I agree that many “Bernie Bros” are obnoxious. I am also disappointed that Sanders has not spoken out enough against the bad behavior of some of his fans (but I’d still rather see a real progressive push back against the conservative Democrats). However, if we’re going to complain about noxious fans on one side, we also have to call out worse behavior from the anti-Bernie fanatics. Like this appalling meme.
DO NOT DO THIS!
That is a recipe for a chlorine bomb, not glowsticks. It would likely kill or do lasting harm to anyone making it, and also harm anyone around them.
Here’s another recipe. Take standard partisan political fervor. Add a few amoral morons who like the trolling behavior they learned on 4chan. Mix together and watch enlightenment grow.
Oh, I didn’t mean to write “enlightenment”. I meant “stupidity”.
Well, it’s just a good thing that Obama issued that tyrannical Executive Order banning the consumption of chlorine bleach, in order to strengthen Obamacare and reduce Global Warming.
I, for one, would be very disappointed if Conservatives took it upon themselves to violate Obama’s edict, and even moreso if they drink their bleach with an ammonia chaser.
Wasn’t the point of my post clear enough? We do not advocate poisoning or killing our political opponents.
There are no “Bernie Bros.” This is an obnoxious meme created and promoted by a political campaign not associated with Bernie Sanders. Using “Bernie Bros” is like calling women the b-word. It is never used in a complimentary sense and discriminates against young men by means meant to ridicule and disparage them.
It’s like saying Democrat Party. There is no such thing. It’s the Democratic Party.
There are no self-identified Bernie Bros. That’s a term of derision applied to young progressive men by non-progressive mud slingers. Please don’t use that term. And if the meme you saw creates a chlorine bomb, why would you think it’s actually from “Bernie Bros.”?
http://usuncut.com/news/sanders-supporters-death-glow-sticks/
“Some of the subreddits were labelled “Let’s trick Sanders supporters into killing themselves” on forums such as /r/KillThoseWhoDisagree and /r/EnoughSandersSpam.”
Except plenty of people seem to have experiences with misogynistic dudebro sanders supporters. Even someone like me, who is about as close to the “Sanders or I stay home on election day” group can point to a few.
Acknowledging that there are misogynist dudebro Bernie supporters is different from painting all Bernie supporters as misogynist dudebros, and denying that there are any is blatantly false.
It’s not clear from PZ’s OP, who is behind this rather malevolent attempt to get Sanders supporters to poison themselves with chlorine gas.
Hillary supporters?
Trump supporters?
Cruz supporters?
or just plain old Reddit trolls?
I’m guessing plain old Reddit trolls. Reddit is the trash dump of the internet and I never go there.
@3 markgisleson, at no point did PZ suggest that this meme was the product of Bernie Bros.
Vivec, not saying there are not people who fit the meme, just that the label is manufactured and derogatory.
Any use of Bernie Bros is defamatory by design. It’s not a complement, it’s an insult. It appeared literally overnight all across social media. When it began showing up, I was on a college campus and I couldn’t find any young Bernie supporters who’d heard the term. It’s not something that organically came into being, it was drafted by oppo researchers and distributed through a large network to smear young men for daring to get involved.
I put “Bernie Bros” in quotes intentionally — I agree that it is a bogus granfalloon. But we cannot deny that some Sanders supporters are disgraceful assholes. As are some Clinton supporters. As are a great many Trump supporters (I suspect “asshole” is a required criterion for supporting Trump.)
I would not impugn the general tenor of Sanders supporters, since I’m one, and my wife is even more of one.
Holy shit, that is an incredibly awful thing to do. I hope no one tries to do that and ends up hurt. Or dead.
This is a homemade recipe for chloroacetone, which has been used as tear gas. Don’t try that recipe at home, or anywhere outside of a fume hood.
Why do people appear to be getting more upset at the term Bernie Bros than at there being people on the internet who appear determined to kill their political opponents?
As a Bernie supporter, I’m tiring of Bernie supporters. I feel like the ones who aren’t obnoxious and abusive spend a lot of time telling me the obnoxious, abusive ones don’t exist and the real issue is referring to the nonexistent ones as “Bernie Bros”. OK. This has been productive.
