9mo ago

If somebody spends the whole day watching fox or religious propaganda, gets worked up and all he can think of is owning a liberal or converting an unbeliever, is this person a victim or just gullible?

Let me explain the question:

If fox news and religious propaganda are exactly that, propaganda, then they are victims.

If, however, every person is free to listen to what they want and then rant against liberals, migrants, Muslims, Arabs, trans, gays, atheists, you name it, then they are just gullible.

I’d have more patience for a victim than a gullible person.

Everybody is free to believe what they want to believe. What I don’t get is why they have to stir things up and why they believe they are the only ones getting it and everyone else is dumb, woke, a communist or is going to hell. Why can’t they keep their opinions to themselves?

53 comments

I don't think it's an "or" situation. They are both.
- This is the answer.
  In many ways people are the product of their surroundings. Even if these people are "just gullible", that's because they don't know any better, which makes them victims also.

Maybe I'm missing some nuance of the word but if they believe the stuff because they are gullible... isn't that what makes them the victim?

The gullible often become victims. I don't understand the distinction you're making. Between personal failing and societal failing? They feed into each other. Both warrant correction.

It happens with liberals, too. Having said that, people really do need to go outside, get away from the 24/7 media feed, talk to actual people, and apply some critical thinking on their own. None of us is the main character.
- I'm the main character, obviously, why else would the sun revolve around the earth? Purely to honor me the main character, reincarnated in this dying world to save it from the demon lord known as See Oh Too, and its generals Shell, BP, and Chevron. /S
  
  save it from the demon lord known as See Oh Too, and its generals Shell, BP, and Chevron.
  HOORAY!
  /S
  ...oh :(

I'd put them on the same level of victimhood as followers of people like Charles Manson. They probably wouldn't have done what they did without his influence but they're still culpable for the damage they've caused.

People should grow up and take responsibility for their lives.
That's the main thing.
A grown up, responsible person can have opinions, and can change their opinions.
A grown up, responsible person can spend their day as they want, and can also understand that it is probably unhealthy to watch news a whole day long.
A grown up, responsible person can utter a rant when it feels neccessary, and can also apologize afterwards if someone got hurt from it.
- People should grow up and take responsibility for their lives.
  We SHOULD all get free unicorns too.
  But if you actually want to fix the problem, as opposed to just should'ing it, that requires that we see these people as victims. And this means we don't blame the victim, we help them with their situation.
  The wonderful part about the train of thought that you've started, is that eventually you realize that people not only need to take responsibility for their own lives, but also need to take responsibility for the society they impose on other people's lives. And if we're unhappy with that society, we have to actively do something about it. That is our responsibility. Just as much as it's our responsibility to fix ourselves.
- Should. But its not like we can force them to grow up and become responsible.
  
  But its not like we can force them to grow up
  But should you?
  Are you responsible for their life?
- People should grow up and take responsibility for their lives.
  This is something on I don't agree at all with liberals. When people are manipulated by cult-like technique (or even (social) media optimized to give their brain a fix of dopamine) it's not about their individual responsiblity but the responsiblity of the assholes manipulating them.
  
  This is something on I don't agree at all with liberals.
  Is it only liberals in your country who think so?

Or are they bigots looking for confirmation bias?

I think the "people are free to believe what they want to believe" is a mistake. This is the very statement that relativitises opinions and belief systems with facts and creates the illusion that they are all equal.
Look at the "facts don't care about feelings" crowd that believe wholeheartedly that statements pandering to their feelings are facts and disregard any actual facts as fake news. I don't think it's because they decided one day to pick and choose what is a fact and what is not, but they actually can't tell that there is a difference in opinions, beliefs and facts in the first place.
People need to accept that sometimes the truth is painful, that it contradicts what you want it to be, and worst of all - that you may have been wrong.
Edit: that said, I think people are free to believe whatever they want to believe when it comes to unprovable existential esoterica like personal values, afterlife, religion, whatever. As long they accept it is a personal belief and not an universal truth.

Being abnormally gullible can be a symptom of some types of mental health issues. Extremely gullible people, especially, deserve compassion.

"willing victimhood" is certainly a thing.

Does their gullibility somehow diminish their victimhood? Gullible doesn't mean they're malicious, it just means they're easily misled. If anything, if they're "just gullible" we should be even less hostile towards them, and more towards the propaganda machine (because it is) that's feeding them their misinformation.

Tldr "In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god's blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence"

Blame is not a finite resource. Just because 2 people are involved doesn't mean they're both 50% to blame — they can both be 100% at fault.
So to answer your question, the person is responsible for their onerous views. They chose to watch that trash and believe it. We can have compassion for them without absolving them of blame. At the same time, they are a victim of the people lying to them. So it's fine to blame the person consuming the bullshit and the person producing the bullshit, and the fact that there are 2 people to blame doesn't make either of them any less to blame.

