I first noticed this a few years back when I started to see “The Empire Did Nothing Wrong” on bumper stickers. Sure it seemed like a joke at the time but I was confused that so many people thought this was a statement worth putting on their vehicle. I mean, pretty early on in the OT, Darth Vader uses the Death Star to murder an entire planet so surely no one was serious, right?
Whoooo boy have I learned a lot about my neighbors’ values since then.
Let us remember that the entire “The Donald” meme subreddit was entirely satirical when it was made back in the early days of his first campaign. It was people posting memes of Trump as the Emperor from the fascist human empire in Warhammer 40k. (Which is also an entire related topic on its own)
What happened pretty fast is people who didn’t get it was satire started coming in absolutely LOVING the worship of the golden clown and started posting unironic memes of Trump riding tanks and carrying eagles and shit. They eventually drove out the people who were there for laughs and it became one of the largest subreddits and a huge chunk of his online support came from that subreddit before it was eventually banned for all the reasons you would expect.
I think we have vastly overestimated people’s capability to discern media, we have vastly overestimated our population’s capability to rationalize and reason things out. We have a massive segment of the population that has cognitive dissonance baked-in to their very being.
Seriously, I had a whole ass mental breakdown when I started realizing just how bad it is. Most people are on autopilot and just react to stimuli. No brain use. They’re fucking CLAMS.
Yeah, being able to plan and do more than just react is apparently a shockingly low percentage of our population.
They have a couple “truths” they tell themselves and hope everything else just falls into like or will complain to someone else to do something about it so that it does. Listen to the hymns in a church some time and listen to how people talk about God. Its very lazy
Religion has been a thought-stopping tool for literal millenia.
The digital age and age of mass media does the same thing but with limitless reach and focused power to rob people of their most precious ability, the ability to make judgements and comparisons and use mental language to make abstractions to better understand topics more complicated than where the next meal will come from.
When I found out about the 501st Legion, I was absolutely baffled. George Lucas dressed the bad guys to look like Nazis, and now fans were dressing up as the bad guys because they love the movies so much? What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Then Captain America came out and people started dressing as Hydra agents, and I was like, “Oh, they’re just straight-up okay with Nazis. Got it.”
I had the impression the 501st was a different beast from “The Empire Did Nothing Wrong” types. I thought the point of them being stormtroopers was so everyone else had someone to heroically oppose? Their charity events seem to focus on things like kids shooting them with dart guns.
I’m not saying they haven’t been co-opted since I learned about them several years ago; but last I knew, they were happy playing bad guys to let other people be good guys.
“We can learn a lot about people’s intentions just by how they interact with fictional media.” A statement I would have ridiculed people for a few years ago. But it’s true and it’s sad that we even have to now.
I first noticed this a few years back when I started to see “The Empire Did Nothing Wrong” on bumper stickers. Sure it seemed like a joke at the time but I was confused that so many people thought this was a statement worth putting on their vehicle. I mean, pretty early on in the OT, Darth Vader uses the Death Star to murder an entire planet so surely no one was serious, right?
Whoooo boy have I learned a lot about my neighbors’ values since then.
Let us remember that the entire “The Donald” meme subreddit was entirely satirical when it was made back in the early days of his first campaign. It was people posting memes of Trump as the Emperor from the fascist human empire in Warhammer 40k. (Which is also an entire related topic on its own)
What happened pretty fast is people who didn’t get it was satire started coming in absolutely LOVING the worship of the golden clown and started posting unironic memes of Trump riding tanks and carrying eagles and shit. They eventually drove out the people who were there for laughs and it became one of the largest subreddits and a huge chunk of his online support came from that subreddit before it was eventually banned for all the reasons you would expect.
I think we have vastly overestimated people’s capability to discern media, we have vastly overestimated our population’s capability to rationalize and reason things out. We have a massive segment of the population that has cognitive dissonance baked-in to their very being.
Seriously, I had a whole ass mental breakdown when I started realizing just how bad it is. Most people are on autopilot and just react to stimuli. No brain use. They’re fucking CLAMS.
Yeah, being able to plan and do more than just react is apparently a shockingly low percentage of our population.
They have a couple “truths” they tell themselves and hope everything else just falls into like or will complain to someone else to do something about it so that it does. Listen to the hymns in a church some time and listen to how people talk about God. Its very lazy
Religion has been a thought-stopping tool for literal millenia.
The digital age and age of mass media does the same thing but with limitless reach and focused power to rob people of their most precious ability, the ability to make judgements and comparisons and use mental language to make abstractions to better understand topics more complicated than where the next meal will come from.
When I found out about the 501st Legion, I was absolutely baffled. George Lucas dressed the bad guys to look like Nazis, and now fans were dressing up as the bad guys because they love the movies so much? What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Then Captain America came out and people started dressing as Hydra agents, and I was like, “Oh, they’re just straight-up okay with Nazis. Got it.”
I had the impression the 501st was a different beast from “The Empire Did Nothing Wrong” types. I thought the point of them being stormtroopers was so everyone else had someone to heroically oppose? Their charity events seem to focus on things like kids shooting them with dart guns.
I’m not saying they haven’t been co-opted since I learned about them several years ago; but last I knew, they were happy playing bad guys to let other people be good guys.
“We can learn a lot about people’s intentions just by how they interact with fictional media.” A statement I would have ridiculed people for a few years ago. But it’s true and it’s sad that we even have to now.