Citigroup Tech Executive Unmasked as Major QAnon 'High Priest' (bloombergquint.com) 338
QAnon's biggest news hub was run by a senior vice president at Citigroup, the American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Jason Gelinas worked in Citigroup's technology department, where he led an AI project and oversaw a team of software developers, according to Bloomberg. [Alternate URL]
He was married with kids and had a comfortable house in a New Jersey suburb. According to those who know him, Gelinas was a pleasant guy who was into normal stuff: Game of Thrones, recreational soccer, and so on. Things did get weird, though, when politics came up...
The movement had been contained mostly to the internet's trollish fringes until around the time Gelinas came along. In 2018, while doing his job at Citi, he created, as an anonymous side project, a website dedicated to bringing QAnon to a wider audience — soccer moms, white-collar workers, and other "normies," as he boasted. By mid-2020, the site was drawing 10 million visitors each month, according to the traffic-tracking firm SimilarWeb, and was credited by researchers with playing a key role in what might be the most unlikely political story in a year full of unlikely political stories: A Citigroup executive helped turn an obscure and incoherent cult into an incoherent cult with mainstream political implications...
The need to spread the word beyond core users led to the creation of aggregator sites, which would scrape the Q drops and repost them in friendlier environs after determining authenticity. (The ability to post as Q has repeatedly been compromised, and some posts have had to be culled from the canon.) This task, Gelinas once told a friend, could be his calling from God.... His intention, as he later explained on Patreon, the crowdfunding website widely used by musicians, podcasters, and other artists, was to make memes, which are harder to police than tweets or Facebook text posts. "Memes are awesome," Gelinas wrote. "They also bypass big tech censorship." (Social media companies are, at least in theory, opposed to disinformation, and QAnon posts sometimes get removed. On Oct. 6, Facebook banned QAnon-affiliated groups and pages from the service....) The site wasn't just a repository of QAnon posts; Gelinas served as an active co-author in the movement's growing mythology... Gelinas claimed he was the No. 2 figure in the movement, behind only Q, according to a friend, and began to dream about turning his QAnon hobby into his main gig...
By now, his site's growth had attracted an enemy. Frederick Brennan, a 26-year-old polymath with a rare bone disease, had decided to unmask him. Brennan was a reformed troll. He'd created 8chan, but he had a change of heart after the man responsible for the 2019 mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, posted his manifesto on the forum in advance and inscribed 8chan memes on the weapons he used to kill 56 people... He referred to Gelinas's site in a tweet as "the main vector for Q radicalization."
Days after Gelinas was outed as the man running the site, Citigroup "had put him on administrative leave and his name was removed from the company's internal directory. He was later terminated."
The movement had been contained mostly to the internet's trollish fringes until around the time Gelinas came along. In 2018, while doing his job at Citi, he created, as an anonymous side project, a website dedicated to bringing QAnon to a wider audience — soccer moms, white-collar workers, and other "normies," as he boasted. By mid-2020, the site was drawing 10 million visitors each month, according to the traffic-tracking firm SimilarWeb, and was credited by researchers with playing a key role in what might be the most unlikely political story in a year full of unlikely political stories: A Citigroup executive helped turn an obscure and incoherent cult into an incoherent cult with mainstream political implications...
The need to spread the word beyond core users led to the creation of aggregator sites, which would scrape the Q drops and repost them in friendlier environs after determining authenticity. (The ability to post as Q has repeatedly been compromised, and some posts have had to be culled from the canon.) This task, Gelinas once told a friend, could be his calling from God.... His intention, as he later explained on Patreon, the crowdfunding website widely used by musicians, podcasters, and other artists, was to make memes, which are harder to police than tweets or Facebook text posts. "Memes are awesome," Gelinas wrote. "They also bypass big tech censorship." (Social media companies are, at least in theory, opposed to disinformation, and QAnon posts sometimes get removed. On Oct. 6, Facebook banned QAnon-affiliated groups and pages from the service....) The site wasn't just a repository of QAnon posts; Gelinas served as an active co-author in the movement's growing mythology... Gelinas claimed he was the No. 2 figure in the movement, behind only Q, according to a friend, and began to dream about turning his QAnon hobby into his main gig...
