^ this. The specific example in my mind was TikTok short-form manosphere content that flooded the internet in 2023.
It doesn’t even need to have fake views. Content tagged with rising extremist views will naturally foster higher engagement—some of it from the absurdity; some of it from the growing group of people who believe it. Andrew Tate was a large part of promoting violent misogyny and patriarchy. The views never changed; they just became far more familiar.
It’s not about quality. Most people use content just to fill a void. Look outside at the people around you. Just about everyone is looking at their phones on rides, listening to podcasts when walking. It’s just filler.
The alt-right took over the social sphere just by taking up space. All the manosphere/trad-life/christo-fascist/slopaganda crap flooded the internet, and then it became the norm—not because it was convincing, but because it was recognizable. People parrot what they hear; And that’s especially true for the majority of unintelligent folks who wish to masquerade as intelligent. It just so happens the masses heard a lot of “women/people of color/queers are destroying our great white Christian society”.
There’s nothing about this that’s inherent to bigotry or conservative ideology; It’s just that USA conservative-aligned businessfolk bought up the outlets and skewed the scene a little bit in the favor of alt-right ideology. Over years that compounded, and now it’s seized the entire conversation. Perhaps lefties/liberals were hesitant to use those methods because they play to emotions, and not intelligence; But this is the reality of our current social sphere.
zero posts older than 1 year… so they had no bearing on Kamala’s election campaign, which we lost on November 5th, 2024
Trump was sane-washed constantly, and his fascist siege on the White House was downplayed across the board. Trump ran on being the “Peace President” and his claim “Kamala will send your sons into WW3” got echoed across the media landscape. The real problem is USA voters were financially miserable and are stupid enough to believe an insurrectionist is going to fix that. An accelerant to that problem is that our media landscape (𝕏, cable TV, and now Ellison’s aquisitions) is run by pedo Nazis, for pedo Nazis.
To those claiming “lefties…actively sabotage[d]” Kamala’s campaign… how!? Kamala got votes; it’s just Trump got more; and looking at the landscape around us, that makes sense.
When I hear this claim that Harris could have won, it always comes back to the rational details that make Kamala the better candidate. I voted for her, and believed she would easily win, for all those reasons; But we do not live in a rational climate.
I get why some still refuse to believe that fact—We’re all worn down and hurt, and the understanding that the people around you are stupid racist morons is not a pleasant view to have. That has implications outside of politics and headlines. That means your schoolteachers, coworkers, neighbors, doctors, police are stupid racist morons; And that is the reality of our nation, if not humanity.
Kamala didn’t lose because “Lefties” criticized her stance on Israel. The Democrats lost because 40% of the population got hooked on AI short-form deepfakes of black and brown folks causing chaos in public; 30-second clips and 3-hour podcasts whining about “woke entitled feminists” disguised as “dating advice” and “men’s mental health” content; cutesy cottagecore vibe content of “Little House on the Prairie” cosplayers; and Men With Microphones yapping Straight Up Lies through the working folk’s morning car commute. And this whole scene started well before 2024.
USAmerica - you are going to have a population of fundamentally broken people after this. High schoolers watched their friends disappear. Children in daycare saw their teachers dragged out. Relatives and neighbors were dragged out of their homes. Stores were raided. People are dead; And lives will forever be changed.
This chaos creates trauma, resentment, distrust, hatred. Because in the end – we let it happen. The people of this nation let this terror happen. We let tens of thousands be massacred. We let our stores and community homes be raided.
And it was done through our core infrastructure. The people were trafficked through federal agencies. Our three branches of government worked together to make this happen. Our corporations and their technology let this happen. Google. Amazon. Microsoft. Apple. They all have had a role. Our neighbors voted for this, cheered for this.
If the next candidate—be it Democrat or Republican—wants to close the book on all this and broadcast platitudes of Democracy and Compassion… whatever candidate(s) those are, I hope they fail.