Two mosques attacked, forty people killed, four people arrested. What an ugly piece of news to wake up to. It's interesting to see an attack on Islam where the perpetrators use a similar modus operandi to extremist Islamist terrorists, but it is perhaps more interesting to note that so few have happened thus far. Hopefully it's not a sign of things to come.
Shocking stuff altogether. Fucking nutjob. Moral is don't let crazy access to weapons. But at least our saviour Gemma has got the truth. Using any tragedy for her own personal gain. Vile.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=760538310991837&id=100011070254271&anchor_composer=false
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/rest-of-world/2019/03/15/shitposting-inspirational-terrorism-and-the-christchurch-mosque-massacre/
Good analysis here.
Unreal.
Is 8chan simply a place for people to 'hang out' who are unable to function with real people?
Quote from: Black Shepherd Carnage on March 15, 2019, 11:36:12 AM
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/rest-of-world/2019/03/15/shitposting-inspirational-terrorism-and-the-christchurch-mosque-massacre/
Good analysis here.
Charles Manson tried to start a race war with the Helter Skelter murders. An uncanny resemblance to the ideas talked about in that article. Awful stuff, but I fear it's not the last we'll see of this type of thing from either Islamic extremists or twats like this guy. What annoys me somewhat is the political capital some are already getting out of it. Can't they park the party politics for just one day and be sincere at least?
Totally Pete.
BBC/CNN immediately using it to bash conservativism/the right, and how social media platforms haven't done enough to delete 'alt-right' accounts.
According to his manifesto, he doesn't identify as a conservative, he's an 'eco-fascist' whatever the hell that is. He's clearly a very confused and disturbed individual who has commited an atrocious mass killing based on some distorted anti Islamic ideas, the process beginning with a trip to Europe and buying into the cultural/ethnic dilution conspiracy theory, yon 'great replacement' bullshit.
I don't see the need to name drop Donald Trump et al achieves, other than further entrenchment on both sides.
Have a look at the link I posted Kev. Interesting angle, deeper than plain anti-Islam, quite disturbing, Black Mirror-esque.
There was already a crackdown of conservatives from most of the major tech players. This won't help. Oddly enough he listed Candice Owens as an inspiration. Proper screwball. No doubt it will inspire other fucked up peopl to copy him.
Quote from: Caomhaoin on March 15, 2019, 07:10:12 PM
I don't see the need to name drop Donald Trump et al achieves, other than further entrenchment on both sides.
This kind of nonsense was evident on Matt Cooper this evening (why I listen to this shite when it winds me up, I don't know). Apparently the shooter made a reference to Donald Trump in his rambling 79 page manifesto, in that he rated him symbolically but not as a person or a politician (or words to that effect). So not a ringing endorsement exactly. One reference in a 79 page document hardly marks him out as a major influence either, but hey, let's fuel the hysteria regardless.
I am 'right wing' but the correlation of my (moderate) politics with this is totally nonsensical. The killing of 50 odd people by a screwball should be reported as is, but this sidelining the action in favour of bullshitting about social media censorship is nauseating.
Yer man Tommy Robinson is getting flak left right and centre because of a perceived solidarity with this murderer. Journalism is at its lowest ever ebb.
It's football terrace journalism. Any sense of moderation gone out the fucking window. The industry has a huge amount to answer for in terms of it's stoking of animosity on all sides. Every second piece you read has a sly dig at someone or another. RTE gone down the feminist articles route like a good thing. Have a read of top 10' in terms of books.etc on the BBC and out of 10 books you might have 2 or 3 by men. It's got nothing to do with Islam but it's certainly a symptom of the wider slant these media.outlets take om things. Then you have the locos like Fox.news and CNN...horrendous stuff. We've had massive atrocities in Europe: Bataclan etc and the NZ attack is just as sick and just as despicable..let's hope there's a hell for this cunt to rot in. However, we're going to be hit with loads of far right, neo nazi stuff now for the next few months. Yes, they're around, the mongoloid cunts, but they are a tiny minority and certainly don't have any place in more nuanced conversations around immigration for example. All that said, I hope something good can come of this and bring communities closer..bloody awful stuff.
It's gone to the point where being a moderate conservative is counter culture now.
I don't envy the young lads anymore, god knows what kind of Orwellian gaff they are going to inherit.
Sorry about your sensibilities and all, but do you not think the right-wing appropriation of the event has been a little bit more concerning than that by the left? Not disparaging the general issue of polarization at all, but, y'know, just worth keeping in mind how it looks when you complain about a speck of dust on one side while there's a huge plank sticking out of the alt-right's eye (Milo, Fraser Anning, etc., and their idiotic responses to the tragedy).
A few youtubers vs the BBC/CNN spin? I'm certain of which is more dangerous, yeah.
By the way, what is the 'alt right', in your opinion? Yer man Milo is more of anti feminist than anything else. Hardly a 'hate crime'. He's a homosexual who enjoys the darker races.
I'm sure people have been antagonized by the BBC or CNN into random acts of violence, I'm not sure any have taken inspiration from their spin to go out and murderously target specific groups though. Spin dumbs people down, sure. But you don't need a huge machine to brainwash people, so the real danger can, and does, lurk at every level. In this case, it came straight from the underground, but an underground fed by the more mainstream "alt-right" (I call alt-right basically the entire right-wing movement which bangs on about their freedom of speech; this seems to be the most characteristically "alt" twist of the new right).
I'm an advocate of free speech 100% but it's a pity that so many people seem only to want to use it to be sensational, like Milo whatever- his- name-is. Imagine basing your entire persona on being an 'agent provocateur', particularly people who actually possess some intelligence. It seems to me to be a massive, banal waste of energy that could be directed to more positive ends.
Quote from: Black Shepherd Carnage on March 17, 2019, 01:13:04 PM
I'm sure people have been antagonized by the BBC or CNN into random acts of violence, I'm not sure any have taken inspiration from their spin to go out and murderously target specific groups though. Spin dumbs people down, sure. But you don't need a huge machine to brainwash people, so the real danger can, and does, lurk at every level. In this case, it came straight from the underground, but an underground fed by the more mainstream "alt-right" (I call alt-right basically the entire right-wing movement which bangs on about their freedom of speech; this seems to be the most characteristically "alt" twist of the new right).
Interesting take. It's ok to publicly disseminate lies as long as nobody is directly killed. The growth of the alt-right is largely a result of a failure in both centerist politics and media. People disappear into alternative echo chambers . There is a massive disconnect between what people know to be true and what is reported. It leaves them more receptive to shit talkers who add that grain of truth into their agenda. Also, people claiming to want an end to the alt-right do more to stoke it than anything else. Calling people insulting names is not going to get them to take your side. Suppressing ideas (even terrible ones) just forces them underground. Debating them properly and showing them up is far more effective.
Nut bags like this lad should not be allowed to impinge on the free and legitimate speech of others.
I didn't indicate that disseminating lies is okay. It just struck me as an odd time to pipe up about the left/liberal spin machine when the right/alt-right spin machine was doing so much worse. Would seem to reveal more about subjective sensibilities than any kind of attempt at objective understanding of the overall picture. Also, in terms of consequent action in the world, it seemed a fitting reminder that number of viewers does not translate directly to number of actors, though Kev seemed certain the BBC/CNN were a bigger danger. It's a bit more circuitous and complex than that, no?
CNN,BBC and RTE were exactly the types of outlets I was talking about. A lot of talk about what to ban in the wake of this. Tying this into conservative mainstream opinion is irresponsible at best. Suppressing opinions is bad and leads to echo chambers. No excuse for this fucker though. A thousand people could watch the same stuff as him but it takes a special kind of dickhead to interpret this as the logical conclusion.
Yeah, no, I'm against all forms of banning, no platforming, etc. I don't think Milo should have had his visa revoked for Australia, for example.
So I'm just riffing here and open to being called up on stuff..
The Milo thing is another points scoring exercise. Why bring so much attention to this guy? Why not leave him out of the conversation, rather than lashing out in this way and focussing all the attention on him. We're in a strange place at the moment. 130 people were killed in Bataclan and nobody went out on the streets of Paris looking to lynch the perceived enemy. Maybe there was hate speech by the usual thugs, but on a grand scale, there were no mosque burnings or anything of that type..an eye for an eye scenario. Now, I'm not sure what that says about society, have we been cowed into just accepting that these things are likely to happen or is it that people are actually very educated and reasoned and willing to believe that it's a rotten few that perpetrate this stuff? Maybe the majority believe that it is in fact just a few assholes perpetrating these atrocities and we will win out in the end?
All that despite the fact that you can be sure that within certain sections of the French Muslim community there is a certain, unspoken support for these types, in the same way that the IRA had that 'they're bastards but we can understand them' thing going on in the 80's.
Even today, there has been an attack in Holland. Europe clearly has an issue, especially when these types of incidents are now being relegated to page 2 and 3.
So what is the answer? I have no fucking clue, and I'm not sure anyone does. The left/right American discourse has spread out to all.aspects of life on a global scale. Milo talking about Feminists and SJWs suddenly makes him a spokesperson on Muslim.immigration in NZ. Trump's Wall extends to include refugees coming into Europe from Syria and the likes, Brexit voters etc. The total lack of nuance or segregation of ideas is disastrous really and attracts gimps like this guy from NZ, but I would lay a lot of blame at the door of the mainstream media and the likes of these Australian politicians(ambulance chasers) for propogating much of the division. (The alt right commentators are not without their gobshites too, let's not forget that).
What business is itof ours what the US president wants to do across the ocean? Does it have anything to do with Ireland or affect us in any way? Absolutely not. And yet he is plastered all.over pur media to a degree we have never seen before. He seems to be the cause of everything from the glass ceiling to Brexit.
My worry is that there is no end in sight, that, certainly in the online world, things have gotten completely out of control. The internet is in its infancy and yet it is creating shockwaves across the world as can be seen from above examples. The only consolation I take is that on a day to day level.I bump into people from all walks of life and as long as I avoid talking about politics or religion, most are sound out. Again, just riffing here, so a slight pinch of salt required..just womdering how people would read thjngs.
I work in IT and view the internet slightly differently to most. At its core it is just computers connected to each other. The IRA May have used telephones for example but the phones were not the problem. They would have used pigeons if there were no phones. The same with the internet. It is a communication medium and nothing more. It is not a separate entity and has no sentience. The people using it are the problem, not the devices relaying the message.
The calls for censoring websites and individuals is as obscene as it is absurd. Shooters like this are a tiny subset of people with conservative opinions, a statistical anomaly. There was no call to ban Korans after any of the ISIS attacks even though ISIS are a small subset of Muslims. I refuse to have state intervention in what I am allowed to watch and read because some weak minded git will go to the extreme with it. I can just imagine the massive erections in news rooms around the world when an actual neo-nazi terrorist attacked. Realistically there hasn't been such an attack since 2011. Banning stuff all over the place will not end well.
It's no better than that video nasties shite in the 80s and 90s.
I would agree. We can't let the bad apples dictate proceedings.
A balanced take on things between Joe Rogan and Ben Anderson here. I think they sum up how certainly i feel about NZ and how many of the people I know do too. The idea of this troll killing is mental, and it feeds into a kind of Joker like personality which, if allowed to, the media will have a field day on. I'm with Hellfire on this though, a horrible tragedy, but it's certainly not in any way a trend and hopefully it won't become one.
https://youtu.be/ZmGQFcvUkAI
How deranged. It's one thing that the killer seems to lack any sense of remorse and is treating his killing spree as a massive joke, but what's more frightening is the support he has. Trolling culture is foreign to me. I only come across the milder forms of it on the NWN forum, and on the old MI forum, and most of that is mildly amusing and ultimately harmless, but the fact that there are entire sections of the internet where those skills are practiced and developed into and art form is bizarre to me. Seeing it spill over into real life events in such an horrific way is just another level of nuttiness that I can't comprehend. Maybe there's an element of denial to it, or rather a kind of detachment from events that the killer is using to compartmentalize his actions and emotions. I don't know much about psychology so I'm probably wrong, but how do you make sense of such inhuman behaviour.
Websites like rotten.com must have a part to play here as well. Watching beheadings, murders etc as entertainment never made sense to me but it seems to be a popular pursuit. It must be difficult for generations growing up with the omnipresence of the internet, instant access to all sorts of real life violence and aggressive forms of porn throughout their formative years to not become either completely desensitized or psychologically damaged in other ways.
rotten.com shut down years ago. I will take the internets side on most things lol. If your kid is watching decapitations and extreme pornography then you are failing as a parent. There is a multiverse of parental control software to control and log what they are viewing online. A five minute Google search is obviously too much time for some people to invest in their kids. The U.K. now has porn laws coming in to effect to accommodate this unique brand of laziness. Aye, he's one sick and cold bastard. Troll culture as you call it has been around for centuries, it used to be known as bullying or being a dickhead. Appending the word cyber to these activities makes it seem as though the internet itself is an actor in these problems. It's still one person being shitty to another, just with faster and more efficient communication devices.
I typed a massive reply and accidentally deleted it. Fuck technology!
My personality and interests were more or less fully formed before I began to use the internet at around 18 years of age so I only ever used it to facilitate those interests. For many young people the internet itself is the hobby and wields a massive influence over the formation of their identity. If you are desensitized to hard-core imagery and see it as nothing more than entertainment then that is quite a huge shift in cultural outlook. Of course it won't be to everyone's taste, but for those who are drawn to such stuff there seems to be a world to explore. That has to have a psychological impact.
I am probably wrong about this but aren't the preventative measures not always playing catch up with the concerns of parents/ society? 'The kids' are a step ahead at all times. And there are so many channels to disseminate information so as each one closes another two or three open. You really just need one tech savvy person in a community to figure out a way around the system and then everyone has access.
I'm not anti- internet but there's no denying it has completely changed society for better and worse. Saying that the internet is not the problem, people are, is like saying the loaded gun didn't kill the person. No, but it had a massive part to play.
A properly locked down phone, tablet or laptop is an extremely difficult thing to get around. A state wide solution is far easier to get around (look at the number of Chinese people on Facebook). For every kid who is willing and able to learn privilege escalation there will be thousands who aren't. These softwares get patched regularly when workarounds become available.The truth is that most people make no effort to police what their kids are looking at. A lot act as though they are completely powerless to do anything so don't try. They then demand that the government do something to stop their Billy beating off to something really vile. It's not the states or anyone else's job to shield your offspring from harm, it's yours.
I completely disagree with the gun analogy. You are comparing a communication device to a weapon. It simply does not stack up. The very same arguments were made against horror films, music, video games and subliminal messages allegedly contained in LP's when they were played backwards. Tens of millions (myself included) have viewed the commentators this guy did and only one massacred a bunch of people. Terrorism, mass murder and political extremists existed long before the internet. Treating it as an entity with a personality of its own is silly. If there is vile pornography on there it's because someone put it there, not because a web server went rogue and decided it would be cool.
Fair points.
Different perspectives on a topic there..v intersting. I would often have wondered exactly what McLove was saying there but Hellfire is bang on the money. People dedicate so much time to shit that doesn't matter in life and yet fail to pay attention to the really important issues. I do think parents need help somewhat with this stuff but as he said, there's loads of resources out there.
I would go in turn go back to the previous post related to the alt right and this whole troll killer coming up from the underground and posit that all the evidence says that this is not a trend or even a thing, though if we are looking for certain outcomes then we can organise the evidence in that way.
Just like that guy that killed his family up in Cavan and trying to find reasons or culprits or people to blame..essentially the killers are to blame, and nobody or nothing else. Just real bad apples. An amazing book to read on this topic is Columbine by Dave Cullen, where after years and years of searching and trying to find causes and reasons, the basic idea was that both kids, from what I recall, were just unfeeling psychopaths..horrible little bastards essentially. The media tried to pin it on white power, satanism, marilyn manson, but essentially they were a pair of horrible little cunts who just wanted to damage people and gain infamy as a result. I can't help but think that this tragedy is the same type.
Yeah of course, that's exactly what it boils down to. The concern is that the internet gives these people a place to anonymously 'meet' and perhaps validate each other. It has happened in the past and will in the future regardless of the internet. I just wonder if the internet gives these people a server if community and then justification. Just thinking out loud. I have no answers.
What seems to have eroded is any sense of personal responsibility. If this lad could kill fifty people and laugh about it afterwards the internet is the least of his problems. What I was saying about echo chambers earlier feeds into your point there. If mainstream politics and media fail to engage with people then someone on the fringes will happily tell them what they want to hear. I'm reluctant to tie this lad into the bigger political picture though. Anyone who can kill that many people without any conscience is fucked in the head from the start. He could just as easily have ended up a serial killer, except this was the vehicle he chose for his sick fantasies.
But is that echo chamber culture not a direct result of the internet as it allowed people to find their ideological allies and feed each other everything they want to hear? It was always there in terms of newspaper choice but it seems more exaggerated now with online forums etc.
I'm not anti- internet I hasten to remind you. I just think that the possibility that it has its part to play should be considered.
I think McLove does have a point, though. The internet is absolutley being used as a weapon. Social media allows content to be targeted at an individual level (in fact, their revenue streams depend on it) and this is most definitely being exploited. The Internet Research Agency is spending a lot of time and money on content for consumption in places other than Russia, as well as providing funding for local protagonists of destabilisation like Aaron Banks in the UK. It's not as if Cambridge Analytica wanted to sell you car insurance either. The internet is far from an even or unbiased platform, it is becoming a tool of warfare. As far as I'm aware, there aren't many tools out there which will filter out targeted posts from a user's facebook or youtube channel. I'm not a facebook user but I've often wondered why youtube continually recommends "Jacob Rees-Mogg DESTROYS...." videos to me. I know it's not by accident. Phones and laptops, locked down or otherwise, are providing a direct channel for advertising as well as propaganda at individual level, the content AI can't tell the difference.
Quote from: Eoin McLove on March 19, 2019, 10:46:29 AM
But is that echo chamber culture not a direct result of the internet as it allowed people to find their ideological allies and feed each other everything they want to hear? It was always there in terms of newspaper choice but it seems more exaggerated now with online forums etc.
A very important point. Most social media channels allow the user to build a coccoon of reinforcing opinions and filter out contrasting voices. One of the techniques the (Russian) IRA have used is creating pages and groups based on "pride". They entice people in by the likes of "Texas pride" or some such bullshit to sucker people in innocently, fill it with memes and harmless fluff and, every now and then, drop in something subtle to steer the group in a destablising way. It's not about right-wing white folk either. They had plenty of "black pride" type pages, usually filled with harmless memes and the like and, every now and then, drop in a "this is not my country" type of disenfranchising post because, when it comes to elections, persuading your opposition not to vote is almost as powerful as mobilising those who would vote the way you want. It has proved surprisingly powerful. The quality of journalism has declined with their revenue, you could argue, and you get what you pay for. Less dissent, more of the same opinion and you need only look at German history to see where it can end up.
Hysterical nonsense. I'm not going down the Nazi rabbit hole with you because Hitler has been dead for a very long time now. Blaming a communication medium for human behavior is ridiculous. All of the things you described were happening already. There was no shortage of people getting brainwashed into doing unspeakable things in the 70s and 80s. A lot of people are dim and weak minded. The internet only mirrors this.
One aspect that is new about this latest killing is how it connected to online gaming, both in aesthetic and community terms. You could argue that we had games in the past which involved killing enemies, but it would have been an extremely elaborate feat to make real-world killing look like Mario jumping on an evil turtle, for example. This guy streamed to an online community an experience which was an exact replica of a gaming situation, and they cheered for it in real time, in the disconnect between game-world and reality. The notoriety he got for it was both live and global. I'm no expert on these things, but those who are generally say that the desire for notoriety spreads like a virus, a virus affecting a minority, sure, but I think "statistical outlier" is far too dismissive a jump, especially within given communities. There have been incessant calls for the media to tone down their coverage of mass killings for this precise reason, so that's not new. But what is new, with the internet being used in this way, is that the initial and live audience who stoked the killer's notoriety, he was able to draw that together by himself (no mass media needed) as a relative "nobody". This audience were already specifically like-minded in several potentially disturbing ways, hence the conversation they were all involved in, and this bounced out in real time to communities members of that community were connected to, and so on and so on, to the point where Facebook ended up deleting the full video of the killings over one and a half million times. That's one and a half million uploads, not counting all the attempts to upload edited versions to avoid detection.
In this regard, could this latest event not be seen as a sociopathic equivalent of how the Arab spring mobilized social media and the internet? Sure, dissidents and rebels, etc., etc., existed beforehand, but there is a qualitative shift brought about by the internet, not merely a quantitative one, as far as I can see. I'm not saying the internet makes us worse people, but it absolutely changes how we think, just as the invention of writing and later the printing press did. A precedent form of echo chambers surely existed, but the notion only became tangible and instantly graspable with social media. Now we're being asked to consider not just left versus right or liberal versus conservative echo chambers, we're also being presented with a reality that includes echo chambers of genuine and/or mock sociopaths who revel in displaying a total disregard for human life (referring here not only to the killer but to the comments posted on 8chan as it happened).
No point blaming everything on the internet, no. But I'm not convinced we can so neatly dismiss the idea that it may have played a specific role that no other medium before it could have.
Jesus I wasn't aware of the video game element to all of this, and the relation to the online video. Christ that's grim, depressing stuff.
Quote from: hellfire on March 19, 2019, 12:29:37 PM
Hysterical nonsense. I'm not going down the Nazi rabbit hole with you because Hitler has been dead for a very long time now. Blaming a communication medium for human behavior is ridiculous. All of the things you described were happening already. There was no shortage of people getting brainwashed into doing unspeakable things in the 70s and 80s. A lot of people are dim and weak minded. The internet only mirrors this.