By now, his site's growth had attracted an enemy. Frederick Brennan, a 26-year-old polymath with a rare bone disease, had decided to unmask him. Brennan was a reformed troll. He'd created 8chan, but he had a change of heart after the man responsible for the 2019 mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, posted his manifesto on the forum in advance and inscribed 8chan memes on the weapons he used to kill 56 people... He referred to Gelinas's site in a tweet as "the main vector for Q radicalization."
Days after Gelinas was outed as the man running the site, Citigroup "had put him on administrative leave and his name was removed from the company's internal directory. He was later terminated."
Maybe he can run IT for Trump (Score:5, Funny)
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Just because somebody supports Trump doesn't mean Trump supports them.
Just because somebody supports Biden [newsweek.com] doesn't mean Biden supports them.
Let's see if I've got this right (Score:5, Interesting)
Thought he was on a mission from god
To use memes
To spread the word of a conspiracy theory
That says everyone in the US government other than Donald Trump are child sex traffickers
Oh also there's mole men, tons of people including Barack Obama and Mike Pence have been replaced by body doubles, and...
I could go on, but those last ones are real, 100% "canon". News stories always make QAnon sound way saner than it is, which is pretty wacked out considering how crazy they make it sound to begin with. I guess you never really know who's secretly a schizophrenic conspiracy cult leader in their spare time.
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Re: Let's see if I've got this right (Score:2)
Go ask someone holding a Q sign if they're just trolling.
"Chemtrails" sound like a joke too until you meet someone that believes it.
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Far too many people are not using the entirety of their mental capacities.
I see this stuff for the obvious bullshit that it is, but apparently most of my family, including my parents, constantly fall for it. They're my parents so they should have mental capacities comparable to mine, but somehow they don't see through the obvious bullshit. I fear the possibility (made more plausible by the rise of Trumpers) that they represent the average American.
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I really have to question the overall mental health of the population. This isn't the first time some crazy conspiracy theory about child abuse in a basement [wikipedia.org] has taken hold, including among "authorities" when it went as far as demolishing a building and digging up the foundation up to a depth of 3 feet looking for non-existent tunnels. Not to mention people spending years in jail and prosecutors burning millions of tax dollars.
Since then, it's gotten crazier apparently.
Re: Let's see if I've got this right (Score:5, Funny)
About 85% of Americans believe that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.
Really, the only surprising thing is how long it took unscrupulous secular entities to exploit this mother lode of moronhood.
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You can explain away Christianity to make it sound as silly as possible (which you have).
Most objections to Christianity, like yours, boil down to, "I cannot accept a God who does not act the way I think he should act."
Well, why should I (if such a being existed)?
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Been trolling chemtrails people and anti-chemtrail/moon hoax believers and space cadets/GMO and anti GMO/pro and anti nukular zealots, China communist and CIA shills since Usenet was a thing.
Now suddenly that's a crime.
LOL.
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Been trolling chemtrails people and anti-chemtrail/moon hoax believers and space cadets/GMO and anti GMO/pro and anti nukular zealots, China communist and CIA shills since Usenet was a thing.
Now suddenly that's a crime.
LOL.
No, it's just that when your employment contracts states that you have to report all income you have from a 3rd party to your manager before receiving said income, you can be fired for breach of contract when you set up a conspiracy theory website and profit from it without informing your managers. On top of that there's probably a whole bunch of stuff in his contract that ensures they can fire him even without money being involved if he goes loonytunes and starts spreading conspiracy theories since it just
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Let's not pretend that the outcome would have been the same without the absurd "russianhackers-fakenews-qanon-omgwtf-electionmanupilation" racket promoted by shrill losers.
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If not for inspiring a train derailment, firing a rifle in a restaurant, and possibly a murder, it might almost be funny in a lame sort of way.
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The president of a major country
Thought he was on a mission from god
To use military force
To spread democracy in the middle east based on the conspiracy theory
That the president of Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks
Of course he was immediately removed from office because he was
I mean, people could have gotten killed over this. Also
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This shows up yet another problem with AI - the person who made it might be a complete fruitcake and built an AI in their image.
