This is entirely the wrong take. Its like saying everyone was panicking for no reason in the Cold War because Earth wasn't destroyed in nuclear hellfire.
Its feasible that vocal protests helped push back against further tyranny.
i dont want to go down the who was right and who was wrong rabbit hole of covid policies. just dont use hindsight to try and retroactively prove your point.
> "See, it didn't happen because I yelled about it on the internet"
this is a gross misrepresentation of the anticovid policy sentiment. it wasnt misanthropes on 4chan and twitter warriors with no skin in the game - there were, and still are, millions of people down through grass roots and local politics up to sitting major political party members.
the chess pieces we're playing with are very serious on both sides and the original comment i replied to - "i bet those conspiracy theorists feel stupid now" - is disingenious and a badly formed argument.
The conspiracy theorists always claimed that there is some kind of master plan to enslave the human race by the elite and that masks and whatnot are just the beginning.
How does a minority protest stop the evil masterplan? This makes no sense at all. Either there is a master plan and you have to have 90% of the people on the street opposing this, or there was no master plan from the get go.
The conspiracy theory crumbles under its own weight.
> How does a minority protest stop the evil masterplan? This makes no sense at all. Either there is a master plan and you have to have 90% of the people on the street opposing this, or there was no master plan from the get go.
Why can there not be a master plan that is difficult to implement where there is resistance? Why can the plan not have several stages and levels of implementation? Why can it not be that at different levels of resistance the plan may have to be shelved completely, in part, or be paused to try again in future?
To reduce a plan to take over the world so reductively as to make it a dilemma can only be the product of black and white thinking. I know it's best to be sceptical of outrageous claims but I would assume that anyone who reads HN knows that a project with any level of complexity couldn't be characterised in such a way, let alone one to take over the world!
I find the idea that some elite group are out there to take over the world makes even less sense. For what end? The elite already rule the world with a compliant society, who are all working on their "wage-slavery", with their aspirations of buying that new handbag or sportscar or graphics card because they think bragging about it on social media will fulfill them... But noo, there must be an insidious plot to make us all unhappy North Korean-esque slaves that start with mask mandates and "forced" vaccinations, because that way the elite will... what? What will they gain?
Again, I agree that prima facie it's highly improbable (though not impossible, and certainly not if the claim is that powerful people are angling for more power).
However, my problem with the post above is the dismissal, it's incredibly reductive. I have issue lists longer than 2 items for programs that aren't comparable with the complexity involved in taking over the world, the idea that the grandest of all plans can be made black and white in a clearly absurd fashion is, well, absurd.
Or perhaps I should ask those making such out of hand dismissals to help me with bug fixes and architectural decisions, they're clearly masters who would probably be better employed hatching evil plans to take over the world but are at a loose enough end to spend time shooting them down.
Conspiracy theorists must either ignore the internal inconsistency or have a highly convoluted way of rationalizing it. Unfortunately I don't think it's possible to reason with many of these people.
Its feasible that vocal protests helped push back against further tyranny.
i dont want to go down the who was right and who was wrong rabbit hole of covid policies. just dont use hindsight to try and retroactively prove your point.