This is something you see often nowadays, especially on social media. Activists get some controversial policy approved, or censor some already-existing content. Yet if you protest it, you get the "dude why do you care" fence-sitters. They'll tell you that it doesn't matter that much and that both sides are silly anyway. Often these people are in complete support of said policy/censorship, but if you point it out they'll just tell you that those extremists don't represent them (because they're the enlightened "centrists", of course), and you get nowhere.
I feel like this is a big problem. How do you deal with this?
Giving even a fragment of a damn what fence sitters say, is a waste of time and effort. The middle literally doesn't matter, and the apathetic middle matters even less.
I was the middle until quite recently. I was pushed to the right not by persuasive arguments from right wing evangelists, but by the behavior of the left. They are actual, biblical evil and I, as a moral person, cannot abide by their existence.
Anyone still willing to fence sit after the absolute fucking nightmare that was the past year, all perpetrated in the name of leftism, is not a fence sitter. They're either a coward or a communist wearing a mask
Do not underestimate the number of people driven by idiocy, laziness, comfort, and lack of care. Those are, and always have been, the drivers of the fence sitters. It's a symptom of a successful society, that can insulate such idiots from immediate ramifications of mother nature. These idiots usually go along with the mainstream, regardless of what it is or does, because it's easy, and help facilitate the downfall of successful societies, moving away from what made them successful, and toward collapse, when people move closer to nature, when such idiots will be deservedly killed off for being stupid. This is a much bigger topic, but I'll end it here.
I think people vastly overestimate how little other people are aware of the things inside your own bubble. You could be of the opinion that "Surely everyone knows x, y and z", but you go and ask almost anyone you know and their response is likely "What is x, I've neither heard nor care about y, and z is a thing? Why is z a thing? That's dumb!".
Most people aren't politically engaged- even tangentially. I remember asking a couple of my friends(American) about Kony 2012 a few years ago- which I thought had exploded all over the internet and become a household name. My friends had never heard about Kony or even the "Bring back our girls" campaign with Big Mike(at the time was 1st lady).
It's hard to care about something you are completely unaware of. The left and uniparty are in control of most media, so our biggest hurdle is just getting people to know there is an argument taking place, let alone which side they need to take.
Careful. A lot of these people may be fence sitting in entirely good faith, they just haven't been sufficiently shoved off the fence yet by the left (everyone has a different breaking point). When they do, let's be welcoming.
Everyone before you thinks the same thing about you.
Wrong.
Dangerously wrong.
Radicals are able to bring about change precisely because of the apathetic middle. If it doesn't piss off the middle, IT WILL HAPPEN.
Therefore, it's in your interest to make sure the middle lean as far in your direction as you can.
Remember: the reason leftists don't engage in debate is because they know they will lose. The reason they don't want to lose is because they don't want the middle to see that they are wrong.
If you think the middle don't matter, you are doomed.
The left knows they matter, and they structure their every move around them. Everything leftists do, they are able to do because they have the apathetic consent of the middle. Wherever they do not have that consent, they can do nothing.
It's gaslighting plain and simple. Don't let it derail you. If they ask you why you care, double down on your original message and explain again why you think the topic you're discussing is bad or will have negative consequences. That, or make fun of them.
Tell them to fuck off commie. They aren't fence sitters, they are the second group of commies, the incognito mode ones. You have the blatantly overt, then you have the ones who use human's desire to avoid confrontations, especially unnecessary confrontation, to manipulate anyone who isn't gungho about their objections into being silent. They are good at manipulating people. It's a tactic that most men consider undesirable because it is a woman's instinctual weapon.
It is demoralization propaganda. That's all.
I care because I have traditional human emotions where i care about the future and my loved ones.
I have not dulled or down-regulated these emotions with porn, promiscuity, drugs, materialism and short term attention-seeking.
You mean like the comment you made that this quote is from?
I've gotten to the point where I don't. I like this analogy of a rotten ship where the crew are actively hacking away at the hull trying to make it sink faster, and a very small minority of people on board (us) realize the absurdity of doing so.
Instead of trying to convince the crew to stop doing that, it's a more productive use of limited time to try to construct life rafts. If people eventually come to their senses then there's the life raft for them. If they don't then you haven't wasted a bunch of energy trying to save someone who doesn't want to be saved.