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That's great and all, but do you realize there is a cult of people in the US who believe that a god came down to the earth through a virgin birth, was crucified, buried and somehow came back to life 3 days later??
There are also people who believe ghosts are real and talk to people. Entire shows are devoted to supposedly finding and talking to ghosts.
And aliens. Let's not forget about the people who really believe they have been abducted by aliens.
People believe all kinds of crazy stuff. Why do we only seek to cancel certain kinds of crazy beliefs?
Re: Let's see if I've got this right (Score:2)
Doesn't sound much more out there than any "world religion". :)
The only problem is when one gives them an audience and a spotlight.
And the origins are lack of education and opportunities for mental development, multiplied by some trauma cascade.
Yes, in bank managers too. Clearly he's had quite the trauma and need proper help. But hey, let's bash the mentally ill.
That will make everything better.
Bank SVP (Score:3)
Large banks have hundreds of SVPs, maybe even a few thousand.
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And, which of them are running QAnon?
They're all running Q-anon. It's a conspiracy to defraud the American people by loosening banking and investment regulations in order to steal all the normal people's money in huge bonus payments by doing fake accounting showing losses as profits.
Wait a sec; that might actually be true???!!
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VPs, sure. SVPs? I'd have expected a few dozen at most.
It's all title inflation these days though, who can be sure. "Oversaw a team of software developers" used to be called a Team Lead.
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There are 150,000 employees in ciitbank .. someone told me Assistant VP is entry level there, and 1 in 5 is a VP .. so I don't think speculating 1 in 50 is an SVP is unreasonable .. that's 3000 SVPs.
QAnon is basically a gullibility-oriented IQ test (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if you're dumb enough to believe Dems are locking children in dungeons and Trump is going to save then (whilst simultaneously locking up kids in cages near the Mexican border)... ... do you really think the 20th time you're told that Hillary is going to be imminently arrested is the one that's going to come true?
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I mean, if you keep saying it every day or so, then as long as she eventually does get arrested, you can point to your latest post as "proof" about how you're always right.
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You've got it!
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... do you really think the 20th time you're told that Hillary is going to be imminently arrested is the one that's going to come true?
Hillary was arrested. She is locked up. The establishment simply replaced her with a body double to try and discredit our godking Trump.
-Q
Re: QAnon is basically a gullibility-oriented IQ t (Score:3)
On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog (Score:2)
I have long thought QAnon was probably some left wing jerk playing a lot of right wing simpletons. When people on the right were stunned at the total inaction of people like AG Sessions, QAnon was there telling people to hang in there and just do nothing, there was supposedly evidence Sessions had filed many sealed indictments and his outward inaction was just part of his brilliant plan (queue Baldrick, from Blackadder...). There were plenty of right wingers who would likely have been protesting and bombar
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I have long thought QAnon was probably some left wing jerk playing a lot of right wing simpletons.
Interesting theory. I personally think you should reassess your use of the "left" and "right" labels. Possibly look up "horseshoe theory" of politics, however let's go with your current model. Now that you find out that major players in QAnon were right wing jerks instead of left, how does that change your views?
Re:On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog (Score:5, Interesting)
Fortunately social media appears to be responding at last and that will deprive them of the thing that made them grow in the first place.
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Fortunately social media appears to be responding at last and that will deprive them of the thing that made them grow in the first place.
OK, QAnon are a bunch of dangerous loons, so chuck them off social media. But it worries me that views that are worth considering, but generally not popular, might be chucked off as well. Do we really trust social media to sanitise the content properly? What criteria are they applying? Do the people of the USA (or any other country) get any say in this?
Currently, I am investigating all sorts of extreme political ideas, all with the best intentions, such as anarchism and socialism. If I promote anarchy on so
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It doesn't boil down to some kind of "slippery slope" argument, just an application of what they already claim to be their standards. It also requires social media platforms to grow up an
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... and QAnon groups collectively manage to violate all those policies.
