A sign hung in Port Coquitlam advertising a “whites-only” moms and tots group is causing outrage online after photos of a poster were shared on social media.

  • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The telegram has only 2 posts by the creator, conveniently only an hour or two before the picture was posted onto Twitter.

    The telegram picture is also conveniently a picture of the exact same piece of paper featured in the twitter post…

    Whats the odds that someone made the Telegram account with a picture of the paper on what looks to be a table, then took it outside, hung it up, and in under an hour or two it already was posted up onto twitter and being reported by, coincidently?

    Moreover, why was the telegram created first, and yet also has zero members? Who does that and when does that happen? Typically such groups would already have a circle of individuals participating and the telegram would be created for them to chat easier, so the telegram would have users added asap.

    But instead the telegram was made, zero members ever added, the photo uploaded asap of the already printed off paper, then only an hour or two later this twitter account happened to see it so fast and snap a pic, and didnt even bother to edit out the URLs, and uploaded it to twitter?

    Would have been more believable if they had edited out the URLs, but nope, leaving them up like that is something someone trying to make it look legit would do.

    It took me literally like, 30 seconds to just look that telegram up and see what was going on, and yeah lo and behold it looks fake as fuck.

    The deluge of people believing this shit at face value and not even checking out how legit it looks is concerning. Like come on, it wasn’t that hard to check.

    • handofdumb@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Not everyone operates in typical ways. Isn’t it also possible that someone started the telegram in hopes like-minded folks would join?

      If a fire alarm is pulled, assume there’s a fire.

      • maporita@unilem.org
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        1 year ago

        It’s the internet… we should question everything. That’s not to say this is false or that racists don’t exist. Just that being skeptical should be the default position.

      • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If a fire alarm is pulled, assume there’s a fire.

        Sorry but you aren’t going to convince me to just trust random strangers on the internet with a vested financial interest in gaining clicks/likes/shares/subs about random stuff they say, especially when its something so brazen.

        The whole thing clearly looks fake as fuck. People need a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to shit like instagram/twitter/tiktok and whatnot, which was the medium this was shared over.

        Nothing about that picture remotely looks like what it claims to be, the fuck kind of “moms and tots” group posts and shares that way, come on, use your head for a second and imagine the scenario playing out.

        Even going with the absolute maximum benefit of the doubt, whatever way you try and frame it you still end up painting an incredibly bizarre nonsensical scenario that just. doesnt. make. sense.

        The only scenarios that make sense based on the way it was shared, the way it was setup, and the way it has been followed up on are:

        A: It was manufactured upset by the person who posted it. They created it all as a hoax to gain further subscriptions to their platform, which they have a vested financial interest in expanding.

        B: It was created by a troll, who thought it would be funny to see it spread virally

        Ask yourself some simple questions here:

        1. How come the paper for the telegram post was the exact same one that got caught and put up on twitter? What are the odds?

        2. How come there has only been one of these posted and shared anywhere, and how come only once? Surely there must have been other pictures of these flyers by other citizens?

        3. The only conclusion you can make is… there was only one flyer taped up? And that one got taken down as soon as the picture was taken? Who goes to all that length to make the telegram, make the group, get a QR code, setup a (supposedly real) email, make a flyer all typed up… and then just only posts up one solitary flyer?

        4. And what are the odds that that one solitary flyer gets found moments afterwards by, coincidentally, the owner of “BlackVancouver”, a twitter/instagram that is pretty much entirely all about spreading around posts about trying to find racial injustices, and has recently been trying to get more subs/likes?

        5. And despite all that, the telegram still today has no members/new posts.

        6. And the email is a proton one? The fuck? What mom and tot group have you ever met that seriously uses fucking proton mail as their provider?

        7. And jesus look at the chosen email and the chosen telegram name. It’s twenty eight characters long. No normal person, especially one looking to share the group via flyer, ever makes something like that

        I mean come on, this isn’t sherlock holmes here, the thing is riddled with so many goddamn holes, a sieve would hold water better.

        • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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          1 year ago

          People like to be outraged. It makes them feel correct for not being the racist one and confirm how they already want to feel about others.

          It’s also easier for a brain to confirm what it already wants to believe. Good write up but I am unsure how good it would do of convincing those that need it that sometimes people just make rage bait to get people to think alike with them or because they are edgelords that think it’s funny.

          But you know as a wise Republican white commissioner in PA once said “I’m a black gay guy”

          • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Theres tonnes of actual racist shit out there that gets dumped onto social media constantly.

            It’s wild to look at this and even remotely think “aw yeah this one definitely happened, looks super legit”

            You have to live under a rock and never have actually encountered racist trash to think anything about this sign looks like it was made by such a person.

        • Copernican@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          There’s something about it that makes me think it a “to catch a predator” type meeting to out a bunch of white supremacists. Are they really trying to fish for contact information or get them to actually meet in a room? On the telegram link: “Hello everybody, we are encouraged by the response already and hope you can hang in there until we are all comfortable going in person.”

          • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The thing is that post was made almost as soon as the group was made, which doesnt even make sense, as no members were added yet.

            Smells like fish.

            • Copernican@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Also curious if there have been other sightings of this flyer, or if it was the only one? If you only post one flyer in an obscure place, it’s a lot easier to be the main source of documenting a flyer was posted on social media.

              • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Because thats one of the only 2 things the flyer has a link to. It’s precisely the sort of thing a person who’s trying to create a “face value” seemingly real outrageous flyer would do.

                They made the name for the telegram and the email incredibly long and difficult to type out, I am willing to bet the vast majority of people outraged and responding to this post havent taken the 30 seconds to actually go look at the telegram themselves, because its a lot of effort to type out by hand.

                But if you do check it out, it looks fake as fuck. It has 2 whole posts of only 1-2 lines each and thats it, its empty and was made about an hour or so before the flyer was “discovered”, and has been abandoned since then.

                You have to be pretty out to lunch to look at that and conclude “aw yeah this looks super duper real, very legit, definitely was made for a real group by real people that definitely exist” lol

        • TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I dont have anything to gain and I think you’re a fucking knob. You wrote a whole ass essay on why you think a racist action isn’t real. How about spending five minutes with some country folk? You’ll shut the fuck up real quick.

          • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            How about spending five minutes with some country folk?

            Ah yes, the type of people who will make a well formatted and very clearly legible flyer, complete with a qr code, telegram group, and proton email.

            That definitely sounds like the sort of thing “country folk” are so well known for doing all the time.

            You are out to lunch if you think this solitary piece of paper looks real, lol

              • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Sure, but each step you have to take of narrowing the scope of reasonable occurrences re-enforces Occam’s razor.

                Who is more likely to be a smart, tech capable person? A racist who seriously thinks posting up this flyer is a good idea? Or someone who already manages a social media account?

                Each point individually can be chalked up to a coincidence, like yeah okay sure maybe you have this person who is simultaneously tech literate enough to make the nice well formed flyer and setup the centered QR code and setup the telegram account and setup a proton email BUT they are also stupid enough to think this flyer is a good idea?

                Thats a mighty specific type of individual, they exist sure but, thats just one very narrow scope in this situation.

                There’s several more of these weird oddities about the flyer, and when you stack all of them up the whole thing seems extremely unlikely to have been put up by such a person.

                Meanwhile, a tech literate person managing a social media account would be very much capable of making such a flyer, setting up the accounts/group, and is smart enough to know that 90%+ of people will be outraged by the flyer and not bother to dig any deeper than face value, and they know they wont get in any trouble over it because no one would believe the people who actually dig even a little bit into it and point out all the weird shit about the flyer.

                There’s no extra mental gymnastics required for that second conclusion, it’s pretty straightforward and it’s not an unheard of thing to do, people purposefully putting up inflammatory marks in public and sharing them.

                  • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Oh fascinating, the prior telegram account was taken down and the new one created.

                    Note how the new telegram group was created today, despite the group prior existing yesterday.

                    I can also personally confirm the “old” one that was stood up yesterday had different 2 posts, different image, etc etc.

                    This one that is at the same URL still only has 2 posts but different ones.

                    Not sure if perhaps telegram took down the old group and then someone jumped on creating a new account now, perhaps?

                    But its definitely a completely different group from the one made yesterday, I should’ve taken some screencaps of what it looked like.

                  • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    “If I don’t read someone’ response I wont have to confront the possibility I was mistaken”

                    GGWP

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Eh, walk around with a Nazi flag and see how long it takes before you’re on social media…

      The person would have created the telegram group so others who wanted to take part would have somewhere to communicate after seeing the advert?

      Honestly this kind of attitude is only diminishing a problem that’s very real, i.e. the rise of racism and bigotry.

    • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The telegram has only 2 posts by the creator, conveniently only an hour or two before the picture was posted onto Twitter.

      Thanks for posting this. You are showing what people SHOULD be doing instead of immediately going into some race-baited tirade. The problem is that these days, people seem to WANT to get baited into some race argument. Lots of blue-haired, black nail-polish zoomers with nothing better to do started fuming before before they should jump into the comments and read a post like yours which shows that this is probably some total bullshit. Either a joke or something posted to purposefully cause controversy.

      • pixxelkick@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Lots of blue-haired, black nail-polish zoomers

        Ya I am one of those types of folks still, I just took the 30 seconds to look into what I was reading.

        When you make statements like the above, you just shove yourself over to the other end of the problem. You do realize that blanket referring to a large group of people as all behaving the same way is bigotry right?

        Like, you realize you can critique a post without resorting to bigoted ad hominem attacks on a massive group of people?

        Please don’t associate with me, lol. You aren’t behaving much better. Literally everything you wrote here was unnecessary and you’re post would have been much better without it included:

        Lots of blue-haired, black nail-polish zoomers with nothing better to do started fuming before before they should jump into the comments and read a post like yours which shows that this is probably some total bullshit.

        Literally all of that was totally unneeded, and makes you sound extremely bigoted.