Science Greta Thunberg Megathread - Dax Herrera says he wouldn't have a day ago (I somewhat doubt that)

  • 🏰 The Fediverse is up. If you know, you know.
  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
1609745385800.png

Why is Greta Thunberg so triggering? How can a 16-year-old girl in plaits, who has dedicated herself to the not-exactly sinister, authoritarian plot of trying to save the planet from extinction, inspire such incandescent rage?

Last week, she tweeted that she had arrived into New York after her two week transatlantic voyage: “Finally here. Thank you everyone who came to see me off in Plymouth, and everyone who welcomed me in New York! Now I’m going to rest for a few days, and on Friday I’m going to participate in the strike outside the UN”, before promptly giving a press conference in English. Yes, her second language.

Her remarks were immediately greeted with a barrage of jibes about virtue signalling, and snide remarks about the three crew members who will have to fly out to take the yacht home.

This shouldn’t need to be spelled out, but as some people don’t seem to have grasped it yet, we’ll give it a lash: Thunberg’s trip was an act of protest, not a sacred commandment or an instruction manual for the rest of us. Like all acts of protest, it was designed to be symbolic and provocative. For those who missed the point – and oh, how they missed the point – she retweeted someone else’s “friendly reminder” that: “You don’t need to spend two weeks on a boat to do your part to avert our climate emergency. You just need to do everything you can, with everyone you can, to change everything you can.”

Part of the reason she inspires such rage, of course, is blindingly obvious. Climate change is terrifying. The Amazon is burning. So too is the Savannah. Parts of the Arctic are on fire. Sea levels are rising. There are more vicious storms and wildfires and droughts and floods. Denial is easier than confronting the terrifying truth.

Then there’s the fact that we don’t like being made to feel bad about our life choices. That’s human nature. It’s why we sneer at vegans. It’s why we’re suspicious of sober people at parties. And if anything is likely to make you feel bad about your life choices -- as you jet back home after your third Ryanair European minibreak this season – it’ll be the sight of small-boned child subjecting herself to a fortnight being tossed about on the Atlantic, with only a bucket bearing a “Poo Only Please” sign by way of luxury, in order to make a point about climate change.

But that’s not virtue signalling, which anyone can indulge in. As Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, and their-four-private-jets-in-11-days found recently, virtue practising is a lot harder.

Even for someone who spends a lot of time on Twitter, some of the criticism levelled at Thunberg is astonishing. It is, simultaneously, the most vicious and the most fatuous kind of playground bullying. The Australian conservative climate change denier Andrew Bolt called her “deeply disturbed” and “freakishly influential” (the use of “freakish”, we can assume, was not incidental.) The former UKIP funder, Arron Banks, tweeted “Freaking yacht accidents do happen in August” (as above.) Brendan O’Neill of Spiked called her a “millenarian weirdo” (nope, still not incidental) in a piece that referred nastily to her “monotone voice” and “the look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes”.

But who’s the real freak – the activist whose determination has single-handedly started a powerful global movement for change, or the middle-aged man taunting a child with Asperger syndrome from behind the safety of their computer screens?

And that, of course, is the real reason why Greta Thunberg is so triggering. They can’t admit it even to themselves, so they ridicule her instead. But the truth is that they’re afraid of her. The poor dears are terrified of her as an individual, and of what she stands for – youth, determination, change.

She is part of a generation who won’t be cowed. She isn’t about to be shamed into submission by trolls. That’s not actually a look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes. It’s a look that says “you’re not relevant”.

The reason they taunt her with childish insults is because that’s all they’ve got. They’re out of ideas. They can’t dismantle her arguments, because she has science – and David Attenborough – on her side. They can’t win the debate with the persuasive force of their arguments, because these bargain bin cranks trade in jaded cynicism, not youthful passion. They can harangue her with snide tweets and hot take blogposts, but they won’t get a reaction because, frankly, she has bigger worries on her mind.

That’s not to say that we should accept everything Thunberg says without question. She is an idealist who is young enough to see the world in black and white. We need voices like hers. We should listen to what she has to say, without tuning the more moderate voices of dissent out.

Why is Greta Thunberg so triggering? Because of what she represents. In an age when democracy is under assault, she hints at the emergency of new kind of power, a convergence of youth, popular protest and irrefutable science. And for her loudest detractors, she also represents something else: the sight of their impending obsolescence hurtling towards them.

joconnell@irishtimes.com
https://twitter.com/jenoconnell
Click to expand...
https://web.archive.org/web/2019090...certain-men-1.4002264?localLinksEnabled=false
Found this thought-provoking indeed.
1658867339488.png
 

Attachments

  • 1567905639950.png
    1567905639950.png
    201.7 KB · Views: 1,173
  • 1569527044335.png
    1569527044335.png
    450.1 KB · Views: 709
  • 1571204359689.png
    1571204359689.png
    2.7 MB · Views: 542
  • 1572839098505.png
    1572839098505.png
    2 MB · Views: 270
  • greta_108356458_gretaday5.jpg
    greta_108356458_gretaday5.jpg
    89.6 KB · Views: 1,079
  • 1580368884936.png
    1580368884936.png
    270.8 KB · Views: 318
  • 1582430340019.png
    1582430340019.png
    1.3 MB · Views: 1,086
  • 1609745217700.png
    1609745217700.png
    1.7 MB · Views: 639
  • 1616904732000.png
    1616904732000.png
    1.3 MB · Views: 1,308
  • 1658867385840.png
    1658867385840.png
    1 MB · Views: 79
Last edited:
Click to expand...
Fareal said:
I felt sad for Greta when she said last week that the school strike has accomplished nothing. I feel like when the shoe shortly drops about the amount of lip service she is being paid whilst the adults carry on as usual, she will find that a terrible personal blow.

