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I remember about a decade ago there was sort of a split among online atheists over feminism. When gamergate started, I remember seeing some of the same names from the “non-feminism” side of that split popping up.
Haha woops happened to me almost. I still (painfully) remember spouting anti-hillary pro-trump rhetoric in my computer class 😐
TBF, they appealed to someone with the maturity level of a 15 year old.
asdqwe
Do tell.
I was somewhat inoculated against the pipeline for two reasons:
I was in my 20s when I finally stopped going to church and had enough perspective to be skeptical of the anti-feminism content.
By the time I started watching atheist YouTube videos the split between left and right was well-established, so it was easy to filter out the culture war stuff.
That didn’t stop YouTube from recommending Carl of Swindon’s channel every chance it got.
Both ultra alt-right and far-left are cringy weirdos imo. A healthy diet consists of laughing at both sides. Otherwise you end up on one side or the other /shrug.
Unfortunately I brought home the God Delusion while I was questioning religion in my late teens, I ended up in the “New Atheism” Skepchick and PZ Myers side of things, unfortunately my high school aged brother picked it up and went through Thunderfoot and seems to have ended up in some alt right bullshit and hasn’t really found his way out yet.
Me crawling out the other side bloody and bruised but smiling, now a socialist after realizing “wait, people just want to live their lives. What’s the actual problem here?”
But they’re cRiNgE, therefore they must be stripped of their rights and imprisoned forthwith! /s
In all seriousness, though, it definitely seems most of us who went through that have either gone full neo-nazi or pulled back and become flaming progressives of various sorts.
Wow congrats dude.
I skipped edgy atheist and went straight into anti-sjw during gamergate. I had some upsetting opinions for a couple years. Then I smoked weed, did some shrooms, realized I’m bi, and became an atheist. Quick little 180°.
Couple years ago I went back through my YouTube history to see what I was watching. And holy fuck that shit was fucked and escalated quickly. Glad I got out.
I fully believe that psychedelics are criminalized because people who take psychedelics are shown to have fewer authoritarian views after taking it.
Churches and governments generally dislike this. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0269881117748902 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02791072.2017.1312643
Yeah, gotta say my time doing psychedelics was life-changing. I had been exiting that anti-sjw phase of my life for a while, but smoking weed made me chill the fuck out and psychedelics made me internalize the chilling the fuck out long term.
Wouldn’t say they made me an atheist. I’ve made some bad decisions with drugs and have had a near death experience with the full psychedelic release. It’s VERY similar to DMT and whippets. They’re extremely creepy, you realize you’re dead and come to terms with it within 15 minutes of real time. The benevolence of most mammals having that final 15 minutes even though at that point you’re dead, makes me believe there’s something or someone out there that serves as a grand architect. It’s the only way I can personally rationalize my brain doing THAT a few times.
There was one time I took way too much DOC and had a life changing experience. I was tripping for 24 hours, felt like I lost all meaning of myself, was filled with despair, but felt connected to everything and everyone. Afterwards I found the term “ego death” and well… yeah that happened.
While I’m an atheist now, I was raised catholic and really believed in everything until 20 or so. Without experiencing that ego death, I might still believe today.
I understand, we all walk different paths, I find it interesting to hear what other people believe and experience as long as it stays casual. I’ve done a few psychedelics and a lot of crazy ass poly mixes, but still haven’t experienced ego death. I’m starting to think maybe I don’t have an identity to actually forget about. Even when I kholed on 2 tabs I was still who I was.
What do you think of the DOx family? Been curious about them for a while, but haven’t gone out of my way to look for them because I have mixed results with amphetamines. Anything you’d compare it to?
I think the ego death was beautiful. I changed so much as a person because of it. Hard to believe who I was before. A lot of trauma was unpacked and coming to terms with who I really am.
DOC was very similar to LSD but the dosage was difficult to manage. Only had two trips. One was too little and felt like microdosing. Other was too much and… 24 hours is a lot. I remember shaking nonstop during it. I also remember being scared of a dark figure following me. But near the end I realized I was just scared of my own shadow.
I want to say in advance that I am happy for everyone here who exited this pipeline, especially if you were just a kid. But I gotta say - it is creepy to me how many people there are who think so little of women that the gamer gate arguments could convince them at all. As a little kid I thought that someday men and women would all realize that we’re in this together and we’d learn to respect each other as human beings. I was so wrong.
I was attracted by it in the beginning because they were talking about things I was interested in: somebody who had personal relationships with game journalists was given good reviews for their shitty game, certain sanctioned video game sites appeared to be forming anti-competition cartels to eliminate up-and-comers, publishers were clearly trying to capture/recuperate the consumer reporting industry with review embargoes and sponsored reviews, etc. To me, the big looming questions were stuff like “can journalism ethically report on the industry they sell ad space to?” and “was it an isolated instance that Jeff Gerstmann got fired from Gamespot over his review of Kane & Lynch, or was it a symptom of a widespread culture of bought-and-paid-for review scores?”.
And then I checked out what other people were worried about, and it was brain-meltingly stupid. And I don’t just mean the eternal dogpiling on Zoe Quinn long after it had become apparent that she was a relatively minor player in amuch larger game. They became obsessed with nobodies like Anita Sarkisian and other agitprop “internet personalities” on both sides, all of whom seemed exclusively concerned with clout chasing. It became a massive glut of creepy stalking, neofascism, and eventually flopped around till it landed on Red Pill shit.
It all accomplished nothing except poisoning the phrase “ethics in gaming journalism”, when industry and special-interest capture of journalism is a threat in all sectors, not even just entertainment. And that’s not even mentioning the anti-competitive practices in the industry itself—imagine if a film rewiewer got blackballed from every major publication in their entire industry because they gave an Avengers movie 2 stars. Now bringing that up associates you with neo-nazis. Thanks gamergaters, thanks for the mulitple times I’ve been accused of being alt-right for saying Kotaku sucks.