Don't know that I'd characterize it as being "victims", their media outlets have chosen to fuel anxiety and anger that was already there.
The media is culpable for pouring fuel on the fire, but the fire was already there. They are emboldened to be loud since they find such loud agreement from media and online, but they already were thinking the same basic things.

there a victim as not everyone is the same and there's always unknown mental disorders some people have or exposed to lead that fucked there brain up, poor childhood, other reasons.
People are not born evil. Nobody just is born and wants others to die. All of it is a learned trait and often times from these organizations is how these evil things spread.
They are gullible because there a victim of The propaganda and what they learned (usually by force without consent) growing up.
Saying people are dumb or need to "grow up" just is another way to put it into aggressive "us vs them" mindsets.
Nobody is born to be evil or cruel. No body. It is learned behavior and we should destroy the organization and practices that create these behaviors regardless of what political side there on. (Although conservative ones have the absolute worst ones though)

Think that anyone who would find that stuff compelling is not in a good place emotionally or mentally. Now, ideally they should be pulled out of that, and you do occasionally hear stories about people leaving extremist groups like Qanon because they found a healthy hobby or community. On the other hand, I don't think humans can really be separated cleanly between victim and victimizer, and the people this questions describing often become a danger to other people.

Why would you think they all do it for the same reason?

They are falling for engagement strategies all news media outlets use. They will say things that pander to a specific group pointing the finger at the other side so you'll stuck with their station. Both liberal and conservative sites do this. Journalism is dead

discussions like this always bring me back to the Dead Kennedy's song Stars and Stripes of Corruption
Not only is the music one of their greatest, but the lyrics are Jello Biafra's best. If you have never heard it, imagine surf guitar, fast pace and a poet that can unleash lyrics at bullet speeds while staying in tone and driving the beat. The end of their career finale and IMO their magnum opus. The lyrics are just so good. Here is one part that I really think about alot...
But what can just one of us do
Against all that money and power trying to crush us into roaches?
We won't destroy society in a day
Until we change ourselves first from the inside out
We can start by not lying so much and treating other people like dirt
It's so easy not to base our lives on how much we can scam
And you know it feels good to lift that monkey off our back
- Too great a tune not to include a link for the uninitiated!
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=983DwAOCXRI
  The end of their career finale
  Apart from Bedtime for Democracy (SaSoC is on Frankenchrist) ;-)
  
  Bedtime is good but it's the post breakup album haha so does it really count?

"If somebody spends the whole day watching fox or religious propaganda, gets worked up and all he can think of is owning a liberal or converting an unbeliever, is this person a victim or just gullible?"
Neither. Such folks (Along with their "enemies" on the opposite end of the sociocultural continuum, who get all of their intell from The Daily Show and Vox)are case studies in the willfull devolution of modern humans. The sooner all of them guzzle down a gallon of Draino each, the saner this planet will be

People affected by confirmation bias are NEVER VICTIMS.

They're a gullible victim.

Im athiest but I have no issue with conversation as long as its polite. I would regularly discuss christianity with a nice old lady who was a jehovas witness. she handed out slips but was not pushy or rude. I would discuss and even said I would for the sake of conversation assume the bible is real. She took my views in stride that you would think would upset someone from such a fundamentalist faith. If people did not want to talk to her though she did not bother them or such.

Why can’t they keep their opinions to themselves?
Freedom of speech?
"Why don't you keep your non cis het stuff to yourself" is something I hear often from that side. We should be better than that
- Freedom of speech guarantees the federal government won't be able to mete out punishment for speech. It does not mean that anyone can say whatever, wherever, whenever. Social consequences for speech are fair game, as long as those consequences don't themselves rise to misdemeanor or crime.

They aren't victims, but they wish they were. They're awful people who want to be openly awful to others to feel better about themselves, and fox "news" lets them indulge their awful impulses and emboldens them to be the awful people they want to be. Then when they get confronted for being awful, they play the victim instead of learning to live and let live.
Obviously this isn't true of all fox viewers or religious people, but I have been thinking about this lately as our new dynamic. It's not supposedly about the best way to help people anymore (and what we can/can't or should/shouldn't do), it's now one side that still supposedly wants to help people and one that has given up the pretense entirely and only stands for cruelty.

Stupidity is a moral flaw, not an intellectual one.

Oh, for fucks sake, not another one of these "I'm so smart, listen to me" posts.
"Gullible" individuals, huh? You know what's gullible?
Thinking that anyone on this godforsaken platform is gonna change their mind because of some fancy-pants post with big words and a bunch of notes.
Newsflash, @lemmy.world: people are stupid, and they're gonna believe what they wanna believe, no matter how many facts you throw at 'em.
You're just preaching to the choir, sweetheart.
You think you're so much better than everyone else with your "informative" post and your 19.4k notes?
Please, you're just another self-congratulatory, circle-jerking, echo-chamber-dwelling, bleeding-heart liberal who thinks they can change the world with a few clever sentences.
Wake up, buttercup, the world don't work that way.
And by the way, what the fuck is "vestigia.tumblr.com/r/no-stupid-questions"?
Sounds like some hipster nonsense to me.
- 2/10, mostly for the condescending use of "sweetheart". Without that, 1/10. You can do better trolling than that.

53 comments