RE: https://mstdn.social/@DemocracyMattersALot/116868444258059787
I encourage you to troll anyone Ayn-Rand-adjacent by sending them this image with the caption “Makers vs Takers” and then completely ignore every word of the long reply you receive
@inthehands the way this is. 🖖
@inthehands Best troll I ever did was on a 9/11 truther. I was willing to talk through the evidence once but when we circled back to things we'd already discussed, I started posting kitten pics. He knew I read his posts, but I didn't take the bait. It drove him apeshit. :)
Jul 6, 2026, 4:41 PM@rjblaskiewicz
You may have seen this years ago when I lived in Halifax, Canada. I followed a couple Truthers around removing their "911 was an inside job" bumper stickers. They must have spent hundreds on those Info Wars stickers. Such cheap quality vinyl stickers, they just came off in one piece.
It was nice to be one of They for a while, ruining their propaganda campaign for months.
Way better than debating them when they found my FB post of all the stickers I'd removed.
@xinit @inthehands LOL
@inthehands Wyo actually used to be a donor state. At onetime, we had so much in the coffers, they were considering on giving checks to everyone. And then honestly, Biden killed our gas industry, and we never recovered which let MAGA usurp the state. "That square state..they're doing things right. Let's not let them do that" is kinda what happened. We're a little a little bitter about it.
I'm not sure I completely buy this argument: (1) Wyoming only just baaarely crept over the net donor / net recipient line recently; it was a very small shift. (2) The gas industry •needs• to die, and I’m all for using fed money to soften the blow of killing it for individuals. (3) Most skeptical: “let MAGA usurp the state?!?” Wyoming has been one of the most deep-red states in the country since I was a kid next door to it in the 80s, so….
@inthehands maga wasn’t a problem until the freedom caucus came in. Red yes. But republicanism in Wyoming works more like Libertarianism does.
I don’t know, I was in high school maybe an hour or two from where homophobes murdered Matthew Shepard and left his body by the side of the road, which hardly seems a Libertarian thing to do.
Again, I'm from that part of the world. I know the Libertarian veneer, and I also know how much it resembled MAGA beneath that veneer even in the 80s and 90s.
I mean, I don't know, maybe we got different cross sections of that Western Libertarian streak…but many of the tastes I got in Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming growing up there were appalling racist, homophobic, religiously fundamentalist, and primed for Trumpism.
@inthehands Yes. Well, none of those things about Wyoming are true. And I don't appreciate the suggestion that we are like that. So.....
Jul 6, 2026, 10:18 AM@praetor I honestly don't see an argument for the jump from "many of the tastes I got" to "suggestion we are like that"
The statement "all Wyomingans are like that" is easily refuted by a single counterexample, and "some..." needs only one example. I've never been, but the assumption they're all the same is ridiculous, no?
From where I'm sitting (far away) it looks like you introduced a false assumption and then got all worked up about it.
Am I missing something?
@inthehands I partied at the bar he was it when I lived in Laramie. And I’m also gay. And BORN there in the 80s, romped in the 90s, went to UW in the 00s, and moved to SLC….literally 90 mimutes from my hometown in the 10s. So you can shut your fucking mouth, mm’kay. I knew Coloradoans were self-righteous but fuck.
I'm basing what I said on encountering people like this (this church was just a few miles from the house where I grew up):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaPorte_Church_of_Christ
Maybe that brand of more already-MAGA-flavored conservatism was more Colorado Springs centered, and attenuated the further you got into Wyoming? Maybe it's just about what each of us happened to encounter by chance, born roughly the same time and not too far apart but having different experiences? Who knows. I can only speak from my own experience; both of us can. In any case:
> So you can shut your fucking mouth, mm’kay. I knew Coloradoans were self-righteous but fuck.
That’s really not necessary.
@inthehands For one, that is a church in Colorado. Wyoming isn't religiously homogenized. The only place it is, is where I'm from which is SW Wyoming, which is predominately Mormon. The rest of the state doesn't really have a de facto religion. We also don't tolerate fascism very well. Nazi militias from Idaho keep trying to invade the part I'm from, and we consistently boot them out. I have never known anyone except LDS for being fundies
@inthehands also, I really don’t fucking like people who argue with other people about places THEY WERE BORN AND RAISED in.
Jul 6, 2026, 6:38 AMPaul indicates they know of "Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming"
so i don't know why you are objecting to their observations
i'm from connecticut but now live in western new york for many years. i think i can speak to life in western new york well enough. if someone would to be greatly offended at some of my observations this would indicate to me less that i don't know enough of the area, and more that i hit a nerve: the person doesn't like an uncomfortable truth
@benroyce @inthehands No. You absolutely go FUCK yourself. Every other day someone is offended about some shit. They didn't gender me right, you can't say that, I'm offended and all you little cunts defend that. But if I AM offended for some jack ass calling MY HOME STATE a state of full of "homophobes and racists" when we're NOT, then "it's the uncomfortable truth"? GO FUCK YOURSELF. What? Just because we're a red state? Is that it? I can't be pissed because we're RED? Go fuck yourself.
