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Re:Coronavirus and Credibility by thombat on Monday April 06, 2020 @06:34AM (#22792415)
Like the endless YouTube conspiracy-oriented channels which rant about the vast Illuminati/Jewish/Deep-State/whatever conspiracy that holds our world in thrall and assassinates with impunity, yet somehow can't manage to file a few bogus DMCA claims to get the YouTube channels shutdown.

Of course if one tries pointing this out the response is sometimes "oh, they're so powerful that they like to mock us", but more commonly just to accuse you of being a shill/deep-state-agent/whatever.

Re:Coronavirus and Credibility by catalogia on Monday April 06, 2020 @03:17PM (#22796860)
Supposing for the sake of argument that the Illuminati were real and you were in charge of it. You know a bunch of weirdos on youtube know the truth and are generally regarded as cranks. Would you bother concerning yourself with them, or would you ignore them since they're pathetic and powerless? I'd ignore them.

To be clear, I don't think the Illuminati are real, but I don't think your reasoning is sound either.

Re:Coronavirus and Credibility by thombat on Monday April 06, 2020 @05:47PM (#22798228)
An all-encompassing conspiracy orchestrating events across the globe, sparing no effort or expense to weave us all into an inescable spider's web of connected threads, that then says "eh, probably nobody is even going to listen to those guys, let's not bother with having the intern fire off a few boilerplate take-downs"?
Re:Coronavirus and Credibility by catalogia on Monday April 06, 2020 @06:27PM (#22798497)
Sure, why not? It's obvious "probably nobody is even going to listen to those guys" is true...
Re:Coronavirus and Credibility by thombat on Monday April 06, 2020 @08:04PM (#22799149)
Why not? Because what evil puppet-master settles for "probably ok" when a slight extra effort buys certainty.
Re:Coronavirus and Credibility by catalogia on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @09:20AM (#22802936)
One that isn't totally neurotic, presumably. Just to reiterate, I don't believe such an organization exists. But when trying to understand the plausible actions of even fictional characters or organizations, I try to imagine myself in their shoes. If I were in their fictional shoes, I would ignore the people who say I rule the world if those people are widely mocked and derided as insane by the general public. To do anything other than ignore them would be to risk giving them a sliver of credibility.