It’s a far right conspiracy theory, that OP’s trying to tie to legit criticism of the CIA’s atrocities despite having nothing to do with each other-- all in order to try to hide the fact that it’s literally part of the Great Replacement conspiracy.

And what of the many atrocities committed by humanity?

I can be proud to be American and a human at the same time. Saying “I love my family” doesn’t mean I don’t love other people too, and it doesn’t mean I think my family is somehow better than other human beings, it just means I love my family. Same logic applies here.

Yes, which is the single biggest reason I’m proud to be American: because our people’s willingness to stand up for one another and keep fighting for a better tomorrow, even against the most powerful opponents, even at risk to their own lives.

Abolishing slavery, ending Jim Crow, giving women the vote, becoming one of the first dozen countries on the planet to legalize gay marriage, helping win WW2, helping support Ukraine, donating more to foreign aid than any other country on the planet, the Marshall Plan, everything about NASA, best national parks on the planet, entertainment capital of the world, first country to land a man on the moon, the whole “nation of immigrants” things making us one of the most diverse countries on the planet.

And of course, none of that excuses the dark parts of our history, the slavery, genocide, imperialism in Latin America, among many, many others. But that brings me to the thing I love most about American: with the exception of the loud Republican minority, we’re a country that actually reckons with the dark parts of our past and tries to make up for them instead of sweeping them under the rug. And then we get to work fixing them.

We’ve made so much progress even in my relatively brief lifetime-- in agonizing two-steps-forward, one-step-back fashion, for sure, but that doesn’t make it not count. I’m so excited to see where we go in the future.

I’m saying it’s among the biggest issues! A fascist regime going after one of the most vulnerable classes of citizens, how is that anything other than a colossal issue?

I cannot begin to tell you how fucking vindicated my twelve year old, Warrior Cats obsessed, Ashfur-hating self is after reading this write up, lol. The first internet argument I ever had was over this incel kitty. Got my first ever ban, from the Official Warrior Cats Forums^TM, over him, too. I never understood how anyone could find him sympathetic, let alone hot (yes, tween girls unironically found a cat hot, and no, I’m pretty sure most of them weren’t furries). Over fifteen years later, and… yeah I still don’t get it, lol.

Also, for anyone who’s wondering WTF a kid’s series about cats is doing having such a dark plot line: this is pretty much par the course for Warriors. I’ve heard it described as “Game of Thrones for tween girls”, which is pretty bang-on. War crimes, child murder, torture, graphic depicitions of childbirth (err, kittenbirth) and gruesome battle wounds, adult themes like infidelity and emotional abuse discussed at length, and that’s just the stuff I remember from the first arc off the top of my head, fifteen years later!

Spend any length of time in the tumblr Star Wars fandom, and two things will happen: you’ll come out loving Star Wars a million times more than you did before, and also you’ll be completely unable to talk about it with anyone not in the tumblr fandom any more.

Also, on tumblr every single Star Wars character is bisexual, except Anakin (who’s demi), Ahsoka (lesbian), and Luke (gay). So be ready for that.

Gets even better when you learn “jeb” (or a very similar word) means “fucking” in a lot of Slavic languages!

The fact that the guy you replied to totally ignored all my points about, ya know, the ongoing genocide is fucking telling.

Friendly reminder Russia is committing atrocities in the occupied territories. So any kind of negotiated “peace” that involves Ukraine giving up territory means them consigning all their citizens living there to torture, random executions, wanton sexual violence, having their children taken away, and worse!

That’s what you’re calling for when you advocate a “negotiated settlement”.

Yes. I said so explicitly in my previous comment.

This is the truth right there. Gas prices went up two measly dollars compared to normal in 2022, and everyone flipped the fuck out. People were prepared to elect Republicans-- fucking Republicans- to office, they were so furious about it.

