Of all the things Twitter needed to improve their service, allowing meaningless polls of your subset of readers wasn’t one of them. But there you go, you can create polls and get the biases of your readership expressed in cold, hard numbers that mean nothing at all.
Here’s an example.
Do you agree that Black Lives Matter #BLM is the new black version of the Klu Klux Klan? (Retweet)
— Let's take a poll (@ASatyanarayanan) July 11, 2016
Do you agree that Black Lives Matter #BLM is the new black version of the Klu Klux Klan?
80% Yes
20% No
(I think you’ll need to go to this link on Twitter.com and have a twitter account to vote.)
So here’s a guy who has a lot of racist friends, who has made an utterly stupid racist statement, and is asking all of his fucking racist buddies to validate it.
Thanks, Twitter.
“I think you’re dreamy. Do you think I’m dreamy too? Choose one: (Y) (N) (M) -Adolf.”
Twitter in 1934
A racist complaining about the KKK? Like the Brexiteers complaining about the Nazis and ranting about the immigrants in the same breath. Why are the racists always so clueless? (No need to answer – the question is rhetorical.)
Once reactionaries started calling themselves victims of lynch-mobs, witchhunts, hippie-punching, and redbaiting, I no longer feel surprise at the crass depths to which they plummet in order to feel victimized by people asserting their civil rights and asking for equality. Yes, blocking traffic is just like throwing a lynch party. Expecting police not to execute black people is an act of terrorism and genocide. For fuck’s sake, what is keeping that bloody meteor?
It decided it wants nothing to do with us.
A friend of mine, who has a blog over on Livejournal, really likes to do polls – most frivolous, some serious, but whatever they are about, he always includes as an option “I want to complain about this poll.”
That’s what this guy should do, if he’s got any guts. Which he doesn’t.
The assholes are just aping what’s already been spread all over the news: http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/what-you-did-appalls-me-reporter-blisters-tomi-lahren-for-calling-black-activists-the-new-kkk/
My brother posted something from Milo Yiannopoulos that purports to “DEBUNK [sic] #BlackLivesMater myths with basic statistics.” I just bet. Here are the “5 most important FACTS”.
My fav is “2. Less than 400 people a year are killed by cops, 61% of them are white. 32% are black.” This is an old misuse of statistics. Of course, there are more whites…there are a lot more whites (64%) than blacks (12%) in the US (2010 census).
What really galls me about all of this is that the discussion completely avoids the questions of economic class. I bet if you looked at the economic status of whites killed by cops, you would find that they are overwhelmingly poorer than average…just like the blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans killed by cops on a routine basis.
I read Twitter occasionally too and saw the {~~?~~?~} poll asking “does one agrees that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is racism in Science”.
I sputtered while laughing at that racististic question. Trying to imagine how one could see evolution as racism. Only by going the racist thought pattern of taking the ToE partially, that Evolution says white people are more fit than Africans, so ToE must be racist.
Thinking a well documented and vetted Theory is racist, can only be considered by a racist themselves. Dismissing the question as racism disguised as a serious question.
Well, publicity seems to have bent the poll towards a more “balanced” position; currently it stands at 52% Yes, 48% No. Not that it will make much difference to the pollster, I suspect.
Pharyngulating nicely — 67% No.
I recently heard a lecture about how important social media like twitter and facebook is, including for scientists and lab workers. I’d prefer to remain a dinosaur in that regard, thanks.
What inanity.
Poll:
Do you know what a “self-selected sample is?”
a) Yes
b) I’m a social scientist I don’t give a shit
c) I’m from Pharyngula
d) No
There, I think I got all the rong you can have in one place. Self-selected, leading question, overlapping responses, loaded selections. (satisfied)
robro@#7:
I’m surprised Milo’s writing team hasn’t hit on the brilliant suggestion of having the cops kill a bunch of white people, so everything is balanced out nicely.
Poll:
Are you intelligent enough to spell Ku Klux Klan correctly?
a) Yes
b) No?
@15 Well done!
BLM is like the KKK the way that what happened to Clarence Thomas was like a lynching.
Honestly, I’ve been amazed at the discipline of BLM. They have consistently remained calm in the face of violent, reactionary police, and a hostile, belligerent media. If they had acted like those libertarian , sovereign citizens types that flocked to Clive Bundy’s ranch then there would be a lot more dead people.
what do they consider the old black version of the KKK to be? Let’s talk about that implication in the question.
Wasn’t the actually a cartoon in the seventies called the Klu Klux Klan. Did I dream this?
