Agreed that it’s insider trading.

But how will this contribute to monopolization of the corporate sector and harm small/medium businesses? Why would all of this increase their corporate control of other large corporations?

I’m not saying that isn’t their goal, because it clearly is. But I don’t see how pump and dumps necessarily help them achieve that. Especially now that everyone with a brain knows this is what they’re going to keep doing

You’re missing the broader implications of the meme. It’s not just about women feeling unsafe around men — that’s a real and valid experience — but this particular meme has been co-opted and amplified in ways that serve deeper political agendas.

It does racialize the threat, whether consciously or not. The ambiguity of “a man in the woods” leaves people to fill in the blanks with their own biases, and statistically, media and social conditioning prime many to imagine a Black or brown man — not a white suburban dad. That’s why this meme feeds into racist and xenophobic narratives, even if unintentionally.

Worse, it also primes men — especially men of color — to feel alienated and demonized. It reinforces the message that they are inherently threatening or unwelcome in public spaces. This isn’t just a feminist meme gone viral — it’s political fodder. Right-wing actors boosted this kind of content ahead of the 2024 elections to create division: stoking male resentment, amplifying racial tensions, and undermining solidarity between groups that might otherwise resist conservative agendas.

So yes, the fear of violence is real. But the weaponization of that fear — through memes like this — deserves serious scrutiny. Just because something resonates emotionally doesn’t mean it’s not being used strategically.

If you asked people to describe the skin color of the “man”, i very much doubt most of them were thinking of a white man.

A white male Connecticut suburbanite isn’t what is being thought of in their minds eye - it’s a “thug” or an “illegal”. Because the meme is racist, and anti-male sentiments manifest via violence against black and brown men

The idea that AI art “isn’t art” because it’s a shortcut or because it uses an algorithm misunderstands both what art is and what tools have always been.

Art has never been defined by the medium or method — it’s defined by intent, vision, and expression. A camera didn’t make photography “not art.” Digital tablets didn’t make digital painting illegitimate. And AI doesn’t erase artistic vision — it channels it through a new tool. The artist is still choosing the concepts, crafting the prompts, refining outputs, experimenting with style, tone, and feeling. The AI doesn’t create meaning — the human behind it does.

Calling AI a “shortcut” implies that ease diminishes value. But would you say that a poet using a thesaurus is cheating? Or that a sculptor using power tools is less of an artist than one using only a chisel? Artistic integrity isn’t about how labor-intensive the process is — it’s about what’s communicated, and why.

Also, this notion that AI art “lacks a connection to life” is projecting a fear onto the medium. An AI image born from someone’s grief, curiosity, memory, joy, or political message carries that emotional weight — not because the AI feels anything, but because the human behind it does. That’s no different than paint, marble, pixels, or film. All of those are just lifeless materials until a human gives them meaning.

As for copyright — that’s a legal framework lagging behind the technology, not a moral judgment. Copyright law also initially didn’t know what to do with photography, collage, or digital art. Legal ambiguity doesn’t mean it isn’t art — it means the system hasn’t caught up.

AI is a tool. If someone’s using it to chase trends or mass-produce content, sure — maybe that’s shallow. But if someone’s using it to explore ideas they couldn’t draw or paint by hand, to tell stories, to reflect identity or dreamscapes — then it’s art. Full stop.

The fear that AI replaces artists comes from a zero-sum mindset. In reality, it opens doors for people with vision but without traditional training. And that, ironically, makes art more human — not less.

No it isn’t, it’s literally what astroturfing is and how public relations campaigns are run. I know people who literally do shit like this for a living

Doesn’t mean the original meme was created by an agency necessarily, but it certainly was boosted and amplified by conservatives to spark anger against PoCs/immigrants, and to build intergender resentment amongst men. Which worked wonderfully for Trump, as is evidenced by his strong performance with Gen Z men

The goal was to increase fear of the “other” - which is a classic right wing tactic.