Jul 6, 2026, 6:55 AMcurrently i'm snacking so i'm unable to fuck myself
everywhere i've lived i've encountered bigots. it doesn't offend me as a matter of place where i am from if someone holds a negative opinion of that place, because all places have negative qualities
what is a tell though is how offended you get
why?
just admit wyoming has some douchebags. and good people, of course
then use your energy to convert the wyoming douchebags
rather than getting so upset people notice them
@benroyce @inthehands yeah. Everywhere has douchebags. I’m looking at one. And I’m not going to do a mea culpa for defending my home state to appease your liberal ass.
Jul 6, 2026, 7:12 AMi'm not a liberal
i am an ass though
anyway, like i said, the average well adjusted person can admit to the existence of douchebags in the place they live, because there's douchebags everywhere
but someone dealing with some weird emotional denial about the obvious, on the other hand, is rather cringe (misplaced pride maybe?)
but whatever
you do you dude
nobody really care that much. you're upset over nothing. you could try chilling out
@inthehands I believe the response to their long reply should be a simple, "I ain't gonna read all that, taker. Here you are trying to take even my time."
@inthehands the original thread has some gems in it, like how this is likely #aislop and the coloring of blue and red implies a party bias, New Mexico is a safely blue state yet a lot of people would make the assumption that states like NM that take more federal funds than pay into it would therefore be conservative. It would also be stronger to have citations that people can actually look into as well as concrete numbers rather than just blanket labeling
Jul 6, 2026, 6:32 AMNM is just an outlier
like north dakota is an outlier because of the bakken oilfields
the outliers don't disprove the general and truthful trend that blue states take care of the poor in red states, mostly
why do you feel the need to object to the generally truthful trend? why not just acknowledge it?
@benroyce @inthehands I’m not disputing the claim, my very first reply aligns myself with the claim. I’ve been aware of this statistic many times for years. What I’m calling for is better sources from the get go instead of a visually misleading graphic that likely wasn’t even created by a person. Wouldn’t this graphic be more effective if it provided the actual numbers of contributing vs receiving funds? Wouldn’t this be more effective if it listed sources that it pulled from?
Jul 6, 2026, 6:43 AMi get you now
yeah i can agree we don't want ai slop or just sloppy charts and graphs
Sources and more specific numbers are not hard to find. Here’s one:
https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-contribute-the-most-and-least-to-federal-revenue/
@inthehands @benroyce not exactly the point I was making, but thanks anyways.
@benroyce @hadeny @inthehands sloppy graphs are a common problem, but IMO the only thing I would change on this one is to include a source. Graphics are compelling because they reduce the amount of thinking required to understand a concept. Some people (like me) like having more data, more numbers. That data is often too much for most people.
Lately, I'm surprised most people can still tie their shoes these days. But that's overly cynical, I think. We do need to improve our educational system. But each state gets to enforce - or not - their own educational standards.
@Jirikiha @benroyce @inthehands as compelling as this likely #aislop graphic is it still is misleading, particularly with its color choices. Too many people in this thread assumed that the colors meant political affiliation when it has to do with contributing/receiving federal funding.
@hadeny @benroyce @inthehands I don't see any of the obvious indicators that this is AI slop. No misspelled words, merging borders, or the like.
Perhaps they could have used politically neutral colors like green/brown or yellow/green? But, that may not work for accessibility - it needs to work for color blind people, too.
Blue and red are often used as cold to hot indicators. If they wanted to show the degree of contribution, perhaps a sliding scale of the two colors would work?
I don't know. Part of me thinks some hand holding is necessary to get the point across to the largest audience possible. Another part of me thinks people should grow up and think for themselves. The graphic does not appear to be deliberately misleading, but people will project what they will.
Unambiguous communication is hard.
@inthehands Yeah, if you're just trying to to troll them it's pretty easy this way. When did Florida go net negative? They used to be positive. Desantis tank it or just the influx of cult groupies? Of course the whole thing struggles when you kick in Texas. They've had the carry power to offset 6 southern welfare states, generally. I'd also be remiss if i didn't point out that Maine & New Mexico are historically democrat dominated.
@inthehands
The Democrats support genocide and brought us Donald Trump, as well as the surveillance state. Both parties work for the same billionaire donors. Amazing that so many people still buy the whole "good cop bad cop" routine even now! I don't know how they manage to completely overlook the genocide in Gaza, among other things.
What we need is to end the system altogether and replace it with something that answers to the needs of the people. And we the people are the only ones who are going to do THAT.
Jul 6, 2026, 4:31 AMWhile you are "ending the system", or "seizing the means of production", Black and Brown people will be working in the trenches actually making lives better. But please, do go on.
