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this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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I gave you 3 claims, and you picked your own 4th.
Ah, now I see why you were so weirdly desperate for me to post that particular photo. You had a narrative needing to be fulfilled. Sorry to disappoint.
Yes, and they haven't been acted upon either.
Potentially, yes. How are you imagining this kid "coming forward" to the authorities?
Yep. By photos posted online by their abusers. By having child services interview their guardians.
And should have been handled by the police. They weren't.
No-one claimed this either. Debunkers love to invent strawmen to attack.
Your favourite picture is far from the only suspicious Instagram post/comment
Literally their job. And they point is they weren't doing it.
You are the one defending the guy with a "members only" file share on his website who makes child abuse jokes on Instagram.
This applies equally to debunkers who think "no basement" is proof that pizzagate is false.
I'm not convinced any part of pizzagate is real, but you (and other debunkers) are convinced it is 100% fake. That's what is interesting.
Pizzagate debunkers are just as fervently irrational as the unquestioning gun toting believers.
Would you like me to read one of those 3 claims?
So let's see we're YOU are finding this instagram stuff. Hmm..
Ok, we know where your BEST evidence is. Let's figure out this instagram claim.
Here are the times YOU brought up Instagram:
You talk a lot about instagram for someone who finds the FIRST instagram picture from your GOLDEN source embarrassing. Here, I'll add context. I'll expand the crop. And let see what this fear-mongering document says...
It's the "most widely referenced one". YOU are the one pointing to internet "frenzies" as evidence. An internet frenzy was whipped up about this ONE picture in particular. There are no other pictures related to this child. YOU are claiming the other photos are connected.
Adding more context makes the evidence look WORSE.
Also notice that the simple explanation isn't good enough: "please let me know if there are more". They want another explanation because then "see, they're changing their story". For some reason they want the reader to be suspicious of only ONE explanation. Reality works in a strange way for people who think like this.
Then every pizzagater ever says, "that's why you picked THAT photo. Of course the one my opponent chooses one that makes me look silly. They won't show you the other stuff I sent them. Please read the first paragraph at least, where it says if you don't see EVERYTHING, you'll be too ignorant to know the truth."
They are always saying "look at everything. but don't look at anything."
The only claim I made is that I have seen no proof of illegal activity. There are plenty of times in my life where I have seen proof of illegal activity. It's a pretty common thing to see on the news. I don't see why I should worry about people who have weird tastes in art. I see a lot of mixing pizza, weird art, and sex in that doc, but not kids. I'm worried about one who see that photo as normalization of child abuse. (Here is where that claim of "I'm not claiming THAT photo is what i'm talking about. don't you see how vague i'm being. look at everything" This is 30-Rock's "Homonym Game" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZLkcFns8Ks )
Seeing a girl smiling with masking tape on her arms does NOT look like normalization [i use US spelling]
You are either being very disingenuous here, or you find that image stirring. I do not want to accuse you of anything, but the reason I want a journalist in the loop is because every pizzagater with any sizable voice is WITHOUT FAIL either (a) trying to convince people (including themselves) that SA material of minors is more common than it is or (b) very homophobic.
The document you provided is teeming with homophobia.
I am implementing a new rule. I will not engage with pizzagate arguments with people unless they pledge: "There is a gay person in my life that I love, and they live a meaningful, fulfilling life." That's probably not hard. Honestly, I don't care if you know them personally.
If you can't do that, I'd rather deal with a more serious mind virus.
Because that is where Alefantis posted.
There are more. E.g. wearing a "pizza slut" t-shirt.
Yes. Alefantis commented on most or is connected via his restaurant.
If you want to claim a slamdunk debunk then the simple explanation must be the only explanation, or the suspicious explanation is shown to be impossible.
Your "debunk" falls far short.
You claimed pizzagate is absolute garbage. That it was debunked.
2 dudes on a street correr and a BMW parked nearby is not proof of illegal activity. But it is suspicious. You want the police to check it out.
Dude, you're the one obsessed with this particular photo.
"There is a gay person in my life that I love, and they live a meaningful, fulfilling life." Send your gay strawman away.
Please remove the quotation marks. That's not how words work.
There is a gay person in my life that I love, and they live a meaningful, fulfilling life. I love gays. Great fun.
What I don't like seeing them being irrelevantly dragged into arguments in an attempt to distract and score cheap points.
This has nothing to do with showing that the claims made by pizzagate are impossible.
Cool. There are gay people I love too. Wouldn't change a thing about them.
