MeanwhileOnGrad
"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
Welcome to MoG!
Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.
Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post as opposed to arguing.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
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As I am every time, I am genuinely baffled about who these people are.
Are they propaganda bots? Confused Westerners who have chosen the world’s weirdest “team” to be on and support uncritically (or been driven there by the very real shittiness of the Western system in some respects)? People from communist countries who are trying to cope? Trolls? Parody accounts? Something else?
I think that a lot of them are #2. But it just seems so weird and tragic all of them getting together every day on the internet to tell each other how awesome North Korea is. I am very curious to be able to sit down and have a face to face conversation with one and just see what’s in there.
I used to post on r/pyongyang. It was a lot of veiled sarcasm praising the regime, famine, prison camps, etc. Every once in a while someone new would show up confused. Depending on their responses, they would either be attacked as capitalist shill pigs, or 'gaslit' with more posts praising NK in comparison to the free world.
I don't get that vibe from this group. But I could be wrong.
Same opinion. Pyongyang was fun, we laughed at each other and invented the most stupid sentences to praise this dictatorship.
But tankies on lemmy are not fun at all. I think it’s a mix of bots and angry teenagers, but I can be wrong too.
until someone prove my wrong i doubt it's bots, maybe for upvotes etc, but i think is just some people that need urgently touch grass
Seeing how anytime is Hamas is criticized here, the critic is given a torrent of down votes yet nobody ever really responds to the criticism, I think bots are almost certainly an issue here.
nah, just too much extremists, they don't hawe good argument that's why they dont answer
I once had like 87 cowards downvoting me though. You dont think even a single one was a not?
? i said that it can be bots
'Confused' is a strong word. But they're overwhelmingly privileged Westerners who have transitioned from the Manichean millenarianism of suburban American evangelical Christianity to a mirror image. The same in every way except orientation.
Their endless parade of apocalyptic proclamations and screeds on how we deserve the coming collapse for the sin of existing are... quite familiar to anyone who used to be in evangelical communities.
I think it's both. I think the base is state-sponsored propaganda, and it attracts some confused Westerners who want attention for being different.
They eagerly regurgitate state-sponsored propaganda, but I doubt any significant number of them are actually involved as anything but useful idiots.
Nah, I think Lemmy is treated as a training ground. Think about this - if an actual Russian or Chinese state propaganda agency approached Dessalines and offered to fund Lemmy development in exchange for getting their agents on the admin list, how quickly would he nut himself?
Do you really think a tankie could stay quiet for long about being such An Important Part Of The Vanguard?
Lmao. State secrets are a patriotic duty, comrade. But you are right, they could definitely just infiltrate the instance with a sufficient number of terminally online information warriors.
lemmy was already like that before reddit fuckover, probably worse because we only had lemmy.ml, so no, just flood twitter, and chatgpt is cheaper
Definitely a lot of propaganda bots, welcome to the slow and steady mass brain wash.
Yes, a significant portion of them are high fiving over their cubicle walls in Russia and China. I am convinced that Lemmy is a training ground for these efforts before they get moved up to Facebook and reddit.
It's pretty easy to spot the difference between the propagandists and the teenagers though. Teenagers are not well connected to history or world events and clearly just work within their very small bubble of edgy contrariness. The propagandists have a broader self awareness and regurgitate or even connect multiple talking points much more skillfully. Though on Lemmy, "skillfully" needs some qualification, since there is a lot of really bad and transparent propaganda here. Like I said, it's clearly the practice squad, with a handful of higher profile lieutenants.
That is a fascinating theory
Like a lot of these things there is absolutely no way to know, but it would explain why they are even paying attention to Lemmy at all (to a degree that to me makes 0 sense relative to its trivial level of actual popularity), and I’ve seen people where it’s clearly their first day handling the account (like posting some “things in North Korea are actually great” meme out of nowhere on an account that’s always before been domestic US politics stuff).