And while you are being "practical" and "respecting POC", tens and hundreds of thousands of brown children will continue to be murdered by the DNC, which receives bountiful funding from APAC and J Street. But I guess those kids don't really matter to you. We just need to keep voting Blue no matter who, right? What's a little genocide between friends?
Jul 6, 2026, 4:57 AM@Quasit
A hundred thousand dead Iraqi children stare up from their graves to thank Ralph Nader for making sure Florida voters knew GWB and Al Gore were exactly the same. Not to mention the decades of climate action lost, because as we all KNOW they were exactly the same on that issue.
@Okanogen
Wow, it takes some nerve to invoke dead Iraqi children while supporting a party that's committing genocide in Gaza and Lebanon!
I'd congratulate you, but I don't congratulate shitlibs. I mute them. Bye-bye! 🖕
Jul 6, 2026, 4:32 AM@inthehands oh holy fuck is there really NO POINT in engaging them. Our headmate Peter thinks he can land a few useful punches at least with well-chosen words (short and...very much not sweet) but the general impression I get from that crowd is that if you hit them in some way, they just...pump up the old #meme machine again and disgorge some words (possibly all LLM generated now) that have served them for many decades of chewing on their memories of Reagan and Thatcher and Ayn Fucking Rand
@inthehands Reddit taught me this over a decade ago. I see nothing has changed. Well things have changed. For the worse.
@inthehands This is a graph of "Democrats feed on the rich". Ever had an email campaign or a spam SMS that the Democratic party would like to donate to you?
It's always fun to tease right-wingers, of course, but the truth is that analyses like this make no sense - and note they are used by the right too, for example in the UK to show that poorer places are 'dependent' on the City of London.
The problem is that they don't tell you where income or wealth are actually generated - only where the taxes are paid. If an area has lots of corporate headquarters full of very highly paid people, or lots of rich landlords, it will collect more tax - but it might well have taken the income being taxed from plants or properties in areas that collect less tax.
The 'starvation' thing is also obviously absurd - people don't eat tax. You'd probably get a very different map if you looked at where food actually comes from.
@GeofCox @inthehands in the American case though it's a direct call out of hypocrisy. I follow British politics a little bit, though not much, but as far as I know you don't usually have as much of a political culture of rural conservative regions decrying more urban liberal regions for "welfare state" policies and in general overspending in a way that's implied to impact the national government while claiming conservative spending policies save money.
@hubertus @GeofCox @inthehands It's an extremely common pattern in many places, including the UK. Cities tend to lean left, with support coming from both from fairly prosperous professionals and the urban poor. Rural areas tend to lean right, both among the local rich and poor, but they don't add up much in numbers. Cities are surrounded by towns and suburbs that are city oriented but more rural in self-image, and these tend to lean right as well.
@hubertus @GeofCox @inthehands it's not the only pattern, and it gets modified by local factors, but it's very often at least a part of the story.
There's fractal component to it, where towns may be the local 'city' but part of the 'country' relative to larger city centres further away
@Zamfr @GeofCox @inthehands I'm not talking about the general urban vs rural left vs right divide, that's nearly universal for sure. I'm talking specifically about the "urban welfare takers" argument from rural conservatives that act as though they're the ones being taken from. It felt to me like the divide in the UK, and most places, manifests more like rural people feeling like they aren't getting the funding and attention big cities are. Again though, only very casual understanding on my end.
@hubertus @GeofCox @inthehands
That's common as well. Some typical tastes: prosperous people consider themselves justly rewarded for their virtue, and resent taxes. Common in people who work in the 'urban' economy, but prefer to live out of the city in a more 'virtuous' place.
More rural people, rich and poor, who blame the city economy for lowering their income.
An often racist assumption that city poor are lazy welfare bums, as opposed to rural poor who work hard and know their place.
@Zamfr @GeofCox @inthehands fair enough, thanks for the added context!
@hubertus @GeofCox @inthehands
There is usually not a sharp divide between 'they take our taxes' and 'they take our money through other means'.
You can see that clearly among farmers, who tend to have preferential subsidies schemes everywhere, but still complain that their money is being taken.
They are not confused about those subsidies, they seriously feel that the subsidies are an insufficient compensation for money that is taken from them, like through low prices for agricultural goods
Jul 6, 2026, 6:29 AMthing is, republicans are the party of cruelty
they would be fine with people starving next to vast bountiful farmland. it's the "i got mine, fuck you" culture
that states run by democrats take care of the poor in states run by republicans (mostly) is still a valid observation
@inthehands One might also title it, “Why a General Strike would work”
Jul 6, 2026, 4:36 PM@inthehands
I like threads like this. Usually surfaces a coke people that I can just proactive block #NotAllWyominginians or whatever.
@inthehands
There a convention of Ayn fans in NOLA, every thread that shows up on FB get a few memes
And and never forget to remind them:
Ayn Rand died on welfare, and Horatio Alger was a child molester!