White shooter -> love wolf with mental problems
Black shooter -> All BLM is to blame.
I could have sworn there was one, clueless, idiotic Saturday morning show, the worst play on words ever.
But I bet one of you could write one: a group of kooky kids in a beat up van (with a confederate flag on the side) search for clues as to how #BLM is taking over America.
and ruining white Christmas.
How do we know the tweeter is a racist?
And rietpluim @2 why compare Brexiteers to Nazis?
There isn’t enough evidence to sustain either comparison.
You guys are doing exactly what you criticize the right for doing, jumping to unfounded conclusions.
If a conservative wanted to limit the number of Muslims coming into a country because of the possibility of allowing terrorist in you’d criticize him for over generalizing.
Yet his generalization is actually more reasonable than yours.
Let me ask you all:
Whom would you rather have as a neighbor, a self -described
moderate Muslim or a self-described White Nationalist?
Why did you make the choice you made?
A moderate Muslim, please.
Because White Nationalists are by definition fucking stupid bigoted crap heads and I’d rather move house than have to put up with one. Because as a non nationalistic person I’d be firmly in their sights for harassment.
BE DEUTSCH
Kevin Terrell:
It’s an inference, not knowledge.
Let me introduce you to the duck test.
(Or, to put it differently: heuristics)
Your insinuation is very imprecise: What rietpluim compared was “A racist complaining about the KKK? Like the Brexiteers complaining about the Nazis and ranting about the immigrants in the same breath.” — i.e. [racists:KKK::Brexiters:Nazis(immigrants)].
You did intimate that you infer that the KKK is racist, though. Give you that.
(And hey, Brexiteers are totally not into National Socialism, right?)
Hmmmm… an admitted religious but moderate person, or an admitted xenophobic, racist person. Dunno, depends on the person’s actions, far more so than their claims. So: insufficient information upon which to make a determination.
More to the point, religious Muslims (exactly like religious Christians!) discriminate on the basis of religion, not of race. But the issue featured in the OP is about racial — rather than religious — discrimination.
(Care to attempt to rephrase your attempted leading question in racial rather than mixed terms?)
I swear, racists have an obnoxious persecution complex. That’s why I call them Klanileos.
Is this some sort of trick question? The moderate Muslim, of course. Heck, I’d rather have a self-described radical Muslim as a neighbor than a white nationalist. At least, if I live in the US or Europe. I’d take the white nationalist over the radical Muslim if I lived in Iraq or Saudi Arabia.
@23 – Would you care to quote one of these geniuses to show us what you mean by “reasonable”?
Kevin Terrell, #23
Did you look at the other polls and the retweets on that account?
Also will take the moderate Muslim.
All White Nationalists are bigoted assholes. A lot of moderate Muslims are not.
You ask very easy questions.
Hmm…Since I know many moderate Muslims, and how they act and think, this is a no-brainer. I’ll take the moderate Muslim over the asshole with guns, ego and bigoted attitude every day of the week.
Kevin Terrell:
Maybe you should have taken 2 seconds to actually check the guys twitter feed. And then it would become abundantly clear that yes, he is a full blown racist.
But let me help a bit:
– She’s being honest! (retweeting the news story “Conservative host under fire for calling Black Lives Matter ‘new KKK'”)
– Retweets: “The BS from blacks on slavery is nauseating. They’re too dumb to know their genetic code would be gone if stronger tribes didn’t sell ’em.”
– Retweets: “You know 330,000 white men died to free the slaves you bitch about all the time, right?”
I think we are done here/
Kevin Terrell:
Maybe you should have taken 2 seconds to actually check the guys twitter feed. And then it would become abundantly clear that yes, he is a full blown racist.
But let me help a bit:
– She’s being honest! (retweeting the news story “Conservative host under fire for calling Black Lives Matter ‘new KKK'”)
– Retweets: “The BS from blacks on slavery is nauseating. They’re too dumb to know their genetic code would be gone if stronger tribes didn’t sell ’em.”
– Retweets: “You know 330,000 white men died to free the slaves you b* about all the time, right?”
I think we are done here.
(Posted again with word removed that probably triggered the filter.)
@Kevin Terrell #23 – Read again. I was talking about those Brexiteers ranting against the EU because Hitler wanted a unified Europe too, and in the same breath against the bloody immigrants who are ruining their otherwise superior nation. They don’t even see the latter makes them more like Hitler than the EU is.
Also, many of neighbors are moderate Muslims.