fatte catte of jort dort hort @roisin@jorts.horse

AND IM PROUD TO BE A SUMERIAN

WHERE AT LEAST I KNOW I’M FREE

TO SELL MY COPPER AT DISCOUNT PRICE

AND IGNORE COMPLAINTS TO ME

I really don't appreciate @onan and others from the church of the subgenius attempting to use cult recruiting tactics on me.

I grew up in a cult. I'm done with them. Trying to use those psychological recruitment techniques on me, I find particularly abhorrent.

I'm pissed, which is better than the alternative which would be being triggered to seeking to appease through the previously ingrained cult indoctrination of my life.

Here's some things to look out for with cult recruiting:

Spouting nonsense, or talking about some deeper truth which only the enlightened few can truly comprehend. This seeks to push the "gotta know" buttons in someone's head, which encourages them to poke deeper to try to gain some of this deeper truth.

Love bombing. This is what it sounds like. A target is identified and they are surrounded with people telling them that they're good and right about everything, then dropping an invite to be a part of the cult. The people doing the love bombing will typically express an interest in the target's interests, to make the target feel like the love bombers really get them.

Isolation. This is usually physical isolation, but can also manifest as psychological isolation. Targets/subjects are isolated from familiar things and people once they are ensnared. For meatspace cults, this is can be done, for example, through a "weekend retreat into the woods" which actually lasts several weeks. The Mormon church does this by sending members on missions far away, to isolate them from their family.

There is also psychological isolation, where the subject is isolated and alienated from familiar people through having their mannerisms, way of dress, and way of speaking and relating to the world altered to make them unfamiliar and unrelatable to people outside the cult. The subject will find themselves shunned and distrusted by the people they seek to connect with outside of the cult, which will usually cause them to seek familiarity with the perceived safe and supportive environment of the cult.

Lastly, people who are under a lot of stress, and are already isolated from social support networks, such as those who are perpetually online, are more susceptible to cult recruitment techniques. Usually this manifests through the subject being identified and targeted for recruitment, but it is also possible to target someone for recruitment, and induce this stress and isolation.

Another way that it's possible to induce stress in a subject would be to intentionally cultivate a social environment which is stressful, and hard to understand, and try to lure in people with the promise of knowledge, of understanding. This goes along with item 1, spouting nonsense.

So, a way that this might all come together for a coordinated recruitment effort, would be timing a deluge of nonsensical bullshit, for example a spoof or ironic-not-ironic suicide cult "the aliens are coming to rapture us, don't be left behind!" Timed to coincide with a time which they can predict will be a very broadly stressful time for the target audience of this deluge of bullshit, like July 4th, and then when any person inquires into their bullshit, they are invited to become enlightened.

Hey, Onan. You fucking asshole. Quit preying on vulnerable people. If you want friends, fucking talk to people like people. All this bullshit? It's unnecessary, abusive, and exploitative.

Knock it off.

log off based or stay online long enough to see yourself become cringe

Just reposting this really cool bit of art I found the other day

(cw: #DeathToAmerica )

I've got my learner's permit for driving a truck, but now I'm stuck in a queue for the hiring process. I'm exploring my options but in the meantime I'm coming up on my second month of not being able to pay rent. I am driving for doordash again but fuel is eating almost all my revenue. I'm hoping I can raise $350 for a partial rent payment. Anything helps, especially boosts.

https://www.paypal.me/rwcarlisle
Venmo: @robertwcarlisle
Cashapp: $rwcarlisle

#mutualaid

reading about how the crypto crash has disproportionately affected black people in the us and jesus this is bleak

all of these people convinced by platforms (cashapp, paypal, etc), financial advisors, celebrities etc. that this was their chance to catch up, and just had all their money taken by these grifters

On Elvis: The idea that Elvis was responsible for the whitewashing of rock is simply false, there's no historical basis to it. In the years in which Elvis was cool (roughly up through 1960, with Elvis is Back!) rock was still a fully integrated medium - Little Richard had already given up the devil's music after being born again, but Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley were still producing hits, the whitewashing of rock would only occur in the early sixties

Now, who *was* responsible for the whitewashing of rock, then? The reason Elvis emerged as the scapegoat was because he was no longer cool, and the real culprits remain beloved: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, etc. Some of them openly worshipped Black musicians (the Stones) and others treated Black intellectual property like they were the British Museum (Led Zeppelin) but it was only with the British Invasion that rock became overwhelmingly a "white thing"

berlusconi folding his party into a new party, then shuttering the new party and re-founding the old one energy

like we litigated this at the time but if you didn't want people signing up solely for the flagship instance, compromising the core mission of decentralisation, it seems to me you could have easily directed people to instances not maintained by you, thus both decentralising better and saving you work

mastodon dot online is such a goofy idea. what exact use is being served by shunting users off to an even less moderated version of dot social, especially now that registrations are open again on social?

How to Tame a Cat

gender repeal party

i love the idea of a transgender person who has made absolutely no effort to physically or visually transition but like. you look at them and you're oh that's so obviously a dude/girl or whatever they are

is the joke in futurama that the pizza was delivered to "i. c. weiner" as in "i see weiner" or, given it was being delivered to a cryogenic facility, is it "icy weiner". much to think about