Wombaticus Rex wrote:1. Let's stop the pigpiles and learn to be spectators. I am probably more guilty than anyone, so I'll just address myself here. Jesus Price, dude, why can't you just hang back and let a discussion happen? Why do you think your meta-commentary matters? When 2 people are trying to work some shit out, let them. I know we all know what I mean, though: let's have less single posts that would work out to be 4 printed pages, with sentence-by-sentence breakdowns of other people's posts. Let's have less lawyers on the f'ing courtroom floor during depositions, too. I think a little more restraint would lead to a lot more Illumination here.
2. Let's have conversations instead of a symphony of monologues. I notice a lot of people who were most hostile towards Jeremy didn't even address him -- they talked about him. They made declarative statements instead of asking questions. To each their own, but the consequences of that approach affect all of us here.
So: two sides of the same coin, and basically my last word on the subject of My Behavior In This Thread. I appreciate being called out on it. In the spirit of Christmas, one more:
3. Let's pretend we're doing something bigger here. I know this is basically a support group for post-everything omnivore burnouts, veterans of the Meme Wars, etc. I know we're all far too cynical for mere activism. I don't want to see us getting organized, I don't want to see threads full of declarations of intent, because I don't want to watch whatever little bonfire my plea could start up dying out before February 2011, which it will. I only ask that we all chew it over and keep it on the backmost back burner of your beautiful brains. Any solution that emerges will have to emerge, to be informal and probably invisible, too.
But: think about it.
Okay, I've thought about it. And while I'm more than willing to pretend to doing something bigger here, I'd also be interested in actually
doing something bigger here - at least something bigger than pretending - which is really why I post here at all. Because however many times I let my jaded self loose on the board, there's always the random chance that my rejection of some convention or another might lead me or others to understanding the world from a more clearly defined viewpoint. And hopefully, a view which places my understanding in opposition to the forces of oppression. At least that's my general goal with regard to footholds of viewpoints, understanding things, er, politics, etc.
But now I'm monologuing again. Just trying to get my thoughts in order, in order to proceed to the conversation part, which begins, appropriately, with a question or two about the subject at hand. And at the risk of pigpiling, I'll change over to soliloquy for dramatic emphasis:
What does the "areyoutargeted" website actually do for TI's that they can't get in other places, such as the various google or yahoo listserv-type groups devoted to the varieties of mind control? Anything? I mean in terms of services, it claims to offer information and even solutions not found elsewhere, but does it? Are the coping strategies laid out there useful or empowering to the victims?
What can we reasonably conjecture is the true breakdown of visitors to the site, by categories of afflictedness? That is, out of the scope of visitors who enter the site looking for information about their problem, how many are going to actually turn out to be true TI's, how many are going to actually turn out to be TBMC survivors (see Willow's suggestions above), and how many are going to actually turn out to be schizophrenics, or delusional individuals?
What provisions can we find on the site for the safeguarding of the groups of individuals who almost certainly are not TI's, but whom we can be damn near certain may encounter this site as a result of the presentation of their own, non-TI affliction? Specifically, does the filter used by the site - the "hollow mask" test - offer a reliable diagnostic for schizophrenia? Are the surveys designed to offer, in any way, a control on the possiblility of delusional or TBMC persons responses?
Where does the site lead the reader to in terms of political or ideological conclusions regarding the premises of TI? I mean, in terms of the "story arc" that the reader is channelled through. Is there an anti-psychiatric/antii-med bias there? How might that affect the non-TI's, specifically schizophrenics, that encounter that message? Or, is there a right-wing or authoritarian ideology at the end of this rainbow?
Allow me to resume my monologue for a moment here with a hypothetical. I want to gather together a group of malleable individuals who are unlikely to be seeking professional help for their afflictions, and then sort them into categories and get some information from them, so I'll start a website full of inconclusive suppositions masquerading as fact sure to appeal to a narrow group which has recently been identified as an internet niche and proceed to survey them, register them for forum entry, and provide plenty of feedback mechanisms to attempt to make my site a central gathering ground for these individuals which I happen to know are all over the web in a variety of existing sites and lists. I'm not going to offer any real solutions, but I'll make sure to reinforce the ideas that:
- the CIA or some other vast, well organised and technologically superior conspiracy may be the culprit,
- there's little you can really do about it beyond awareness and keeping updated on my site, or sharing anecdote on my forum, and
- I don't really have any robust mechanisms for real redress via political activism.
Sound a bit like Rigorous Intuition, doesn't it? Okay, now I'm scaring myself.
Now I'm not even saying that's just what is going on, but that's what goes through my head: culling for usable persons ripe for exploitation, and using their weaknesses as needed for whatever I might need them to be used for.
Because although I have truely nothing but sympathy and, really, empathy for anyone who'd feel that they were the subject of MC targeting, in my honest opinion this is one of the most suss
threads I've encountered here in a while. From the OP on down, it's felt like a setup to me. And every visit I make or hyperlink I add to "areyoubeingtargetedwhydon'tyouwearsome
Medievalarmor" contributes another click to the page-view counter and adds further legitimacy to the site's statistical data.
The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe
