I initially thought it was a great example of false persuasion.
However, after looking at the Vigilant Citizen article on it, it seems like the ultimate example of false persuasion. It is super bizarre and intriguing, but obviously false.
I still don't understand why a "kid-friendly" place is posting photos on their Instagram with people engaged in sex acts on top of slices of pizza. Not to mention the references to crude sex acts, occult rituals and (objectively) creepy photos of kids.
How is the top comment on an HN thread about Reddit one that burns two paragraphs contemplating whether there is actually a conspiracy running from a DC pizza parlor?
Of course most people don't believe the pedo stuff. However, they're totally on board with slandering the DC power-brokers, especially the ones who exemplify the class-culture of the "liberal elite." That's what this is really about: the attacks on art are the main giveaway.
While I "get" the Maria Abramovic "Spirit Cooking" stuff qua art, it pretty clearly also shows art as "high-class trash". When people see Abramovic's art, then see pictures of her with all kinds of elites and celebrities, they're right to see the culture as decadent. But then again bourgeois decadence isn't anything new...
Of course most people don't believe the pedo stuff. However, they're totally on board with slandering the DC power-brokers, especially the ones who exemplify the class-culture of the "liberal elite." That's what this is really about: the attacks on art are the main giveaway.
That's not my read. I think the art is key, but I think the majority involved genuinely believe they have discovered evidence of pedophilia, and consider the art a strong part of the evidence. Consider how the imagery in the Heavy Breathing videos would be received by the authors and target audience of this: http://truediscipleship.com/ten-scriptural-reasons-why-the-r....
One of the discussions that surprised me was genuine concern over a picture showing someone next to a cardboard cutout of the Pope. My guess is that most of the participants don't attend a lot of parties that display potentially blasphemous portraits of religious figures, and tend to make assumptions about the other amoral practices of those who do.
In fairness to the nutters, it's not like the notion there's a massive pedophile ring operating at the highest levels of government is absurd. We've seen them exposed in several Western countries, and both candidates had ties to Epstein. It's just this particular accusation seems to be bonkers.
I would be more surprised if there wasn't a pedophile ring in DC. But I don't think that case will be blown open by Podesta's emails and squiggles on pizza shop walls and a moon and star which is apparently Baphomet?
We're talking about a conspiracy that runs from a pizza parlor, the credibility of which is bolstered by a first-principles analysis rooted in the dynamics of pizza parlors as the top comment on an HN thread. This is some Tim and Eric stuff here.
There should be a term for your kind of comment, I propose "betterguy trolling", it's very similar to concern trolling but at its core is the belief that you are better than the other person. Your commemts have zero value here, all you said was to point fingers and laugh at the other guy's views. "It's PIZZA how can it be bad" is the extent of your research that you are letting on over the course of what - 4 comments. Maybe there is still a better word for it, it's not just about pretending to be better - ah I think I got it: "in-person trolling". You simply act like your viewpont is the sane normal accepted view.
That is not even close to being a summary of the story. Sorry. It's not just about mentioning pizza in an email. Your comment was once again completely pointless, I have already told you that what you are doing is only virtue signalling. You just call other people dumb and then link to people agreeing with you with 0 information or content.
Do not accuse people on HN of "virtue signaling". That's simply a way of saying that someone is lying, or commenting in bad faith, not because they believe what they're saying but because they're trying to curry favor with some other group of people. It's semantically indistinguishable from accusing someone of "shilling", and that's one of a very few arguments that's specifically forbidden on HN:
There's also no way to make such an argument civilly, and civility is a basic requirement for commenting on HN.
Making arguments on HN is trickier than making them on Reddit, and you may find it's not worth the energy. There's nothing wrong with keeping your discussions there.
While I agree with you, this type of argument doesn't persuade a person from falling to confirmation bias. And the number of people who'd believe such a thing, far exceed the number of people obsessively posting (and trolling) online about it.
The New York Times is only going to magnify this effect. The skeptical argument has to acknowledge the inappropriateness of some of the pizza shop's Instagram posts.
It's not all that much crazier than what we know to be true. Pamela Anderson visited Assange to give him a sandwich the day before his internet git cut off and he more or less disappeared off the face of the planet. Truth is stranger than fiction.
By the power vested in me by the Internet board of governors and Archer Daniels Midland I hereby downplay this particular accusation about child exploitation and may God have mercy on your soul.
I believe the streisand effect is picking up steam with Pizzagate. I would encourage others as well to approach it with an open mind.
Also, this has potentially far reaching implications not just for comments on reddit, but any comment made on any forum on the internet. Without a way of proving a comment has not been tampered with, how can what you write online be used against you in the court of law?
Without a way of proving someone isn't lying about what you said, how can what you say be used against you in a court of law? How could evidence gathered by police be used in a court of law? It could be fabricated! We are just trusting they found those drugs in that car! They could be from anywhere!
Every online interaction that's ever been used in the history of the internet is malleable. There is crypto technology to prevent this, but it isn't being used.
We still try people just fine, based on trust and belief. You can check to see if something's been altered.
Why are people pretending this is new or a big deal? Of course online forums aren't reliable. Of course they are owned by the administrators and can be modified at will. Did an administrator do it to mess with a bunch of screaming blubbering nasty and horrible trolls calling him a pedophile, and institute a silly find/replace rule as a kind of petty revenge? Yeah. Was it childish? Sure. But seriously, who cares? Who really believes that reddit is serious business? When online forums take your swear word and replace it with symbols do you throw a hissy fit about "freedom of speech"?
> How could evidence gathered by police be used in a court of law? It could be fabricated! We are just trusting they found those drugs in that car! They could be from anywhere!
I think this sarcasm is misplaced given the number of scandals surrounding trust in police and the evidence they put forward.
For example, the mishandling or tampering of evidence in crimina labs:
A lot of these situations have the same parallel of trust - we trust prosecutors to produce all exculpatory evidence, because it is very difficult to determine that they haven't(since the defense doesn't have access to the evidence like prosecutors do). We trust labs to not tamper with the evidence, because the defense does not have the resources to challenge every lab analysis. We trust police officers to not lie under oath, because they are often the sole "untainted" witness of a crime, especially in controversial police shooting cases. When that trust is broken, it is difficult to rein in the backlash - there is no way to know just how often it was broken in the past without us knowing.
>/u/spez's admission further raises interesting legal questions for reddit. What happens with /u/stonetear's and other legal case now? How do any legal cases involving content on Reddit work now that the integrity of posts are nonexistent? Any defendant's lawyer will have a field day arguing that somebody who did something illegal here didn't do it.
Complete nonsense, this argument will hold up just as badly as it would've held up before.
