Political discussion on SW

@Elessar lol I can see the similarities. People like this are irritating. They act like they are above every one else and want to play both sides, yet they have no consideration for when their ideas are taken to their logical ends.

In this case, she's defending people who have no credibility and spread misinformation. Maybe she'll say she was just playing devil's advocate lol

@deadgerbil
Now who could that possibly be? 🤔 A Canadian troll, perhaps?

@Frank52 yup lol

@lynncelestial I was just pointing out that refusing to provide evidence and demanding that others disprove your unsubstantiated claims is often a hallmark of those who believe in conspiracy theories. They always try to off-load the burden of proof. In your example, person b could just say "that video has been edited! Prove that it hasn't been!". As if they want the eliminate the possibility of finding the truth.

@SW-User I usually find it’s the opposite. Dismissing everything as a conspiracy theory is one form of stupidity that is often accompanied by other forms of foolishly dismissing people. People who dismiss things as conspiracy do so because they quite literally don’t want to look up evidence and want someone else to find evidence for them, do the work for them, which becomes the official narrative and then dismiss anything else as a conspiracy because surprise surprise they don’t want to have to look things up.

@lynncelestial Yes, immediately labeling a claim as "conspiracy theory" without investigating it is dismissive and stupid. Examine the evidence and discuss its merit and what truth it may contain. Giving it a negative dismissive label (like "conspiracy", "fake news", "propaganda") from the outset is a way to avoid addressing the argument being made and consulting the evidence.

By "conspiracy thinking" I was referring to the kind of dismissiveness that everything is fake news, brainwashing, or propaganda. I'm not making a judgment about any claim itself. If someone makes a claim and they have evidence, I'll examine it and debate it, I won't say "that's a conspiracy theory, I'm not reading that". But I will call out attempts to make a claim unfalsifiable. What's the point of debating something that can't be proven true or untrue?

Yep that too. Or even worse are those that pretend the entire internet is, as a whole, home to some sort of big vague conspiracy theory where the earth is flat and Hitler rules the lizard shapeshifters which every internet person believes this same conspiracy theory as the next person, like a religion; rather than just maybe the media sometimes lies@SubstantialKick