The strange case of the far left & the war In Ukraine.

 "Rage farming" Ever heard of it? No, neither had I. But this is just the latest in the long list of lefty buzz words in order to make sense of a world that increasingly appears to make little sense. So what is rage farming?

ChrisO_wiki goes into great detail to describe it using the war in Ukraine as his case study. And when I say the war in Ukraine, I mean the the supposed lack of a war in the Ukraine.

He goes on to explain how the twitter algorithm works, which makes my mind drift off on a different line of thought, and that is how much I notice how left wing people seem unable to understand how Twitters algorithm works (indeed pretty much how all social media platforms work) Its very simple, the more you engage with something the more the algorithm is going to show you similar content. For example:

I once come across a woman who was complaining that she kept seeing conservative commentator Sophie Corcoran in her news feed in spite her not following Sophie. Yet a quick check on her replies I noticed that she had engaged Sophie 37 times in the last 2 weeks (all of which were just troll posts) So it had become a vicious cycle for her, by simply not trolling Sophie, her news feed would have been Sophie free within a matter of days. Yet even this simple explanation fell on deaf ears, a classic case of cause and effect. If you want to troll someone, the effect is the algorithm will give you plenty of chance to do so. But anyway back to ChrisO_wiki.

ChrisO_wiki is an even sadder case, he knows how the algorithm works, he knows that "rage farming" drives engagement much more efficiently than simply posting positive pictures of fluffy cats and cute puppy dogs. Yet he appears to have stumbled upon an epidemic of right wing influencers who are suddenly denying the war in Ukraine even exists!

Which is actually incorrect. There have always been influencers (yes on the right wing) who deny the war exists. But they are a tiny number, how do I know this? Because I follow a few of what you would call "right wing influencers" and none of them deny this war is going on. They may be suspicious about the huge amounts of money being pumped into Ukraine, they may have many, many questions about who is fighting on who's side and they may questions about the futility of a battle that has been raging on for over a year now. All these things are pertinent questions, thousands of innocent people have already lost their lives, the propaganda machine on both sides has been on overdrive and debunked and faked images/video has become a mainstay of social media platforms.

But to deny the war exists? I don't know anyone who thinks this, I certainly don't follow them on YouTube or Twitter and I have been following this war very closely.

ChrisO_wiki then goes on to mention people noticing extreme weather events to further prove his point.

Apparently 60% of Republican voters have not noticed extreme weather events opposed to only 22% of Democrat voters. He extrapolates this to climate change denial, he doesn't reveal his source of this data (always makes me suspicious) but the worrying thing here is he has definitely taken the opinion that Democrat voters always tell the truth and the only thing worth noting is how much Republican voters deny the truth (lie) It doesn't strike Chris that maybe Democrat voters might themselves be lying as well (worrying)

He sums up in explaining how rage farming is a very powerful tool, which I think is fairly obvious, one of the main reason Twitter is so successful is because we (and I do mean literally all of us) just love to poke each other with sticks.

Finally he then hits on another phenomenon, and that is that some people will "like" something that's been posted simply because of the person that's posted it is on their side. I fully agree here, I see this happening dozens of times a day, but he also frames it as only something that happens among Republican/conservative voters, this is flat out, 100% wrong. This kind of mindset most definitely doesn't have a political leaning. Its human nature to want to support our friends even when we don't fully agree with their position, this isn't politics.

Finally, he plugs a friend of his who is excellent on the war in Ukraine and worth a follow. Ironically, when I went to have a look at this lady on Twitter, I found loads of right wing people I follow on Twitter were already following her!

But Caroline Orr Bueno (Ph.D) will not be earning my follow sadly, from tweeting about how Elon Musks recent twitter space panel had no women (couldn't care less) to no less than 12 tweets complaining about the BBC now being tagged with the title "state affiliated media" Now I won't say she's a conspiracy theorist, but I already have enough people I follow to get my war in Ukraine info (mostly from people who are actually there) I don't need yet another moany lefty's opinion on it.

Sometimes, arguments have no left or right wing angle to them, in fact! The vast majority of arguments have no left or right wing angle, they are just arguments and anyone who engages in this type of chicanery should just be dismissed as opinion not worthy of listening to.

Like ChrisO_wiki for instance.