For those who aren’t familiar with the term, it means believing something that probably shouldn’t be believed, or being influenced to believe something that’s not necessarily in your best interests.
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Countless times throughout my life. In fact, a big part of my life is slowly deprogramming from years of propaganda. Whether it is religion or politics the amount of misinformation is enormous as it is prolific.
Even something very personal like relationships is fraught with tons of negative cultural issues around control and love. Most of what society teaches is a lie designed to perpetuate things like the Patriarchy.
Edit: After reading a lot of these I would like to offer an alternative to what a lot of people have said.
I learned about a conspiracy back in the early days of computing that was essentially that the US was intercepting all emails and all phone calls around the world.
There was a lot of good evidence including a spy pact with Canada where we had an installation on their soil and they had an installation on ours so we could spy on our own citizens without breaking the letter of the law.
Also good evidence that AT&T and other providers had let the government access their major server trunks to install their own hardware.
Well Snowden proved it was all real. This was probably the biggest conspiracy theory of my lifetime.
Go all the way back to the echelon conspiracy. You were a crazy person to believe the government could intercept your phone calls at any time. 30 years later it’s an accepted norm.
Used to believe that humanity would inherently self-improve, especially the more easily information became accessible.
People couldn’t read and write at first, and didn’t know much about the world, and now we have instant communication and access to vast repositories of knowledge.
I believed that people were naturally curious, and wanted to learn and figure things out. Education systems sucked, but with improvement it could foster that curiosity in everyone!
Turns out that was incredibly naive. Humans have an inherent ego that tries to make themselves more than reality. Their problems are more real than another’s. Their inconveniences are more important than anything bigger-picture. I thought religion were old dinosaur structures of primitive belief systems that lasted for too long, but humans will literally make shit up or believe in some made up shit from someone else if it helps them ignore the inconveniences of reality.
COVID-19 really helped sink that in.
Oh man. Yeah, I remember in middle school reading about WW1, WW2, Vietnam, the Civil War (USA) and thinking that thank god we’re smart enough to be past that.
Yes, also, COVID killed any hope I had left. I remember before the pandemic thinking that if aliens landed all of humanity’s petty bickering would end once we had something that united us all, and when COVID hit I thought “this is it, we have no choice but to come together as humans and face a challenge”…holy shit was I wrong. In the years since the pandemic I’ve had to actively try to forget most of what happened for my own sanity.
People are naturally curious but we live in a system that punishes curiosity.
covid also shifted the anti-vaxers to the RIGHT.
Humans are smart.
But this isn’t our natural habitat. Its a laboratory and we are the lab rats.
Can you judge an animal’s intelligence if they are in a controlled environment and manipulated by mad scientists? (mad scientist = the 1%)
There was a time I actually thought that Elon Musk wanted to help save the planet by making electric cars mainstream to displace fossil fuel vehicles, and by helping humanity return to space simply for the science and exploration value.
Musk’s “some kind of pedo guy” comment about the diver that dismissed Musk’s efforts with the cave children was the first WTF moment, but I wrote that off has him just having a bad day as he apologized later. Musk fighting the COVID lockdown was also more evidence that concerned me. This was all before Elon’s embrace of trump and GOP Nazism, and long before Elon’s double Nazi salute on national television.
I tend to think at some point that was true, that Tesla was about saving the planet and SpaceX was about making humanity multiplanetary.
It could be he was always a wretched creep and just really good at hiding it, but it seems to me that the wealth and power just ruined him. He wouldn’t be the first person to fall in that trap.
I’ll append my confession here.
I supported Ron Paul once upon a time. The non-interventionism appealed to me in the context of the Iraq war in particular, and the rights-based libertarian philosophy seemed sound. I was young.
If it ruined him, it did so before he had anything to do with Tesla.
That Tesla started with reasonable (if misguided) intentions, I can believe. But only before Musk, who was born rich, got involved.
We must be twins!
Elon is a classic tale of surrounding oneself with sycophants and descending into the madness of their own bullshit. I think he started with pure-ish intentions.
I was a registered libertarian and a Ron Paul disciple. Easy trap to fall into as a relatively privileged white guy. Every self-described libertarian I meet now makes me ashamed of who I was then.
I always knew he was an arsehole, but I thought he was at least a like minded arsehole, when it came to saving the planet.
The trapped kids incident also the first proper crack I noticed in his image. Now, I wouldn’t touch anything of his with a 40’ pole.