So it is a matter of fair enforcement of published rules, then. For some reason, QAnon can persist in their loony lies, whereas some jihadist nutters will get booted off in no time, I presume. The trouble I see is that social media companies can profit from allowing undesirable content, and so conveniently ignore their own rules, until called out on their hypocrisy.
Even if a social media company were being fair in the application of its published rules, many of these rules are open to different interpretat
Not terminated (Score:2)
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What is QAnon? (Score:5, Informative)
For those wondering what is QAnon, and why it is so nefarious, here is an overview.
A primer on QAnon [bbc.com] by the BBC, and how it is much more dangerous than a merely a bizarre conspiracy theory.
Another QAnon overview article from the BBC [bbc.com] from August. Not that Donald Trump as well as Eric Trump posted QAnon info on social media.
Regular people have noticed that QAnon affects how their friends will be voting [bbc.com].
If you think that all this is just on the fringe, and has not real effect, then read this quote from the article and think again:
And you also have this troubling quote too:
You also have COVID-19 conspiracy theories merging with QAnon [bbc.com].
Even though many adherents don't believe the "satanic pedophile elite" part, they do buy into the rest of the claims: the deep state, the shadow government within the government trying to undermine Trump, and so on ... Though the idea was not invented within QAnon, they have helped spread it far and wide.
And when Facebook and Twitter banned them from their sites, that was immediately taken as proof that the conspiracy must be real [nytimes.com] ...
Re:History repeats (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:History repeats (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus he failed to keep himself anonymous.
So why should Citi trust him to manage security?
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Should people be fired for being Tea party members? Wican? Perhaps closet homosexual who get outed?
Or, just possibly, people own personal beliefs should NOT be used to fire them?
Like most things, the more mainstream such craziness becomes, the more it will tone down and die.
Attacking such things just makes it seem more 'real' to the crazies.
However, it seems people will never learn.
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Re:History repeats (Score:5, Informative)
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The CIA had absolutely no data on actual numbers for either event, just numbers pulled out of their asses. Hell, even the countries where the events happened don't have hard numbers to this day. The CIA's estimate for the Cultural Revolution is particularly laughable, since they had essentially no assets in the country and no defectors with any knowledge sufficient to even make a guess at the provincial level much less nationwide. It's varied over the years from half a million to 30 million, depending on
Re:History repeats (Score:5, Informative)
Should people be fired for being Tea party members? Wican? Perhaps closet homosexual who get outed? Or, just possibly, people own personal beliefs should NOT be used to fire them?
Of course, religion and sexual orientation are protected employment classes in the US, but political beliefs/affiliations are not.
Re:History repeats (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there's personal beliefs and then there's psychotic delusions.
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If the employee is at or above the VP level and has another source of income (be it tea party, blm, whatever) that they do not disclose to HR then yes, that is grounds for termination.
Weird so many don't read your code of conduct paperwork, it lays that out repeatedly and clearly.
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Witch hunts? Bullshit....Supporting an insane far-right cult like Q is absolutely not compatible with being employed at such a sensitive post.
You're begging the question here. That's a logical fallacy.
Re:History repeats (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry, he's right.
Q is an insane far-right cult, and supporting it is not compatible with the optics of being an important person at a publicly traded company.
I award you no stars.
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Please provide evidence supporting your assertion regarding this particular person and his role at Citi.
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Supporting an insane far-right cult like Q is absolutely not compatible with being employed at such a sensitive post.
I think his success with that makes him highly qualified for leading a department at somewhere like Citibank. Not sure what the AI his team worked on did, but if it has anything to do with influencing people to buy more stuff from Citi, or how to increase fees, or similar, he would be a good choice. Maybe not now that is expertise in that area is out in public but it certainly fits the work.
Citibank isn't on some kind of mission to better humanity. They are a financial institution that will do anything th
Re:History repeats (Score:5, Insightful)
He's saying that if the guy isn't competent to keep himself anonymous then he's not competent to run the IT systems for one of the largest money laundries on the planet.
Reading comprehension is not your strong point, is it?
Re:History repeats (Score:4, Funny)
Wait... you're telling me that a guy who went out of his way to promote rumors that a DC pizza parlor was running a democratic pedophile ring out of their basement, might not be capable of understanding the repercussions of his actions?