I think the use of an autistic severely anxious child to act as both a mouthpiece of a movement, and as a token sop to that movement, in the long term will be profoundly damaging to her, and I can't agree with that being done to a wee lassie who is not all there in the top stories.
Click to expand...

She's a child star, without the filmography, but with all the baggage and downsides fo such: controlling parents, manipulative agents, used by others to make money she'll never see, fed a false version of the world where everything is fine, forced to give up "normal" childhood for constant work, cast aside for the next new thing without a care....
 
Congratulations to Greta for joining the ranks of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Gen. William Westmoreland, Ruhollah Khomeini, and Donald Trump.

1576071200884.png
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I think the worst part about her skyrocketing into infamy, is the group of right wingers who have a massive hate-boner for her, and I’m not being entirely figurative about the “Boner” part of that sentence. There are people out there who just post about raping/molesting her, and that shit is just Beyond ☪.
 
Fareal said:
Yes. Whether you agree with her views or not (and I know what A&H thinks of her), she is absolutely autistically sincere in her desire for change and urgent action. Greta is one of the few high profile 'activists' who is genuinely not just on the make for herself. (Her parents are a different issue.)

Time covers etc are the sort of lip service and tokenism she specifically doesn't want, and the fact she's getting it is the best demonstration that her attempt to convince boomers that the climate is important has failed. This is just headpats for being a strong willed wee lassie. No one wants headpats.

Rather than a symbol of 'the power of youth', Greta's experiences are an illustration of the complete disempowerment of youth. This shit is genuinely very important to a lot of young kids, and no one is going to do shit about it. She's right, the school strike has failed.
Click to expand...

Dunno, didn't her adventure burn an ungodly amount of fossil fuels?
 
This is who wins when 4chan doesn't care about your publication enough to rig the voting anymore...
 
I just read about the other potential options yesterday, which were Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump, "The Whistleblower", and the Hong Kong Protesters.

Out of all of them, Greta seemed like the most exceptional option. I guess it's fitting that she's also literally the most exceptional person out of all of them.
 
Last edited:
dreamworks face said:
View attachment 1045864
Click to expand...
I remember the "you" cover. So wondrous was the notion of a web 2.0, the soul of which was built by the contributions of individual posters.

Just look at that tagline. "you control the information age. Welcome to your world." I wonder how they feel about that 10+ years later, now that everyone is an alt-right nazi because they didn't realize that everyone "speaking for themselves" wouldn't just parrot the same thoughts and opinions the established media lords already settled on.
 
Jmz_33 said:
I think the worst part about her skyrocketing into infamy, is the group of right wingers who have a massive hate-boner for her, and I’m not being entirely figurative about the “Boner” part of that sentence. There are people out there who just post about raping/molesting her, and that shit is just Beyond ☪.
Click to expand...
Or the people saying that could just massive edgelords, and I know you're not attributing their antics to anyone right-wing who criticizes Greta Thunberg and her handlers.
 
The Last Stand said:
That would be a good step forward. At least with climate change, there's merit, research and science backing it up. Plus, it would help to start protecting the environment from a local scale first, then work your way up if you can. It'll advocate work, resources, and community.
Click to expand...
In an ideal world this would be the case. In reality, however, it revolves around increased centralisation in which the average citizen forks over even more cash to the state. Rather than an organic bottom-up approach, you'll have top-down authoritarianism banning a thousand and one things and intruding into your private life. The only private entities to escape the new burdens will be major companies, who will be able to buy exemptions and even receive subsidies. The biggest joke is that none of these people making these decisions have any clue on what's ecological or not, and will shoot down sensible policies that could create an energy revolution. And with their unwavering support for mass immigration, all these sacrifices will be pointless as the West's mentality and priorities will radically shift in the next century to less high-minded ideals.

I fucking hate how black-white the Climate 'Debate' is. You're either expected to deny that we're doing anything questionable to the environment; or expected to slavishly follow a hysterical cult that insists we'll all be dead in 20 years if we don't hand unlimited power to the government.
 
Jmz_33 said:
I think the worst part about her skyrocketing into infamy, is the group of right wingers who have a massive hate-boner for her, and I’m not being entirely figurative about the “Boner” part of that sentence. There are people out there who just post about raping/molesting her, and that shit is just Beyond ☪.
Click to expand...
The hate-following just invigorates the actual image, because now they have to protect their idol.

I was raging this morning at her getting Person of the Year, not out of a hate for her personally. It just makes me mad that so many people are falling for what amounts to a wraaslin' promo. It's like giving John Cena Person of the Year because he said he was going to wrestle world leaders to fix the climate. The whole thing is overblown and masses are just this retarded. Her whole "HOW DARE YOU!" speech is going into my swipe folder after this though.
 
A Humble Ewok said:
The hate-following just invigorates the actual image, because now they have to protect their idol.

I was raging this morning at her getting Person of the Year, not out of a hate for her personally. It just makes me mad that so many people are falling for what amounts to a wraaslin' promo. It's like giving John Cena Person of the Year because he said he was going to wrestle world leaders to fix the climate. The whole thing is overblown and masses are just this exceptional. Her whole "HOW DARE YOU!" speech is going into my swipe folder after this though.
Click to expand...

It ain't nothing to get sore at, I mean this guy was Person of the Year once:

1092ca0ed76098b2eb5ee279c1be2c3b.jpg
 
honestly after all the impeachment articles they have had in time they would have made Nancy Pelosi the person of the year. But i guess the one with the most opposition point wins
 
Greta is still fake and gay, just like global warming.

Hey how much has the sea level risen since 1980? Are we underwater yet? Does anyone know what this fabled "snow" substance was that no longer exists?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom