Rayvin

You just know at least one of those four will still be here and getting games next year

I still think he'll be gone by the end of this year. Quite why you guys think someone else coming in is going to suddenly turn Labour's fortunes around is beyond me though. The rot was set in place way before Corbyn.

I see willy waving has gone mainstream. Kind of a weird tribute to CT I guess.

Aye as long as we get over the line one way or another, who cares how pretty it is. Have to say mind, our biggest issue is that we do like kinda turgid and lacking in bite sometimes. But that doesn't automatically mean any of the teams we're about to go up against will be better. We should be able to handle any of them.

Dreaded vote of confidence. I'd missed that actually, that always seems to signal the end. And aye, maybe they wouldn't have gone down after all but their current trajectory is appalling. Bottom of the form table iirc. I wonder how long it'll be before RTG starts talking about getting him to replace Moyes.

Wow... I mean, he was going to relegate them. But still. Harsh.

If he's come back and injured the same part of his leg, then we should really admit that he was brought back too soon.

The poll.

Blair would have been far better at capitalising on all this, no doubt.

UKIP have gone out of their way to make it easy for him as well.

Still fairly relaxed tbh. If we go up, we'll get enough quality to survive. We'll consolidate and rebuild to try for the year after. Maybe.

Is that the point that it would previously have been blocked?

It could all happen I guess. Villa looks the least likely of the three though, I reckon they'll pick up some points soon.

Hang on then, so why is the Guardian running this as if it's related to the travel ban?

I think that's wishing for a bit too much.

Do you think it would have happened pre-ban then? The thing here I guess would be if any other Muslims from the UK have managed to enter the US. If they have, then we can conclude that this is an individual case with nuances specific to it and not the whole group.

Yeah they did seem particularly animated about this game. Normally we get a thread but 31 pages is rather extreme. Why were Villa the ones who they've championed to bring us down ffs.

I'm just having a bit of a hard time wondering why an video produced a month ago without anything being said, is now suddenly being circulated with everyone being outraged about it. Why now? Why not the outrage when it came out? Presumably because someone has been looking for something to get him on. Have now watched the original video. His argument is that while we have a line for where the age of consent is, that he says is 'about right' (this bit curiously not included in the reporting), some people of a younger age will be able to give consent due to being mature enough already. This is a stupid comment to make for one thing because even at the age of 16, I would argue most people aren't mature enough to make an informed decision surrounding consent, and especially not when an older adult is involved. But then, he was sexually abused at the age of 14, and the video sounds quite a bit like he's trying to assert some agency over what happened to him. It doesn't sound so much like he's advocating for anything, it sounds more like he's defending his own mental image of himself and trying to set out that he was not a victim. Probably because he doesn't want to be a victim. Not that this makes his comments correct, but I feel that particular aspect of context should be included in our assessment of this - and it hasn't been. Why? The guy is a total arse and a massive distraction from some of the actually quite important issues that are going on at the moment though; I find his argument that he can't be racist because he only sleeps with black men to be absurd, I find his claims that he is Jewish and therefore can't be anti-semitic to be... well, convenient to say the least. Even if it's true. He uses various forms of identities under different 'protected groups' as he sees them, to make him more immune than many others would be in his position. Many of the arguments he makes are uncited (not a rare thing on either side of the debates he gets into) and I genuinely think he's more interested in attention than he is in actually advocating anything he claims to stand for. But yes, I guess I see shadows everywhere when it comes to the media, and it bothers me that they haven't fully reported the context behind this. By 'bothers me' I mean 'it fully supports my view of them'.

Does he have a large alternative media platform that the status quo could find threatening? I'm not going to prejudge the Milo one until I see the video but the PDP one was a character assassination.

The Milo thing is disturbing. He has made a defensive response to this already which seems to hold some weight but I'd need to see the original video I guess. I'm sure it'll be everywhere in due course. That's pewdiepie and now Milo. Who next?

I think to enter into that line of thought you need to be disenfranchised to begin with. It's probably quite similar to how Islamic terrorism happens actually (controversially, on here). People radicalise when they're disenfranchised with the status quo, and they become easily propagandised. I could see that being a key component.

Fair enough.

Fair enough then - and yes, people like Alex Jones are a problem for sure. They're speaking into their own echo chambers and objective analysis within these groups becomes near impossible. But this happens on the left too. Even in the centre I'd argue. People aren't exposed to a sufficient range of views any more, so we don't have debate, we just have isolated whining.

The best explanation I've seen takes me a little out of my comfort zone in terms of discussing the current MSM Overton Window. Gloom would probably know more about it. But the gist basically is that the current Overton Window on acceptable views has shrunk to the point wherein the media are all operating in a safe, centrist space - to the exclusion of what is now a majority of people situated outside of this window. The majority simply organised around a single figurehead and outvoted the centre. Had the Overton window been large enough to give voice to these concerns, maybe trust would be higher. Thus, I think the media can be fairly homogenous through operating in a very small Overton window, and at the same time widely untrusted.

If you mean me, I do both of those things. I trust literally no one to be honest.