• Stern@lemmy.worldEnglish
    168·
    19 days ago

    It was played up for the show but I think many of us have a Peggy in our life.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.worldEnglish
      57·
      18 days ago

      I feel like Peggy was played down compared to the ones I know irl. If Peggy was realistic, she wouldn’t be likable.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        18 days ago

        So much hate for her. How can the Internet hate a woman who made Hank Hill so happy? Shouldn’t she get at least some points for that?

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.worldEnglish
          19·
          18 days ago

          Whenever l have run into snooty Quebequois that insist that I speak French, I channel Peggy and say “Jay parlay fran-says tray bee-en. Jay-tude on lay-cole quart ons.”

          That does the trick and they will beg me to speak English.

          • eldavi@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            17 days ago

            i had this cuban moreno friend who was overly proud of his spanish heritage and would make fun of my chicano spanish sometimes. each time he did it in public, i would shut him up by asking someone in the group which one of us was latino which one was american; my garden variety mexican looks always got picked as latino and his afrocubano ass got picked as american. it was especially delicious if the person i asked knew that he could speak spanish.

            i thoroughly enjoyed using american racism to put him in his place and it’s probably the only time in my life where that racism worked to my advantage. lol

    • Drusas@kbin.run
      32·
      19 days ago

      Pretty sure she’s supposed to be in like her thirties, maybe forty-ish.

      • Stern@lemmy.worldEnglish
        34·
        18 days ago

        Karens are different imo. Peggy would never call the cops on a black person, or present some distorted/dishonest version of events to a store manager/911. Shes just a narcissist. I could see an B plot of her getting pulled into a Karen’s orbit though.

        Kahn I could definitely see doing some straight up Karen shit.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.worldEnglish
          10·
          18 days ago

          "Hey Cotton, meet Kahn, he’s Japanese.

          NO HE AIN’T! He’s Laotian, ain’t you Mr. Kahn."

          Possibly the best interaction with Kahn in the show. Definitely Cotton’s best lines.

  • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
    144·
    19 days ago

    i worked on a pc used by an older, very “conservative” woman awhile back. needed help with her facebook accounts (plural), among other things. she had vpn clients, multiple browsers. tor, the whole bit on there.

    it would be one thing if she was just passing tracts, but she was all-in on the fake news, trump, anti-vax, the border, jan 6 and ‘the steal’… basically the whole far-right agenda. and she was spreading that manure far and wide.

    the kicker: she’s an employee of a local catholic parish.

    • Ace! _SL/S@ani.socialEnglish
      88·
      18 days ago

      the kicker: she’s an employee of a local catholic parish.

      Not surprising at all, without misleading and lying to people no religion would gain mass traction

      • deafboy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        17 days ago

        This is actually the most shocking thing of all. We raise little misinformation spreaders all over the world, base their entire worldview on dogmatic believes and act surprised when they grow up and spread misinformation.

  • veee@lemmy.caEnglish
    88·
    19 days ago

    So, it’s clear that a small subpopulation is preferentially tweeting links to sources of misinformation, and for many users, they’re the most significant source of exposure to these sites. So who are these people?

    They’re a bit more likely to be female. While both the comparison groups were roughly evenly split between male and female, the superspreaders were 60 percent female. They’re also older, on average 58 years old, nearly 20 years older than the sample as a whole. And, while much of the misinformation about the election largely circulated within Republican circles, only 64 percent of the superspreaders were registered Republicans (nearly 20 percent were registered as Democrats).

    • Technus@lemmy.zipEnglish
      109·
      19 days ago

      This is hardly new phenomenon. Before Twitter and Facebook, it was email chains. I still have some from my mom claiming Obama was the Antichrist.

      • nahuse@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        41·
        18 days ago

        That specific email was when I knew my mom was irrevocably radicalized.

        She wasn’t, and still isn’t, religious. But she was fucking convinced that Obama was literally the antichrist.

        • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
          18·
          18 days ago

          The right in general follows the Wrestlemania principle, wherein they exist in a strange quantum state of both believing the narratives and storylines with all their heart, while at the same time understanding enough about the world around them that they can function and understand complex concepts. IE: the vaxxine-skeptical nurses and climate-change denying scientists.

          If you’re old enough to remember having to argue with your friends that wrestling is scripted, and your friend doubles down that there really are necromancers and supernatural powers in professional wrestling events, but you also know that point where trying to convince them becomes less enjoyable because you see for a moment that their connection to this fantasy storyline is all they have and you just let them believe that the fantasy and spectacle is real.

          Because for wrestling fans and Trump fans, it’s not about logic and reason, it’s about emotion and validation for those emotions, and that validation doesn’t necessarily need to make sense to provide comfort for fear and anxiety and sadness.

          Those people never grew up and grew out of their magical thinking. We all have magical thinking about something, but this segment of the population stands out more because their belief is being steered by powerful criminal minds and shaping international policy.

      • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        18 days ago

        Before that it was fliers and classifieds in the paper for groups to meet up and discuss or have mailing chains.

        Although, I would have to admit that back when people who wanted to gather around a single idea had to make an effort and have leadership and infrastructure, you saw a LOT less bullshit nonsense in the world, people just kept their shit to themselves most of the time and it was a little better.

