Gloomy

Reading random studies

I searched for related studies and found this one relevant. That is not random.

you find on news sites

It’s from a scientific journal tough, not a new site?

that are outside your area of expertise

While true, this is not a study about biology or medicine. It’s not hard to understand for lay people.

an easy way to be led to believe something based only on parts of the truth.

That’s why you read more then one study. You know, like I specifically called out that this one links to a lot of related work?

In this case, as in many, we have to rein in our judgments for what the study indicates

It indicates that republicans are more likley to belive fake news.

Just because it says it found A doesn’t mean B is true.

Yes, but nobody did that here? I’m confused what you are getting at.

It doesn’t answer your question completely, but apparently conservatives are more likley to belive fake news.

Here is a quote from a study with a lot of links to related works.

In particular, Grinberg, Joseph, Friedland, Swire-Thompson, and Lazer [[42], p. 374] found that “individuals most likely to engage with fake news sources were conservative leaning.” Indeed, political bias can be a more important predictor of fake news believability than conspiracy mentality [43] despite conspirational predispositions playing a key role in motivated reasoning [44]. Perhaps because of this, an important body of research has examined whether conservatism influences fake news believability [45,46]. Tellingly, Robertson, Mourão, and Thorson [47] found that in the US liberal news consumers were more aware and amenable to fact-checking sites, whereas conservatives saw them as less positive as well as less useful to them, which might be why conservative SM users are more likely to confuse bots with humans, while liberal SM users tend to confuse humans with bots [48]. In particular, those who may arguably belong to the loud, populist and extremist minority wherein “1% of individuals accounted for 80% of fake news source exposures, and 0.1% accounted for nearly 80% of fake news sources shared” ([42], p. 374).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378720622001537#bib0045

I’m fine, thanks for your concern.

Im not saying Envormentalim is too much for Star Trek. Nor am I saying Queer topic are. That’s simply not what I wrote anywhere.

I said they felt tucked on. Read my comment below got some more detail, if you want to.

But thanks anyway for your input, I have done some more reading and somewhat have to agree with you.

ST:D did indeed treat Queer topic with respect. It’s still a shitty show and I see the pandering aspect of it. I do still wish it would have been embedded in a better story (and way of telling said story). But I do stand corrected in regards to their overall handling Queer topics.

It’s been some time since I watched ST:D and it was a quite negative experience overall. I suppose that lead to me not seeing the positives in it. I did some more reading now and see where you are coming from.

Thanks again for your input.

I have spend some time reading and have to agree with you. I do stand by some of my statements and am happy to provide examples:

Environmental Issus

I refer to “Sanctuary” (ST:D S3E08) here. The underlying message of the episode is, of course, pro environmental. My main issue is, that it is so very very not subtle about it. The obvious good guy of COURSE is an “empath” and OF COURSE everybody on the planet is oh so nice to animals, to a point of asking them kindly to leave again (powered by a magical space laser), instead of forcing them out. And OF COURSE they live in complete harmony with nature, because THEY ARE THE GOOD GUYS, CAN’T YOU SEE HOW F-ING GOOD THEY ARE.

It’s tiering. It’s so so obvious who are the goodies and the badies. There is no grey here, nothing thought provoking. This is, in my opinion, pandering to the left crowd.

Which I am member of. I count myself as someone, who is very much interested in the whole topic of climate chance, systems collapse and environmental movement. It’s a topic that matters to me. Here it is not driven forward. The episode isn’t showing anything new; it’s not presenting any solutions; it’s not highlighting any problems. It doesn’t trust its audience with the ability to think for themselves. It’s like getting pre-chewed food. You don’t have to question anything, don’t have to conclude anything. It’s just plane obvious how this should be viewed. The whole episode comes down to Environmentalism = Good Anti-Enviromentalism = Bad. And I agree. But this episode is using the pro Environmental stance of the characters to drive the point home how good and nice they are.
The episode would be the same if they landed on a planet where the bad guys are threatening to kill all puppies and the good guys are the only ones defending them. It’s lazy and it’s bad writing and it reduces a very important issue of our time (I’d go so far as to say the most important issue of our time) to a mere backdrop.

