1. Click on the big button in the header next to ‘Local’ that says ‘All’.
  2. Click the drop-down field directly next to ‘All’.
  3. Click ‘Active’ from the drop-down list.
  4. Click on a thread loaded on the page.
  5. Reply to users in that thread.

Congrats! You have successfully done a brigading! Pat yourself on the back! Next seminar, we will be covering how to subtly deceive strategically-important redditors with a simple tactic they don’t know of called ‘whataboutism’

Edit: meant to post this in the secret group chat where we coordinate the fall of the west. Sorry y’all. My bad

14 points

i almost never switch off local

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27 points

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7 points

Are you sure that we should use “whataboutism”? It’s actually a logical fallacy.

Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in “what about…?”) denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accusation. From a logical and argumentative point of view it is considered a variant of the tu-quoque pattern (Latin ‘you too’, term for a counter-accusation), which is a subtype of the ad-hominem argument.

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13 points

Most of the time libs use accusations of it improperly in the first place. Shit like:

A: “Cuba is a failed state.”

B: “Cuba’s difficulties arise mostly from the American embargo.”

A: “America? Oh my God whataboutism!”

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1 point

Sorry, I just found out that I missed the sarcasm in “a simple tactic they don’t know of called ‘whataboutism’”. I did get the sarcasm for the rest of the post, but for some reason I did not realize that that sentence was also sarcastic. Apparently it’s making fun of people calling our arguments whataboutism, lol.

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29 points

God I hate whataboutism. Because no really what about it? Why are you comfortable taking such blatantly hypocrytical stances arrrrg. It just seems like a way to ignore valid critiques

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For real, it seems like just a rhetorical move to establish a blatant double standard while pretending one has the moral high hround, and I doubt John Oliver knew what he was unleashing.

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16 points

About a week ago on Hexbear someone was saying China was good, and I said it’s not good if you’re queer. They replied that America is even worse. To which I said, “I know, I’m trying to get my trans partner out of there so it isn’t holocausted. China and America aren’t the only two countries. Why do you think America is important to this discussion?”

I think that’s what whataboutism should refer to. When someone tries to excuse bad behaviour through comparison to an irrelevant third thing. I see it all the time in Australia from climate apathiers who say “We shouldn’t try to reduce our emissions because China won’t”. I always tell them “we’re doing worse per capita than China is. And even if we weren’t, wouldn’t you want our country to be a global leader in something?”

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9 points

Take this with a grain of salt, as I am Chinese from a medium sized city (only like 13,000,000 population)

LGBT issues in China is not perfect, but it is getting better in larger cities and even my own. The case may be different in smaller cities, more religious places and rural areas, but it is getting normalised on Zoomer social media, and LGBT+ spaces exist in larger cities (that to my understanding do have a fair amount of chasers so not perfect). There are gay bars and such in Shanghai, that aren’t exactly operating in secret from the CPC.

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5 points

Yeah, that’s not what I call good. I don’t think there’s a country on Earth I’d call good for queer people. Australia is pretty bad and I think that’s worse than Australia.

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