And don’t @ me about “100 corporations are responsible for like 90% of emissions”. Who’s buying those corporations’ goods? Who’s refusing to vote for politicians that’ll meaningfully regulate these corporations? Who’s spending all day fantasizing about Da Revolushun^TM that’ll never fucking come (and would kill tens of millions of civilians and likely result in fascists winning and seizing control of your country, if not the whole thing splintering into a bunch of warring fiefdoms controlled by ruthless oligarchs) instead of getting to actual work trying to effect real change in the real world? And I don’t mean “direct action” (read: looking edgy and getting photos for the 'gram), I mean actually fucking getting policy passed that’ll have a real impact on people’s real lives.

Exactly, and that’s a very, very, very bad thing. We all signed up for social networks on the promise they’d help us make new friends and stay in touch with our old ones. Now, ten years later, we’re walled off into lonely bubbles being fed ads and propaganda in between posts from strangers we didn’t even chose to follow, but some algorithm decided we should see posts from anyways.

If social media had looked the way it does now when it’d first been invented, no one would have ever signed up for it. Instead, we were frogs in a boiling pot.

So back in the day, r/IAmA used to actually get really cool people to come do interviews on a pretty regular basis: celebrities, authors, activists, politicians, prominent scientists. They even got President Obama to do an AMA, while he was sitting US president! (For a long time, it was the most upvoted thread in reddit history.)

And I don’t just mean once or twice a year, these interviews were happening multiple times a month. Users could ask whatever they wanted, no matter how off the wall, blunt, or challenging, and the interviewees would usually answer almost all of the top questions.

It was all thanks to Victoria. She was the reddit employee in charge of reaching out to celebrities to do AMAs, and then helping them get set up and navigating reddit for them when the time came. It was one of the coolest features of reddit, and it was all thanks to her.

So naturally, of course, they fired Victoria on the flimsiest of excuses.

Why? We’re still not 100% sure-- reddit never officially explained. But the leading theory is that reddit wanted to change the way IAmAs were run to limit users’ ability to ask hard questions. Ever hear about the Woody Harrelson IAmA disaster (“Can we please focus on Rampart, people?”)? Maybe reddit’s plan was to limit the kinds of questions users could ask, to reduce the odds of PR disasters like that. Who knows.

Whatever their plan was, though, it failed. Killing the thing that made IAmAs so cool compared to normal interviews also completely killed users’ interests in them. And without Victoria to reach out to celebrities and help them with the IAmA process any more, the rate at which celebs would show up on site to do AmAs tanked.

Nowadays, you’re lucky to get one AmA with someone people have actually heard of a year, and even then they’ll usually only answer a handful of cherry-picked questions. For all intents and purposes, the feature is dead.

Kind of similar to how people gradually stopped using the phrase “social network” (implying the main point of these sites was to connect with other human beings) and shifted to calling it “social media” (implying the main point is to passively consume content).

Maybe I’m entering the cranky old women yelling at kids to get off her lawn phase of my life-- but why are all the TikTok challenges always something ridiculously dangerous? (Emphasis on “ridiculous”)

I have the exact opposite problem, where I will literally forget to eat. Then I’ll wonder why I feel so exhausted / weak / anxious, and realize it’s 8 PM and I only had a bowl of cereal and one glass of water all day.

Also, most people bringing up “but the Ukrainian Nazis!!!” are arguing in bad faith (and a lot are fascists themselves, lol). So rather than wasting your time giving a nuanced overview of the far right in Ukraine, Russia, and the West to someone who’s just going to ignore it and reply in bad faith anyways, it’s way easier to just say “Zelensky’s Jewish, lol” and move on with your life.

(To be 100% clear: I DO NOT THINK THE PERSON YOU REPLIED TO IS ARGUING IN BAD FAITH. This comment is more a blanket generalization, not about this specific interaction.)

Also, given the lack of a clear successor, Putin’s death would likely lead to a power vacuum and infighting-- which means they’ll be too busy fighting each other to focus on attacking us.