Let me compare that to, for example, the way how the Malon are presented in Voyager. Of course the mask appears to be the same, just from the other side (pollution = bad). But there are at least some nuances to this theme. I’ll not go into so much detail, but the fact that Voyager is literally offering them a solution to their problem (of pollution) and they turn it down because there is a whole industry around managing pollution at least is a critical take on our modern society, without patronizing the audience too much.

Queerness

The “forced” aspect I was thinking about, when I wrote my original comment, mainly comes from the way how Sevens and Rafis relationship is treated in ST:Picard.

To me it felt like there was no organic build up to it. It just popped up and then disappeared again. There was no real build up to it, in my opinion (!). This is what I mean when I say tucked on. It would make no difference if one of the two has a different sex. It would still feel of and weirdly out of character. It’s very much in line with how season one and two of ST:P treat their storylines, which are often oversimplified, dumbed down and often not explored to the extend they would have deserved. Rafis and Sevens relationship felt glued on and almost like an afterthought. That’s what I mean pandering to the left crowd. It’s not organic or natural, it’s just forced into there (and the only reason I can think of is to hold up a Neon sign about how woke they are).

ST:D handled, things way better, as I have learned after doing some reading up on the topic over the last couple of hours.

Homosexual, Trans- and Non-Binary characters are treated in a positive light, and, at least in the case of gay persons, normalized, as @Stamets has pointed out upthread. I’d wish for ST:D to take this one farer, as detailed below, but hey, it’s definitely the right direction to walk in. Plus, I now do indeed feel they treated Queer topics with respect (after reading about it some more).

It’s a shame how it is embedded in a shitshow of a story, but after reading some of the comments here and doing some more research I absolutely have to agree: They handled it fine. I do stand corrected in that regard and am happy to admit so.

My remaining problem with Non-Binarity, and how it is treated, is how it is still handled as something out of the ordinary. I would prefer ST to uphold it’s utopian take on things. In a utopian world Non-Binarity would be a non-issue. I think it would have been a much more revolutionary stance if ST:D showed people choosing /changing and modifying their pronouns regularly, without it being in the spotlight too much. Because, if one thought this to its end, that’s the kind of future society that has arrived beyond the dichotomy of binary genders.

Think about how being vegetarian is presented in ST:TNG. Humanity has simply moved on from it. There are a few remarks towards this here and there, but mainly it is treated as a given. I would have loved for ST:D to take a similar approach to Non-Binarity.

I have, yes, since I was about 10. Ive seen all of old Trek up to DS9 multiple times. Im not saying New is more woke.

Im saying that progressiv and “woke” ideas used to be told in a orgsnic way that felt natural to the world they were told in. Modern Star Trek, to me, is badly told stories with fanservice and woke ideas glued onto them in an awkward way.

Calm down.

You don’t need to go into full attack Mode here. Im happy for you, that you felt repretented. I did not feel the way they handled it felt like good representstion. I’d be happy to see more representstion in general, I just wish it would be embedded into a better told story. If you are cool with the way it’s done: Good for you.

I am getting slightly tired though of seeing people who aren’t part of the community saying that the representation of us ‘feels forced’. Our mere existence isn’t forced. Moreover, are you really the one who gets to judge this? After people trying to kill us for decades, and then using us for marketing purposes, now y’all wanna judge whether our existence is “forced”?

This is a beautiful example of heteronormativity at work. You can disagree with me on how and if Discovery did a good job of representing LGBTQI+. topic or not without assuming my sexuality or implying thst I called out for the war on gays, thank you very much.

As a rather left leaning Person I have no problem with New Trek beeing “woke” in general.

I fucking hate Discovery, to a point that I had to give up on it after season 3. Picards first 2 season where almost as bad (I like the third season, more or less).

The problem is not so much the wokeness of those series, it’s that it’s just bad storytelling.

The way how “woke” ideas are implemented just feels like pandering to the audience. Homosexualyity, Non Binary characters, enviromentalism… I approve representation for all of those and would have loved to see them integrated in a meaningfull way. But the way they were handled it felt wrong to me, as if they were forced into the story rather than emerging from it organicly.

Edit: I have since I posed this done some reading. While I still stand by this, I do see how Queer topic at least been handled with respect in Discovery. Still embeded in a badly told story, but hey, it’s something and I see how that is not nothing.