• 1 Post
  • 52 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: January 24th, 2024

help-circle




  • I mean this in the most delicate way possible…

    Do we even have a CSAM problem on the internet? Like, I’m sure it exists, and should (hopefully) go without saying that CSAM is 100% horrific and disgusting; but to me, it’s not exactly something that I see running rampant. It’s one of those things I feel like you would have to intentionally go looking for on the deepest, darkest corners of the Dark Web to find.

    I just keep seeing all this anti-privacy legislation come up in the name of stopping CSAM. And yea, again, 100% in agreement that CSAM is awful and those that create/share it deserve hell. But… Haven’t we already kind of taken care of it? I know the majority of these legislative arguments are BS anyways, and the people arguing don’t actually give a shit about kids online, but the arguments don’t even make sense anymore.

    As a parallel, take bigots who argue against LGBT rights. Their arguments are usually disingenuous and clearly pushing an alternative agenda; but even those lunatics have stopped trying to claim the reason for their hatred is because gays are all diseased and full of AIDS, because most people are well aware that, not only is AIDS not limited to gay people, but AIDS itself is far less of an issue than it was in decades past. Like AIDS is still a terrible disease, but we kind of have it under control at this point and it’s silly to talk about as if it’s still a crisis.

    Do we even have a CSAM crisis that warrants any of this? Even in the heads of those too dumb to realize these things aren’t about CSAM at all?



  • I’m always extremely wary of post-mortem criticisms of hated figures. Especially when that criticism is about physical characteristics. Just way too many instances in history of people making shit up after the fact like “and he had a small penis too!”. Take the supposed autopsy of King Charles II of Spain which includes such gems as his body “did not contain a single drop of blood”, that his heart was the “size of a peppercorn”, and he had “a single testicle, black as coal”.

    Not saying the people making these claims on Hitler are wrong, but it sounds very similar to other instances of historians not letting the truth get in the way of a good story.









  • To play devil’s advocate, an issue arises when there AREN’T more verifiable sources. If someone makes an outlandish claim like “Billy Joel used to wash his ass with crisco” and cites a dubious interview, it’s hard to find a source that definitively states Billy Joel DIDN’T wash his ass with crisco. Even worse, is if there was an actual, verified instance of one time where Billy Joel washed his ass with crisco. That may have been the only time he ever did it, and it may have been done as a joke or something like that, but now we have an interview saying he did it regularly, and an example of when he did. Now it’s a lot harder to disprove.

    I feel gross defending Republican talking points, now I need to go take a shower. Maybe wash my ass with crisco.