Some of the fake news that the righteous fringe get is the Jim Bakker sort: it’s the end of days, buy our bucket of tasteless high-calorie chum. Sometimes I get really nasty stuff, like this.
I’m not sure what to call the subgenre of politics this is targeting – probably “anti-immigrant survivalist” or something like that. It’s from one of the same spam-senders that keeps offering me ‘tactical’ gear – aimed at the fear-addicted ignoranti:
I’m having a little trouble forgetting the UN relief workers who brought a cholera outbreak to Haiti, but I doubt that the American fringe would care about that. And somehow I doubt they are thinking about the horrible, devastating viral plagues that the Europeans brought to the Americas, killing millions – those aren’t the immigrants they’re worried about here.
No, it’s playing into some bizzaro-land fantasy in which disease-bearing immigrants come here, probably from some Middle Eastern or African country that we turned into a failed state. The American prepper with the tactical gear is, not to put too fine a point on it, preparing to club down the victims of his own aggression. It’s just another way that America, a nation of immigrants and colonists, shits on people that are, basically the same as them.
The underlying appeal is the same one that American racists made from the civil war, onward: these dirty immigrants are going to infect your children, your daughters, and probably rape your women. So: buy guns and maybe a tactical spork to protect yourself. Part of the beauty of this appeal is that the customer will never get to find out that it’s all bullshit because they’ll never be attacked by an immigrant – the immigrants are almost certainly much more scared of Americans than the Americans have any business being of them.
So, do you have your tactical spork yet? I got mine. I figure when the zombie apocalypse comes, I’ll need a quality tool for eating brains.
Bruce H@#1:
So, do you have your tactical spork yet?
I’m holding out until I have my whole forging set up rolling, so I can make a damascus steel spork with razor-sharp tines. “Samurai Spork” You know it has to happen.
I’m not sure what to call the subgenre of politics this is targeting …
Looks like standard garden-variety xenophobia from here.
Guatemala: Measles import ex Germany.
But why do Guatemalan students visit shitholes like Germany?
Pierce R. Butler@#3:
Looks like standard garden-variety xenophobia from here.
Now I wish to know if there is a facebook marketing demographic you can buy ads for: xenophobes
So I tried to Google the address on that fake-news-ad and it doesn’t appear to exist. The zip code corresponds with a Chicago neighborhood but the map doesn’t recognize the street as belonging to the zip or anywhere else in Chicago for that matter.
Ran the posted “unsubscribe” addy through Zulu… there seems to be a 100% risk of malware if one attempts to unsubscribe from their ads.
Onamission5@#6:
there seems to be a 100% risk of malware if one attempts to unsubscribe from their ads.
Nice! They probably sell tactical adware removers, too.
As you may have noticed, I render this stuff down to image data and don’t touch links. So, congratulations for exploring the edges of my pathetic attempts to protect you all!
You’re pretty security conscious (and conscious in general) but I do wonder how many devices they’ve infected of people trying opt out of seeing their horseshit. Clever-ish assholes.
Onamission5@#8:
Clever-ish assholes.
I always wondered why they don’t get honest jobs. They’re clever enough to probably do OK as software entrepreneurs – if they just used their brains for capitalist greed, instead of lust for power!
@Marcus Ranum #9:
As of late I’ve a problem with people working on commission who don’t fear resorting to straight out lies in order to poach a client despite the fact that in contrast to America, it’s a crime here. You know, libel, consciously false advertisement, possibly shady methods to get addresses…
It’s an economically stricken area so I’m not surprised people, or some people are willing to do any kind of sh*t. Even if it’s not a necessity, con artists don’t seek out honest jobs (unless it’s a big mall scam or a long con) for 2 reasons: one, they think we’re all patsies and two, they trust nobody but their own judgment.
Also, capitalist greed and lust for power aren’t always mutually exclusive. Take for example the compromise that workplaces provide health insurance and pension, when they don’t gamble it away on the stock market, or go bankrupt, or fall victim to a Ponzi scheme. The decades one works to secure their future is built on a shaky foundation, which is both a successful bid for power and greed.
secondtofirstworld@#10:
con artists don’t seek out honest jobs (unless it’s a big mall scam or a long con) for 2 reasons: one, they think we’re all patsies and two, they trust nobody but their own judgment.
That’s the best explanation I’ve heard; I’ve wondered that often. I’ve dealt with a lot of scams (the ones that get caught are the ones who don’t do good job of deciding when to get their chips off the table, and do something else…)
The world that we’re leaving behind us is going to be a rough and stressed place. I expect that a lot of fair play is going to go out the window. Why play fair? There’s not much to look forward to, and a lot of people are going to get pushed to the edge, and over. Why play fair? I suspect the very idea of fair play is going to be one of the early casualties of the mass extinction.