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

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

https://web.archive.org/web/2019090...certain-men-1.4002264?localLinksEnabled=false
Found this thought-provoking indeed.

 

[Alpacawitz]

She looks kinda cute.

I guess she is in the fuck your cousin before you have to meet the boys for a cross burning down by the banjo store kind of way.

 

[Secret Asshole]

What a weak pussy. They aren't going to forgive him, and he surrendered his testicles anyway. He should have just said fuck you it was a joke, and then said something even more offensive.

If I ever become rich enough, I'll just never apologize for what I say unless its wrong. Fuck corporate sanitization, fuck feelings, fuck these weak willed pussies who claim to be adults.

 

[Shroom King]

Maybe Time gave her the honor because then they can say to their masters, "Look, we gave her Person of the Year. Can we just set her aside and engineer the next big thing that can divide people and sow dissent in Western civilization?"

 

[LatinasAreTheFuture]

View attachment 1045887

At least they picked a person this year.

Hey I watch that too!

 

[_blank_]

Ehhhhhh.... Ehh....okay.

Here's how I look at it: TIME's "Person of the Year," as seen in previous years, shouldn't be perceived as TIME's "Bestest Person in the World."

While I'm sure there are plenty who would like to think that Greta truly is the wonderchild this world needs, I'm perceiving this as a pretty valid choice as she does personify the entirety of 2019 very well: a shodilly put together front extoling virtues and fighting a perceived darkness and evil, manipulated from behind the curtains by vile and manipulative cretins the world can churn up, and anyone in the crowd that calls out the falseness in this charade is quickly labeled as some nebulous agent of evil.

Nothing gets resolved. Nothing good is gained. Just keep staring at the pretty lights.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

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 ☪.

Which is exactly why she was picked up and promoted to be their spokestoddler. To get people to angry and defensive about the poor retarded Swedish girl when the inevitable million monkeys on a million typewriters that is internet social media eventually says something crass about her.
Political groups have been using this paternal/maternal instinct bullshit to manipulate the masses since forever.

 

[ZehnBoat]

dunno why they gave her person of the year

SHES JUST A CHILD

 

[Jarolleon]

If I ever become rich enough, I'll just never apologize for what I say unless its wrong. Fuck corporate sanitization, fuck feelings, fuck these weak willed pussies who claim to be adults.

The moment you paint such a target on your back all your income streams will come under relentless attack, so you'd better have Notch level money.

Unless the furor about cancel culture is actually 4D chess by the left to make rich people afraid of speaking their minds by believing the above, as a setup for a "See, everyone whose anything agrees with us, only incel losers think differently!" argument?

 

[Arkancide Pact]

The UN is saying the us owes money for climate change damage. But it's definitely real and not at all a Trojan horse for global socialism, no way.

 

[CWCissey]

The UN is saying the us owes money for climate change damage. But it's definitely real and not at all a Trojan horse for global socialism, no way.

The UN owes Third World women money for hymen damage

 

[Gangster Talk]

I wish I could look into scrying waters and see how fucked up as a person this poor sped is going to be 5-10 years from now after the meme is over having been lauded as the second coming of Christ during her most impressionable years

 

[CWCissey]

I wish I could look into scrying waters and see how fucked up as a person this poor sped is going to be 5-10 years from now after the meme is over having been lauded as the second coming of Christ during her most impressionable years

Porn.

Like some of the freakiest, most unarousing porn ever.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

Ehhhhhh.... Ehh....okay.

Here's how I look at it: TIME's "Person of the Year," as seen in previous years, shouldn't be perceived as TIME's "Bestest Person in the World."

While I'm sure there are plenty who would like to think that Greta truly is the wonderchild this world needs, I'm perceiving this as a pretty valid choice as she does personify the entirety of 2019 very well: a shodilly put together front extoling virtues and fighting a perceived darkness and evil, manipulated from behind the curtains by vile and manipulative cretins the world can churn up, and anyone in the crowd that calls out the falseness in this charade is quickly labeled as some nebulous agent of evil.

Nothing gets resolved. Nothing good is gained. Just keep staring at the pretty lights.

If her followers cant even get their act together and do crippling vandalism on corps raping the environments their protests will nothing save feel good conservation initiatives, all while Bolsanairo continues to send soldiers down the amazon to shoot the indigenous tribes to make way for another ranch.

 

[Stoneheart]

Gretard is now like Hitler, well done, you played yourself...

 

[Meat Poultry Veg]

Political groups have been using this paternal/maternal instinct bullshit to manipulate the masses since forever.

I'm reminded of the "babies thrown out of incubators" tale in Gulf War I or "kids in cages" today.

 

[moocow]

Congratulations to Greta for joining the ranks of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Gen. William Westmoreland, Ruhollah Khomeini, and Donald Trump.

View attachment 1045874

Why, though? She hasn't done anything. She even admitted the protests she supposedly "inspired" accomplished precisely nothing. She's literally failed to achieve anything noteworthy, by her own admission.

Virtue signaling never ceases to disgust me every time I see it. It's just so stupid in this instance.

 

[TowinKarz]

It also not only didn't help, but it measurably made things worse, as how much carbon that wouldn't otherwise have entered the atmosphere did so as a direct result of shuttling this brat around the world to scowl at people?

How much food and fuel was expended to supply her with her own entourage?

How much was spent in resources to just do that photoshoot?

Not only did it not make the world better, it made the air dirtier than had she just stayed home and Skyped the UN.

 

[GeorgiaGuidestones]

She’s still fading into oblivion. This was the last ditch effort to keep her relevant.
She’s complaining that her protests accomplished nothing. Well, get your bony little butt to a beach and start picking up trash, girl. Your fans will probably follow your lead. There! Now, you’ve accomplished something.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

She’s still fading into oblivion. This was the last ditch effort to keep her relevant.
She’s complaining that her protests accomplished nothing. Well, get your bony little butt to a beach and start picking up trash, girl. Your fans will probably follow your lead. There! Now, you’ve accomplished something.

Or be more cynical, her supporters actually starting shit beyond protests and start laying down the economically infeasible methods like sabotaging resource extraction equipment or taking the fight to Bolsanairo's cronies. Difference that requires blood and not just a march down downtown earning the scorn of executives and their browbeaten wageslaves.

But that requires them to realize that this form of change is something you won't come back home in time for dinner from.

 

[Slap47]

She’s still fading into oblivion. This was the last ditch effort to keep her relevant.
She’s complaining that her protests accomplished nothing. Well, get your bony little butt to a beach and start picking up trash, girl. Your fans will probably follow your lead. There! Now, you’ve accomplished something.

She'll be discarded just like David Hogg. These kids get used and get gifted free rides to prestigious universities where they likely stand no chance.