Goredho

At this rate they are going to have to dig up Dianne Feinstein to be speaker.

Please feel free to get on with it, then

Petition to rename TwiceHorn's username to Axiom of Lawdoggery.

This mashup of chat GPT and thesaurus.com sucks.

Baylor moral majority: They shouldn’t have dressed in those stretchy, form-fitting baseball hot pants if they didn’t want to be raped.

Oh no, it’s a no shit GROOMER!!

NTTAWWT

Yeah, in your description the only thing that doesn’t line up is the out in the open part. But the conspiracy to attempt to overturn the 2020 election was not always in the open. Turnip’s call to the Georgia Secretary of State to find the votes was made in secrecy. It was an attempt to recruit them into the conspiracy, it failed, and that’s the only reason we know about it. Otherwise, we’d just know about a bunch of votes that were found in Georgia after the election.

Cheese, man. Relax!

Yes, but the definition of a conspiracy is “a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.” People are pleading guilty to charges related to the conspiracy to steal the 2020 election on behalf of Trump. So by definition the 2020 election was stolen from Trump big lie is not a conspiracy theory, it’s just a no shit conspiracy between Trump, his inner circle, other MAGA politicians, the my crusty pillow guy and right wing news purveyors. Maybe even Putin and his disinformation machine. Your point is my point. 10 years ago, such a scenario would just be dismissed as a conspiracy theory along with flat earth, moon landing faked, 9/11 was an inside job, the Clinton’s murdered everyone, etc… But it’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s a no shit conspiracy of at least a national if not global scope. The ironic thing is that when there’s a no shit conspiracy happening, my friend can’t recognize it because it doesn’t line up with all the conspiracy theories he’s been trained on. The government couldn’t possibly be a protagonist in a conspiracy! Likewise, those of us who are dubious about conspiracy theories don’t wan’t to recognize it, either, because we’ve been trained to dismiss the idea of large scale conspiracies out of hand. The power of preconditioning and bias is strong.

That sounds like at least a flirtatious conspiracy

This stupid list has garnered far more attention than it deserves, which I guess means it was effective internet content if a completely absurd ranking. David Gilmour left out of the top 10?

Well, I did say I was fucking high 😜

Maybe he's not a flat-earther, maybe he just has figured out the secret to not having to engage with overly social strangers at the hotel bar. Gonna try it out next time I'm on a flight sitting next to an old lady that wants to gab on and on about her grandson. "That's nice. How old is your grandson? Do you have a picture? Oh my, yes. He looks delicious. Oh, sorry, I couldn't help but notice. I'm a member of the liberal child-cannibalism cabal."

Could be

Yeah, think its the standard mystic surf green american pro 2. Definitely a sharp color combo with that dark board and yellow/cream pickguard.

Do you think the rise of conspiracy theories, the alt-right, their alternative reality and their attempt to remake America through violence is due to random chance? Or is it the result of a plan with intent? Is there some connection between those emails about the Clinton's murders in the 90s and todays tweet about Trump being a victim of a weaponized justice department? Or is the consolidation of conspiracy theorists into a singular unified force attempting to bring about the downfall of American society simply the result of the random chaos in the world? There are certainly people who benefit from their attempt to remake America through chaos & violence, and there are certainly people pushing for it to happen. The only thing that separates that from being a conspiracy is that it is unclear whether those people have engineered this context together, or are simply catching a random wave of chaotic opportunity as individuals. Maybe it doesn't really matter, except that if it's the result of a conspiracy, there may be a head to chop off the snake.

Yeah, there are a lot of people like that. The most interesting/ironic thing to me, as someone who is decided not a believer in conspiracy theories, is the realization that its far more likely than not that a real, no-shit global conspiracy is going on -- the conspiracy to get people like my ex-roommate to upend America and that its been 30+ years in the making. I don't see how anything else is really plausible at this point.

Fair, so let me re-characterize. He has shown himself capable of intelligence, rational thought and critical thinking in many other aspects of his life earlier in his life. In the run up to 2016 his life started to go off the rails.

