• BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world
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    9 days ago

    There are still two groups of people for whom bullying is still acceptable, and strongly encouraged: MAGAs, and Anti-Vaxxers. Also, Flat Earthers, but they probably belong to one of the first groups.

    • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
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      8 days ago

      I understand the anger but with anti-vaxxers specifically I think there’s a case to be made that focusing too much on the failure of individuals to make properly informed decisions can distract from the systemic causes of the increase of anti-vax sentiment. There has been a decline of trust in institutions resulting from decades of austerity and exploitative practices. Big pharma, the insurance industry, and the scientific community are conflated by popular figures in the grifter economy so that people turn to them for medical help and knowledge instead of doctors, and our education system - having also been eroded by austerity - does little to prepare people for the abundance of disinformation. Combine this with those same grifters gaining legitimacy by becoming involved in government and I’m honestly surprised the problem isn’t worse than it is.

      Your anger is justified but it is better directed at the grifters spreading the lies than the marks who believe them.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world
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        8 days ago

        our education system - having also been eroded by austerity - does little to prepare people for the abundance of disinformation.

        You are talking about Critical Thinking Skills, one of my favorite subjects, and you make an excellent point. There are grifters who like to twist our large systems, and connect dots that aren’t meant to be connected, and create a picture that doesn’t really exist.

        But we’re all in the same boat, and most of us make the right decisions, so I’m not so willing to let the Anti-Vaxxers off the hook so easily. This is an important issue for all society, and to endanger society because you don’t want to employ proper, basic Critical Thinking Skills, is irresponsible to your fellow citizens, especially the youngest ones, who are going to bear the brunt of their Anti-Vaxx adventure.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmings.world
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        9 days ago

        YOU are the problem. It is always permissible to resist evil, destructive people in any and all ways possible. The Democrat obsession with being polite to their enemies is nearly as destructive to society as MAGA.

        • HubertManne@piefed.social
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          9 days ago

          you don’t need to be polite or show respect. thats earned. but bullying. no in that situation you are the problem. that does not mean you also don’t challenge them or defend yourself. sure though if you think im the problem go for it.

          • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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            9 days ago

            Bullying, by definition, requires that the oppressor is in a position of power over their victim and punching down. As these people have it in their power to prevent the spread of a painful and deadly disease but chose to ignore their responsibility to the rest of society to do so, we are challenging their mindset and defending ourselves (and others) from their selfishness. Belittling and mocking them isn’t bullying them, it’s insulting them. If we were bullies we’d browbeat and force them to take vax while delivering a swirly ‘cus they’re fucking dorks.

            • Footer1998@crazypeople.online
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              9 days ago

              Belittling and mocking them isn’t bullying them, it’s insulting them.

              I get where you’re coming from. The question is, do you want to help anti-vaxxers change, and stop being anti-vaxxers, or do you just want to feel superior to them?

              If you want them to change, I really encourage you to think yourself about times in your own life where someone else successfully encouraged you to change their mind. Did they do so by mocking and belittling you, or did they do it with kindness and by helping you understand your mistakes in a way that didn’t make you feel rejected?

              • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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                9 days ago

                do you want to help anti-vaxxers change, and stop being anti-vaxxers, or do you just want to feel superior to them?

                Depends on the person and the situation. This isn’t some hypothetical, far reaching discussion about why they should recycle to prevent future global warming. Look at the picture attached to the post. There’s a kid suffering from measles because some adult in their life wouldn’t use the reality of science and reason and put that kid in the position they’re in. If adults with all those tools and learning want to expose themselves to preventable consequences; fine. That’s your choice, and while I think you’re an idiot, by all means, ignore history, logic, and reality and suffer your consequences. Die. I’m not going to save you in the face of all that.

                Did they do so by mocking and belittling you, or did they do it with kindness and by helping you understand your mistakes in a way that didn’t make you feel rejected?

                Both. I’m far from perfect or ideal. I’ve done things that were selfish and had both the rejection of strangers and the support of individuals who same some kernel of personal humanity in spite of my behavior and backed the idea I could change even when it seemed like I couldn’t, had hurt others, and was otherwise not a benefit to society. But I also used that opportunity to self-reflect and try, sometimes unsuccessfully, to grow and change. I will always fight to give people who have a spark of that the opportunity and time to change. There’s people covered in swastika tattoos who’ve realized their error and try to work beyond the people they’ve been. There’s murderers and rapists who grew up in environments of victimization and passed that on once they became adults because it’s the only lesson they got about how one treats others. My beef isn’t with the victims of bad lessons who are struggling but willing to learn from the consequences of their actions. It’s with the ones that continue to use their past as an excuse to justify their current behavior, and especially those who are aware of reality but don’t care because they have the power and ability to dodge the consequences of what they’re doing but have no concern if it affects another.

