You know how I know my maga relative lost everything he tried to "invest" in crypto? Because he suddenly STFU about it.
There was a while in 2019(I think) when all the office talk(software firm) was crypto then it just stopped it was glorious.
It didn't stop, sadly. Everyone just started talking about AI instead.
Why make it hard on yourself when idiots self-select into an easy target audience?
Of course. Why wouldn't a con artist go after a group that has already self-selected for gullibility?
It's scamming on easy mode
More importantly than being gullible, they often have substantial money and property.
Is it immoral to harm a demographic, that consistently harms everyone else?
The average progressive or even liberal in the US hates hearing this, but the vast, vast majority of Trumpers are actually "okay" people, and you would all get along splendidly in just about any other context.
The problem is though, they are dumb. Don't get me wrong or think I'm sticking up for them. I just have some amount of sympathy and pity because I grew up out in the boonies in Southwestern USA, I was raised conservative and only flipped in my 20's after seeing too much horror and war hurt people I cared about, and by extension, I learned to care for more than just the people I know.
A lot of people haven't learned that. We take for granted that empathy is a learned skill, and we expect others to have it on demand and we tend to resent those who don't exercise it. My take is that we're expecting people to exercise muscles they've never even stretched. These are people locked in communities that they will likely spend their whole lives in, often times decaying outskirts of America, rampant with drugs and alcohol abuse, stuck in low-wage jobs or jobs that demand them to spend every waking moment working. They have no time nor opportunity to learn how to incorporate "care" into their daily misery, much less political knowledge. Then someone like Trump comes along, someone they only hear clips of and hear their "news station" praise while simultaneously explaining that all their problems are because of people who "hate america" and are trying to destroy families with scaaary things like abortion and gender-fluidity. It makes sense if your brain is desperately looking for a story to explain why you're so unhappy. Which is how all our brains work.
We all have to remember that the worst people in the world are identical to us. We could have been born in their lives with their ignorance and tunnel vision, and all their feelings of fighting against a stacked-deck and hopelessness against change that will (supposedly) take away their only comforts in life.
I am getting really uncomfortable with the hate the left is directing at people who are simply dumb as fuck. Yes, they are dangerous, yes they are capable of doing better, and on top of that the only examples we SEE of this segment of America is the most horrific and malicious, the people storming the capitol or screaming at rallys or beating up protestors. They are the worst, but not necessarily the rule.
I had family members who were going to vote Trump and JUST needed to see the clips of him speaking that don't make it to Facebook news feeds to change their mind. Approach this from a place of education and compassion and you will all have better results.
Let's save our hate for the real evil, the grifters and pundits who are pied pipers for the ignorant. They are smart and know what they are doing and it's pure evil.
My personal experience essentially echoes what you've said. I've usually found that when I actually ask Trump supporters, which is probably most of the people I know, what they think and why, they are pretty candid about it. They will also voice frustrations, many of which I can understand or even agree with them on. There is a lot more common ground there than you might think.
The problem is that most of the issues are complex and nuanced. Not that surprising. Issues that impact the population of an entire country, or even a sizeable chunk of it, are bound to be pretty complex. Here's where things go off the rails.
Kind of like you said, Joe Blow from Louisiana is often uneducated at best or a complete moron at worst. Joe Blow does not understand all the complexity surrounding the issues he's upset about and figures that if he doesn't understand it, neither does anyone else. He's also a little too proud to admit he doesn't understand it.
This is why Republican party completely abandoned an issues bases platform, aside from completely fabricated pearl clutching social issues like those scary tRaNs PeOpLe or AboRtIoN. They know full well that they have nothing when it comes to meaningful solutions to actual problems and if they did, the few supporters they have with functioning brain cells would start to ask to many pesky questions. A divide and conquer strategy is much simpler and more effective; albeit incredibly destructive.
Is it immoral to harm them? Yes, its bad to harm anyone.
Do I give the slightest fuck about them being victims? Hell no.
Why?
Because, to be short about it, my give a fuck is reserved for innocent people. Not for hateful bigots, terrorists, and enemies of the state who want to overthrow our democratic way of life in favor of having a rotten jackolantern as a mentally declining god emperor.
