I get the vibe “lefty memes” is a misnomer, and an actual progressive like me won’t be accepted here, so I’ve never tried posting anything in here yet - but everywhere else I’ve posted this so far has hated it, so I’m trying here now.
I made this meme because I noticed parallels in how Republicans and Democrats coordinate to block access to guns and vaccines, violating my rights and putting me and my loved ones in senseless danger.
I’m not quite ready to give up on finding a community where people like this meme. I know it’s actually one of my most well-crafted ones yet, no matter what some people say.
Image text (Morpheus meme format, repurposed to represent US uniparty politics, not blindly misused without understanding it as some commenters keep saying)
Red pill:
Let people who pretend to know nothing about vaccines decide who can get what vaccines
Blue pill:
Let people who pretend to know nothing about guns decide who can get what guns
Red pill:
Let the weapon industry dictate gun policy
Blue pill:
Let big pharma dictate vaccine policy
Yes, let the self-interested capitalists dictate gun policy. That’s surely a recipe for prosperity
I get the vibe “lefty memes” is a misnomer, and an actual progressive like me won’t be accepted here
lmao you sound like a dork
Hey now that’s pretty rude, haven’t you considered that its very very hard being The One True Leftist?
he’s the Chosen One! he was supposed to bring balance to the Left!
Dork, communist, terrorist, conservative, “enlightened centrist”
There are many titles for my kind in a world where people just use words at random with no meaning
yeah ok “actual progressive”. you keep it up and I’m gonna strain my eyes from rolling them so hard lmao
Progressive and communist seem like more meaningful words to describe me with than dork or terrorist, but I welcome them all as long as you’re too busy calling me names to do more “productive” oppression work against me
somebody help! they’re being oppressed!
it gives enlightened centrist vibe, maybe that’s why
Definitely enlightened but I’d also definitely say I’m extremist, not centrist
if you have to tell people that you’re enlightened, you ain’t
also why have you picked vaccines in particular. maybe you wanted to express something else more clearly? there’s no money in vaccines to such degree that western pharma companies don’t want to research them, and bulk of (non-mRNA) vaccines are made in Serum Institute of India, they make this stuff for half of the world if not more. this thing is cheeaap, and because it’s a preventive one and done you can take it on your own terms, you’re not under time pressure to get it so you can shop around to get it cheaply. you can’t nickel and dime people on vaccines
now if you do want to nickel and dime a patient, you’d need something that they’re gonna need forever and jack up prices or just keep them high from day one, like with antiretrovirals or what purdue pharma did or like with daraprim. and then there’s entirely another very american problem of insurance leech layer. taking a very charitable look at it maybe you want to say a thing about availability of american healthcare in general, less charitably, and more likely, you sound like a libertarian antivaxxer
If you have to tell people you’re enlightened, you ain’t.
Incorrect.
You then spent the rest of the comment building up to calling me an antivaxxer, while you block my access to vaccines.
I’m glad I skimmed your comment instead of reading it, but still, what a waste of time
I get your point and it’s not a bad one, I just believe that despite how well crafted the meme is, people reject it because that’s not how the Matrix reference works at all
It’s also begging the question. OP thinks “gun experts” are people who own a lot of guns, and violence epidemiology is oppressive because it says things about their collection of toys. I know this because they’ve been posting the same meme over and over again for days. OP is not expressing a principled stance about class struggles and the role of an armed proletariat therein. They’re a right wing troll doing thinly veiled enlightened centrism.
I would be pleasantly surprised if, after figuring out a way to remake the same meme from a more fitting template, it found more acceptance
Try it out I suppose, but be aware of the connotations of the templates you use
I just can’t think of a template that would be better for this. Maybe I should just try a template that’s more directly fitting, even if it doesn’t seem “better” to me, in case I’m just reading the situation wrong
progressive and communist seem like more meaningful words to describe me
…violating my rights and putting me and my loved ones in senseless danger.
tbh this kinda signals that you see politics through the framework of individual rights, not systems of class or domination.
broadly speaking, do you think the problem is bad politicians or the state and capital as systems?
Seems like you’re conflating red pill (lie) versus blue pill (truth) with red pill (Republican ideals) versus blue pill (Democrat ideals). Is this close to what the idea is trying for? If so, that’s probably the real reason people don’t like what you’ve made, because it doesn’t really fit the format of the original and thus doesn’t really make much sense.
I wish you were right.
