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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4056 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 17, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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IDK if this is too CW for FFT. I sometimes find myself thinking that all memes and social movements are the partial result of influence by intelligence agencies. However, I realized there’s a fun and easy disproof of this: the existence of anti-military sentiment. Memes and so on which discourage people from joining the military have been common and popular for a while, sometimes getting to the front page of Reddit. You’ll see something like “you’re only fighting for oil companies”. This is strong proof that intelligence agencies aren’t manipulating public opinion all too much, because one of their priorities should be to get more applicants into the military. So the fact that we have very little propaganda about joining the military is actually a good proof that there’s not a significant amount of government propaganda effectively targeting the populace.

With that said, I have actually noticed less anti-military sentiment memes, so maybe this is changing, who knows.

I just don't think the memes and the sentiment, rubber hits the road, *do *that much. Look how America pivoted behind Bush after 9/11; look how the blue-pilled urbanites, the most pacifistic anti-interventionist of the lot, were the prototypical Ukraine flag-fliers. People I've known who've joined the military do it because of the steady job and benefits, and because they're not straight-up spit-in-a-cop's-face anti-fed. Most military propaganda is just trying to make it seem like the actual job of being a soldier won't be *that *bad, either by making it seem cool or valorous, or, well - I found this lil compilation on 4chan the other day:

https://imgur.com/a/X89B3Mf

Behold, recruitment for Gen Z! It doesn't even try to be something other than what it is; if you try to be too sneaky, it tends to backfire. But showing a cute young woman doing military stuff, playing with your thoughts, even teasing you about your suspicions that she might be trying to recruit you...

Nothing new, of course, just a new medium. Remember when they used to put pin-up drawings on fighter jets?

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