To be sick of propaganda on MN

[Apolitia]

Recently there seems to have been an outbreak of fairly overt political propagandising on MN. Scenarios and views presented as ‘just what I think’ which I strongly suspect are not from your average MN punter.

This, and the weird AI/ reddit-type dilemmas (me 31M, 33F blaaah, aargh) that frequently pop up are putting me right off. And I’ve been here for more than a decade.

Mayve I’m just old and grumpy and it’s a sign to put down my phone and talk to actual people :/

I agree with you.
Posts feeding the same posters or posters with the same views.
You are ignored if you post anything different to them.

No healthy debate, a waste of time posting any experience that disproves their view.

Feels as if MN is being used as another form of right-wing media.

I'm ready to leave, so sickening to see our country brought down by media hype.

Maybe people just don’t agree with you!? Why would someone be spreading propaganda years and years away from an election? The majority of the UK didn’t vote for Labour so it’s not that surprising that most aren’t overly keen.

Serious conspiracy theory stuff. I thought this would be a thread about Mossad agents or something.

You must live in remarkable silos of rightthink, if you assume all these posts are orchestrated. I mean, I assume some are.

But out in the real world many people think that way.
My slimming world group.
My facebook

All are mainstream ordinary people who think this way.

I mean for goodness’ sake, more than half voted Brexit.

I get you don’t like it. I get you don’t agree. But you aren’t an overwhelming majority opinion. It’s far more mixed than that. My Facebook blew up with people protesting about the WFA immediately. No need to orchestrate anything. People were outraged.

Now, I don’t agree with you or with them. I’m more in the ‘loathe most politicians’ camp, and get really discouraged with all the politically motivated personal attacks tearing down one party or another.

But it’s both sides and always has been. In fact locally, it’s the labour campaigners that are worse than the tories for it. Though we’ve a new chap just elected who would fit in nicely with reform, so that will be interesting to watch.

You think alternative political opinions shouldn’t be discussed?

There are definitely some bad faith actors posting, whether from political parties, foreign powers or otherwise. I wouldn’t underestimate the use of cyber methods to destabilise our society or manipulate public opinion.

But there is also a fair amount of people shouting down anyone with the temerity to criticise Labour or Starmer and calling them a bot or shill, seemingly just based on the fact they’ve dared to be critical. It’s pretty tedious as somebody who’s been on here for 10 years, under various usernames, to have posters try to dismiss me and my opinions in this way.

And don’t get me started on the chumps who are unable to conceive of the notion that somebody criticising one political party must automatically support or be in the pay of another. It’s incredibly juvenile to approach politics like you’re a rabid football fanatic who supports their team 100% no matter what. Yet a seemingly high proportion of grown adults seem to do this and then steam on to threads and throw their weight around accordingly. Unutterably tedious and very unimpressive.

Err. No.

Seriously then … what are you wanting?

I think there is a combination of factors at play.

Yes there are almost certainly some journalist threads, some political activist/bot threads etc. It would be extraordinary if there were’t, because there are on most large forums.

But I think also you are assuming that people who hold different views to you “must” be disingenuous. It’s very apparent on this very thread, with people expressing incredulity that anyone might criticise labour.

This post below for example. Clearly the poster has strong views in one direction, but seems to believe that anyone with equally strong views in the other direction must be a “Tory propaganda bot”.

It's not that Keir Starmer should be immune to criticism, but the obvious Tory propaganda bots spamming this site...and being allowed to spam it...are getting boring.
Starmer will never be as cruel, incompetent and corrupt as the last 3 Prime Ministers before him , no matter how many melodramatic threads get started on here.

Are we forgetting Tony Blair and his weapons of mass destruction?

I think there are a lot of relatively wealthy people who are absolutely terrified of paying a bit of extra tax, and they’ve whipped themselves up into hysteria over it.

I saw Starmer described on here as ‘the most evil PM in history’ over the WFA. Poor families have lost hundreds of pounds a week under the Tories and children are going hungry, but now that pensioners (most on a decent income) have lost £3 something a week, that is “most evil”.

