.

 

But also some actual boots on the ground "install loyal puppets in countries that are none of your business so you can control you" type of imperialism.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony

It's fine guys, keep finding new terms for a practice.

 

TL; DR: a Trump supporter I know said that the POTUS can be of any faith, just not a Muslim, because a Muslim would try to change the US by inviting concepts from Sharia Law. I, coming from a large Muslim family (which I'm not sure he knows?), disagreed.

 

Nothing particularly facepalming on my feed as of late, aside from my cousin trying to tell my brother's wife how to parent her son. My cousin doesn't have kids.

 

"I heard some people in the country are trying to steal Trump signs!! > : (
Trump signs should be made so they electrocute to death any SCUMBAGS who try and take it!"



(I can get not wanting someone to steal your sign, that's wrong. But hoping to electrocute anybody who touches it?)

 

There's always some kinda horoscope nonsense creeping up. I mean, honestly. At least this one isn't riddled with typos...

 

My cousin posted this:



I responded with this:

 

I've got a friend who went off the deep end recently. I'm not sure what his deal is. He's a nice guy and I don't want to delete him, but every single post is major conspiracy theory nonsense. Anti-vaccine, vaccines give you cancer, 9/11 was an inside job, "chemtrails" (not even a word) are above his head daily and the government is bombarding us with evil chemicals to make us docile or something. He said, "If the chemtrails don't exist, why are there way more trails near every major city?" Let me think, DURRR, MAYBE because AIRPORTS are based in major cities, where AIRPLANES fly into them?! Holy cow. Conspiracy theorists are some of the dumbest people because unlike average dumb people who live their lives kind of just doing their thing, conspiracy theorists think they are right about everything and everyone ELSE is dumb.

I argued with him a bit over a few of these things, mainly just asking questions, posting links, research studies, etc. But he repeatedly hit me back with links to right-wing conspiracy theorists and whatnot. I just finally left it alone and unfollowed him but kept him as a friend. I don't know what makes someone like this but he wasn't always posting such crazy nonsense.

 

I don't think my cousin will go completely insane, as my issues with her posts are that she is grossly misinformed (or uninformed in some cases) and I'm repeatedly throwing Snopes at her. That post just happened to get on a specific nerve.

 

What was their reply?

 

so, when facebook keeps top-of-the-feeding some random person i barely know's wedding or baby or whatever major life event post that means everybody obligatorily likes it so it gets super promoted... if i "like" the post, will that acknowledgment of it make it then drop down the feed or does that make facebook keep it at the top of my feed longer?

 

Ezio Skywalker They replied with "it was a joke lolz". I refused to respond to that and just let them sit in their new bed.

Rogue_Ten Dunno. I just unfollow the post. Screw their like-farming.