I’m hopeful we can all agree encouraging political opponents to poison themselves is not at all OK.
I haven’t seen this particular variant before, but the whole “here’s a neat trick you can do with household chemicals” that turns out to be a toxic mess reeks of 4chan. I’ve seen images from there similar to this one masquerading as home science experiments and the like. I find rabid Bernie Bros as infuriating as the next guy, but this looks like 4chan trollery directed AT Bernie supporters. Either typical /b/ behavior or Trump-ets from /pol/.
What makes you think (I presume) markgisleson is more upset at the moniker than the bomb trickery? My guess is he felt no need to express disapproval, disgust etc. at that because the OP already had that covered. It’s possible that I’m wrong, but I prefer not to second guess the motives of a poster.
Thanks for posting this. I’ve shared the link on Facebook as a Public Service Announcement.
@11 or any chemist
The directions say to tightly cap the 2 liter bottle after adding ingredients.
Will the reaction make the bottle blow up? If there is a gas being produced it will. Is chloroacetone a gas at RT?
A 2 liter plastic bottle filled with something toxic that violently bursts can indeed be very dangerous to anyone close.
Nope. No such thing as Bernie Bros. [/sarcasm]
I caucused for Bernie, and I probably have more ideological agreements with him than with Hillary, but I am fully ready to vote for her in November should she get the nomination.
As to whoever made this meme, they can seriously fuck off.
Raven #17. Depends upon the amount of chlorine tablets added. This is an oxidation reaction, and is exothermic, giving off heat. With a small amount of oxidant, and only slight warming, the bottle would hold. The potential for a bomb does exist with a sealed system if it warms up too much. Chloroacetone is liquid at ambient temperature, but it has a pungent odor.
Wrongly thinking that PZ was blaming Bernie supporters for the meme is kind of a tell. It indicates being distracted by trivialities.
I think that this one is worth pursuing because too many on the internet get knee-jerk defensive when others create terminology to deal with people of problematic behavior and are associated with definable groups. I’ve been going over the issue in the Sincere Kirabo post about “village atheist” and if people like the one who created the image in PZ’s post got their own derogatory term that would not bother me in the least.
@markgisleson
I have seen people I know refer to fans of Bernie Sanders who act in particular ways call them Bernie Bros. Are you saying they are lying? That they don’t encounter these sorts of Bernie Sander’s fans? Because I’ve seen them when they point them out and I can tell from the context that it ridicules and disparages on specific characteristics and while they may be disproportionately young men that’s more a matter of culture and impulse control than actual discrimination of young men. How is it at all like the b-word outside of being an insulting characterization?
I’m unfamiliar with the term. The existence of a group that actually calls themselves by an insulting characterization is not required. Racists don’t tend to call themselves racists, though it does happen on occasion.
Again, so what if they don’t call themselves that? So what if it is a term of derision?
Where do you get the idea that it’s applied by non-progressives? The people I know who use it are mostly women who or women who support Hillary Clinton who experience sexism from a subset of Bernie Sanders fans. Young and male is not part of the terminology, though I can believe that they are that disproportionately.
Your reason is suspect since PZ explicitly attributed the meme to anti-Bernie Sanders people.
To expand a bit on why I say that “Bernie Bros” is about characteristics other than young and male, I don’t tend to get upset when “Bro” is applied pejoratively despite my moniker because I know that the whole “Bro culture” has lots of problems. I tend to use it because being an adult male fan of My Little Pony goes against the gender stereotype. So “Bernie Bro” does not bother me in the least.
I was unaware anyone ever claimed it was supposed to be anything other than an insult aimed at a specific type of Bernie supporter…
Bernie Bros have earned their derisive term, but this is something else entirely.
I’ll take an obnoxious asshole all-capsing about a woman daring to be as ambitious as Bernie Sanders any day over this.
@8
That’s not how defamation works.