Capitalist oligarchs are the ones who rule society, and so if there are problems in society, the fault ultimately comes back to them as they are the rulers. They, however, will never admit responsibility to anything, and so they will always seek to shift to blame to other people, but they are the ones who rule, so their blame must be shifted to the non-rulers, i.e. to regular people. Shifting the blame to all of regular people would be vastly unpopular, and so they instead pick out a subset of regular people to blame. Whether it is Jews, Somalis, transpeople, immigrants, etc, it is always the fault of some minority group of people who have no political power, and it is never the fault of those who control everything and are in the position of power to make all the decisions.
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Never liked the guy in the first place, but what really sealed the deal was when I heard him talk about the stupid fucking Hyperloop, and then later when he built the even more stupid Loop system in Las Vegas.
As a Swede who knows trains and remembers reading about Swissmetro, the Hyperloop system was not just a stupid idea, it was an old discredited stupid idea from the very start.
As for the Loop system, the less said about it, the more time is left to laugh at it.
Musk was already know for being a toxic asshole long before the pedo incident.
His was already establishing himself as anti-labor, a terrible leader and an asshole who screamed at employees and fired employees in front of other employees.
He only got into Tesla and spacex because he was able to establish himself as unremovable because every other company he had attempt to lead, fired his ass for being all of these things.
Absolutely, but little of that information was common knowledge at the time.
I’m not sure common knowledge is a appropriate here, most of what you and I listed still isn’t common knowledge.
I recall all of this being covered and discussed. The main difference was the type of excuses being made becuase believe wanted to believe he was saving the world.
There are definitely people who still believe. But there are now fewer people proclaiming it and the excuses are gone.
Now the argument is if he’s a Nazi or not. Few take his goals seriously, we’re in some weird state where people are gaslighting themselves for various reasons. A big one is to protect the massive amount of money invested in his worthless companies.
You couldn’t tell he was a maniac grifter? The fact that his money comes from family mines in South Africa and he didn’t renounce it but built upon it didn’t let you know he was a villain? 😕
PS: Weird post to downdoot. Explain yourselves, you cowards, lol.
PS: Weird post to downdoot. Explain yourselves, you cowards, lol.
You’re not wrong, you’re just being a dick about it in a thread that is literally about the time one drank the Kool Aid.
Criticising people that have reflected their previous choices/views and are acting different now is unnecessary.
Where’s the criticism? Stop having an emotional reaction to my actual bewilderment (“you couldn’t tell…”) and just explain it to me (or don’t!). 🙃
Had I said something like “lol you fucking incompetent moron, you smoothbrain fucks”, I’d get it, certainly. But I didn’t.
You asked people to explain. People explained that you’re coming across as a dick, in a thread explicitly about regrettable, gullible moments. I don’t know what you’re having a problem with here but it seems like you’re the one having an emotional reaction, calling people cowards and refusing to hear people’s explanations.
I think the reason your initial comment comes across hostile is because of the way it’s written (chaining questions), and the way you’re asking things that have an obvious answer.
However, you didn’t write anything explicitly hostile. It’s a question that could come across either way, and if you genuinely had no mocking or hostile intent I would have suggested rereading and rewording your comment to make that clearer, as it’s tough to interpret that kind of thing through text. I’ve totally left comments that read hostile when I didn’t intend it to, it just happens sometimes! 🤷♂️
Now this is a proper reply. Fair enough. I wasn’t being hostile, more like 🤔😔, certainly not too positive. It’s annoying that people can be this blind, it’s a big reason why the world is so shit and why the West cranks and exports villains who are loved locally… it’s triggering, for lack of a better word.
Just when you exhibited a moment of possible self-reflection, you just threw it all away and reinforced every negative connotation your prior statements have held.
😔
Maybe the criticism is valid, you just don’t wanna hear it?
I had no idea he came from SA with wealth from mining until after I figured out he was full of shit and and absolute dickhead, only after that did I realize where it all started.
So don’t blame people for not knowing what you knew at the time.
First of all, where’s the blame? Don’t get too emotional on me. Secondly, that’s like the easiest and quickest Google research you could’ve done, lol. Finally, does anyone who isn’t in the spectrum even have to Google anything related to him? The insanity and depravity was palpable, just like with Milei and Trump and the others. But if you are, then the little Google search would be absolutely necessary before you start praising him as if he’s some messiah and not just another selfish capitalist amoral prick. Haven’t y’all had enough experience with these folks to recognise it?!
This is where you put the blame in your comment:
The fact that his money comes from family mines in South Africa and he didn’t renounce it but built upon it didn’t let you know he was a villain?
This isn’t even general knowledge these days, and has only started spreading in the last few years, you acted as if everyone knew it from day one.
