I am also confused. Specifically about “there’s no such thing”. Is the meme saying (among other things) that authoritarianism doesn’t exist or isn’t real? That seems obviously untrue on the face of it? Unless we’re redefining it so as to be meaningless.

Help me out here.

Y’all, as a baby leftist who still has All The Reading still to do. This whole back and forth has been fascinating to read. Also, kind of disheartening.

A billion offshoots of Christianity killing each other over how/whether they dunk their babies. Liberals/Lefties in the US pissing each other off and leaving a nice opening for the fascists.

What is with us as a species that we almost seem to prefer arguing fine points with people who we largely agree with while the actual enemies of a common cause laugh and win.

Like I said, fascinating read. Just… “more unites us than divides us” and all that?

Really? Generating real-looking faces has been doable for years now. MS paint copy/paste over an actual ID with the letters/numbers scrambled seems like child’s play.

(Not that I would ever publicly condone ID fraud. That would be a terrible thing)

edit: oh. To do it en mass to fuck up their databases. Yeah that’s fair. For a one-off: easily doable. At scale… Fair point

I think you might still be missing the point. “America” does not hold elections. “America” is a set of two continents (North and South America). The United States of America is 1 nation on the continent of North America. So when people talk about the USA and refer to it as “America”, it’s kind of like if people talking about the UK referred to it as “Europe”.

The whole point of it was to criticize how USA-centric USians are by completely discounting that they are 1 country of many on the American continents. This is so much the case that it seems to confuse some people who think that “America” and “The United States of America” are synonyms.

edit: err, maybe you do get it? I can’t tell. I didn’t get much “melting pot” from it and thought it was more a celebration of Puerto Rico with a little bit of "get over yourselves mainland US. The rest of the Americas are pretty sick too in their unique ways

Reverse Isekai! A battle hardened warrior wakes up to find himself in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He quickly learns that the skills of an adventurer don’t translate into a profession so easily here and tries to make the best of this new life.

This. It’s an Xbox with access to the Steam library instead of Game pass.

I think there will be some PC folks who get one, but I bet that won’t be the biggest audience. Their target audience is console players who are currently putting their cash into Sony and Microsoft.

It answers the (console player’s) question: “why can’t I just buy a box that let’s me play steam games from my couch on my nice big TV?”

I hate that this response lead with “I agree”. To me, the r word is repulsive. I hear what you’re saying about “it didn’t used to mean what it’s come to mean”. But folks use the same argument to fly the swastika and use the n word. I get where you’re coming from. But word of advice: try taking arguments that you want to use to defend one thing and see what kinds of things you don’t agree with you could use the same argument for. Legitimately a fun mental exercise and amazing way to pre-check your arguments.

By this logic fat shaming is acceptable? Some people naturally have faster or slower metabolisms. But anybody can have healthy or unhealthy body weights. Some just have to work harder at it. So if somebody has a naturally fast metabolism but chooses to eat and exercise like Trump does, it’s ok to make fun of them for their weight?

This. I think this is where that line is that I’m still trying to dial in on. To some extent, intelligence is under our control (this is why “you’re being ignorant” is legit. Some idiocy (or lack of education?) is by choice). So, maybe it’s fine to mock somebody for remaining willfully ignorant. But not ok if they’re intellectually less capable due medical/biological factors?

No wonder it’s a blurry line. This shit is ambiguous af.

Right. This is what I was talking about. I (and I suspect others) oftentimes want to name call a person and not only point out their evil but also point out their incompetence and inability. Both of which usually have some intelligence component.

It seems reasonable to berate an evil person when they can’t even be evil competently.

But we can’t (or shouldn’t) because it indirectly (or directly) makes fun of people who are perfectly good people who are unintelligent.

Again. I get it. Probably just showing my bias and yet another fuckin thing to unlearn.

I’m guessing it’s not just cognitive abilities either? “Tripped over his own dick” is offense to folks with motor control problems. Etc etc.

Therefore the only thing you can make fun of is a person’s evilness. Not their incompetence (because all incompetence is presumed to be from natural causes that aren’t their fault)

I still have such dissonance about this. I want to say “Look at this idiot” and point out something unintelligent that an objectively evil person does. But because intelligence is an inherited trait, we can only use negative language when referring to a person for evil that they do by choice? Or something? So, evil people bumbling can only be mocked for the evil intent and not for their inability to be evil with skill and intelligence?

I dunno. Trump is a numpty and if that offends the numps or whatever group that term was originally a slur for then I apologize.

edit: to be clear, the r word seems objectively shitty to use and I don’t. I just have yet to find an objective litmus test for where the line is between that and “silly” cuz I swear there’s always someone there to explain the etymology of “silly” and how it’s origins were shitty in some way

I think I found where OP got all those extra commas. Must have stolen them from this poor poster.

_ No offense. Just playing_