Sure am. You see someone showed it to me in a document they linked. They called the dossier the best evidence of pizzagate. That dossier has this particular photo. It even said "We might as well start with this picture of a girl taped to a table, which is probably the most widely referenced one." Of course, that " girl taped to a table" was standing on the floor with her arms affixed to a table with masking tape, and not even a lot of tape.
That photo sure stirred up a frenzy. My claim was that anytime anything that is purported to be concrete evidence is investigated, it sure looks like nothing upon inspection. The pizzagater always plays the Homonym Game. "I was talking about a different photo?" Well, I'm talking about this photo.
So if you argue that frenzies show there must be something happening, I will point to THIS picture. Because it is THIS that picture that by itself caused a frenzy. Read the words around the picture. Then read my proposal of the only definition of pizzagate i can agree with
Pizzagate: The believe that real world damage can be caused simply by never admitting any harmless explanations regardless of plausibility.
So 4chan decides to use Pizzagate as a weapon to sick on this shop owner and his friends and family. It fits just fine.
You act like I'm cherry-picking, because you know most people aren't going to check, and the kinds of people that do check don't fall for this shit.
Well, that piece of "evidence" is clearly trash. Anyone trying to sell it to me thinks I'm stupid. Why would I bother?
Do you have a dossier that does NOT include wastes of time?
Did they? It's not a bad introduction but voat had much better documentation.
Again? Let's discuss this one instead.
The photo is not illegal, but it is suspicious, especially when combined with Alefantis' other posts.
See. You have to add in and highlight "by itself".
4chan didn't make him post suggestive comments or host suspicious files on his website.
You have failed to make this argument clearly.
So one item labeled a waste of time allows you to disregard the rest. This is a repeat of the "no basement=debunked" argument.
Pizzagate debunkers are just as illogical as Pizzagate true believers.
I'm not talking about another photo. You have a mountain of evidence. Please edit out any trash designed to waste time. That picture is a pretty clear litmus test. I'm not stupid enough to be scared of that photo. If you think I am, this will not go anywhere.
Then you aren't going to debunk them.
If you had been able to debunk pizzagate this step would not be necessary.
Sadly I think I agree.
I'm not really interested in measuring how stupid you are.
Then what are you even doing here? Honestly. You asked if my favorite podcast had a pizzagate episode.
I said, i don't think so. I'll ask others. I don't like talking about pizzagate because every claim is dumb. I said:
None of that has changed. The more I say, the more you shift and want me to look elsewhere. It's clear to me that anyone who could read that doc and not be embarrassed that they are trying to spook you with that picture, is not worth engaging with.
You picked out me saying "no victims coming forward". You know there's still not any, right? No matter how many different things you tell me. You called it a "bad argument". I'm not here to argue. You brought this shit up. It's not an argument. It's a fact. You can keep claiming not to make an claims. But facts are facts. Calling them "arguments" makes them sound like they can be "bad". Nope. I said a fact, and you took personally.
So you link some homophobic shit. i don't want to read that. There's some horrible allegations that if some unhinged individual who has a fuzzy notion of epistemology reads, things could get and have gotten ugly.
Your lies are consequence free. Is there anyone (journalist, pundit,...) with a reputation to protect that says anything about this?
Can you show where I had expressed any desire to debunk this? This might be my first use of the word in this thread.
I said it's not interesting. I haven't seen any claim attached to anything concrete. Why would I engage? I'm not a witness.
The only document you have has claims that no one can be serious about. I'm asking you to remove those. You're just wasting my time.
Yes. Thanks for that. Sincerely.
A lazy, blanket statement leading to this lengthy thread.
It's also interesting how claims that it was debunked dissolve when examined.
I linked to some evidence. It's hard to do so now that search engines have been scrubbed and voat has died.
Because the claims are not impossible, or even unlikely.
At the beginning I gave you the NYT and a steemit link with additional evidence. Nothing has shifted.
I didn't write it. There are not a lot of other options that search engines index. Just view the pictures if the text offends you.
All the linked evidence is factual. I've not drawn any conclusions. Not sure what I could have lied about.
This was the closest
Whenever you state that every pizzagate claim is dumb.
Ok. I'll remove everything from that document except for this
No one will touch this with a 10-foot pole. People that the pizzagaters victimized have been hurt, and some of the worst offenders of the conspiracy theory were arrested. No one will put a stake on this.
All the people that used to talk about this have disappeared. There once was a rush when people were talking about that document. Adding new threads. Making connections. This was going to be it. But nothing came.
