Why do conservatives use the laugh emoji on posts that have to do with covid, or vaccines?

I suppose it’s because they think covid is a joke.

They use the laugh response on Face-book when they disagree with a post, because that site doesn’t provide any other response icon for disapproval.

Because they are dicks.

Not to quibble, @Zaku, just wondering, because you are usually pretty careful with your language, and I’m not into FB culture at all: is there no longer a distinction to be made between disagreement and disapproval? And what does it mean when derision is the only way to express either one?

If people didn’t know how to disagree in a civilized fashion, they used to get annoyed or indignant when someone differed with them; although there always used to be a few who strove to listen better and think for themselves. Now, in this time of packaged and color-coded opinions, it seems to lead straight to being ”offended,” which of course entitles them in turn to some sort of reparation, from demanding apologies of the other all the way to monetizing it with a lawsuit.

I feel like we are being reduced to a coarseness that leads to a dissolution of culture. Is this the consequence of laugh tracks, simplistic thumb gestures, and Hallmark sentiments about your specialness, or is it just an epidemic of entitled narcissism that grants full status and respect only to opinons of one’s own and one’s anointed deities?

Maybe they think death and dying are funny.

They are definately laughing at the perceived ‘sheep’ swallowing the government line.

I could send you guys posts from my social’s that would drive you mad with frustration! Sad but true.

defin I tely, darling

What @filmfann said.

They also laugh at stories about children getting very sick from Covid. They laugh about children dying. They laugh about someone who overdoses. There is no better way to describe them. They are definitely dicks.

@Jeruba Right. Not sure how that happened, I have auto-fill on.

Its only the most frequently used emoji in the United States.

Congratulations on making it this far in life, guys.

Because they are assholes. They think people are being paranoid and sheep.

@KNOWITALL, that must be what it’s filling in because I’ve seen it in several of your recent messages.

@cheebdragon Why do they use that emoji on serious comments about covid? Enlighten us.

@Jeruba I found your post about how people react very interesting.

It supplants argument. Lots of people do this when they want to feel right but not think about it too hard. Derision is easier than persuasion, discussion, empathy or introspection.

This behavior is not at all the unique province of conservatives.

@Jeruba What a thoughtful set of questions, especially in reply to a reply to a question about trollish use of emoticons on Face-book!

”Not to quibble, @Zaku, just wondering, because you are usually pretty careful with your language, and I’m not into FB culture at all: is there no longer a distinction to be made between disagreement and disapproval?”
– In thoughtful conversation, certainly there is a distinction.
– Sometimes that even happens on Face-book, though not generally in the numerous low exchanges between people with very different sets of ideas about US politics.
– The context here though is about the reaction icons that FB offers on every post, like GA’s on Fluther. FB used to only have Like. Now it has Like, Love, Care, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry, but no Dislike, Disagree, or Disapprove.
– Many other sites (e.g. Reddit, Imgur, Stack Exchange, Quora) offer Upvote and Downvote, and people, particularly (as mentioned in the title, US “Conservatives” seeing posts they are against) on political posts, often have an impulse to want to vote up or down. FB doesn’t have anything that is clearly a “downvote”. Particularly on a political post, “Angry” can very often be interpreted either as “I am angry about this post, because I disagree” OR as “I am angry because I am moved to anger by the issue this comment mentions!”
– So some people have noticed that “Haha” in response to a serious post gets around FB’s attempt to not provide disagreement. And as OP suggests, I have absolutely seen this very often used by conservative troll/bully types, to try to ridicule and discredit when people who care about some issue post a view they disagree with. (e.g. The homeless people are freezing in our community – we should really let them sleep in a public building.”)
– The reason I used the word “disapproval” in my reply above, was because it felt more appropriate for the type of reaction I feel they are having. Disagreement implies more thought than I think is typically going on in those cases, though clearly they also would like to say they are disagreeing.