                • Footer1998@crazypeople.online
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                  8 days ago

                  Right, this is what I’m getting at. Bullying people and treating them like shit will not help them self-reflect and change. To achieve that, we need to extend that support you mentioned, we need to somehow see the kernel of personal humanity within them.

                  Like you said, this isn’t a problem where the consequences are confined to individuals, adults acting poorly is causing innocent children to suffer and die, so we need to focus on solutions. This isn’t like these people believe in Flat Earth, if we just sit around mocking and belittling these people, more innocents will die at faster rates.

                  We need to collectively swallow our (totally justified) anger and find some kind of a way to understand the root reason of why people are anti-vaxx, and help them resolve whatever broken logic or unresolved emotional issues is standing in the way of them doing the right thing.

                  • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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                    8 days ago

                    This isn’t like these people believe in Flat Earth,

                    My local anti-vaxxing, Straight Pride Festival hosting, “free drinks at my bar if you can prove you turned someone in to ICE”, white nationalist just tried to primary our Republican governor, who himself is helluva bigot, and while he lost he still got 30% of the vote. He’s also a flat earther who hosts round tables for fellow believers at his bar. There’s a substantial overlap in the illogical and irrational belief community.

                    Now, I don’t think he personally is a flat earther. Despite being repugnant, he’s an intelligent and charismatic person, smart enough to recognize gullibility and use it to gather strength of numbers. For a person like that to change they’d have to be willing to abandon the power they hold. It’s the same problem with podcasters, celebrities, snake oil salesmen, and talking heads that push these ideas. Plenty of them aren’t true believers, it’s a means to profit and clout. There comes a point where you have to stop looking at people as victims of their own ignorance and instead intentionally harmful for their own gain at the expense of others.

                    There’s also the problem of religious beliefs. We allow people a lot of leeway in spirituality because humans do seem to have a need to feel connected to something “greater”. When someone does that in a manner where their belief guides them but has respect for the rights and boundaries of others, fine. When spirituality becomes religion it often ends up becoming another tool of oppression and unaccountability because people begin demanding their to practice their beliefs regardless of how it’s affecting others. Since god is made up, you can put any words you’d like in god’s mouth to justify your behavior, and worst case you disregard the people you love around because “only god can judge me”.

                    The US created a problematic loophole with its hands off approach to religious beliefs. If people used their liberty to pursue beliefs that nurtured their personal spirituality and self actualization it’d be great. Instead it’s become a breeding ground for hucksters to develop their own cults of “this is what the ancient book really meant”, or sometimes they just write a brand new book. And we do at times come together to quash behaviors of the religious even at the expense of an individual’s right to act on their supposed god endorsed beliefs because that practice violates the right of another. Joe Smith informed people god was chill with dudes marrying multiple teenagers, but that one’s gotten quashed (for the most part, but some sects still do it, they just have to live removed from society). We’re still fighting to quash child marriage loopholes and male genital mutilation. I don’t care if your god impregnated a teenager with your Savior, your prophet married a child, or your god commanded you to cut of the end of a kid’s penis as a sign of devotion. It’s gross. They’re gross and people are gross for abiding it.

                    Arguments of logic and reason don’t work on people whose core belief is based on the existence of an invisible, all powerful, universal puppet master. It results in people who do not take accountability for why they must be accountable for their actions in the here and now, judged for their behavior by fellow humans instead of some future where god decides. It also creates people who are willfully ignorant of cause and effect, prevention and accident. I’m content to let adults dance around in a church with a handful of rattlesnakes. I could tell you why that’s a bad idea, but if an adult wants to lose an arm or their life engaging in that, welp. Their life to lose. Spreading disease or denying a child access to healthcare because they’re praying over them instead; not their life to lose.

                    help them resolve whatever broken logic or unresolved emotional issues is standing in the way of them doing the right thing.

                    Like an addict, who continues to destroy themselves and the lives of those in their circle/community with their addiction, repairing broken logic and unresolved emotional issues can’t be helped by external forces until they make the decision to change for themselves and then accept the help. Otherwise they cycle repeatedly through the consequences of losing their privilege of being a part of society, turn themselves into pariahs as the community shuns them to avoid the collateral damage of their behavior, or kills themselves through their own choices. We don’t have to tolerate the fallout of selfishness while they “work on it”. At what point do we look at the pox ridden, scarred for life, maybe dead body of a child then turn to the adult that helped cause that and say “nah, fuck you, your right to chose is revoked”.

                    This isn’t the dark ages, people aren’t unaware of the sources of disease. We’ve had a good thousand years to figure out where they come from and our literacy rate, declining as it is, is sufficient that we can demand a baseline understanding of cause and effect out of adults. If they want to put up a fight, fine. I’ll fight them over it. If bullying them to the point their only choice is to live cut-off from society so they can’t spread their disease and die alone, unvaxxed but self-satisfied they clung to their belief to the miserable, painful end, so be it.

              • FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world
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                9 days ago

                I don’t give a fuck about changing their minds, only their behaviour

                They can take a vaccine and then whine, or put half a potato on it, or claim to be magnetic now

                Just so long as the stupid cunts get vaccinated to protect the most vulnerable people in our society

                • Footer1998@crazypeople.online
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                  9 days ago

                  Okay, so your options there are either to force them to have vaccinations, which would be a violation of their human rights, or to change their minds so that they voluntarily get vaccinations.

                  Remember, these people are generally just acting out of fear and ignorance. Treating them poorly won’t change their behaviour, it’ll only alienate them further from the rest of society.

                  Bullying people is a completely ineffective means of changing behaviour. It’s actually likely to make them dig their heels in further and become even more entrenched in their views just out of pure opposition to their perceived enemies.

          • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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            9 days ago

            If they were being bullied we’d be forcing them to take the vaccine.

            • HubertManne@piefed.social
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              9 days ago

              Im not sure I would call that bullying. Its a mandate for a public but it becomes muddled because some people legitamately can not get a vaccine and there can be side effects no matter how minor (especially in comparison to the disease). Which is why ultimately its best to make it super prevalent. We should make it free for everyone who wants it every year and have it updated if we want more people to have more up to date resistance.

      • too_high_for_this@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Dumbass liberal take.

        The unwritten rules of society rely on people acting in good faith. If someone just honestly believes that the moon landing was fake or fairies are real or whatever, cool, I don’t really give a fuck.

        As soon as your dipshit beliefs start negatively impacting other people, especially when they’re provably false, you invite any and all criticism. The social contract is broken.

        This is just the paradox of tolerance except “bullying is bad”

        • Footer1998@crazypeople.online
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          9 days ago

          There’s a difference between criticism and bullying. Criticism can be constructive and help people to change. Bullying just isolates and alienates people and tends to calcify their positions.

          It’s all a matter of what we want. Do we want to feel superior? That’s what bullying is for. Do we want to help people change their ways? Then go for constructive criticism.

          • too_high_for_this@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            Another dumbass liberal take.

            Fascists are winning everywhere because of tolerant morons like you.

            Not all ideas are valid. Again, if you break the social contract by spreading harmful misinformation, all bets are off. You deserve to be alienated and cast out of society. That’s how a social contract works.

            • Footer1998@crazypeople.online
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              8 days ago

              Okay, let me put this in the language of bullying, so you can understand it.

              I’m not a liberal, you fucking dipshit, and I’m not tolerant towards harmful ideologies, I’m just smart enough to recognize the fucking reality: you need a theory of change, to actually change things. Are you seriously fucking stupid enough to believe that calling someone names will change their minds, you fucking moron?

              Did that work? Are you convinced? No? Oh well maybe your approach is fucking stupid, then, and you need to learn from someone who actually has deradicalized nazis before.

      • M137@lemmy.today
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        9 days ago

        They didn’t mention just people they don’t like though, they mentioned objectively bad people. Same with Nazis, Racists, Pedophiles, Rapists etc. They’re bad, it’s not a like or dislike thing, just pure truth of shitty people that deserve bullying.

        • HubertManne@piefed.social
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          9 days ago

          Bully implies a lack of objectivity. Bring them to justice to make a legal decision on wrong which is about the best objective communal take we can get.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        9 days ago

        Are you suggesting a bully people I do like because that seems kind of productive.

          • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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            8 days ago

            Do you see the fucking picture? Do you understand that this isn’t a joke, that they’ve successfully brought back measles?

            Bully them for their beliefs. They should be shamed out of existence.

              • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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                7 days ago

                I don’t care. You can join them if your answer is to simply let them continue destroying the planet.

                • HubertManne@piefed.social
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                  7 days ago

                  thats fine but if you want to make everyone your enemies you will have a tough time of it. I mean go for it. Kill, maime, murder and let me know if you improved the world. I will march and not comply and insist. It may work or not but I won’t hurt anyone. that is just not going to happen. I will challenge. I will even mock. But there are limits.

                  • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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                    7 days ago

                    No, dude — I said nothing about killing you, or them for that matter.

                    These are cultists. They are brainwashed. They will always reject what you think, what you say — all on the simple basis that thay their ignorance is worth more than your knowledge.

                    These are factors that should be shamed. Shamed so heavily that one of three things happens: the person changes, the person secludes from society (i.e. fucks off and probably dies young), or kills themself.

                    Ideally the person changes, that would be the best outcome. But when I look at that child and think of all the other children who simply can’t get the vaccine, for whatever reason that might be; the only thing I feel is hate.

                    I no longer care if these people survive. They should all suffer for what they’ve done, whether they change or not. Children do not deserve to suffer like this.

                    Edit: This is saying nothing about the man these people undoubtedly support and what he’s done. Measles is not the only thing these people have to answer for.