Re: History repeats (Score:3, Insightful)
Your point ia fair, but with one flaw. Opposite of Qanon is not far left but every one left to qanon, which consists the centrists and right leaning individuals too.
But your point is otherwise valid. Qanon is a minority after all.
Re: History repeats (Score:2)
Wait Qanon can be used to slander anyone from the right? You got that from what he wrote? Logic fail, man.
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Re: History repeats (Score:2)
Yes, Q Anon has literally killed people. One of their followers murdered a mob boss to further the cause of Q.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/1... [nytimes.com]
Re: History repeats (Score:2)
It doesn't excuse the fact that he murdered someone based on his paranoid beliefs, but at least he picked a deserving target - a crime mob boss. It's unlikely that guy's hands were clean. It would be pretty cool if the mob goes to war against QAnon, though. I'll bet the mob wins that one, they've been doing it for far longer.
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Because some conspiracy theories do end up getting people killed. A guy showed up armed to a pizza restaurant hoping to free enslaved children that Hillary was keeping in the basement. Yes, he was not on speaking terms with reality, but conspiracy theories that claim a certain group of people are the most evil of all evil people will set these nuts on the path the violence. A conspiracy group that does advocate that there is a literal war against pedophiles being waged, that is also being promoted as tr
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Is it persecution? Sure, technically.
But being your whole mission in life is to destroy- suck it up, baby doll. Did you think there were no consequences to your words? Your actions?
Do you think that opinions are protected from scrutiny?
Re:History repeats (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, the Democrats- or more specifically, the Democrats of the southern states- also known as Dixiecrats, did in fact found and participate largely in the KKK.
However, the dixiecrat viewpoint is now represented by the Republican Party (Party platforms change- amazing, right?)
Here, educate your dumb ass. [wikipedia.org]
despite the fact that the Democratic party founded the KKK and never did kick out high ranking members like Byrd.
I can see you have no fucking idea how the parties are organized nationally and state wide.
The WV Democrats are for all intents and purposes, Republicans.
They really are the last of the Dixiecrats. See: Joe Manchin.
Your trolling is weak dude. Learn some fucking history first.
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Sure, the Democrats- or more specifically, the Democrats of the southern states- also known as Dixiecrats, did in fact found and participate largely in the KKK.
The KKK was founded immediately after the Civil War. Dixiecrats emerged as a faction of the Democratic party in the 1940s.
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Same colors, entirely different beliefs.
The Solid South ended with the Southern Strategy when they all realized they were Republicans now, because the Democrats were into that racial equality stuff.
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Republicans during and after the civil war was mostly a northern party, and the Democrats were mostly a southern party. The Republicans in the south were mostly freed slaves with "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers".
True. But after civil rights laws were passed and Jim Crow laws were overturned many white southern Democrats rejected the party in disgust and became Republicans. So, let's say in 1950 most with southerners were Democrats, then in 1970 most of them were Republican - was this because they suddenl
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Re:History repeats (Score:4, Insightful)
Qanon is not just a right leaning political organization. Qanon is not politics, it is full blow batshit crazy conspiracy theories. It is accusing the entire democratic leadership of being pedophiles and that there is a secret war against them, which is likely to encourage those with already a tenuous grasp on reality to take action. Witness the moron who showed up armed at a pizza parlor after hearing a milder version of these conspiracy theories. Several mass shootings can be traced back to conspiracy theories.
If anyone in a position of power at my place of employment was spouting insane ideas about a flat earth, faked moon landings, or that Zuckerberg was behind the JFK assassination after having traveled back in time, I would expect that their employment would not last longer than it took to fill out the necessary paperwork.
Just because politicians have an antagonistic relationship with the truth, and voters are believers in alternative facts, does not mean that we should also treat the clinically insane as just another valid political stance.
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So you're saying that only an approved Leftist with all the correct opinions can have an important job?
So what you're saying is that you're putting words in someone else's mouth?
No, not really, that was a quite reasonable paraphrasing.