These fascists do that with everything. They take a real social issue people are upset about and then use it as a pretty container to fill with their bullshit. I was around then and I don’t even remember the original controversy just the weird backlash against women as gamers.
Bro. The gamergate argument was that the corruption and nepotism in games media was and still is out of control. Just because it started with one shitty Indie “game” dev sleeping around for good press doesn’t mean that was the entire focus.
I wrote “arguments” instead of “argument” because it was pretty clear to those of us outside the drama that for a lot of people it was about hating on women who had the audacity to make shitty indie games like any other shitty indie developer. There was a point hidden in there somewhere about unfair practices in the game industry in general, but I’m skeptical that most people really remember it for that today.
So true. And yet… I’m also not surprised.
I almost. Thankfully I caught on quick that these people didn’t care about the truth but rather pushing a narrative.
Being raised as an atheist makes life so much simpler. Never had to spend time with those parts of YouTube, life was simple and clear.
Off-topic but if you don’t mind me asking, how did you parents answer big questions like on the origins of the universe? Did they tell you religious people were wrong? (my religious parents go out of their way to differentiate us from ‘them’ so I’m curious.)
Some don’t have an answer or don’t care. Some parents show all the religious answers to disillusion the uniqueness and originality of major religions’ answers. Many children don’t ask or care. Many children are perfectly fine with documentaries about the Big Bang, seeing the complexity involved.
I asked, my parents didn’t know and cared little to find out, I found documentaries and audiobooks made for children. It took a long time for me to understand that the boring religious stories they subtly taught in school were seeking to at least partially replace the scientific narratives.
This so much. The average kid doesn’t give a flying fuck about the meaning of life. They’re too busy enjoying it. It’s only parents that insist on saddling their kids with that existential dread baggage.
We were/are always just honest with our kids. No, we don’t think there’s a god/goddess/whatever. When we/grandma/grandpa/whoever dies, they’re just gone. Nobody knows where the universe/world comes from. As far as anyone knows it’s several billion years old. Explain the big bang as best as we know it. Etc.
There’s no ‘right’ way for so many things when it comes to kids. Ours know that many people believe in a god. We don’t. That’s ok.
Just explain the big bang. I mean, not as if anything else is true. As for the “meaning” of life, my parents were quite blunt. And I’m also blunt to my kids: “there is no meaning. Life is what you make off it. Be excellent to each other and enjoy the ride”
I was also raised atheists but I found myself being entertained by the bashing of ridiculous claims of fundamentalists. Things like thunderf00ts “Why people laugh at creationists” or anything by Darkmatter2525 were just poking harmless fun. As time progressed, some of these YouTubers started making more podcasty stuff where they would rant and rave about the evil effects of religion on daily life and I was still on board.
When they all switched to bashing feminism I left pretty quickly because I had a good friend who was an outspoken feminist and I realized that the videos portrayed feminism all wrong. Who knows where I would be if it wasnt for her.
Amen!
Having been raised in a religious family myself, I never had to spend time with those parts either for the same reasons. Perhaps this only happens to people who are brought up without a clear policy regarding beliefs?
I’m so glad that I had my edgelord phase just a little out of sync with most of my generation.
My best friend had this happen to him. Except he’s over 30.
He now worships T×m P×ol, El×n M×sk, and J×e R×gan. He also thinks that Tr×mp is “the ultimate epic troll”.
He finally started saying that c×vid is fake & trans folks should be “purged”. He also still thinks that you can catch AIDS from a toilet seat or a handshake.
His critical thinking skills have eroded to the point where I don’t even recognize him anymore. He just parrots talking points from grifter podcasts.
We are no longer friends. I miss the “old” him everyday.
Why the fuck are you censoring what you post? You’re not going to get banned for wrongthink, this isn’t reddit.
Maybe they just find their names distasteful.
It’s to protect myself from folks who will inevitably search these terms and harass others who criticize these people.
This platform is growing, and I will take precautions to keep myself safe.
Fair
Because bad actors will search these terms and harass you for speaking ill of them, no matter the platform.
Not sure why you’re being aggressive over someone taking precautions to protect themself.
Got into the Atheist youtubers, then they moved onto anti-SJW and I stuck around. Thought I was being an enlightened logical centrist, “both sides are bad” and all that. So I figured modern feminists were overreacting.
Then the MAGA movement ramped up, now abortion rights are gone. Also since then I discovered I’m trans and now LGBT rights are at stake.
Wow, something very similar happened to me! Instead of realising I was trans, I got a lot of queer friends and felt actual love and suddenly I was 100 times more empathetic which horrified me when I thought of how nasty I’d thought of people before.
HRT helped me actually feel again, and empathy made me realize that thinking “logic is superior” is really stupid and even thinking there’s a seperation between emotion and logic in politics is really stupid. Oftentimes logic is just justification and obfuscation of an emotional opinion.
The final nail in the coffin for me was when I stumbled on this Martin Luther King quote about how the moderate is the true obstacle for civil rights, those “who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom”.
It made me realize how stupid it is to negotiate with fascists and bureaucracy. That we should get angry, we should get emotional, we should get active and maybe violent, when we see human beings stop being treated as such.
What a ride! Honestly glad you are better, even if the world is not.
Really makes me look back on the days of us making fun of women with dyed hair shrieking over Trump winning. They were right, they were reacting appropriately and I was a fool to not see it. (Just want to emphasize that I’m not a Trump supporter, I just didn’t think things would get this bad)
I have a couple points in my past who if I met I might punch