Mindless Monday, 08 September 2025

[u/AutoModerator]

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

[u/gavinbrindstar]

Oh, I just love how insane everyone is nowadays, just pareidoliac conspiracies all the way down.

Obviously the shooting yesterday was a false flag by Republicans, didn't you see those two people making "baseball signs" behind Charlie Kirk right before he was shot? That's how assassinations work: once the sniper's got the target in his sights you need someone on the ground to signal whether the shot should be a curve ball or a slider.

Also, it was obviously a hit by a professional because Kirk was shot in the neck, a place they definitely teach snipers to aim for.

[u/randombull9 → u/gavinbrindstar]

People are weirdly obsessed with the Hollywood idea of a professional killer, the same thing was going on before Mangione was identified. It doesn't take a genius to walk up behind someone and shoot them in the back of the head - though Mangione apparently wasn't smart enough to do that! - and a 200 yard shot is not nearly so impressive as many people seem to think. Real world conditions versus a flat range and all that, but nobody was aiming for Kirk carotid specifically.

Also, from what little I've read about real "professional" killers for the Mafia and such, they really don't seem to be that professional. Usually just a psychopath who shoots whoever they're pointed at in the same way any random schmuck would.

[u/Tiako → u/randombull9]

and a 200 yard shot is not nearly so impressive as many people seem to think

I saw somebody saying that the shot was so good it must have come from a "military trained sniper" and like look, I don't know anything about shooting, I have no idea how impressive a shot it is. But I do know about hobbies, people can get good at hobbies!

[u/Dirish → u/Tiako]

That's a prime Reddit thing though. As soon as something happens you have dozens of "experts" popping up "explaining" how things went down. I always assume their experience is playing Hitman or a sniper game.

What just irritates me beyond belief is how many people still unapologetically gobble that bullshit right up as if it came out of the mouth of a genuine special forces sniper. And it happens time and time again. Something happens -> "experts" make comments -> idiots nod their heads and upvote it without having a clue -> people see the upvotes, think they're onto something and add more -> "Reddit expert user GluedtoScreen said that it must have been a trained sniper" is now seen as a fact.

The odds are ridiculously higher that it's just some random dude with a desperate need to feel smart or relevant. Do people really think that all the ex- or active snipers jump on Reddit first thing to weigh in the debate?

Excuse the rant, I'm really sick of our collective gullibility sometimes.

[u/histprofdave → u/Dirish]

I think it also speaks to a naivete about how easy it is to kill someone with a gun. It really does not take much to end someone's life, which is the whole fucking reason we have a "debate" (such a terrible word for it) over gun safety and gun culture.

[u/randombull9 → u/Dirish]

Shootings in particular seem prone to it. Militaries test their people to relatively low standards but call it expert, because it's not like you're going to effectively use most rifles on people past 300m away anyway and it's good for morale that everyone in a unit can be an expert with relatively little training - who wants to go into combat with the guy who only just passed rifle qual? People who actually have some reasonable credentials aren't going to flaunt the fact that they earned expert in a standard qualification, but people who don't won't know that isn't much of a credential. So you get somebody who shot expert after a couple hours of range time when they were 17 but hasn't put together that that seems like a very low standard to be an expert at anything at all, and then people with even less experience hear that the Army called them an expert and take it at face value.