Watching them get fucked in the way they've tried to fuck everyone else give me the same delight as watching gas station robbers be met with a shotgun from the clerk and earn an emergency trip to the surgical suite via the ER.
I dont wish it on them, but I will take delight in it.
Its hard because people can use that as an excuse to harm people they pretend is harming them.
But in this case i just couldn't care less. Drain them for every penny they've got. Hold them upside down and beat them like a piñata.
Less money for Trump to scam from them... The Crypto Scammers are doing good for once.
Good choice, most are dumb as fuck. If I were evil I would absolutely grift them. They make it so easy!
They're already being grifted, they have already passed the first filter.
People sometimes wonder why scam emails and phone calls are so obvious, with mis-spellings, bad grammar and poor English. The thing is that they do this on purpose. Running a scam takes time and energy, you want to work marks that you know can be manipulated easily, and if someone can't determine that an email from "micosaft.pAypal-Customre-Sercicve.com" isn't legit, they're VERY likely to buy the story that they have to send money via Western Union to some random address in Kazakhstan to get their share of the king's inheritance.
Being in maga is basically that. If you're wearing a red hat and waving flags and spouting off FOX news lines to anyone who will listen, you're a mark.
It's not the onion. But now the whole world is the Onion.
I can think of no better irony at this point than The Onion switching directions and becoming a real news outlet.
And future generations wokld look at their archived 80s/90s stories, and think they were real.
And thus the cycle begins anew.
That's brilliant.
You know how once in a blue moon you look at news story that's sounds completely crazy and go "huh"? Like when buzzfeed suddenly started using all their clickbait money to fund good, legitimate journamism?
This would be that.
Or like when all the news outlets were reporting that the Queen had died. AND EVERYBODY BELIEVED THEM!!!
She's not dead. She's still out there. Roaming the streets. Seeking justice among a seedy criminal underbelly, seeking personial closure for the deaths of her parents in an alley when she was a child.
..........wait, I might be thinking of Ted Turner.
Ya because they already know that they're stupid.
Scammers usually try to target 🎯 gullible people like old people. Usually people who don't understand what's going on.
If you're gonna type out target, why the emoji?
MAGA Supporters would be reading it 🤣
The worlds tiniest violin, playing a medley of the worlds saddest songs.
And donate to a left leaning charity? Chaotic good
Nah, just targeting the low hanging fruit in a get rich quick scheme. I’m not crying though.
i mean troompa loompas have been getting conned by king con-man conning them for years-- why shouldn't other con-men get a slice of the pie?
It's a plus if trump's supporters are scammed before he can fleece them, let the convicted felons well dry up while other scammers get rich.
Not sure whether "let them fight" or "spidermen pointing" meme is more appropriate
Is there really a difference if the money goes to crypto guys or some GOP PAC? They are both scammers from the word go.
And as scammers prefer to target the most gullible idiots, they already have a perfect target group for their "business" with the MAGA brains.
The money going to crypto guys has less negative impact and might even help some 3rd world north Koreans actually afford food. Any money going to the GOP only brings pain and suffering.
But see, the truly smart scammer would have a potentially decent coin and name it maga-coin. They're looking for anything except government currency...the super scam, or is it?
Isn't that what those supporters are there for? .... to be scammed
It's just different scammers now.
Grifters of all walks of life have long valued conservative orgs, because they are suckers, and a lot of them have done the hard work of contact lists.
Ah, Big Stupid enabling the Scammer Class: a tale as old as time.
Trump was anti-Bitcoin while president, when his opinion mattered. And now that it's taken off despite him, he's trying to promise crypto users what Biden has already delivered. The SEC just dropped its case against Ethereum.
These are the exact same people who keep leaving their coins on exchanges.
And he certainly wasn't anti-crypto when it came to pushing his own lazy NFTs.
I work in the anti-crypto scam industry. I applaud their efforts. Ethical fuckery.
Fuckem.
People always act like crypto is useless and crypto scams are bad but...
Cultists are easy to swindle.
Huh, well, I'll allow it.
They'll claim the Deep State got them
Turns out they were part of the derp state all along
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