Pretty normal expectation from a rich white guy in South Africa at the time, ngl.
It took me years to learn that he was from SA
Hang on, before I reply I have to research whether any people in this thread bought their computer with money earned through slavery.
I downvoted you for complaining about downvotes.
Understandable, lol.
He was a big figure before the Internet became what it is today. We only saw him through headlines, that he probably paid to have embellished in a positive light.
Before he started going on twitter and we all saw what a prick he was, he was Mr. Most-Likely-To-Be-Iron-Man-IRL. It’s a shame really.
haha excellent edit/ps.
Pizza party, soccer practice, Christmas, whenever it’s served really
Kony 2012, not the genreal idea of raising awareness about Joseph Kony, but that it would actually lead to his capture.
I believed the USA was a liberal democracy full of concerned citizens. I also had faith in the financial system at one point!
Americans would vote to cut off their own nose to spite their neighbor’s face.
In fairness before the Internet we could pretend people were decent and thoughtful. Facebook well and truly ended that.
So you just drank the socialist kool aid. Got it.
Hahah socialism. Like subsidies for farmers who grow corn for ethanol? Or like subsidies for Amazon warehouses. Or should we only do socialism and when banks gamble to hard and collapse? Or socialism like getting a government/military jobs to avoid poverty?
Fallacious reasoning. I could also reference Stalin, breadlines, and the fact that the greatest famines in human history were the result of the authoritarian nature of socialism.
We could discuss the pros and cons of specific policies but instead the “socialist” kool-aid drinkers just tend to rant about capitalism = bad and therefore socialism = good without any grasp of any nuance or willing to do any critical thinking.
For example, with ethanol growing corn pulls carbon out of the air, burning the ethanol of course returns it back. It’s carbon neutral, which is significant because Global Warming is a real thing. Pulling oil from the ground and burning it is obviously not carbon neutral. Ethanol is a much better fuel than burning oil.
Amazon was facing an anti-trust lawsuit: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/ftc-sues-amazon-illegally-maintaining-monopoly-power
But something has changed in the last year, so now it’s drill, baby drill and corporations like Amazon can bribe the government to look the other way on their anti-competitive practices.
You’ve probably been convinced “both sides are the same” because that is the belief of your group. But it’s in the the nature of cult behaviour to deny reality to conform to the group. Which is what the phrase “drinking the koolaid” is in reference to.
You know I picked the strawman out while I was skim reading this bullshit. Just wanted you to know whatever you typed was a huge waste of time. Because of the straw man in the last paragraph lol. I did get a lol outta the ethonol rebuttal. 1/10 bait
You say socialist like it’s a bad thing and it screams “I’m ignorant.”
If you hate socialism stop using the things socialism provides you. Mail, paved roads, power and water delivered to your house, fire and police, education, etc. Socialism is a big part of why our lives are so decent despite the capitalist hellscape the billionaires are pushing. They’ve lied to you that social programs are why your taxes are so high; they’re high because the wealthiest among us aren’t paying a fair share.
None of that is socialism.
All of that is infact socialism. Taxing individuals and creating community services. It’s like the core tenant or our education system which is socialist, even if it failed to teach you that. It’s the core tenant of social security and Medicare. Those third rail policies that everyone loves? It’s socialism.
None of that is socialism but alright I guess every country in the world is socialist so you’ve got what you want.
What’s the purpose of social security? A state run program to redistribute money from the working to the non working? A social safety net to protect vulnerable citizens.
So what is the difference between that and communism?
Sure it is. Are you using a different definition of socialism? Who owns the schools?? Who owns the roads?
Thinking everything is a “hellscape” and only those in your group are enlightened enough to see a better way (those outside the group are “ignorant”) is what most people refer to as “drinking the koolaid”.
Modern “socialism” is at best a grift, at worst a cult.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in…
…don’t make me post the whole copypasta.
“socialist kool aid”
If caring about others is kool aid, call me the kool aid man because I am about to burst through the glass ceilings and bring delicious nectar to all.
How to say you never studied government without saying you never studied government. Classic.
He did a good thing for sure
You have faith in the financial system?
I ran 5 km every day and ate very low fat, mostly plants. Ended up with non alcoholic fatty liver.
seems inherited, did you ever find a cause?
No one else in my family or extended family has had fatty liver. Fortunately yes, I reversed my NAFLD by eating a low carbohydrate high fat diet.
I believed that I had to be certain way in society or I was fundamentally flawed and bad.