“And what does it mean when derision is the only way to express either one?”
– I think it means FB was trying to control the available types of reactions that could be easily expressed in a way that the site would quantify and show that way. Perhaps slightly like Fluther (but evil), they thought limiting reaction counts to non-negative channels would tend to encourage participation and positive feelings toward using FB. I think it’s partly an attempt to avoid negativity. FB tries to encourage use of FB, and part of that is focusing attention on things other people react to, and those reaction icons, and replies, are used to choose which posts to show to whom by their nefarious and nebulous algorithms.
– But yes, there is of course a lot more going on there than what FB intended. There are many very toxic and dysfunctional conversations and forums on FB. Where I’ve seen the type of use the OP refers to, the people doing it will either only click Haha, or they will spew aggressive troll comments that make zero effort to understand or engage in anything other than bullying, hatred, threats, insults, etc.

“If people didn’t know how to disagree in a civilized fashion, they used to get annoyed or indignant when someone differed with them; although there always used to be a few who strove to listen better and think for themselves. Now, in this time of packaged and color-coded opinions, it seems to lead straight to being ”offended,” which of course entitles them in turn to some sort of reparation, from demanding apologies of the other all the way to monetizing it with a lawsuit.”

“I feel like we are being reduced to a coarseness that leads to a dissolution of culture. Is this the consequence of laugh tracks, simplistic thumb gestures, and Hallmark sentiments about your specialness, or is it just an epidemic of entitled narcissism that grants full status and respect only to opinons of one’s own and one’s anointed deities?”
– I think it’s what it looks like to be in a country or community that has fractured into opposing factions with their own world views, like other places in the world where there have been religious wars and/or cultural intolerance.

^^GA. Facebook really does need a dislike or thumbs down. Many people have said this for years. I don’t understand not having it available. I disagree would be nice too. What emoji would be disagree? A face with “no” across it?

I think conservatives use the laugh to make fun of the person not as disagreement, unless the other person was coming after them personally. What I mean is, let’s say someone accuses the conservative of being paranoid about the government shutting down businesses and doing another lockdown, but the conservative wasn’t meaning that at all, then they might use a laugh emoji about the accusation and misunderstanding, implying they are not paranoid.

Thank you, @Zaku, for such a thoughtful response.

@JLeslie,
> What emoji would be disagree? A face with “no” across it?

Aha, the limits of emojis. Given the restrictions of having to respond with a weird little picture (many of which are getting so oblique, abstract, and symbolic that, guess what, we are reinventing kanji), you can say only what the set of symbols lets you say. That way the proprietor of the symbols gets to control what you can say, It’s like the cults with their special lingo and their redefining of their lexicon—so you speak and even think only what’s allowable in their culture. How about breaking free and using words in their standard definitions?

@Jeruba I went to a presentation entitled Language and Reality. It was great. It was given in a philosophy study group here where I live. The lecturer talked about how language influences and shapes culture and thoughts, and I very much agree with this.

Being bilingual and married to someone from another country I see how language has an influence on culture and vice versa.

One thing in the lecture that was discussed was how some languages have many words for slightly different emotions, while other languages are very limited and people need to interpret through context. I brought forward the example that in English we use the word love for friends we love, our spouse we love, family, and even inanimate things, while in Spanish there are different words for each type of love. The person presenting had examples in German and some other languages, I don’t remember them.

You have me thinking about how the online world is changing our vocabulary and in some ways trimming it down to fewer words than English had already. If we accept the theory, it means to me there will be even more miscommunication than already exists. It also means younger generations might be limited regarding emotions and perception, because the limited language limits their options. It also highlights how education can influence understanding, because people are more likely to have a more limited vocabulary the less educated they are, but of course there are exceptions to this.

@JLeslie,
> What emoji would be disagree? A face with “no” across it?
– FB uses a blue thumbs up for “Like”, so on that site, “Dislike” would logically be a thumbs down icon. Some people have even made that for them in some joke feedback to FB. Maybe red like this .