I believe you may be chasing a high that was at its peak when it looked like pieces were coming together.
Everything fizzled. Now you're trying to get strangers worried about a list of files. It's not the same.
The emperor has no clothes here. No one else will put their reputation on the line.
I'm sure you have people in your life that you get along fine with. This is, provide no one brings this up. That has to feel isolating. Most people have moved on.
I was being honest. I'm not interested in pizzagate. But I have heard from so many people describing what it was like to have once believed it. And what it felt like when they were able to reconnect with people who pushed them away.
Obviously, I don't know you. You're fine to tell me I'm way off base. We're strangers here, but it's just food for irl-thought.
One crazy person has been jailed. No-one was hurt. All because the police failed to investigate.
Because there is nothing new to talk about. Although if someone had done a thorough debunking then that would be new information of interest.
This may be true for people searching the Internet and finding clues. Crowdsourced Sherlock Holmes. I only got interested when the crackdown happened, subreddits were closed and journalists silenced. Then claims of debunking popped up (usually without logical argument).
Debunking is much more interesting, scientific and rigorous than the actual conspiracies. James Randi, moon landings, aliens, 9/11. You learn a lot from a good debunk (hence my interest in your favourite podcast)
No, I'm trying to establish if it has been debunked. That there is no possibility of truth in the claims.
If you said pizzagate was unlikely, dubious or unconfirmed then I would agree and we wouldn't be having this exchange.
Neither do the debunkers following behind.
Did you ever used to post at 4chan?
No. Too difficult to follow conversations. My exposure has been 2nd hand by reddit or reformed text
i used to post on 4chan all the time. the hard to follow part was a feature. It let's you see only the good stuff in a way that's hard to explain, but I'll try.
The fun of 4chan is that everyone is full of shit. In fact, there posts about how much shit everyone else is full of. It's fun.
So how do you have fun on 4chan? It's easy. You lie. You're anonymous. It's consequence free.
It's been said that people like "bad jokes" because jokes split the room into two groups: those that get it and those that don't. A "bad joke" has a very forced punchline so that everyone gets the joke. There is no split in the room. Everyone hates the joke together.
A lie on 4chan splits the readership. Those that are ready to debunk anything. And those that "yes, and..."
The "bad lies" were no fun. Easy debunk, no one elaborating. The other lies were the fun ones.
The debunking group is the loudest, most numerous, and had tons of fun. There were infographics on how to tell if the user was pretending to be two different people ("samef--"). There were infographics on how to see photoshop artifacts. All kinds of good skeptical reasoning and debunking tools. The debunkers proved the liars lied.
The debunkers would share huge greentext png files of reformated text laying out how full of shit that all the liars are.
The other group had a different kind of fun. They found that if they see an obvious lie, they "yes, and...". That's an improv cliche that means you fully accept the OP's premise and develop it fuller yourself.
Wrestling fans would call it "kayfabe". Horror fiction on reddit has "nosleep" rules. It's in general, a willful supension of disbelief. These are "metarules" in a sense. They are rules saying it's against the rules to mention the rules.
Of course the yes-anders got debunked to hell and back. There are all kinds of greentext proving it.
But, the yes-anders shared greentext too. They had huge pngs full of undebunked truth. It was easy to do. It's all lies, and they are editing this huge png files. They just leave off an debunking.
Is it really that easy to just cut out the debunking? Wouldn't it just be easy to check?
HELL NO. That's the fucking point of 4chan.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to follow conversations. Everyone is only responding to what they came to see. There's no "I'll get back to that". You got to spew your shit while the shit is flying. Or you miss the fun.
This is where the debunkers always lose. There is just too much shit to debunk.
People reform the text into the png files I was mentioning. Put out a mountain of stuff. IGNORE ALL CONTRAPOINTS. And there are some people that believe them. When I said
I mean, they are the yes-anders. The people pretending to believe it because its fun to watch people try to debunk things when they never admit other, plausible explanations. I would have to say that the "99%" figure is an uneducated statement, so your guess is as good as mine.
But there are those that see this spread without any debunking because the debunking is lost. And anyone that tried was driven crazy by people pretending not to understand. So it's now an echo chamber of those that fell for it.
4chan was fun. I'm glad I quit.
The only time 4chan /pol caught my attention was when FBIanon posted about the Clinton foundation. I thought it was a fun LARP, then Bill Clinton has a clandestine airplane meeting with Loretta Lynch.
But given that nothing has happened to the Clinton foundation I would accept that FBIanon has been debunked.