I was getting high last night, watching some netflix show on conspiracy theories and it occurred to me how integral the belief in conspiracy theories is to where we find ourselves now. Anecdotally, I remember the first time I had a conspiracy theory pushed to me by someone I knew well. It was sometime in the mid 90s, and it was an email forward from my room mate. It talked about all the suspicious deaths around the Clintons with the insinuation they must somehow be involved. No proof, obviously, just a list of people known by Bill Clinton that had died prematurely if not suspiciously. That was all it took for him. Definitive proof that the Clintons didn't just possess politics he found distasteful, but were involved in a conspiracy to commit and cover up multiple murders. Fast forward 30 years and that ex-room mate believes teachers-as-groomers is real, the 2020 election was stolen, January 6th was a peaceful protest being mischaracterized by a complicit mainstream media, Trump is the victim in a massive government conspiracy to deny his rights, Hollywood and liberal elites are all engaged in a global pedophile ring, and so forth. All with about as much evidence as he had for believing that email about Bill Clinton back in the mid 90s. He wants to move to a sea-stead in Panama to get away from the horror that is life in today's USA run by liberals. His business has failed, and to fill the void, he's started a podcast and is authoring two books "with the help of AI." The FBI has flat out stated conspiracy theories are a prime motivator for radicalized domestic terrorists. “The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts,” the document states. It also goes on to say the FBI believes conspiracy theory-driven extremists are likely to increase during the 2020 presidential election cycle." The diabolically brilliant part of this is that for those open to conspiracy theories, any response by society or government is just more evidence of the ongoing conspiracy. Then it occurred to me that there is, in fact, a no shit, crazy-as-fuck conspiracy going on. A conspiracy of global scope, where the powerful, rich and/or influential are trying to direct world events through nefarious means: Either my ex-roommate is correct, and there is a conspiracy between powerful liberal politicians, the democratic party, George Soros, Alec Baldwin, the mainstream media and the deep state to enslave us all in a system that keeps people like him and Donald Trump down, or... There is a conspiracy between powerful conservative politicians, the Republican party, Donald Trump, Vladmir Putin, Elon Musk, Fox, OAN and fringe militia groups to motivate people like my ex-roommate to disrupt the current function of our country and ultimately completely remake it into something more amenable to their ends. 10 years ago, both of those would have seemed wildly implausible. Now, I don't see how it could be possible for one of them to not be true, with it far more likely to be the 2nd scenario. We often half-joke about living in a simulation. We aren't, but what is almost undeniable at this point is that there is at least one crazy, whacked out conspiracy theory that is real, ongoing and impacting all of our lives whether we believe or don't. Then I thought back to my ex room mate, 30 years ago, with that email that he believed and I laughed at. That was the beginning for him, the start of his grooming, to make him lose all faith in his country & society. To radicalize him and to motivate him to action. That grooming continued since then, through the advent of social media and its construction of informational walls around him. Through the Obama presidency, until the point where Hilary was on the ballot. Before that point, he was a conservative contrarian grumbling about the direction of the country. After that, he's become apocalyptic. Sold all his investments, put it into crypto, let his business go belly up, talking of moving overseas, much like some here have if Trump gets a 2nd term. He's all in on his conspiracy, and couldn't just walk away from the table if he wanted to. He's not stupid. He's got a 140+ IQ. He's completely capable of poking holes in an idea with logical flaws and demonstrates critical thinking skills in lots of other areas. I don't know how he fell for this shit. It's like he has this weird, unconscious and undeniable compulsion to believe liberal/government conspiracies. Like the frog/scorpion parable. His dedication to these ideas has brought him nothing but pain, hardship, isolation, and financial ruin, but he just... can't... stop... believing. I rarely talk to him anymore. I check in every few months, see if it sounds like he's come around, and within 10 minutes its obvious he's gone further down the rabbit hole. I checked in on him again this morning and tried talking sense to him, but it was useless. I don't really know why I am posting this. Maybe its just a ranting lament for a lost, one-time friend.

Username does not check out. Do you have a Time Machine backup from before the update?

Thats fucking idiotic. Ukraine is fighting an existential war with Russia and they are gonna give Hammas the material Ukraine needs to defend themselves so that Hammas can attack Israel? Who do they think we are, a country full of a bunch of damn aggies? No one’s gonna believe that shit.