Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youāll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
You donāt get it, this is a likely bribe
yikes, good call! I couldnāt get past the Borderlands 2 vibes, but youāre right.
itās like generalized manufacturing consent
Help me out, the coffee isnāt working today and I still donāt get it. How does bribery fit in?
Ads are used to influence customers, right, but how many people on train station are about to buy a fighter jet or a tank? (Maybe itās a part of recruitment strategy) If they wanted to influence DoD or elected representatives then there are more direct options
Instead, remember that ads are paid for, and nobody needs to know how much, and that money probably is much less tightly controlled
yep, and alongside: go-nowhere hype-du-jour businesses are a remarkably good vehicle for pushing money from A->B for many of these people
? thatās raytheon, a large company with multiple state customers that delivers what it says in spec, not anduril
I donāt mean just raytheon/MICshit but also the broader use of the technique by extraction-grifters
Ah, thankyou for bearing with me, I see what you mean.
I just assumed there must be a large military office nearby and they were targeting the procurement personnel who do the actual contract and tender work, plus maybe the manufacturer headquarters is nearby and this is part of one of the more revolting symptoms of a highly militarized capitalist culture. I didnāt get quite as far as drawing the connection to targeting politicians and staffers who likely canāt put a meeting with missile sales reps on their publicly documented calendars, but that makes a lot of sense.
thereās another thing in american context specifically: generally keeping defense manufacturers in state is a popular decision among voters (both parties) because it brings DoD contracts (lots of money) and well paid both blue and white collar jobs. this in turn influences back procurement decisions (a bit) (hey, my state has a factory of this junk obsolete since it was on drawing board (like A10), can you put some money in it? closing that factory would lose me an election)
this is more clearly seen in nuclear weapons manufacture, against all logic itās spread around the country with little reliable logistics between these sites
My sense growing up in Huntsville was that the airport ads for defense contractors were kind of like, e.g., Exxon sponsoring a pavilion at EPCOT. The intent wasnāt to push any specific consumer towards buying any specific product, but to pump out a positive image for the company generally.
And a lot of those contractorsā people fly through Huntsville on business. (For those not in the know: The airport is just down the highway from Redstone Arsenal, which is where we brought all them Nazis we recruited to help us beat the Commies to the Moon. The only reason Huntsville exists as more than a sleepy/dying cotton mill town is the space program and missile warfare.) There may well be deals along the lines of āadvertise here and your people get the cushy loungeā.