    • MajorHavoc@programming.devEnglish
      36·
      19 days ago

      Someone compare these stats with lead paint exposure stats. I’m so curious if we can finally get positive correlation.

      More honestly, it’s easier to accept that people we love are brain damaged, than just plain gullible.

    • Drusas@kbin.run
      20·
      19 days ago

      I’m going to guess a big part of the reason that older women spread misinformation more than older men do is that women are more chronically online at that age as opposed to trying to be active and out of the house, and/or less likely to be employed and therefore have a lot of time on their hands with no kids to take care of now that they’re all grown up.

      • livus@kbin.social
        26·
        18 days ago

        I think you’re right - women are also socialized to seek out social/interpersonal connections more than men; this is a big factor in why the suicide rate for elderly men tends to be significantly higher than for elderly women.

        This doesn’t explain the 60 year olds but with the elderly (70+) women in my life, the vulnerability to misinformation is also an artifact of their comparatively poor levels of education. They were schooled with the expectation that they would be SAHMs.

  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.worldEnglish
    68·
    18 days ago

    I think many of us can remember when their grandparents got their first email account.

    FWD:FWD: don’t fall for this kidney harvesting scam!

  • 01011@monero.townEnglish
    65·
    18 days ago

    So the demo that likes to spread malicious gossip (and lies) in real life also does so online? I’m shocked…

    • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      18 days ago

      I was actually shocked when I found the quiet lady in accounting was actually a huge Twitter user who spewed such wild shit, at the level of JK Rowling toxicity.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
      18·
      18 days ago

      Social media, not just Twitter. The key issue here is human nature. These platforms are just the force multiplier. Misinformation is alive and well on Lemmy as well. It just flies under the radar for the most part because it doesn’t go against your prior beliefs.

        • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          17 days ago

          Tankie stuff

          “Don’t vote” propaganda stuff

          For a relatively tame one, just yesterday there was this idea making the rounds that Cohen saw jail time for the “exact same crime” that Trump did, so we could expect jail time for Trump. This despite the fact that they actually did totally different crimes.

          In my experience so far, lemmings are the dumbest and most naive userbase of any social media I’ve ever been on. But then I left Facebook back in like '07 so I didn’t see the worst of it

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        18 days ago

        I’m curious if there’s any software way to reduce it here. Lemmy admins aren’t enslaved by profit like most social networks.

        • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
          5·
          18 days ago

          I don’t think there’s a silver bullet for it. What works is critical thinking and humility about what you don’t know. One good rule of thumb is to keep in mind that things are virtually always nuanced and complicated. When ever someone presents something as simple, straight forward, black and white etc. an alarm should go off. Even when what is being said might not technically be incorrent it’s still often just one side of the story. There’s always the other side to it as well. Nothing/no one is all bad or all good. If one stands for a cause but can’t make a single good faith argument against their own view about it then they’re not thinking honestly about it.

          • explodicle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            17 days ago

            Sure, but I’d love a software way to reduce it even if there’s no silver bullet. All the critical thinking in the world won’t make me immune to propaganda, and realistically the average person isn’t going to change any time soon.

            If there’s always another side, then there’s another side to your “there’s always another side” argument, so perhaps there are some one-sided topics like “does something exist”.

            • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
              2·
              17 days ago

              Yeah that’s another rule-of-thumb: Never say never or always, there’s always an exception. I’m also fully aware of the irony of that whole sentence.

              Yeah I get what you mean. Would be nice to have but I don’t know how such an add-on would work in practice. I imagine that rather than filtering it out it would instead need to be something that adds a correction/context next to it. There’s usually atleast a kernel of truth even in misinformation so simply just hiding it doesn’t seem optimal either. An interesting point about free-speech I heard recently was that by silencing the fringes it leaves the rest of us ignorant to what views people hold as well as prevents us from hearing all the evidence that they’re wrong. Generally I’m not against misinformation on places like Lemmy but what I do wish is that the top comment on each thread was the one providing nuance, context and correction. This place just doesn’t encourage that. There’s a set of accepted beliefs and viewpoints and anything going against that is just met with hostility. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful psychological phenomenom and people don’t like their beliefs challenged.

            • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              17 days ago

              Sure, but I’d love a software way to reduce it even if there’s no silver bullet.

              Restricting new accounts.

        • oce 🐆@jlai.luEnglish
          3·
          18 days ago

          Maybe an LLM fed with the political science equivalent of IPCC reports. Just need to get those consensual reports written!

  • Snapz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    17 days ago

    Boomers are intimidated by tech (which, fine…) and FULL of unearned pride and an always churning fear of being exposed as frauds who don’t deserve allv they have.

    The combination means they need to performatively “do tech” to prove to the kids (and to themselves, because of course they are also raging narcissists) that they “have the memes” too and can “do a post”.

    So they will do this misinfo spreading, likely often unknowingly, bit not for the obvious reason.

    • tempest@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      17 days ago

      Watching my parents age has made me incredibly ageist in my political views.

      People in their 60s and 70s should not be in office.