For context, the post I'm referring to is a map of Africa with subsaharia Africa in deep green, Sudan in light green and north Africa was white or some other color. The poster was claiming nothing had ever been invented in the green zone. My comment was gonna be this:
Some modern Archtecture taking inspiration from Sudano-Sahelian features such as a roof shape favoring natural ventilation.
And since I just transitioned to recent inventions, there's the Cardio Pad, invented in Cameroon, to help diagnose cardiovascular disease.
But maybe I am interested? Fact checking isnt just useful for the primary offender but for anyone else reading their lies, that might get the wrong idea of what the truth is.
There's value there, it's just not in convincing the person you're responding to. Speak to the other people reading their bullshit. Nonsense starts to look legitimate if it's not challenged.
Sometimes I am accidentally (slightly) racist or sexist and don't realize it. Just because I was raised in a family that was pretty disconnected from society. I always appriciate it if someone pioints it out to me in a civilized manner instead of the usual "nazi" or "fucking whitetrash asshole". Insults don't make me want to change my mistake.
The amount of sealioning and goalpost moving I see is incredible. I'm happy the mods seem generally good about it in most of the lemmy instances I participate in, but holy crap some people need to have their keyboard thrown out or their fingers broken occasionally to get the message.
I am quick to block users on any platform exactly for this reason.I'm not obligated to engage with bad faith arguments or other explicit wastes of time.
Want proof X happened? Do like any rational person and spend TWENTY SECONDS on an internet search. Demanding I provide proof is just an attempt to get me to waste my time compiling sources so you can go "nuh uh."
I gotta make sure I stop replying as soon as a reasonable person would stop being convinced by the dog whistles. It’s challenging when people keep moving subject so much.
Fwiw, I can confirm I saw the post you're responding to as well, it was made by a racist troll who had a brand new account they switched the username on to match the name of a well known account and then spammed racist off topic crap to a bunch of different communities before getting banned (at least, I presume that's what happened, I just reported their profile and all of their posts then moved on with my day)
The thing is, I don't think right wing trolls are just looking to annoy people. They're spreading a propaganda. They want at least a part of the people who see it to believe at least a part of what they're saying. And by repeating it a lot in many places, it can work. That's why I think it's also good to make a counter propaganda sometimes, not for the troll, but some who might tend to believe them.
It is also true that banning them and removing their post was objectively a good thing to do, but I still wanted to post the refutation, and since this is a comic strip community it had to do a comic strip and this is one of the two ideas I could come up with (the other idea would've been a comic presenting the inventions in question, but it would've taken too much work and I wanted to post my text right now, lol).
My response to illustrate how it was wrong, for the young and unaware who can get suckered into the "just asking questions" alt-right neo-fasc pipeline, included:
Various metallurgical and mining techniques.
Medical techniques both ancient and new.
A new type of syringe.
Varieties of boats.
Dolosse Blocks.
Coffee as a drink.
Lmao, it happens quite often where I'll get a reply, it's wrong and/or stupid, I'll reply, send, and 'error: deleted'. Mf they need to know that they are wrongggggg shakes phone in frustration.
Engaging with obvious trolls is stupid...but getting upset that you don't get to jump on their bait before it's deleted is really stupid and an incredible waste of energy.
The people who saw the post before the "correction" are not likely to ever see it, and since it's deleted no one else is going to see it and won't benefit from the "correction"...I simply can't see why this causes distress unless you're really just doing it to correct someone and feel superior, and the deletion robbed you of that.
That kind of racism can't be reasoned with. All the proof you have, they've seen, and are looking for a flight to refute it. It's far easier for them to lie than it is for you to prove them wrong.
Simple deleting it is the best possible outcome. Responding to them just gives them an additional platform.