The bear meme was a conservative astroturfed campaign to push people right - which is why it appeared shortly before the 2024 US elections

But being able to mechanically draw well doesn’t make you an artist. Imagining the ideas and transposing those ideas into reality makes you an artist. Which AI enables people to do

High technical skill in utilizing writing/drawing/painting implements is not equivalent to art. That’s a very STEM view of things which demonstrates a lack of emotional connection with life or art

The goal was to increase fear of the “other” - which is a classic right wing tactic.

The bear meme was a conservative astroturfed campaign to push people right - which is why it appeared shortly before the 2024 US elections

The bear metaphor was obviously thinly veiled racism/xenophobia from the start. Lots of conservative/moderate women who are terrified of anyone who isn’t white or who is “illegal”

Creativity isn’t the same thing as drawing or painting or whatever. Being mechanically gifted at manipulating an instrument to produce certain output isn’t reflective of one’s creativity. There are plenty of very creative people who are bad at drawing etc. Ai art empowers those people to transform their ideas into reality

Mechanical skill at manipulating a tool like a brush is not in any way correlated with artistic talent. Creating and imagining the meaningful concepts and transposing them into reality to convey emotional and intellectual meaning is a reflection of artistic quality. Not how good someone is at drawing. If AI can empower person’s to transposing their ideas into reality then it should be encouraged and widely adopted

If you aren’t artistically talented, whether through lack of ability or through disability, then AI is significantly better at turning an idea into existing art than using a pencil/paintbrush/pen

Coming up with the idea is the art, as is transposing that idea into reality. If ai can transpose your idea into reality more effectively than any other artform then it should be utilized for such purpose

The point is that the system itself is the issue. Calling out specific reasons for that is fine if you do so to call attention to its presence as the bigger systemic threat. But debating if one effect of capitalism is worse than another effect ignores the fact that we should be focusing on capitalism as a whole

AI can be bad only because capitalism is bad. Address the root cause

Yes they did. And all of this is the same as what was said about photography and the invention of the camera and its utilization as art.

Photography is art. Film is art. Digital media is art. CGI is art. AI art is art.

You may not like it. But most people didn’t like those other new forms at first either. And they stopped being afraid of change and new things and learned to love it. The same will occur here. It is inevitable and impossible to oppose or resist

This is progress. And it will continue to accelerate regardless of whether or not you approve of it

System A is bad

System A produced Product 1 and Product 2

Product 1 and Product 2 are therefore bad because they were produced through System A

Criticizing Product 2 without criticizing Product 1 is an incomplete analysis; and criticizing either Product is foolish because System A is the cause of the issue

System A must be destroyed in order to prevent it from creating new Products that will be bad, and to undo the badness of the existing Products.

System A is capitalism

you’re buying into a system that exploits workers for your own convenience

The electronic device you used to make this post was also made by exploiting wage laborers for the benefit of capitalists. Yet, you found that device to be so convenient that you still bought and used it anyway. The same could be said for all of the other goods and services that you use.

Perhaps you should remove the beam from your eye before pointing out the splinter in anothers

Extrajudicial killing is bad no matter which side it is

No it isn’t, unless you think the Sons of Liberty were bad. And if it wasn’t for them there wouldn’t be a United States to begin with. This country was founded through targeted murders and terror campaigns waged against a structural oppressor. It’s literally what it means to be an American

The people who have been killed by the American health insurance industry, for one

You can use this for any example of self defense though. If we accept that the CEO represented an imminent threat to Luigi and to others, then the self defense was justified. The same as how it is justified for you to murder someone who is pointing a gun at your head and is moments away from killing you. You don’t need to wait for a trial in that case.

The idea here is that the US health insurance system represents a constant and ceaseless threat to the entire population; and, because industries like them write our laws, lawsuits against them are impractical. There have been legal challenges to the US Healthcare system; none have resulted in structural change. Given this, the actions of Luigi (or whoever did it) are the only remaining choice left to protect the American people from this deadly threat

Although I suppose emigration to a social democracy such as Sweden is also an option. But that isn’t feasible for most people. And Sweden/Norway/Finland/Denmark/etc would soon ban immigrants from the US if hundreds of millions of Americans decided to suddenly move there