I didn't blame the medium, I thought that was quite clear. I am saying the medium, as it is - unregulated and offering to inject custom content moderated only by AI direct into user feeds for a fee - is facilitating the attempted manipulation of human behaviour on a scale never previously seen. It is completely open to exploitation and is, without question, being exploited.
Again, all internet phenomena. Not that I think gaming should be banned or any such nonsense, but you have to accept the part it played in influencing his operation. There are a multitude of factors that lead a person to these types of events, each one harmless enough in their own right and when in the hands of a rational human (like death metal etc). The broken mind is indeed the main issue here, but as mentioned, the ability for many fucked up individuals from across the world to gather and validate each other is new enough. The response from his pals is very curious. You get a lot of extremist ideas championed in the metal scene, a small handful of actual extremists and a multitude of hangers on. I wonder what that breakdown is on the likes of 8 Chan. How many of his followers are in it to seem edgy and how many have been radicalized.
The Columbine killers were obsessed with Quake and it is gone over extensively in the book. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle of all this. A variety of influences, a perfect storm.as such, but ultimately it takes a real nut job to follow through on it.
I'm not even sure "radicalized" is the right term. "Disenfranchized to the point of genuinely being sociopathic", might be closer to the "troll" psyche.
It is not remotely similar to the Arab spring. That was millions of people rising up against authoritarian regimes. Interestingly that was coordinated entirely through the internet. Context here lads it was one attack by one person. If we took the total number of people involved in these communities and only one attacker then he is statistically insignificant. Taking away people's right to talk freely online because of one screwball is absurd. By that logic we should all be taking the blame for Joe Frankulin from Goatlord for all the ballacting of the early black metal scene. Also, a read of the manifesto might be worthwhile. He details all of his grievances in excruciating detail in that. The media will never tone down coverage of mass killings and I'm not sure they should. He shot a hundred people and killed fifty. He would have been pretty notorious in the absence of all forms of technology and networking. Talking shit on the internet is not the same as gunning people down. Never will be. I've said it a few times already but here goes. People blame the internet rather than the individuals concerned.
We don't ban bars because booze destroys some people's lives, Korans because some people want to kill and maim people for their religion, bibles because they are promoted by the worlds largest paedophile ring or cars because people die in road accidents. This hysteria as much sense as banning The Exorcist because Jamie Bulger got killed. Child proofing everything because of screw ups like him means everyone has to develop at the same pace as the slowest in society.
Not a single person in this thread has implied that anything should be banned.
This killing has been used to promote censoring of certain sites as well as influencing how social media networks operate. Saying that sites/YouTubers are partly to blame is pretty much the same thing.
There were calls for some standards and regulation long before last Friday. Perhaps they're a little more focussed now?
That's a predictable knee jerk reaction and is meaningless as other resources will spring up to fill the space and certainly won't change people's ideologies- more likely censorship will harden people's attitudes. I believe in free speech, I just think it's often misused by people who think that it validates their cuntish behaviour. That's an unfortunate side effect of something I'd view as being generally positive. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the current vogue for non-platforming has had a direct influence but it's not helpful in the grand scheme of things. It just adds to the gulf between both sides and dialogue gets smothered.
Edit. It presents a real dilemma that goes back to another question I raised earlier. How many people use that site for entertainment, or to appear to be badass? Just because most of us might find their sense of humour questionable/abhorrent and the fact that one person actually followed through on his fantasies, should that mean that everyone else's freedom should be curtailed? Should people espousing extremist views on public forums be monitored? How do you tackle the likes of radical Islam without monitoring extremists, and even then, what percentage of people who may claim to be radical Islamists on their own forums really pose a danger to society?
Unfortunately when everyone has the right to speak it makes you realise that you're surrounded by wankers. Banning and regulating are much the same word in the context of government involvement in the internet. I do have opinions on the no platforming thing too, but as I was saying he really doesn't deserve to have his grievances heard now. For me he doesn't fit into that wider debate about online censorship of everything right of Stalin. The free exchange of ideas is an important thing. Even when someone is talking through their hoop. He has done more to hurt the causes he cares about than anything. This will accelerate the speed of banning and provide what looks like a valid reason for it.
I'd largely agree that video games, movies, etc., don't inspire people to murder. I'm less sure about mass murderers not inspiring others though. And the cooler they make it seem, maybe all the more "inspiring". I think it stands to reason that there are many more latent killers than actual ones, and this is what makes the fear of influence understandable, even if you don't agree with how that fear is addressed.
Soldiers need to be trained heavily to be able to kill people and I assume to cope afterwards. Even they would balk at the thought of killing 50 non-combatants. I don't believe the websites that are getting the blame (most of which I've visited at some point) are capable of conditioning someone to be able to perform such an act. This lad must have had ice in his veins for a very long time, possibly from birth. He would have found a cause eventually or if he didn't would have just done something like this for kicks.
Was listening to politicians over the other side of the pond, they want live streaming delayed by 30 seconds like a TV studio so that it can be turned off if needed -
these guys haven't a clue how the internet works...as if facebook has enough people sitting about monitoring everything.
Events like this create their own momentum. Moderate voices can be drowned out quickly, seeds are sown and the hornets nest kicked. It's a push for some sort of censorship and I reckon it will be more for political gain than anything else. Will do nothing but erode trust and force people onto the dark net and other echo chambers.