@Zaku I mentioned the thumbs down. I said I think of it as dislike, and that is not quite disagree. It doesn’t really matter on Facebook though. I think it was you who mentioned we used to only have “like” at our disposal, so in some ways like was similar to GA and still used that way sometimes by people I’m sure. Thumbs down would be interpreted and used a bunch of different ways no matter how many other options there are.

@JLeslie Humor is subjective.

@cheebdragon Objectivity is subjective.
Therefore, humor is objective. As a matter of fact, many find my humor objective.

@filmfann You should double check the definition of objectivity.

@JLeslie I’m surprised to see this morning that yes you did mention thumbs down. I was rushing when I replied, and apparently I didn’t read your replies very carefully at all yesterday morning. I thought I’d even looked for someone mentioning that, but I somehow didn’t see it.

@Zaku No problem. :)

@cheebdragon I’m asking you to explain what’s funny about someone stating concern or presenting information about covid. You’re saying the presumed conservative clicking the haha emoji isn’t making fun of the person writing, but rather what they wrote is actually funny? I don’t think the person writing serious concerns and information is trying to be funny.

They might sometimes click Haha on things they think are funny, or in less aggressive ways, but often it is quite aggressive. Let’s see how long it takes me to find an example…

Oh, wow…

That was harder than I thought, because the main place where I used to see that, a public county FB group, seems to have been completely abandoned by anyone who would post anything not Y’allQaeda-friendly. Two people who used to do that all the time are now group Admins, and don’t have anything to post Haha about, because most of the posts are by them or people they agree with, a high percentage of which are ads for concealed carry gun permit classes, and such content as:

A joke suggesting Hollywood make a film with Alec Baldwin and the Democrat governor they hate and would like to see shot. That got some Haha, but more Thumbs Up.

Lots and lots of Fox News and anti-vax shares, homophobia, xenophobia, pro-Trump BS, etc.

e.g.:

“For every life saved by the vaccine, 5–6 lives are lost to vaccine side effects.”
“If you are younger than 40 you are 13.5 times more likely to die of vaccine than from covid.”
“If you are over 40 you are about 5 times more likely to die of the vaccine than you are of covid.”
”So if you are afraid of covid, you should be at least 5 times more afraid of the vaccine. If you are also young you should be 13.5 time more afraid of the vaccine.”

@Zaku I just roll my eyes at the statistics constantly stated by these people and then passed around. Statistics based on, um, total rumor and obviously made up. There have been some instances of side effects that involved blood clots or heart, but these people are moving the decimal or flat out making numbers up.

They were doing the decimal thing with deaths from known covid cases in memes on social media during the first 6 months of covid. Even my friend who is an accountant just sucked up the bullshit like a sponge and posted it. When I showed her the chances weren’t .006%, but rather .6% with HER numbers, she realized her mistake, but she has a head for math so even though she wasn’t thinking initially, she was able to understand what I was talking about.

The CDC website had the same numbers, these people pulled them directly from there, so if you did “research” it looked valid, but these idiots just added a percentage sign like .006 equals .006%.

@JLeslie You don’t get to decide what other people find humorous. Some people cope with tragedy and trauma in different ways. George Carlin had a joke about how rape can be funny, some people would agree and others may find it offensive.

@cheebdragon I’m not trying to decide what people find humorous, I’m trying to understand what is humorous about it to them. You won’t say. George Carlin would be right out there with a joke demonstrating what he found funny about a situation, you say nothing.

In the purest sense? Ignorance. (Not stating that as an insult) It’s a lack of information combined with obtaining the wrong information (Misinformation and Disinformation) from Unreliable sources. They hear this wrong information long enough that when someone counters it, they think it’s a joke. Using the laugh emoji is a way of brushing off and avoiding the topic in general while making fun of the OP. It’s
a shame..