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I don't see the difference between this and "video games cause mass shootings", including the implicit ableism towards neurodiversity. https://twitter.com/JYSexton/status/1355621787724341255
The media outlets paving the way for this have been doing so in plain sight for decades. If you want to look for fictional contributors, try the ones that have been stoking white supremacy, demonising Muslims and depicting defenders of civil rights as misguided meddlers at best.
Who, disproportionately, likes to obsess about clues in TV shows, etc? Autistic and ADHD people! Is it a slippery slope to believing paedophiles run the government? Not unless you believe some really fucked up things and are SPECTACULARLY willing to ignore overt brainwashing
... conducted over Facebook, over Fox news, over Twitter, and invariably channelled through white supremacy.
It's not uncommon, BTW, to suggest that autistic people in particular do not really have agency and can simply slide from one set of beliefs to another on no basis other than a vague stylistic similarity, rather than their content.
C.f -- the use of autism to explain away and erase trans identities, especially in youth. Autistic teenagers, the thinking goes, are never REALLY trans, they are just haplessly persuaded to believe they are, because they ... don't understand categories, apparently?
And no, I don't think the thread I was reacting to was *consciously* invoking autism in the same way, but if you've ever been to school you know people can sense and dehumanise difference in ableist ways without knowing there's a diagnostic category.
Neurotypical people find the intensity neurodiverse people bring to their enjoyment of media strange and unnerving. They assume the people who unnerve them are both more heavily involved in wrongdoing, and yet have less agency, than people like themselves.
He gives himself away, here. Creepy *obsessives*! Being *taught* to obsess! (Could he have been "taught" to obsess in this way? If not, why not?)
If you still find this at all persuasive, try this. Re-run the last 20 years. 9/11 still happens. Bush still happens. "Vaccines cause autism" still happens. Glenn Beck still happens. Sarah Palin still happens. Fox News still happens.
But ...
But ...
... Lost doesn't happen! Stan Lee cameos in Marvel films don't happen! Disney dropping characters from one film into crowd scenes in another doesn't happen!
Do you really - REALLY - believe that THAT's what you need to go back and change to prevent the rise of QAnon?
Do you really - REALLY - believe that THAT's what you need to go back and change to prevent the rise of QAnon?
Because if so, you're maybe more vulnerable to believing a bunch of transparent bullcrap than you think.