Hatred of Muslims must be tackled - EU rights agency
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2019/0319/1037347-rights-agency-report/
Also completely agree with this guy on global economic management since 2008 ->
https://www.afr.com/news/world/oceania/not-enough-done-for-disaffected-says-nz-politician-20190318-h1cig6
Nothing the EU do would surprise me anymore. Convenient for them that most people who are anti mass immigration are almost always anti Brussels. They've been dying to filter news to only include trained lapdogs for years now. They have banned a few sites I use in Australia and New Zealand now. Most people that use 4Chan and Bitchute would be quite capable of changing their DNS settings or configuring a VPN. They may also be forgetting one of the cardinal rules of the internet. Never piss off 4 Chan.
Quote from: The Butcher on March 19, 2019, 09:53:14 PM
Was listening to politicians over the other side of the pond, they want live streaming delayed by 30 seconds like a TV studio so that it can be turned off if needed -
these guys haven't a clue how the internet works...as if facebook has enough people sitting about monitoring everything.
Facebook don’t have anybody moderating anything, they switched it over to AI a few years ago. There is no human approval or review required for anything posted, either as personal posts or the kind of micro-targeted sponsored political content I referenced earlier.
Quote from: Juggz on March 20, 2019, 06:44:21 AMFacebook don't have anybody moderating anything, they switched it over to AI a few years ago. There is no human approval or review required for anything posted, either as personal posts or the kind of micro-targeted sponsored political content I referenced earlier.
There is still a human element (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona), this article shows how fucked the FB moderation system is and makes for a good read.
Lot of solid point and good argument in this thread that there's no use in reiterating, but generally it is the fault of the person and not the medium whatsoever. Politicians and prominent public journalists & bloggers will use it as a platform to discuss censorship pros and cons anyway much like they will with any medium of information (or art). "The Internet" is an easy bogeyman for people who look at it as some sort of unknown collective force, which it has shown to be occasionally but is not actually even remotely that. Fractured groups of loud people with poor ideas in an echo chamber does not constitute it's whole but its easy to paint it that way for the sake of argument in the wake of any tragedy. It's an easy stance to take.
I was fairly steeped in internet culture through years spent fucking around on 4chan, encyclopedia dramatica, various other forums and sub sections of twitter & fb - see 'Jeffbook' for an incredibly light hearted and wholesome take on modern forum culture surviving through private facebook tag groups. It's jarring to see this bleed over into the man's manifesto and see his whole attack designed for a very particular internet subculture, but given the types of people /pol/ puts on a pedestal and designs their memes around it's not surprising. This man's method of being remembered forever isn't through the actual massacre, it's by doing everything he can to become engrained into that subculture as a meme. Shocking level of dissociation from reality, exacerbated by exposure to other people and sites that worship these things mostly ironically, but not created by it.
Just on that point, I've worked in multinationals and they have small teams dedicated to monitoring what should and shouldn't be on their platform. Take the recent Twitter/Rogan interview. Rogan asked how many people they had working for them in the context of monitoring what goes up and is taken down by them in terms of content. The CEO says 4000, and Rogan seems impressed until the CEO has to clarify saying that they have 4000 ppl working for them, full stop. That includes directors, all their engineers, lads making coffee, interns, legal, accounts, marketing, HR, et etc etc. So really they have a couple hundred people worldwide(at a push) monitoring and making decisions on millions of Tweets everyday. It's one example but it sums.up a lot of silicon valley type companies where profit comes before any sense of regulation/ownership of responsibility. So that's the other end of the scale..massively influential platforms and companies but very little in terms of monitoring/due diligence etc. Those departments are important, but they are usually understaffed and overworked. Sales departments, on the other hand, would be very different.
So they're banning the sale of what is essentially a self help book in NZ's largest store in the wake of the shooings. Jordan Peterson's book banned and a fellowship in Cambridge Uni rescinded. He's about as mild as they come. I'm reading Nietzsche at the moment and if they start taking him at face value, and out of context, we could start seeing book burnings. I see Pew dee pie, who is nothing more than a celebrity gamer, was repotedly quoted as a main inspiration by the killer. The lad is some limp wristed Swede who likes video games and books, I've actually watched him a good few times. Where does this absolute nonsense end?
That's absurd. I read the Peterson book and it's essentially a self help guide. There is no political angle or incitement to hatred whatsoever in the book. It's not even vaguely misogynistic despite apparently being aimed solely at men (it's not).
Welcome to modern day liberalism. Everyone who doesn't conform needs to be banned. The deaths of fifty people represents nothing but leverage to promote your horseshit. He objected to government legislation forcing him to use made up pronouns. He's obviously as bad as the gunman himself.
Seems the main objection stemmed from a promo tour photo of him with his arm around an adult man wearing an "I'm a proud Islamophobe" t-shirt, easily found online. I'm sure the book ban will be rolled back, just a knee-jerk thing, no point knee-jerking back at it.
Quote from: Black Shepherd Carnage on March 22, 2019, 01:34:30 PM
Seems the main objection stemmed from a promo tour photo of him with his arm around an adult man wearing an "I'm a proud Islamophobe" t-shirt, easily found online. I'm sure the book ban will be rolled back, just a knee-jerk thing, no point knee-jerking back at it.
I searched for that picture.. then I did a silly thing and started reading the comments under it.... jesus wept :-\
Just checked there to see if the bookstore have given any more statements on their position and stumbled upon this. I mean, sure, the liberal left is full of clowns, but please let's not forget about the absolute fucking state of the conservative right:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/troubling-signs-new-zealand-shooting-is-being-used-to-turn-my-country-into-islamic-state
"What I see unfolding seems so disproportionate to the magnitude of the crime."