Indeed. They don’t want to be saved. Let nature take its course and cull the parasites. Why are you arguing with parasites in the first place? Get away from the cities. Take care of your own. You should be growing food, learning to treat grey water and sewage, learning to collect and purify fresh water, creating power with small hydro, wind, solar setups. Learn small engine repair. Learn to weld.
The communists will starve themselves. You just need to step back and watch it all happen. There is no country or battle to win back. They won. They rule.
I don’t think we’re at the point of the ship being unsalvageable yet.
When did police disappear, activist DAs drop cases, and governors tell us it's "a summer of love", only when antifa inflicts violence on the public.
At this point in time, if you in the middle, you’re really trying to stay there by actively ignoring your eyes & ears.
Plant a seed by telling them that supporting the side that actively censors speech is not a good idea if you support free speech.
That’s it.
Let subsequent events do the rest of the work.
Even Jesus hated fence sitters.
That's hilarious. What's the story?
In a rational world nobody would care what someone who claims not to care thinks, and you wouldn't have to deal with them at all. Now those kinds of comments get more attention than they deserve because the internet is full of cynical bastards easily swayed by reddit-style rhetoric. (as u/TheWestYearZero points out they've most likely had their senses dulled by degenerate consumerism)
Maybe respond with something like "Ok, thanks bye?" or "Your non-committal is noted. Now please leave so the adults can discuss this issue." Any kind of snark. It's the only emotion people like that can feel.
They're just stupid people. Or people with a normalcy bias that is pathological.
They are saying that reason will have no affect on them. Unfortunately that only leaves force, or the threat of force. Fortunately they will never think about it that deeply.
You have to treat them like a sheepdog treats sheep. Bully them to where you want them to go.
They're not fence-sitters. They're moderates at best. More likely is that they're hiding their power level to try and manipulate.
Ah, good, you've already figured it out.
It's taking a team of dudes and a piece of expensive heavy machinery to move that rock. All to appease a group that we've acknowledged is making dumb, stupid demands about irrelevant things.
Saying "we're not moving the boulder" is not dumb. What's dumb is allowing dumb people to bully you into expending resources on action that is irrelevant and changes nothing.
Moving that rock isn't going to change black incarceration rates. It isn't going to change black educational attainment. It isn't going to change black fatherlessness. It's not going to improve ANYTHING for black people whatsoever. Prior to this group's whining, that rock was just a rock. Nobody had called it a niggerhead in decades. To everyone around, that rock was a rock like any other.
They haven't removed some 1920's racism from the grounds. They've created an empty space where a rock used to be, and now everyone knows a bunch of angry black leftists made an empty space.
They should call the empty patch of ground a 'niggerspace'.
Just wanted to say I enjoyed your posts throughout this thread.
I enjoyed your username
Better times.
Usually I literally just link to them stories about the Left's pedo-fascination. Link to them stories about how they want to promote drag-queen story time, or how they want kids introduced to porn:
https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/entertainment/2021/may/drag-queen-story-hour-coming-into-homes-on-pbs-lets-learn-tv-series
https://kotakuinaction2.win/p/12jJGWbZVF/yes-kink-belongs-at-pride-and-i-/c/
Typically, it will put them on the defensive (because any normal person wouldn't want to be associated with such perversions). They won't change their mind, but the idea is to keep peppering them with stories and facts about the Left enabling or promoting child grooming.
Instead of them constantly chirping about "both sides", they'll want to distance themselves from the Left a bit, but just note that only "one side" wants that kind of facilitation.
It doesn't always work, but if you force them to defend a morally reprehensible position, they will defer to not wanting to be associated with that position. I haven't met one fence-sitter who changed their mind after such an exchange, HOWEVER... if it's in a public forum there have been other people who will see said information and get a bit of an eye-opener to how far gone the Left is.
When facts fail, insult them.
Remember to insult them again when things they like get cucked.