There was a headline article in the Mail this week about a single mother with 8 kids. Usual benefits bashing story, along with nasty comments. The next article down was a ‘Money’ article with someone asking for advice on how to gift their home to their children so they could avoid paying their own care costs when the time comes. The consensus was that this was a perfectly legitimate and sensible thing to do. The double standards is nauseating.

Conservatives have no power now, so they’re resorting to bleating online.

It is hilarious, I don't think it's bots, it's just a lot people very um... Naive... People thought the political party made a difference.

They honestly thought things would change, I'd say it's because they were young and can't remember the last time but it not.

Politician now and will forever serve themselves, that will never change.

Keir Starmer ate my hamster threads

Yes! This is how I think of them.

And in the long run this behaviour is dangerous. Every government needs scrutiny and sooner or later every government has stuff happen which does need to be more closely looked at.

But I've already reached saturation point (some weeks ago, indeed) with the completely constant crying wolf. The daily howling outrage, but when you click it's... oh Keir Starmer ate my hamster, or Keir Starmer is going to eat my hamster next week, or Keir Starmer hasn't denied eating my hamster.

So I've tuned it out.

If something does happen that really does need attention, I might no longer be paying enough attention, and I will certainly be slow to believe any of it is true.

The consequences of crying wolf are well known.

There is almost no chance in our lifetime of there ever being a Prime Minister as bad as Boris Johnson.

Oh, Im not so sure about that. Liz Truss managed to fuck up the economy in about 5 minutes.

On one of the thread at the moment Keir Starmer has been described as "a monster". There's also some utter shite about Labour selling the NHS off to private consortiums. The evidence for this seems to be that the consortiums exist and have taken over hospitals in Asia.
Of course we want debate and we want our politicians held to account. And KS has done some stupid things in the last few weeks. But the tone of the threads and number of posts that say "they are going to do this / might do this..." with no shred of evidence is getting really tiresome now. It reminds me of American politics where Republicans try to paint absolutely everything democrats do as being socialist and that the USA is going to end up a communist state.

Did you start a similar thread at that time?

Yes, they were just as tedious. I was expecting them to calm down after the election. But no.

We went from threads entitled "women will cease to exist" and scolding women for thinking of voting Labour, to the madness which started I think the very morning after the election of "Are you regretting voting Labour yet.

Accusing anyone who is pointing out starmer’s inadequacies of being a Tory bot is tedious.
Plenty of people voted labour to get the tories out. And plenty of people didn’t vote at all.

I totally agree with you, OP, but if you call them out, you yourself get deleted. That's new, during the brexit threads, and pre this general election, I am pretty sure everybody called everybody else a paid bot or troll, and posts were allowed to stand.
This is not the forum it once was.

Another Labour voter who feels uncomfortable when they don’t occupy the moral high ground, but was happy to scream ‘pay the VAT’ in others faces for weeks if not months on end. Sorry guys, Starmer did you all up like kippers, now you’re going to have to listen to the comeuppance for the next 5 years, sucks to be you…

The boots on the other foot now ,Labour are now the party in power, Keir frequently called out The Conservative, parties inadequacies in fact he was very sanctimonious,
It goes both ways.

To be fair, that particular mother has been on TV for a lot of years, publicising herself. She contacts the media, especially the DM.

Before the benefit cap, she used to boast how much she claimed, and the luxuries she bought etc. Anyone that worked was a fool etc.🙄

She thought she was clever.

This story was her boasting how many breast jobs etc she had funded on benefits. 🤷‍♀️

Is that aimed at me? I’m not a Labour voter, and even if I was I would still feel the same about state and non-state colonisation of women’s social spaces.

Yes, and these threads as well.

Doubtless some of them are by real posters – including real posters who've been wound up by something they've been given by their Facebook feed.

(Lot of that during the Brexit referendum, like the ones who were anxious about the whole of Turkey immigrating to the UK because of the the non-existent "Turkey joining of the EU". I quite believe some were genuine posters, genuinely anxious, about fake news.)

But some, as you say, are by supposed "newbies". Mm-hm.

I think this is a very naïve take on how politics works.

Let’s put it another way. Is Rosie Duffield a bot?