So what you're saying is that only extreme-right wing alphas who are members of the master race and who have all the correct opinions can have an important job? Oh my ... 'reasonable' paraphrasing is even more fun when you combine it with 'reasonable' amounts of sarcasm!!
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We all know what someone means, colloquially, when they use the phrase "Alpha". But I'll play along. So what word/phrase would YOU use to describe an Overbearing Douche Bro ... never mind.
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I guess you never read Brave New World. You should. It's a classic, and it will teach you quite a few things. Among them, the cultural origin of the current "alpha" as related to human status.
Re:History repeats (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know. The whole "firing people because you don't like what they do on their own time" thing is a slippery slope. Participate in the wrong online subculture and you risk getting shitcanned.
What you did in your personal life could always get you shit canned. Always.
Having an opinion and keeping it to yourself? Perfectly safe. That's an aspect of you, and frankly, nobody gives a fuck, because your privately held opinion is of no consequence to the optics of the company. At the point where this becomes public, and those words are actions in the form of them having been publicly spoken, you've painted a bullseye right on your ass, and there's nothing slippery about that. The idea that every opinion should be protected is the slippery slope here. That's how you get fourth Reichs. You don't want a fourth Reich, do you? Me neither.
"Sorry Bob, we just saw your fur suit photos on Reddit. Being a furry just isn't compatible with being employed at Boratechodyne Inc. Please clean out your desk and security will see you out."
That fear is perfectly valid- but the idea that furries and nutcases that are actively radicalizing people who are then committing murders are indistinguishable? That's just a big fat load of horse shit.
This is why we have protected classes. Because you can't protect everything- because some shit *does not deserve protection*. Can this be abused? Yes. The alternative is a lot worse. At least with protected classes, there's a democratic factor in the formula.
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Your Hitler and McCarthy shit is nonsense.
Hitler and McCarthy thought that political dissent and enemies of the people should be eliminated.
Not extending to them special protections due to persecuted minority status is not analogous.
That was a weak ass false equivalence. Shame on you.
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Just because most people don't want a fourth reich, doesn't mean we should try to suppress the opinions of those who do.
If you suppress a group like this, you don't make it weaker - you make the members more angry and more extreme in their views as they will feel persecuted and become even more convinced that their way is better. You push these people to become both more extreme and more hidden - a dangerous combination.
What's needed is education. Allow people to hold their views, allow them to express thei
Re:History repeats (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because most people don't want a fourth reich, doesn't mean we should try to suppress the opinions of those who do.
Not granting special protection is *not* suppressing their opinions.
By default, businesses can fire who they want when they want for whatever reason they want.
We are letting them play in the default.
If you suppress a group like this, you don't make it weaker - you make the members more angry and more extreme in their views as they will feel persecuted and become even more convinced that their way is better. You push these people to become both more extreme and more hidden - a dangerous combination.
What you mean to say, apparently, is that if we do not grant them special protections, then they're going to get angrier. I agree. Time to face that head on instead of running from it. There are padded rooms for these fucksticks.
What's needed is education.
Yup.
Allow people to hold their views, allow them to express their views, and then calmly teach them how those views are flawed.
Sure. At state levels? Absolutely. And that's the law of the land.
This is a private entity dealing with a private entity. I am not beholden to listen to your bullshit if I'm your boss. Period.
If you respond to them by banning their views
No one did that in this discussion.
and insulting them, they will become more hardened in their cause.
Well, I'm definitely not going to stop insulting them. These people are fucking crazy. You don't try to reason with insane people.
Do you even know what QAnon is?
Re: History repeats (Score:2)
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You've got it almost exactly backwards, the idea that rationally discussing terrible ideas is harmless and potentially beneficial is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place. [wired.com] The people who pick up these views are not rational or reasonable or swayed by evidence. Society basically has a bunch of people vulnerable to becoming lifelong conspiracy nuts wandering around, and the only way to keep them from falling down the rabbit hole to the tinfoilverse is to keep them from finding the rabbit hole
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It's genuinely interesting to observe in near real time how established order begins and executes witch hunts in modern era.
Bullshit. He was fired for having an undisclosed side gig. From the "terminated" link:
That's at least 36K a year--over twice Federal minim
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That's assuming he was actually profiting from that money...