You have to be seriously special to come out with a phrase that in any way minimizes the "magnitude of the crime" when said crime is utterly unprecedented in your country's recent (i.e. not since the end of WWII) history, a history notably devoid of Islamist terror attacks. Then, on the list of "disproportionate" things she lists, only the Peterson bookstore thing isn't a more or less masked statement of Islamophobia.
Quote from: Black Shepherd Carnage on March 22, 2019, 01:34:30 PM
Seems the main objection stemmed from a promo tour photo of him with his arm around an adult man wearing an "I'm a proud Islamophobe" t-shirt, easily found online. I'm sure the book ban will be rolled back, just a knee-jerk thing, no point knee-jerking back at it.
Getting a picture taken with someone in a dodgy shirt means a self help book needs to be banned. Modern day leftism needs to die. I would be more concerned if it was Amazon, Apple or Google play banning it.
Of course it's no good reason to ban a book, it just hadn't been mentioned. As I said, personally I think the ban will be rolled back. People react in funny ways to extreme circumstances.
Have a listen to Sam Harris on this topic. I may not always agree with him but I find him to be quite a reasoned individual who actually thinks things through before he speaks. Listen to what he says about the creation of the word 'islamaphobia', listen to the menace that seems to surround him, the lists, the death threats..I think it's all very relevant. A pregnant Chelsea Clinton was cornered by a bunch of little bastards the other day who shouted her down and made her apologise for things she had said that somehow they have connected to muslims getting shot in NZ..yes Chelsea Clinton, who has never said a negative thing in her life.
Jordan Peterson, again a fairly mild mannered and educated guy, who has the good sense to push back on government when they tell us what we should and should not be saying..death threats, bannings etc etc.
https://youtu.be/DqOdDV7Brq4
It all reminds me of the 'shame' scene in GOT but while Cersei was a bitch, and the viewer might have enjoyed it, the menace, the nastiness, the resentment, the irrational shouting and screaming, the unwillingness to listen objectively to other points of view or have a civilised debate..it's very disturbing.
We have always had fringe lunatics on the right. People who literally just hate anything of difference. What is worrying is that the left are now taking up that mantle..the nastiness, the destruction of individuals, the yearning to have their enemies submit and repent.
I'm reading Nietzsche's Anti-Christ at the moment, and I can't help but see massive parallels between 'the priest'of old and some of these modern groups. The controlling of the moral code, sin, repentance, the attacking of foundational social values...PUNISHMENT.
If it have learnt anything in my life, it's to be very wary of big social movements, when everyone goes up I'll go down and vice versa. Time to buy a plot of land, grow my own food and home school my future kids...or maybe just turn off the tv, stop looking at the internet and fucking enjoy my life :)
I would be much less optimistic. Leftism is behaving more and more like a religion these days. Bans set a precedent rather than get revoked. Still, it's a private retailer. I would find it more worrying if it were state enforced.
Quote from: Pedrito on March 23, 2019, 10:56:23 AM
Have a listen to Sam Harris on this topic. [...] Listen to what he says about the creation of the word 'islamaphobia'
The comments on the link I posted were actual Islamophobia though, in the sense that they were written by a Christian conservative who genuinely hates Islam for the simple reason that it's not Christianity qua "the gospel". Harris is certainly right about how the word is often used. But it's no different to how "anti-Semitism" can often be used to refer to "anti-Zionism", a situation which does not mean that anti-Semitism does not exist. I've never really cared for Harris or any of the other "horsemen" ( :-[ ) of atheism when they take on religion, whether that be Islam or Christianity or whatever. I've always felt that the net result of their particular approach could be nothing other than arming bitter angsty types with rhetoric they barely understand, on the one hand, and riling up a mixture of naïve and innocent and naïve and aggressive believers, on the other hand.
Harris is not to blame for these shootings. He is responsible for an awful lot of pseudo-intellectual bullying through his listenership though, as is Peterson. People like this should address their followers in no uncertain terms when the latter act like morons... hence why, if Peterson speaks against intolerance in 12 Rules (which his followers were quick to point out after the banning of his book in the NZ bookstore chain), he should have admonished the middle-aged man who was wearing the t-shirt in the photo, and been wise enough not to be snapped in what was obviously going to be perceived as apparent approval of the sentiment expressed: "I'm a proud Islamophobe."
Idiots, it is widely believed, should be held accountable for their idiocy. Likewise, people who present themselves as public figures of reason and wisdom, should be held to a much, much higher standard.
Quote from: Black Shepherd Carnage on March 25, 2019, 03:55:41 PMThe comments on the link I posted were actual Islamophobia though, in the sense that they were written by a Christian conservative who genuinely hates Islam for the simple reason that it's not Christianity qua "the gospel".
LifeSiteNews is obviously a Christian/Catholic site, and while the idea that the shooting is "being used to turn [NZ] into Islamic State" may seem overblown, the reaction of the NZ authorities has been excessive and even hysterical, and it is pretty clear that the atrocity is being used as justification to bring in some decidedly "illiberal" measures, particularly on speech. I see little to disagree with in the article itself.
The accusation of "Islamophobia" is another weapon in the Leftist armoury, along with "xenophobia", "misogyny", "homophobia", "transphobia", etc, being used to destroy the reputations of those who express concerns about where we are being taken. And the deconstruction/destruction of meaning ushered in by the "left" over the last couple of decades has left language and words very slippery, with accusations amenable to being ascribed any form depending on circumstances. Everything is about power now, not honest debate or meaning.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, here (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D2N1PWAVAAAwBJp.jpg:large) is the "Proud Islamophobe" t-shirt talked about above. Is there anything on that list that is not inherent to fundamentalist Islam? Is there anything on it that non-Muslims would agree with, or not be concerned about, or that would not cause them to be fearful of having people who hold such views in their country? And would any such "Islamophobia" be rational or irrational?
