HelixDab2

It is, yeah. When you look at accounts like Occupy Democrats and start fact checking them, there's a lot of bullshit that they post. Like, pants on fire kind of bullshit. I knew a lot of people that followed them. In order to get engagement, accounts need to stir up emotions and get people to react and comment; it's easier to do that with things that outrage rather than dense policy positions.

I want to believe that the political left is more intellectually honest than the right, but that's because I'm mostly on the political left. (I'm an anarchist at heart, but with a cynical disbelief in the ability of people to work together in a country the size of the US without some degree of authoritarian control.) So I try to fact-check all of the sources that I use for both factual information, as well as ideological biases.

Yes, I understand that. But on social media you aren't necessarily getting right-wing propaganda, as there's plenty of left-wing propaganda and misinformation as well. That's why I'm saying that they're low- or no-information voters that are working solely on feels.

Even if you’re a relatively disconnected right winger

I'm not talking about relatively disconnected right wingers; I'm talking about people that are largely centrist, and not paying attention to Fox, NBC, CNN, or any newspapers, and gets all of their 'news' from social media. I guess you'd call them the hoi poloi; they're low-information voters (or no information voters), and mostly apathetic as long as they feel like they're getting by. Policy won't matter to them very much; they're voting on feels.

any right winger that obsessively follows the news is literally ben shapiro or alex jones.

That depends. There are a number of people that are extremely fiscally conservative that have zero interest in culture wars issues. Most of them have defected from the Republican party entirely though, because they see that the current iteration of the Republican party is deeply harmful to the kind of conservatism that they stand for. But that kind of conservative hasn't really been popular since about the time that Newt Gingritch was trying to stir up the country against a president that didn't keep his dick in his pants.

We can probably tolerate a little more disinflation, as a treat.

No, not really, because deflation (not disinflation) tends to be self-sustaining, much like hyperinflation does. If the dollar I have today will buy two dollars worth of goods next week, then I'm going to hold onto my dollar to make any sort of discretionary purchase until next week. When everyone does that, all at the same time, it's like building a dam; the flow of money just grinds to a halt. Companies don't have money coming in, so they can't pay workers, which leads to layoffs, and the people laid off have no income to buy anything now, which feeds right back into that cycle.

I agree with you that corporations need to be reined in, that executive salaries are out of control, and that things like stock-buybacks are the bane of a functional economy. But that's literally going to take legislation in this country to fix, in the same way that it did when the economy crashed in the 1920's, and I guarantee you that there's going to be zero political interest in that for at least two years.

Ironically, after working in production for over a decade, I'm hoping to go back to school for business management. Because it turns out that there's zero career track and advancement potential if I stick with what I already know. Depressing shit.

Paul is 9-1, the one loss being a split decision, and 6 of the wins being knockouts. He's inexperienced, but that doesn't mean he's not good.

I want to see Tyson knock him out in under ten seconds. But I don't think I'll get my wish.

Eh. I dunno. Tyson is in his 50s, and has a much shorter reach than Jake Paul. As much as I'd prefer to see him win, I don't think that Tyson is gonna pull this off.

If I drop that name, that gives people enough to figure out which school I went to, what years, and they can correlate that with my post history to figure out exactly who I am IRL.

I've probably posted enough already that someone with a large enough database could do that already, but dropping names would make it much easier for just about any schmuck with an internet connection and decent search skill.

(And believe me, I would love to tell people the name of the pretentious dick that was the head of the department, but... Aaargh.)

It's not even a propaganda problem, per se, because most people aren't obsessively following the news and economic reports.

It's how they feel about money.

That was the biggest single issue.

People looked at grocery store prices and said, this is nuts, I was paying half this just four years ago.

It doesn't matter to them that global inflation skyrocketed along with inflation in the US, or that we're doing better than the rest of the world right now. They want to see prices go down, even though that would be deflation, which is incredibly bad for an economy.

I went to school for fashion design. (Hence interacting with a famous designer in school. Come to think of it, the head of the department at the time was someone with a significant international reputation. And I still think he's a pretentious dick.) These days I do industrial print media, because I burned out hard in school, due to a combination of raging, untreated ADHD and 48+ hour days working in studio.

I would not recommend fashion design to anyone that has any interest in a healthy work/life balance, and fast fashion has absolutely gutted anything domestic that's of any interest at all.

I... Can't do that without giving away far too much personal information. Unfortunately.

Fundraiser at a very expensive art school. I was a scholarship student at a cocktail mixer, and I was at the mixer because it was being held in the department I was majoring in. All of the people that were attending were fine arts patrons, the kind of people that drop tens of thousands on art without thinking twice about it. I was--literally--a punk kid with tattoos and shit tons of piercings, and I was supposed to be pleasant to people with millions more than I'll ever have.

Got to piss off a world famous fashion designer that evening, so that was cool.