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What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

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Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#181

Post by caconym_ »

chii wrote: post #118
hinkley wrote: post #36

> Sam prides himself on questioning conventional wisdom and subjecting claims to intellectual scrutiny. For kids today, that means Googling stuff. One might think these searches would turn up a variety of perspectives, including at least a few compelling counterarguments. One would be wrong. The Google searches flooded his developing brain with endless bias-confirming “proof” to back up whichever specious alt-right s…

The role of education (and parenting) is to teach the child how to sort information they obtain from sources like those googled results. Why did he believe in those biased sources of info? How come he didn't have the skills to determine what is fact and what is opinion stated as fact?

Is this a rhetorical question? A lot of (most?) adults aren't immune to this sort of manipulation, let alone kids. See: Fox News, cults in general, and so on.

It's not just about bad information, or opinion stated as fact, or whatever. Whether it is designed to indoctrinate and radicalize, or whether it "simply" evolved that way as a meme (in the Dawkins sense, probably clumsily applied), that's how it works. These people haven't just been taught incorrect facts, but whole distinctive patterns of speech and thought that serve to reinforce their own commitment and induce it in others.

It's an arms race, and in an emotionally vulnerable state I doubt even the sharpest kids (or, again, adults) are fully armored against it.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#182

Post by noonespecial »

vzcx wrote: post #78
gatherhunterer wrote: post #67

> Sam’s guidance counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of “breaking the law.” Before long, he was in the office of a male administrator who informed him that the exchange was “illegal,” hinted that the police were coming, and delivered him into the custody of the school’s resource officer. At the administrator’s instruction, that man ushered Sam into an empty room, handed him a blank sheet of pap…

Yes! This is an anti-public school administration article masquerading as an anti-alt-right article.

No. It's the story of one extremist making another. So much so it's basically Newtonian.

If the child had a lesser home life he could have stuck that way. This one had a happy ending but it's a sobering lesson.

Zero tolerance seems cheap up front but the societal "technical debt" is a real bitch.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#183

Post by marcell »

crsv wrote: post #167

It’s a very well written piece, but it just feels too well written, to the point of feeling to precise, too calculated, too... contrived. Aside from the opinions expressed, the ideological concerns, the relevance to the current political landscape - these are all relevant and interesting explorations, but the whole narrative is just too picture perfect and too close to a screenplay. It just feels like good fiction.

Yea there’s no way to tell, but I got the same feeling. It seems too much like a fiction with a narrative arc, and neat story with a good resolution. Who knows.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#184

Post by brohoolio »

crsv wrote: post #167

It’s a very well written piece, but it just feels too well written, to the point of feeling to precise, too calculated, too... contrived. Aside from the opinions expressed, the ideological concerns, the relevance to the current political landscape - these are all relevant and interesting explorations, but the whole narrative is just too picture perfect and too close to a screenplay. It just feels like good fiction.

It seems like good fiction until it’s your life and then it seems terrible.

I can assure you, as someone who has multiple family members get sucked up into this ideology, this is how it happens.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#185

Post by tathougies »

tracer4201 wrote: post #157
_fq4v wrote: post #144

[flagged]

Non white American here. I don’t know what you’re talking about other than you seem to defend alt right views and women seem to make you insecure.

Also non white here. I think your source of misunderstanding is that you think it is my opinion that rich white people tend to be politically intolerant and insulated from political diversity.

To be clear that is not an opinion: that is empirical data: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/us-coun...

Not sure where you're getting the stuff about women though. Forgive me for having sympathy for victims regardless of gender of perpetrator. If that's an alt right view then I guess we should all be alt right

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#186

Post by tropo »

eropple wrote: post #122
opportune wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of this is due to marketing. I know for example PragerU heavily advertises on Youtube. Is there a way for an advertiser on youtube to get better recommendation placements?

Dunno why you're downvoted; to me it's a reasonable question. What I don't know--and why I am profoundly concerned about such recommendation algorithms--is if there's any way for non-Googlers to ever check that.

I didn't know either, until I saw educationdata's comment. It's subtle, but I think opportune is implying that PragerU is fascist.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#187

Post by philliphaydon »

nv-vn wrote: post #169
philliphaydon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn’t it always been like this? When I was at middle school, the Teachers used to lock the classrooms during lunch time, and I had some tennis balls in my desk so I asked my teacher for the key. She gave me the key and said “just get your things and don’t forget to lock the door, so not let anyone else in the room”. When I left the room one of the girls from the class tried to enter. I stood in the doorway because s…

Reminds me of the time me and my friend were sent to the principal's office for talking about Nerf guns. Because obviously 2 second graders were plotting to shoot up the school. Or the time a girl said I threw something at her when I said she couldn't have it. Note that I don't think this was something about girls lying, I think everyone lied equally at that age or maybe even boys lied more. But the way school admini…

> I think everyone lied equally at that age or maybe even boys lied more.

I definitely was no saint at school. Not sure many people can say they were.

> I don't think this was something about girls lying

Me either, but I do feel when something happens between a male and female, unless there is enough witnesses, side is always taken with the girl it seems, unless the witness is friends with the boy, then they aren't deemed reliable.

Another time at school I was playing basket ball with a couple of friends. There was an Indian girl walking by and the ball almost hit her, I pointed at her and said watch out and the ball just missed her, I laughed at the fact she just narrowly escaped being hit with the basket ball, but she thought I was laughing at her nose piecing for some reason. (I don't understand where this confusion came from, I couldn't even see she had a nose piecing until later when I was standing next to her) but again I was forced to apologize for laughing at her culture or something like that.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#188

Post by [deleted] »

neonate wrote: post #139
dTal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most of Europe WW2 was just a terrible ordeal. In Germany it's a source of great shame. But the US? WW2 was the making of modern America. The US was catapulted into a world leader position, and got to feel like a badass hero doing it. And WW2 was the US's first major overseas conflict. Nazis are the archetypical "enemy without".

Great comment, but aren't you overlooking WWI? Phillipines? etc. There was even an anti-imperialist movement in the US before WWI.

[deleted]

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#190

Post by mindslight »

deanCommie wrote: post #158
alexandercrohde wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I don't know if I think a middle-aged man who goes to a rally to hold up a sign saying "NO TRUMP. NO KKK. NO FASCIST USA," is progress over the alt-right. To me it's the exact same thing -- an overly zealous person who takes politics as a tribal game and has no sincere intention of changing anybody's mind.

"KKK" and "No KKK" are exactly the same thing? FFS...can we stop with the false equivalence? When one side is preaching intolerance, and the other side preaches intolerance to intolerance THEY ARE NOT BOTH EQUALLY INTOLERANT .

Maybe not "equally", but they are both intolerant. The groupthinks of both teams are used to mobilize violence against easy targets of their outgroups, regardless of the purported goal.

The real distinction to draw here is the matter of numbers. A counter protester is "punching up" in respect to the more numerous mob. They're not likely to get the mob to put down their pitchforks no matter how well-crafted their sign. But as this story demonstrates, their presence makes for human faces that object to the furor.

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