I can’t think of a way to repurpose the meme with a more fitting format, but if you could, I believe you’d get similar responses. I think it’s basically just Democrats hating being called out for violating my rights because they support gun control and, on the other hand, they prefer blaming Republicans for blocking me from accessing vaccines.
Not about the meme’s format, but the message itself, sadly.
This is where I’m coming from too, it just doesn’t really make sense to me as a meme? Maybe that other meme format with the sweating captain trying to decide which button to push
That’s actually a great suggestion, thank you muchly. I might try that
I think those seem like two separate and unrelated issues. Separate each of them into their own argument and they would probably make a little more sense, and fit the format better.
Example 1 (vaccine argument): red pill (lie) = people who are telling you they know everything about vaccines and they should be the ones who decide who gets what blue pill (truth) = big pharma is the real perpetrator, influencing policy makers and controlling who gets the vaccines (etc.)
Example 2 (gun control argument): red pill (lie) = people who know nothing about guns are trying to decide who can have them blue pill (truth) = the weapon industry is actually the ones dictating gun policy
Adjust the wording to fit whatever it is you are trying to say, and separate the issues into truth versus lie instead of red (republican) versus blue (democrat).
But that wouldn’t show how the parties mirror each other from the view of a neutral third party just trying to survive.
The point is to make Republicans think about how they look the same as Democrats when they join in on blocking me from getting guns, and vice versa for Democrats because they join in on blocking me from getting vaccines. They both complain about the other side lying and replacing experts with fools in important positions, but they both go along with it when the money says, leaving people like me far from restoring our rights.
The message would be totally lost if they were separated
All I get from this, is you shouldn’t have guns, and probably vaccines.
Ok so called “leftist,” now you’ve finished your transformation into an anti vaxxer?
I’m so tired of Democrats just being Republicans in disguise
RE: your question about the deletion of a thread you put to me on a post you’ve since deleted or had taken down by mods or whatever:
RE: your question about deleting a thread.
I can’t even see that thread, and as that was done by someone who has an account capable of making that thread-removal happen, likely as a mod or admin, I’mma say its their perogative.
My facebook wall and posts are mine - there’s plenty of shit comments I’ve had to delete for various reasons, and if you have a problem with it, I would suggest not using facebook. Same goes for comments on Youtube vids. I’m unaware of any reason Mastodon should, or you would expect them to, handle comments on blog-posts or whatever any differently.
Ownership and curration of one’s space and blocking are inherrent in the idea of voluntary federation/de-federation. I can’t delete replies to my posts on Lemmy in general, but that’s because they aren’t made to a community that I own or moderate, or the same for an instance with admins.
The thread you can’t see anymore was the thread you had replied to me in at the time.
My facebook wall and posts are mine
Not exactly. You can be banned if you say “fuck Zuck” a lot and tell the truth too much for the authorities to allow. Happened to me years ago. It also really shows you how worthless most social connections are, because most people (at least in my generation / region I grew up) don’t even care about social connections enough to keep them going through a facebook ban.
I’m unaware of any reason Mastodon should, or you would expect them to, handle comments on blog-posts or whatever any differently.
I don’t get what you’re saying. Are you suggesting there should be no warning label to let readers of a thread know a person being replied to can’t reply back, just because other platforms don’t have one? What’s the point of piefed if it’s just going to do whatever existing platforms do and not solve problems?
I didn’t say anything about labelling, but facebook does have it in place. Its not just that they can’t reply back; They can’t even see their own comment or the OP any-more, let alone your reply.
EDIH: I agree with you that labelling is best and getting notified about something you can’t reply to is stupid, but beyond that, I’m in favor of thinking of communities more as private spaces. Whether its right or not, mods, admins, blog authors or peertube videographers can treat those threads as if our comments are un-wanted trespassers and they have no obligation to explain their reasoning.
There’s no point in getting worked-up about it. 99 times in a hundred, its not hard to anticipate how what we want to say will be recieved in a given space.
We aren’t prisoners, so we are also free to choose to take our comments elsewhere, or start our own instances or communities to host them. That said, if you anticipate moderating the replies to what you have to say to be too much work, well, that’s often how the mods in other places are looking at it.
Its often not just “letting you say what you want”, but also, likely putting more effort into moderating the replies on your comment than yourself will have to. Work and effort you mostly won’t see or acknowlege.
I still don’t quite get what you’re saying. I’m not trying to be hostile, I did think we were on pretty much the same side when I had asked initially
check my edit maybe
Thanks for the response, looks like we are indeed pretty much in agreement then
