Ranting because a tweet was just put out by the AP that boggled my mind at first, now I'm starting to wonder if it's a poor attempt at direct manipulation.

https://twitter.com/APStylebook/status/1618658301750689792?s=20&t=y8EOscmf66t22I5vINKeFQ

TL;DR, the linked tweet suggests that using the word 'The' in front of things like 'the mentally ill, the poor, the uneducated, the French' is a dehumanizing term and we need to restructure our sentences to be more humanizing... by not using 'the'.

This tweet blew me away at first. It's insane. What it's suggesting is so obviously nuts, so why on earth was it made? Why didn't anyone think about what they were about to publish?

Let me preface everything I'm about to rant about. I'm a gay, left-leaning, progressive dude who is 100% in favor of people treating each other with more care and empathy. I've been through my own personal mental health issues just from being gay, and I'm deeply involved with the gay community, the trans community, and queer life in general.

But this tweet baffled me. We have a fuck ton of ways to dehumanize people. People are being overworked, underpaid, then being lied to about 'inflation' while companies price gouge and pay our politicians to let them do it AND not pay proper taxes so this cycle can continue. That is dehumanizing. Minorities of all walks of life are treated like absolute dirt just for being born, just for being different, and less abundant. That is dehumanizing. And in the zeitgeist we even have AI and robots (literally non-humans) replacing us in a way that makes our lives harder because there's no solution for when these people lose their jobs and can't relocate their skills.

But the Associated Press is suggesting that the word 'the' is dehumanizing purely by putting it in front of a word or phrase describing a group of humans sharing a commonality. It should be obvious that this tweet is the definition of pure insanity even if you can't describe why. Your gut tells you this is just pure bullshit. It's being suggested that rather than our language being easy to understand and easy to communicate that we should be jumping through needless and pointless hoops just so we don't outrage the group we're trying to refer to. (And uh, people inflicted with Frenchness, apparently).

And so I went to the comment section, and of course, people are calling this out as what it is... nonsense. That's the easy part. The thing I noticed though is that 99% of the people calling this nonsense also have that paid blue checkmark. These aren't people who are necessarily popular or 'important', like say a person representing another group, but rather just a ton of individuals who thought paying for Twitter blue was a really good idea.

If you're like me, you know that the most abundant people buying that checkmark are more center or right-leaning when it comes to the political spectrum. But who am I kidding, they're right-leaning. They're the 'anti-woke' peeps who don't have an issue with someone like Elon, and in fact, love that checkmark because it pisses off progressives and 'the libs'. This isn't always the case obviously, but the people in the replies seem to be who I'm describing. Beyond that, there are a lot of conservatives just in general calling this out.

So what's the issue here? Where's the conspiracy? Isn't it clear that this is leftist trash? Well yeah, duh. But it's too on the nose. This is simply put: gaslighting. Either someone at the AP is getting paid to put out a tweet that is intentionally nuts-looking but is obviously more in line with 'the left', making it totally ok for 'the right' to pick it apart and have one more thing to look at claiming 'the libs are at it again'. But why? Why post it, why get someone to do this? What's the reward here?

Well, the nuttier you make a progressive party look, the less likely people are going to want to associate with it. Regardless of the good 'the left' or 'the libs' want for this world, it isn't going to seem very appealing if your coworkers, family, and friends are constantly trashing it for how insane it is. It's an easy way to de-legitimize a movement, and it's being done in a very modern way.

Even if the person who tweeted this wasn't being paid, even if they themselves didn't put this out for this purpose... if this was a genuine tweet, it's obviously the product of conditioning. You pit a progressive side against a conservative one, you make the meta of the 'war' about catering to people, and eventually, the rabbit hole will lead a well-intentioned group to make people who are just a bit too extreme in their thoughts.

But imo, that isn't what's happening here. I think this was thought out, and I think it's malicious. And now I'm starting to wonder where else this is being done. One thing that comes to mind is the recent discourse over the Harry Potter game. It's very clear that J. K. has become sort of 'enemy number one' in the eyes of many people in the trans community. And hey, she's absolutely a dipshit! But compared to people in power, people with WAY more influence, even I can see that boycotting this game that has very little to do with her is extreme. It's the kind of thing that de-legitimizes the trans community because it presents it in a very nutty way. And for what reason? To /push sales through the fucking roof/, which is absolutely going to happen. Again, and I say this to anyone who is trans who reads this and thinks I'm trying to talk down to you... please understand this is the opposite of the point I'm making. J. K. is a horrible person, she DOES have influence in this world due to her wealth, but not buying the game isn't going to hurt her in any way. Even if it did work like that, this would be far too little. And because it's far too little regardless, the outrage and mere suggestion of a boycott looks ridiculous compared to something like... idk... tweeting instead about government officials who are more actively harming this community.

Outrage is being manufactured to oil the very machine that causes very legitimate suffering. I can't blame the people caught on the end of this, because this shit is hard not to react strongly to. But clearly, something is happening that is swaying opinions in a more extreme way, and I think this tweet is proof.

I also just want to say, not every outraged or generally angry 'lib' is going to be because some genius conservative has played a long con and won. That would be giving them WAY too much credit. What I'm saying is that they've seen the meta, they've seen that when people are angry they can use that to their advantage, and this is just a really good example of it.