I’m not familiar with this reaction, but here is a youtube video that claims to show what it does. Assuming the video maker has titled it correctly, it is absolutely a recipe for a deadly bomb.
BTW, any chemical recipe that tells you to enclose the products tightly should set off huge alarm bells. Why are they telling you this? Does it produce harmful fumes? Does it produce high volumes of gas that can explode the container?
If I wanted to try this, I would put a tiny amount of the chemicals in an OPEN container OUTDOORS, and see what happened. Then I would try another small amount in a ziplock sandwich bag, again OUTDOORS.
Also, always wear eye protection and gloves when doing any chemical experiment.
@brucej
I can believe it if there is an aspect to the conflict between Rs and Ds that I’ve missed. I regularly stumble upon new and old examples of pejoratives, slurs, insults and more that I was previously unaware of.
Do you think the authorities will be able to use their electronic surveillance techniques to discover the hoaxers?
The official story is that toadstools are poisonous.
The government lies.
Therefore toadstools are a miracle cure.
Not.
@markgisleson…
If you are seriously going to say that there’s “no such thing as Bernie Bros”, then you must be living in a tiny little privileged (yeah, privileged) bubble.
Tell that to Elon James White and Imani Gandy of This Week in Blackness. Tell that to Rod and Keren of The Black Guy Who Tips. Tell that to Black Lives Matter. Tell that to Netta. Tell that to DeRay. Tell that to Marissa Janae Johnson. Tell that to nearly all of the woman, especially the black women, who are either a) skeptical of Bernie Sanders, or b) outright support Hillary Clinton. Go into the TWiB Facebook group or the TBGWT Facebook group and tell that to them.
I have literally seen the Bernie Bros in action in Twitter and on Facebook. I have listened to the kinds of emails and tweets and messages those people I mentioned above, and many others, still get from some Bernie supporters. I have even directly read such messages! And these messages come from people whose profiles are adorned with pro-Bernie, anti-Hillary memes and other pictures.
To be completely fair, “Bernie Stans” is more accurate, since it isn’t just d00ds doing this. And no, it’s not at all every single supporter… even those people I listed above have acknowledged multiple times that it’s a minority of Bernie’s supporters. Some members of both Facebook groups I mentioned are, in fact, Bernie supporters, and even they acknowledge the existence of Bernie Stans (and Bernie Bros).
Don’t come anywhere and try to claim “Bernie Bros” is some kind of slur… fuck you for that, markgisleson. Seriously.
And yeah… it’s not a “bogus granfalloon”, PZ. It’s extremely real. A minority, yes, but still real.
And obviously, Hillary has her Stans, too. She has her toxic fans just like Bernie does. And I think we can all agree that Trump supporters (and Cruz supporters) are made up of mostly Stans/Bros.
As for the meme… holy shit that is terrifying. I don’t know who thought that’d be a good idea, but I hope it gets investigated, because that is terrible.
Oh, and just in case… I am not supporting Hillary. I’ve resolved to spend my presidential vote on keeping the Republicans OUT of the White House, and voting as left-wing as I possibly can down the ballot. I will #VoteBlueNoMatterWho come the election because letting Trump, or any Republican, win, and thus letting the country burn for 4 years, will impact negatively on too many people. Going for a scorched earth policy in a presidential election is is the worst possible thing we could do.
Well shit, I guess he wants people to die via chlorine poisoning. There’s no other explanation!
I find it sad some poor wanker has decided to produce something like this, and is presumably getting the giggles thinking about how many people-shaped-objects might be hurt by their actions (because of course, anyone who’d believe a meme from the internet isn’t a “real” person to the sort of mind who’d do this), and the amount of personal power this imputes to them. I find it even more sad they’ve found a reasonable blind for their anti-social activities in the emergent tribalism of US politics, but let’s be honest, if it wasn’t politics they were using as a blind, it would be football, baseball or something like that. Heck, if it weren’t an election year, they’d probably have let the meme surface close to July 4, as a “patriotic” glow ball or similar. They’re dangerous, in the sense they regard other human beings as things, and more specifically, as things for their amusement, which is the heart of evil.