I dropped that belief, acknowledge that to some point it’s convenient for me to follow societal norms but trying to fit in makes me mostly miserable. I naturally don’t want to do things that bother other people but I also don’t really want to be around them so why should I try to be likeable to them any more than is normal to me. This way people who like me, are sure to like me as I am. If I like them enough, I’ll naturally also want to be considerate of them, even if I have to occasionally behave a little different.
I somehow made it very complicated with just beating myself up for being bad/stupid/ugly/broken because I kept believing people who I don’t even like.
If you work hard, are honest, and moral, you will get ahead in life.
It was embarrassingly late in life before I realized how much of a farce that was.
Oh man! The pieces of myself I gave working for companies that gave zero shits about me! I worked way too hard for way too little. I was nothing to them.
Kids if you’re reading this unionize your workplace. Through a union is the only way I’ve gotten a decent wage, benefits package, and shield from the whims of management. They’re nothing without us, they produce no value.
An oldie but a goodie
Divisive propaganda got me to vote for Jill Stein in 2016. I would still assert that Clinton was an awful candidate, but I should have voted for her.
Professional grifter Jill Stein
you must russian-backed grifter jill stein.
I fell for this, too. I felt like I needed to “punish” the democrats for corruption that blocked Bernie from what should have been rightfully his. It felt like the democrats were doing election fraud. I thought Trump wouldn’t possibly win in my state anyway. Oh how naive I was.
Even if all Stein votes went to Clinton, she still would’ve lost, so the country ultimately followed your strategy of not voting third party. You need to take responsibility as the current situation we are in is the result of your endorsed strategy.
I mean, not really. You just said it wouldn’t have made a difference if I voted for Stein vs Hillary. I got several lifelong Republicans to change their voter registration to Democrat to vote for Bernie. I do not endorse voting 3rd party anymore. I used to think you should vote your conscience no matter what. I believed in a free and fair democracy. Now I think you should strategize even if the democrats suck too.
I do take responsibility for being a dumb young 20s person falling for what I now think was Russian propaganda, but Trump winning a second time had nothing to do with me. That’s on people who didn’t vote at all in 2024.
I mean, not really. You just said it wouldn’t have made a difference if I voted for Stein vs Hillary.
I am not talking about “you.” I have no idea who you are. I am talking about your strategy. People followed your strategy and it got us into the bind we are currently in.
I got several lifelong Republicans to change their voter registration to Democrat to vote for Bernie. I do not endorse voting 3rd party anymore. I used to think you should vote your conscience no matter what. I believed in a free and fair democracy. Now I think you should strategize even if the democrats suck too.
And people have followed your strategy and it failed. It turns out that having no principles and endorsing warmongering fascists who promise nothing to their constituents will just make you lose the election.
The point of voting third party isn’t even necessarily some expectation that the third party wins, but to pressure the Democrats to actually stand for something so that the Democrats will win. Your strategy of “vote blue no matter who” always leads to the Democrats not only losing, but also shifting farther to the right before losing because they have no incentive to have any populist principles, and then this hands the reigns into an even farther right Republican administration.
Again, Trump’s victory is a result of your strategy. This administration is yours. Own it.
People did not vote third party in this election in significant numbers enough for it to sway the election. People did not do so last election either. People have been consistently following the “vote blue no matter who” for decades now, with the last time there was any serious backing for a third party was back in the 2000 election.
I do take responsibility for being a dumb young 20s person falling for what I now think was Russian propaganda
Russiagate in 2025 🤦♀️
Yeah, I’m sure it was those few hundred dollars in ads on Facebook and not open support for an industrial scale holocaust, an out of control cost of living crisis, shifting towards being jingoistic and running on wanting to massively ramp up military spending and constantly attacking Trump from the right saying he isn’t hawking on the border enough.
Yeah yeah, I’m sure none of those had to do with people not being very inspired to vote for the Democrats. Democrats aren’t popular because of a few Facebook ads, not because they’ve done anything wrong! Sure sure.
but Trump winning a second time had nothing to do with me.
You take no responsibility for anything. You just constantly want to shift the blame elsewhere. Your failures are all secretly the fault of Russia or of other poor and struggling Americans. The problem is never you or your beloved fascist politicians. You do not have the level of maturity needed to admit when your strategy has failed.
That’s on people who didn’t vote at all in 2024.
It is the responsibility of a party to have a strategy to attract voters. Saying “we should have a strategy that appeals to no one” and then losing the election and blaming people for not voting for you just reveals that you, at the end of the day, genuinely do not care about the outcome of the election. This is why you try to shift the blame of your own failures onto other poor and struggling Americans.
