“War crimes” serve to criminalize war for “the bad guys” only; no other country could even dream of surpassing the U.S. in this domain.

Yep. Wall.

It’s definitely bad even in Europe and specifically some areas of Switzerland. The main fight currently is to have all personal data that the police collected that night deleted; although they doubled down on their actions.

It looked as if the police wanted to get its payback for another set of demonstrations that happened on the 11th of February related to climate change where they more or less lost control of the city.

The issue with that is they chose to “make an example” out of a demonstration made up of ~250 women, genderqueer and LGBTQ+ people, more or less confirming the point of an inherent patriarchy being in control.

To make it worse, the very next day: football team supporters blocked a tunnel and tram lines with no police contestation to be seen.

I actually haven’t considered that perspective before but that could also very well be an angle!

That yes, politically that’s all skewed, but I’d sooner be looking at things like: (off the top of my head)

It’s not much, but it doesn’t feel like it paints the West in a squeaky clean light like games usually tend to; a game where they wouldn’t do that nowadays would probably be amazing (but sadly not sell very well or even be allowed to launch I’d imagine).

I personally found that Modern Warfare (2019) took some inspiration from the “guts” they had back when World at War came out. Sure, it’s still adapted to a Western audience and primarily sucks up to the generic narrative, but it came across as being extremely gritty and realistic in some aspects, especially with regard to who’s “fighting the good fight”.

I felt it really set out a scene for players to think “hey, maybe we aren’t really the inherently good guys after all here in the West” over various cues and I was fairly content with that perception, even though your average player would miss the point completely (which is ironic) and keep on parroting their “oh yeah, spec ops, badass, U.S. Marines take the lead! hoorah!” shenanigans.

Also, even though Modern Warfare 2 (2022) was by comparison a bit worse, the raid scene where the containers (and their origins) are discovered? That also felt pretty impactful, even though, again, most would sadly not bat an eye or be able to figure it out.

It’s pretty self-explanatory that spineless Western media outlets are in dire need of content and public support to get their clicks and image boost. Even if someone were to bring up the point that the shelling is in fact not done by Russians, it’ll go down the typical propaganda blur process, either:

• getting outright ignored, and on social platforms, the posts are seen as “pro-Putin” and are automatically disliked, censored, etc; or
• getting sent farther down the rabbit hole under the accusation that it’s “pro-Putin propaganda” and then a narrative is slowly built up about how they’re in fact the ones to be correct.

For the last point: look up the Karl-Marx-Allee and see its history with regard to being “Stalin’s bathroom”. In short, about a decade ago, a person thought it’d be funny to claim this boulevard in Berlin was called “Stalin’s bathroom” (due to some marble decoration) during the DDR times.

In the similar, repetitive fashion of anti-communist perspectives that the West takes on, an editor found it to be “credible enough”. It was then rooted into the Wikipedia page and as a result led to a lot of media exposure, cementing the fact it was “Stalin’s bathroom”.

The same person tried to edit their joke out years later and the request got declined by a Wikipedia administrator. They later came out to be a journalist who detailed the situation in full, and that is the only reason it got enough awareness to be fixed. At the same time, it could have been highly possible the journalist would have been called a liar and not been trusted, meaning we’d still think this joke was real to this day.

Media ethics and digital competence are imperative to have for this exact reason. Too many people however simply refuse to or cannot acknowledge these things, either by own choice or not. It is really sad.

Very unlikely. This is more of a mission statement claiming “we have to do everything we can to get Putin out” and the West plans to achieve this through sanctions that reduce the quality of life for Russians, in hopes of getting them to turn against their government.

The fact that this is immoral and essentially turns the Russian population into a Western meat grinder is a separate fact, but nobody in the West really cares. NATO and Russia entering a conflict is something that is mutually avoided by both parties and is therefore very improbable to happen. I personally wouldn’t worry at all.

Less about bad faith and more about just believing things (on reddit) overall. It just happens that reddit users are motivated by karma and this is exactly what would make anyone coping about lemmygrad existing go “omg he’s going to epicly own the commies, updoot!”, similar to most liberal promises and hopes.

Well, they are trying to gaslight you. The primary principle behind religion/religious indoctrination is pretty much gaslighting to begin with; you also said it yourself: “your parent thinking you’re possessed”.

It’s obvious their intent is to bring you to bend to what they want, regardless of the means; but it’s not something that you have to give into. Stick to your thoughts. Keep being yourself and do whatever you need to do to keep yourself going until you manage to get things back in order.

You already mentioned it yourself in your own post: the statements and ideas pushed forward by the church itself are so irrational that it’s almost difficult to believe. As long as you keep your sanity, you’re going to be fine. You know who you are and what defines you, not them, and they can’t tell you otherwise. This statement is never wrong.

Just make sure you prioritize your safety and well-being before anything else that could hazard it. I personally for example still live with my primarily liberal and conservative family; there are some religious influences going around as well, i.e. to the extent of having crosses and other symbols all over.

I don’t intend on coming out to them until I manage to move out (very soon) and at which point I know I will be able to properly continue my transition while staying safe. Even if this means staying silent when it comes to talking politics or gender, I simply just keep my own thoughts and get by however I can.

I’d recommend you do something similar where you just make sure you’re safe and then keep looking into your transition and being out once it’s a good idea to.

Part of the magic behind doing those kind of things is that you don’t need a certain allegiance or affiliation; it doesn’t have to be known it’s anyone from here or anyone else. Black ops are fun.

Probably short term until they actually catch on. I’d be sure there’s some ambiguous enough footage out there that can be posted under the guise of Russian losses while they’re in fact Western. Quite simple enough considering their narrative has continuously been that “any Russian armor that does good is from Ukraine, any Russian armor that does bad is from Russia” which led to numerous accidents.

As an example the person getting crushed inside their car by a transport vehicle. It was first a Russian vehicle; you’d point out the lack of marking; so their next fall-back was that it was a saboteur-commandeered vehicle. It was not. They really like to do a lot of mental gymnastics and that is what should be exploited.

I have no experience with Reddit in terms of that, but I imagine you have to be very careful or present things in a very subtle or confusing way because they’ll otherwise just autopilot into “opposing opinion detected, doot *hits downvote button*”-mode.

Maybe something with an extremely blurry line that they’d interpret fits their narrative while it in fact does the complete opposite; that’d at least be funny content and maybe even bring some people to question themselves.

I think getting !redditactionfront@lemmygrad.ml in as well (although their activity is hard to gauge) could be a good idea, or at least it seems like that’s what that community is designed to do.

The mentality I’d personally go with would be to very subtly and skirt along the rules, since I’d assume they are very keen to delete and ban any users that even remotely question their perspectives. I don’t see bigoted anti-communists being very willing to debate matters that are too complex beyond their understanding to begin with, hence bans and censorship is the way to go for them.

Organizing something over Discord could potentially also be cool, i.e. among a large and trusted group, make just-barely-fitting posts and comments on the subreddit and have them pinged in order to get them upvoted quickly, which could award them more legitimacy or vision than a regular post. Would definitely be tedious but possibly effective/worth considering.

Poland is definitely not one of the greatest countries to be in with regard to this kind of situation. What your parents are doing is indeed terrible, and if this experience could tell you anything, is that human beings are absolutely not as bound by blood as idioms tend to portray.

What I recommend you do is backpedal. There sadly is nothing of benefit that could come from you continuing to hold this position to your parents, considering they would continue to coerce you with the harmful things they are doing.

Try and work and grow toward becoming independent without having to rely on your parents, whether that means getting a job, moving out, being able to possibly move out to another country as you possibly progress, and so on. The situation you are in is undoubtedly difficult and hard, but it is not the end of the world.

Your light would have to be the possibility to break free from the control of your parents, and that’s exactly what you have to work with. As bad as it may sound, you did get forced back into the closet and you have to play your cards right, considering this is a matter of you essentially surviving.

Do whatever keeps you sane and try to improve your relationship with them for as long as you have to be under their control. You could go as far as saying that you only had some ‘stupid thought that is now gone’, that you had a ‘revelation’, some kind of ‘message from God’ or whatever else that could bring their image of you back to a positive one.

As they appear to be fanatically religious, based on what you mentioned, you could most certainly say you just recently had a dream that ‘brought you to light’ and they’d absolutely buy it. It might help you defuse the situation to some extent and regain their trust, which can pave the way to you moving out to study or work or get in a position that frees you.

Your own thoughts and ideas can be kept to yourself until you manage to move on from their control. Keep in mind that the situation you are in is not your fault; those are simply narcissistic and fanatical parents—there sadly are plenty and enough of them in the world.

They were faced with a choice of supporting their child and living a healthy life together, or spending their last days in a nursing home, alone, all because some metaphysical spirit is telling them to. They chose the latter, and the only loss is theirs, I can promise you that. Stay strong.

I just avoid not playing as female protagonists as a preference & it solves that issue but it sucks to miss out on some games at times

Emotion suppression is definitely a bad thing that has been getting normalized in society (thanks to the emotional abuse that older generations were subjected to which nowadays became a notion of toxic “toughness”). I could for example hardly recall the last time I cried over myself, while at the same time somehow being able to connect with stories from games, shows, etc. was always so much easier.

For most of those who could end up taking estrogen, it seems to be a gateway to being a much more sensible and emotive person; and even regardless of gender, coming to terms with your emotions is completely fine.

The Life is Strange games (although I never played 2 as it was apparently not that good and it had a male protagonist) have always mysteriously made me feel extremely emotional while being able to unknowingly relate to the characters and the events really deeply. I could definitely recommend the series to anyone who would be intrigued to look into those games.

It was after playing True Colors that I realized it was the subconscious understanding of a missing female adolescence and the freedom of emotion that made me feel that way (the game is based around understanding emotion and it’s incredibly well-made). It helped me be so much more receptive to my own thoughts and feelings.