#all of which would require the same length of responses to debunk and deconstruct

[rutadales]

So instead of sending an ask clearing up misinformation on these tags bc that would be pointless and serve to only make people upset, instead I am going to illustrate to all of you how short, quippy, and wrong statements completely control the conversation. Any attempt to clear up misinfo is going to take twice as long and be a lot less clipable (tbc this person isn't doing this intentionally doing this (at least to my knowledge) but it goes to show how pervasive these quick and wrong statements are). Watch:

"dream gave gumball's va alcohol" completely wrong, dream and gumball here both went to a birthday party of a mutual friend and met 20 minutes prior to the interaction in the Uber. There's nothing to show that Dream even brought alcohol to the event, let alone saught out a 20 year old to give it to him.

"VA is underage" technically correct in the specific context of America's legal drinking age, but so misleading it feels intentional. For most people underage means below 18, a minor, and not a 20 year old adult making the decsion to drink a year before it's legal. Any reasonable person is going to assume 17 or younger here.

"VA had a bipolar swing" There's nothing to suggest this besides people decided it. You can't diagnose a manic episode from a 4 minute clip and the majority of you are not capable of diagnosing anytime at all. No one has confirmed this, not even gold statue Michaelangelo (who by the way has deleted every tweet involving the situation). But even in the scenario where he is manic in those clips, being manic is not a free pass to verbal harass minimum wage workers and be freely antisemitic, ablest, and homophobic. But I digress.

"and called Dream a faggot" yeah that parts true

Even more additional context that is relevant is Dream was physically assaulted by Gumball's VA. Gumball's VA directly asked if Dream was Jewish after saying Dream would never get rid of his money, called the Uber driver the r slur and said the Uber driver had down syndrome. He then threatened to kill or paralyze Dream.

See how long that took? Almost 400 words to counter 4 lines. And I'm giving the original commentor the benefit of the doubt here and assuming they're just repeating what they heard but you see how that's dangerous? You see how this method of controlling interactions keeps the flow on the side of the person who is factually wrong?

And I didn't even get into how this is a tactic of the alt right, how it serves to normalize using faggot as a weapon, how it actively desensitizes people to bigotry if the person on the receiving end "deserves it". Or how harmful instantly trying to make the assaulter in this situation the victim, or using mental illness as an excuse to assault and threaten to kill people is also bad! Because even though that is all true and absolutely necessary in this conversation, I can't get into it! Because it would take even longer and "I ain't reading all that" is the most annoying, damaging phrase on twitter right now.