I want the Democrats to appeal to non-voters so they will actually win. You want the Democrats to appeal to no one and then just shame non-voters as bad people for not mindlessly your beloved fascist politician, because you ultimately, at the end of the day, don’t actually even care if the Democrats win or lose as politics is just a game to you. I want a strategy that actually wins elections. Your strategy has been the dominant one for decades now. As the old saying goes, insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
What was the intent of your vote? To voice displeasure with both candidates?
That, to demonstrate to the Democratic party that I don’t want to support them if they actively fight against my policy goals, and to help develop a viable third party.
Wish voting third party could accomplish that. I want the same things. Thank you for sharing.
Shocked that a vast majority of this country doesn’t agree to exclusively vote for candidates whose primary policy position is electoral reform.
Elon Musk in his early days. He was fresh, convincing and his ideas sounded good. It turns out they sounded a bit too good. With hindsight he really is the world greatest con-man. Why this still goes on its beyond me, though.
In early days of Tesla I felt pretty sure a Tesla was going to be my first car. Now, I’m kind of just happy not having a car at all.
I knew of Tesla and SpaceX and I’d vaguely heard of him but didn’t really care so I wrote him off as another rich asshole immediately. Then I had some friends raving about him going to Mars and saving the world. I almost bought in but within a few weeks of that happening he called the guys who rescued the kids trapped in a cave a pedo just because he couldn’t use his sub. That started my hatred of the man.
For a while there with the “Not a flamethrower” and stuff he did manage to put a veneer of “Wacky” over the way he conducts business.
I remember when Reddit was in love with him. I never really engaged with him either way. It’s probably indirectly thanks to him that my opinion on self driving cars has soured, and I theoretically stand to gain the most if it ever becomes a thing since I can’t drive. We shouldn’t try to make a machine learn the messy landscape of roads designed for humans, we should develop better rail and bus infrastructure and make cities more pedestrian-friendly.
wild to think that whole house of cards of his collapsed because his PR person wanted a raise and being the greedy little ratfuck he is he refused.
cleanly they earned it
kimd of makes me wonder who all else out there is a complete piece of shit but we just don’t know/realize it
Never heard about this. Do you have a source I can get some further reading on this?
don’t have any links off the top of my head but it should be easy enough to find.
it could just all be coincidence but the timing of public-facing downfall and that event seems too good to be true imo.
Ok I’ll have a look. Thnx for the interesting info
Report back. I remember somethingabout there being a musk cleanup team who followed him around and put right everything he meddled with. But internet search is so shit now that this is the best I can find. SpaceX employees denounce CEO Musk as ‘distraction’ in letter
I was raised evangelical Christian in the Bible belt. I was a “true believer” I call it now. I literally believed there was a hell that people were going to. I’m glad I’m out of that.
Apple products through the 2010s.
I’d watch their WWDC presentations online religiously
Mine have generally been mentioned. In my early 20s in the early 2000s. Got into the ancient aliens stuff briefly.
Believed in supernatural and past life stuff for a good bit.
By the mid-2000s, having “pulled myself out of poverty” (I didn’t do it on my own; I had help and support for family after having been homeless at one point) and gotten a salaried job, started listening to rightwing radio hosts. Thought I just needed to work a bit harder and success would come. All the other people were lazy and social programs were bad with the possible exception of something like WIC. Nah, I was just fairly lucky to have survived some stupid situations, had help from family, and was generally just way too entitled and thinking I was special. I was fairly insufferable for a good while.
When I was a kid, I watched Chinese dramas about the war of resistance against japanese invasion, and it portrayed the CCP as heroes…
The main fighting force was actually the ROC Army lol
I used to have more positive views on PRC, but then my mom told me about One Child Policy and I wasn’t supposed to exist…
so yea, my opinion changed pretty quickly
No way in hell I’d support an organization that wanted to legislate me out of existence, also denying legal paperwork after I was born.
Also, cops.
I used to think they actually protect people, now I know they are just a bunch of useless assholes that sometimes harass innocent people. They never help with anything, always have this aggressive attitude, does injust arrests.
This view isn’t based on the internet, it’s from actual real life experiences.
I’m of the opinion that anyone who supports the police probably hasn’t had an interaction with the police.
Like seriously, any time I’ve been the victim of a crime, the police have been the worst part of it. I guess I’m probably biased, maybe there’s some place where cops don’t suck, but I don’t live there
I think people probably like the idea of the police: someone you can call in an emergency when you’re in danger. But their response does not reflect their branding
