I can't seem to escape this kind of paranoia no matter where I go online, but Star Trek Online is the last place I'd expect to see the kind of fear and hatred the wingnuts propagate on a daily basis. No, no, I take that back. Just spend 5 minutes on Earth Spacedock or Deep Space Nine and you'll see all sorts of comments ranging from anti-Obama sentiment to talking points taken directly from Infowars.
The wingnuts seem to outnumber the folks who are otherwise sane in other places as well. Hell, youtube was Ron Paul country in 2008 and 2012. You can read a news article about income inequality in the United States and there will be a thousand comments bitching about the poor and blaming them for their abject poverty. And some of them call for straight up armed rebellion because it's their '2nd Amendment Right'. Little do they know that the gun manufacturers would make a killing off of their little 'rebellion' and we'd just end up with even worse government.
We also have the pandemic scaremongers. These are the guys who run around telling people to get ready for full on outbreaks of diseases. We've seen this sentiment for quite some time with AIDS, Avian Flu, Swine Flu and now, Ebola.
True, it is definitely cause for concern, like anything else, but our medical infrastructure is quite a bit different from that of African countries which is why the outbreaks are so much worse over there, not to mention all the other diseases they have to deal with due to a lack of access to medical care.
This kind of crap seems to be everywhere and sometimes I just feel like trashing my PC and saying to hell with it. But then I'd have to build a new white box from scratch and that can be very costly. I don't trust out of box computers and you can't upgrade them.
I basically have a love/hate relationship with the internet. While there's a great deal of information available, it also gives the wingnuts an even bigger platform than they deserve. I think it's perfectly fine to let them hang themselves, but in America there are people who buy Snake Oil by the barrel full and because of that, the rest of us have to be eternally vigilant.
See you around,
Homer