I am slowly coming to the realization all of the tactics I was taught of as "childish", "petty" and "useless" are precisely the tactics that grown-ass adults use to get their way everywhere. They were lying the whole time.
for me, if you already gave devil the finger, where is the rest of hand :)
Usually it DOES matter. Every bit counts because it emboldens bad people to do more and scares good people into doing less, thinking others aren't out there stopping it. Both sides may do wrong, may. But one usually has done most, and two wrongs do not make a right. You have to reason out what is right in the current situation. These people should be ashamed at turning their brains and consciences off. Some of it is fatigue with the current situation, but most likely they are Leftists, or Leftist enablers, who are just as bad. Tell them to stop being weak, lazy and immoral. You don't make a good society acting that way.
I actually am also frequently encountering this, although I’ve had people take it to the extreme and apply it to things like trans Drag queen story hour, so maybe it’s just something leftists say when they know they can’t win an actual debate?
Draw down scope. Why we care is because the Brown Shirts precede the Gestapo and the SS... The proper scope for Smol such as you and I:
But that requires care, and careful planning, and charity of arms.
Then that person is (too) left wing, and is a lost cause. You can't look at the burning husks of the BLM riots, the nonstop bullsht at the elections, the tech yanking and fact checks in the election contests, and now the lockdowns and walk away thinking "both sides are the same". You'd have to be left wing to begin with to believe that.
I'm struggling to find something on the right that the progressives are justified in being mad at... and I can't think of a single fucking thing. This argument only works on sheep.
As to what to do about this, if you presume it's true that they're lying or they can't be saved, I think the suggestion to push them off the fence sounds about right. If you can make him acknowledge his partisanship, problem solved. If they were never deprogrammable... nothing lost.
Present them with a thought experiment: they can will a good side into existence right now, if they can only imagine it. What does it look like to them? The gamble here is that they will be unable to describe it, and a weak description should be challenged so they're pushed into a defensive posture.
Typically, it is foolish to answer this question because it is rarely asked in good faith. If you were to answer it directly and honestly, you should expect to receive attacks against whatever you answered with (because your answer would be like a giant cartoon bullseye to them). Knowing this, it's not hard to understand that the person asking really does care and they're just a bad faith actor.
But this doesn't answer the question. How to deal with them? Well, I wouldn't bother on a platform like twitter that encourages poor communication habits. I'd probably give the troll-ish Umineko-inspired argument "without love you can't see it", which translates to "you can never understand a thing if you don't care about it". The way you present it can be done to infuriate them by suggesting they're inferior to you for not caring (it may well be true). Using the same logic, you could also just throw their question back because it's a fair gamble that they do not care about you or your motives enough to listen, but I think this is less effective.
I want to point out that this short question is a highly effective bad faith strategy. It is not an easy question for most people to answer, but you naturally try to answer it after reading it. Once the answer proves non-trivial to produce, you take a tiny amount of psychological damage/irritation, which causes you to hesitate in responding.
Of course it's a short-hand communication platform. Hmm, how about berating them for nihilism? The normal defense against an accusation of nihilism is to show that something matters to you, so you then get to take the role of bad actor and attack whatever they answer with (you must be prepared to attack holy cows like BLM).
Both sides can suck, sure.
But one side is trying to flat out ruin the US at warp speed, one is going a fuckton slower.
So my plan is deal with the easier part (aka the retarted leftists, though I repeat myself) first, then the neocon fucks after.
My opinion? If someone is saying this then their actual opinions disagree with whatever the prevailing opinion is and don't want to say it. I use this very thing with family and such when the battle is not worth it.
It's not totally wrong too, both sides are wrong, but anyone that knows my actual positions know they are much closer to one side than the other.
Which version do you prefer:
No individual has property rights, except the inner circle most loyal to the leader.
You will work for free, own nothing and will be killed for any expression of disagreement against the State.
Or:
Every individual has property rights.
You keep profits from your labour, own anything and will not be executed for any expression against others.
(Exremely simple version of the entire argument.)
Both sides ARE bad.
I point out badness of the side that's talking to me at the moment and ask them when they're going to fix their shit.
For THIS side that generally means saying "why are you still using a site that hates you?"
Yeah seriously. Why are you using reddit? It's a place for commies, normies, and shilling. You're never going to get any useful information out of there.
There are useful subs. I wouldn't be angry at people if there wasn't, because abstention from it wouldn't matter.
If you plan to go this route, I disagree that "discussion" is the most effective approach to knock someone off the fence. A better approach is Spandrell's, which is to make your enemy knock them off the fence in such a way they have no choice but to join your side.