$3000 a month is not really a huge amount for hosting and managing a high traffic website, especially a controversial one that has enemies.
Reasons - whatever they are. (Score:2)
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Your brain doesn't work.
Re:Someone tell us all... (Score:5, Informative)
QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory. It alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against President Donald Trump, who is battling against the cabal. The theory also commonly asserts that Trump is planning a day of reckoning known as "The Storm", when thousands of members of the cabal will be arrested. No part of the theory is based on fact.
Although preceded by similar viral conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate, the theory proper began with an October 2017 post on the anonymous imageboard 4chan by "Q", who was presumably a single American individual. It is now likely 'Q' has become a group of people. Q claimed to have access to classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the United States. NBC News found that three people took the original Q post and expanded it across multiple media platforms to build internet followings for profit. QAnon was preceded by several similar anonymous 4chan posters, such as FBIAnon, HLIAnon (High-Level Insider), CIAAnon, and WH Insider Anon.
Q has accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking officials of being members of the cabal. Q also claimed that Trump feigned conspiracy with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the sex-trafficking ring and preventing a coup d'état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros. "Q" is a reference to the Q clearance used by the U.S. Department of Energy.
quoth Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Re: Someone tell us all... (Score:5, Insightful)
Miracle? (Score:2)
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I don't really care about Qanon. It sounds like nonsense to me
That's because it is nonsense. There is nothing sensical about Qanon or it's bullshit conspiracies.
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Re:That's more reasonable than I thought (Score:4, Informative)
Criminals don't like Trump either-- he gives them a bad name.
When the president's idea of "Law and Order" involves caging immigrants after separating them from their kids, or rounding up peaceful protestors using unidentifiable federal agents in unmarked vans, or sucking up to Kim Jong-Un, or telling President Xi he support concentration camps... that's not law and order.
That's fascism of the worst kind.
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It's basically what happens when you keep kicking the trolls off sites, they start to hang out together and without the influence of non-trolls to keep them grounded, they start flying towards the sun with their nonsensical theories, and it starts to resemble a death cult.
Like we shouldn't allow "troll sites" to exist in the first place, but these people will just drive themselves into harder to find places and hence "deep state" and "dark web" become the same thing.
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Exactly this..
If you engage people in debate, listen to their views and then present evidence which counters them then some will listen and start questioning their views.
On the other hand, if you censor them, insult them and kick them off platforms, they will become increasingly angry and increasingly firm in their views. They will seek out new places to express their views, and since most places have banned them they will move to places populated exclusively by like minded individuals who will only reinfor
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If you engage people in debate, listen to their views and then present evidence which counters them then some will listen and start questioning their views.
Current history says otherwise. How many times have people been told to wear a mask and social distance yet all we hear is, "Fake virus! Tyranny! Let my people go and drink!"?
When people talk about murders, the notion that black-on-black violence is the real cause and we shouldn't worry about some white terrorists shooting up synagogues or trying to kid
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Trolls don't debate, they troll. There's a difference between trolls and people with extreme views.
Facebook is the biggest troll going, it deliberately pushes the most extreme, sensationalist news and conspiracy theories. Motive is profit, sensationalist crap doesn't need to be true to keep users on the platform.
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What the fuck is QAnon, and why should we care?
If you don't know by now, explaining it to you won't make a difference. Your general apathy of the world around you is amazing. Turn on the news sometime.
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The nuttiest among them barricade themselves inside a compound somewhere and meet a grisly demise at the hands of law enforcement and/or suicide? That's been the usual pattern for crazy cults.
You know what doesn't make the news when there's far-leftists burning down their city and far-rightists marching with tiki torches? The millions of other Americans who just went to work that day, paid their bills, went home and watched Netflix. The majority of the country doesn't identify with fringe groups.
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While many people blindly vote for their 'lizard' and some people protest the wrong 'lizard' is in charge, these people join a cult that, like all cults spoon-feds answers to its believers. Qanon is unusual in that it doesn't glorify its leaders and its supreme being is a person (eg. Trump) who does not practice it.