Ah, that makes so much sense.

Goodness, you’re being very serious.

My opinion of you is definitely my problem, true. You did seem interested, based on the fact that you posted in a public place, but I suppose that was an error on my part. Good day, sir/ma’am (genderneutral).

pics or it didn’t happen

There were “normal” people on reddit?

Who’s asking?

Okay. Just fyi, you using AI forces me to assume you don’t care enough about whatever issue you have with the guy to put in the effort.

The AI is what hurts, mostly.

By this point, I suspect a lot of people who use the term don’t actually know anymore. To them it just means “the shadowy bad guys who want to ruin my life specifically”.

That just means nobody listens to what radio DJs have to say. Or to the radio, for that matter.

The problem is that the radio station thinks listeners seem to need some human voice to tell them things in between songs but they don’t want to pay an actual human to do it so they burn trees instead. Just put on a playlist at that point and leave more room for another song or two.

They arent Ukrainians, what would make you think that.

Or Argentinians or New Zealandians or Norwegians or South Africans or whatever. What would make me think that (if I even thought of ANY nationality) is that I don’t know, I know nothing about any military, I wouldn’t recognise them unless they have very ostentatious symbols of their nationality somewhere on them or I’m being told “these are [country]ans”. That’s why I said “for all I know” and then added the most polar opposite option I could think of.

added to that where this picture was taken

Which I also don’t recognise. Might be anywhere in the world. (well, “anywhere” is an exaggeration, it does look rather hot and dry)

“russias new mega blaster 9000 russia strong hahaha”.

That would count as propaganda, of course, from that person in particular.

people would probably not laugh about a picture showing a American Drone strike with the caption “dropped a big one in the toilet”

I don’t know, active drone strikes seem different to me from some dude posing with a stupid big gun. The connection to “Americans being posers in Walmart” is a lot stronger.

Anyway, what I can accept is that people might use this picture for their actual propaganda if it is spread around, I get that, and I agree that we need to be cautious. I’d venture though to say that anything that is even remotely related to some kind of national identity can be used that way. That includes stuff like news coverage of Russian aggression (“Woah what is that weapon making the cool fireworks over Kyiv?”).

Thinking about this (too much, sorry), I had another thought: if this picture (on its own) counts as Russian propaganda, shouldn’t that be more reason to use it like this? Really what it does then is equate (apparent) Russian military with stereotypically pathetic Americans who feel like they need to demonstrate their power by taking guns to go buy a drink. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

I don’t know, it at least doesn’t seem like very effective propaganda if only a tiny group of people even recognise what it’s showing. Propaganda usually tries to reach as many people as possible with very simple and effective imagery. So I’m not sure.

I get where you’re coming from, if you do have that specialised knowledge, it must be obvious to you. But without that, I don’t see how anyone would think “Russia strong” just from this picture. For all I know, they might be Ukrainians.

As someone who doesn’t know shit about military technology, nothing about this suggests Russia to me. In fact it doesn’t suggest any country, except “hur dur Americans like shooting” because of context.

So I don’t know, is it propaganda if you need to have specialised knowledge to recognise what’s being advertised?

The characters’s behaviour…? I don’t follow. You said you saw a picture?

It depends on how your dislike manifests. If you just take yourself out of the equation and leave them be, that’s self-care. Telling them to stop a behaviour that they can’t help because of some disability, telling them they’re “lesser”, that’s ableist.

How is you liking that character relevant?

Okay, but what if I depict security as a pug?

What I’m saying is I’m having trouble with the initial premise, not necessarily the conclusion.

I never “did” anything, I just realised at some point that I didn’t think that whole business was true (apart from the bits about being nice to each other). So I stopped going through the motions that I’d been taught to follow.

My privilege here is that I live in a country that is not very religious, where any religion is done in private, and my mum, who taught me a very forgiving and kind Christianity (emphasising all the things a religious right would despise), only cared about me being a decent person, not about what I believed.

And that’s Youtube, an entirely different place that isn’t the topic of discussion here and that’s ALSO always been Like That. Never Look At The Comments is received wisdom.

But that’s humans? It’s always been like that, everywhere at all times. The only thing that’s changed, maybe, is that Lemmy is growing and there’s more discussion in general so of course the absolute number of things that cause name-calling has grown too, just like the absolute number of things that don’t.