Well, we're obviously coming at this from a very different set of values, but what you've got going on there is a whole lot of conflation, the t-shirt too is a hotch-potch conflation of numerous cultural assimilations, etc. And without even getting into a debate about the rationality of a t-shirt, I believe the bar for people like Peterson should be wisdom.
I hear you Chris and I think you are right to question figures like Harris and Peterson who need to be more careful with who and what they are associating with. A tshirt like that does nothing but stir up shit, and certainly, Peterson, with the power that he has should be aware of that. That said, I like the man, I think he's got guts, and moreso, I think we needed him and people like him. I like that he has put himself out there and that many people are using him as a bridge into deeper topics. I think the mainstream has become so anti intelligence, anti discourse, anti academia, anti nuance and depth and exploration of ideas that it is somewhat refreshing to have the likes of Harris, Peterson, Rubin and the likes, who, at the very least, are willing to discuss and explore ideas and often admit that they are wrong. I think it's a great thing that they are selling out stadiums and real discussion is being listened to, because for so many years, all we had was the comedic route, the taking the piss out of everything route, that if I'm honest, I'm sick of, and which gives far too much credit to the likes of Jim Jefferies than they deserve. It's easy to take the piss, but put your cards on the table and tell us what you really feel, as such.
Harris, I do find quite one dimensional or biased if I am being honest and I think you summed him up very well. It is not that he is a bad guy or his intentions are negative, but he does seem to give leeway to people who love to spout on about atheism and the opposing faction too.
All that said, banning books is sinister. It is a type of character assassination. I am sure he will sell more books as a result, and I don´t think it's going to shut him down necessarily, but I think it's also good that people get a bit outraged over book banning..push back on them as such. Cambridge released a statement as to why they took back his fellowship also, and their terms didn't seem overly harsh..I think they're just looking to avoid any controversy. That said, it, again, appears like an attack on free speech, shutting down an academic etc etc.
Agree with Chris. People of authority like Harris and Peterson have a duty to call out their followers who act in a mob mentality way.
Regarding that article in lifesitenews and that t shirt. They're both ridiculous and idiotic.
Very peculiar oversight (?) there from Peterson, particularly after the drama around him posing alongside that alt right frog flag. Disappointing.
According to him he meets hundreds of people after shows. They've dug up 2 dodgy photos over the years. If the guy came from the side, maybe he didn't see it. I've listened to him a lot and he's a good guy. I'd say he is actually a very, very good human being and his work has helped lpts of people with depression, people who are transsexual etc. He's misunderstood because people take him a bit too literally at times because he's an academic used to talk about big concepts, whilst much of the general populace is more akin to monkeys with their fingers up their arses.
I don't agree with him on everything, he's a bit rigid for my tastes, but he's far from a racist or a nazi. If he's a racist, god knows what your average Dublin taxi driver is.
I found the following discussion very good. Australian TV and the agreement between him and thw transgender ex-sportsman who transitioned to a female, seemed like a return to reason and conversation and polite debate..very refreshing, and as suspected, even many transgender people feel like they are being made pawns of, in a wider thrust for power, a wider war for hearts and minds, words and expression. It's got very little to do with transgender people or muslims and everything to do with who is allowed a voice and who isn't. Think I need a wank..
Quote from: Pedrito on March 26, 2019, 07:05:10 PM
According to him he meets hundreds of people after shows. They've dug up 2 dodgy photos over the years. If the guy came from the side, maybe he didn't see it. I've listened to him a lot and he's a good guy. I'd say he is actually a very, very good human being and his work has helped lpts of people with depression, people who are transsexual etc. He's misunderstood because people take him a bit too literally at times because he's an academic used to talk about big concepts, whilst much of the general populace is more akin to monkeys with their fingers up their arses.
I don't agree with him on everything, he's a bit rigid for my tastes, but he's far from a racist or a nazi. If he's a racist, god knows what your average Dublin taxi driver is.
I found the following discussion very good. Australian TV and the agreement between him and thw transgender ex-sportsman who transitioned to a female, seemed like a return to reason and conversation and polite debate..very refreshing, and as suspected, even many transgender people feel like they are being made pawns of, in a wider thrust for power, a wider war for hearts and minds, words and expression. It's got very little to do with transgender people or muslims and everything to do with who is allowed a voice and who isn't. Think I need a wank..
Yer wan in the red dress trying to "sledge" JP was pathetic though wasn't she? I agree with a lot JP says about people needing to take responsibility for their own shit before trying to sort other people's shit out etc. It may seem banal to some but to others they need to hear it. All authoritarians can get fucked though
Seems the libtard cultural marxist take over of the world ain't quite here yet folks:
"Jordan Peterson book returns to New Zealand bookshops after Christchurch attack"
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/27/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life-new-zealand-bookshops-christchurch-attack
Money talks
And time heals, so to speak.
Quote from: Pedrito on March 27, 2019, 03:21:19 PM
Money talks
Which is why the New Zealand government have banned the psycho's manifesto, telling people if they have copies they must destroy them immediately.
But they can buy copies from the censor's office "for research" for $102.20...
Cool. Some of that money may fund the $180 million buy back scheme they have planned.
Partially joking there, but honestly, what are you actually driving at? Have you thought about it?