• GenerationII@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    Bud, you need to take a breath. This was a thing before social media, I promise you. It’s not a psy op.

    It’s simple, toxic masculinity throughout the post war period led to a lot of men lying about their height (same for women and their weight during the same period). Over time public perception of what a tall person looked like shifted, and now every woman thinks that 6 ft is average height.

    This phenomenon came out of American advertising, not Russian agents.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Here’s more, the evidence is massive and every major institution is reporting on it, but people like you are tuning out and not caring because it just seems like more “gender war nonsense” or “internet arguing” which is exactly the point of what they’ve been doing for decades, making it so people get mad at anyone who raises awareness of outside influence in our social discourse because you’re all tired of caring. I get it. You are not “talking reason to a conspiracist” here, you’re a victim of warfare.

      https://www.queensu.ca/artsci/news/how-russian-gender-based-disinformation-could-influence-the-2024-u-s-presidential-election

      Your personal feelings are irrelevant, this is a huge issue that you can google and get avalanches of reports, stories, data, evidence and facts. But for some reason people aren’t caring as much about facts anymore… hmnnn, interesting.

      • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        You’re both right, though. Russia is amplifying the toxic masculinity culture, which absolutely started in the pre-internet era.

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          You’re both right

          I’m highlighting how this is a huge issue, they’re downplaying it and saying male height insecurity hasn’t been played up by Russian and other national interests, and I not only know for a fact they were, I have had firsthand access to the scenes behind the curtains where people have been on the frontline of tracking and stopping foreign online influence. A lot of great people did a lot of great work we’ll never hear about, but enough of the shit bled through and took hold in American culture that it will never be shaken now. We have several generations of backwards, dark-ages masculinity bullshit and gender division ahead of us because we were too tolerant of intolerance and we didn’t take threats seriously. Like the user above.

          I appreciate you understanding the issue, but to say we’re both right is a contradiction in this context.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      And I’m saying that bad actors from a variety of opposing sources have been exploiting our existing social vulnerabilities. Don’t be obtuse, you either know exactly what I’m referencing and it’s making you mad, or you’re dense and ill-informed.

      Yes it’s always been a “thing” but over the last couple decades there have been organized efforts to boost and amplify every small social contention, which is why you have the rise of the “men’s movement” and all the stupid nonsense that came with like redpill BS and incel talking points getting amplified across the world. It’s not conspiracy, it’s been documented and we have had a whole operation in our national security agencies to monitor and track down these subversive efforts.

      Here, while I’m “taking breath” maybe you can get yourself up to speed:

      “Russia is waging an information warfare campaign against the U.S. that didn’t start and didn’t end with the 2016 election. Their goal is broader: to sow societal discord and erode public confidence in the machinery of government. By flooding social media with false reports, conspiracy theories, and trolls, and by exploiting existing divisions, Russia is trying to breed distrust of our democratic institutions and our fellow Americans. While Russia may have been the first to hone the modern disinformation tactics outlined in this report, other adversaries, including China, North Korea, and Iran, are following suit.” - https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/senate-intel-committee-releases-bipartisan-report-russia’s-use-social-media

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/18/how-russia-weaponized-social-media-got-caught-escaped-consequences/

      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/14/russia-us-politics-social-media-facebook

      https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/17/russia-used-all-major-social-media-platforms-to-aid-trump-report

      https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-disrupts-covert-russian-government-sponsored-foreign-malign-influence

      https://www.npr.org/2024/09/04/nx-s1-5100329/us-russia-election-interference-bots-2024

      Don’t be ignorant how vulnerable you are to outside influence. They DEPEND on people like you to keep making people shrug and not pay attention as they use our emotions and social issues as weapons to destabilize democracy. What, are you worried you have to DO something about it? Don’t worry, you can keep zoning out and staring at your social media and dumb youtubers being paid by foreign nations to scream about things nobody actually cares about in an effort to make people enraged. You don’t need to feel any feelings of guilt or responsibility here, just don’t keep working for them for free.