Measuring BLM in terms of insured property damage is probably a poor way to approach a movement addressing systemic bias and social awareness. It at least runs afoul of something to:
reduce complicated events to simplistic narratives
The impacts of BLM have been met with counteraction, which is neither new or unexpected, and no meme is going to be able to fully address a complicated anything.
I love how there are multiple comments downplaying the $2 billion number.
It just goes to show how brainwashed people really are when it comes to numbers like $2 billion.
Of course, compare that number to Elon Musk’s wealth, and $2 billion doesn’t seem like all that much. Compare it to what I have, however, and the difference is almost incomprehensible. I make $80,000 a year. Even if I saved every single dollar I earned, it would take me 25,000 years to accumulate $2 billion. Let that sink in for a moment.
$2 billion in insured property damage is an absolutely massive amount of damage caused by the BLM riots. However, that still doesn’t change the point I’m making, which is that the meme is misinformation.
Your argument is that memes don’t tell the whole story and never can. That’s a completely different argument, and it doesn’t address my point.
My point is that the meme is deliberately presenting a misleading picture of what happened. The fact that the damage amounted to $2 billion is directly relevant to that discussion.
The meme implies that the BLM riots caused relatively little property damage. They did not. The estimated insured property damage was approximately $2 billion.
Downplaying that figure to make the damage appear insignificant is textbook misinformation, particularly when it’s being used to push a very specific political narrative.
And let’s be clear about something: my personal opinions on BLM and the riots are probably very different from what most people here assume. In fact, the person I originally responded to would probably disagree with a good deal of what I have to say about both BLM and the riots themselves.
But that’s beside the point.
I am specifically and intentionally calling out the propaganda and misinformation presented in this meme. Nothing more, nothing less.
You don’t have to agree with my opinions about BLM to acknowledge that a meme misrepresenting the scale of property damage is misleading. Those are two entirely separate issues, and conflating them is exactly how political misinformation gets a free pass.
It’s a $32 trillion economy, so I wouldn’t consider it a stretch to say that BLM caused the slightest amount of property damage in a meme. The $2 billion figure doesn’t seem significant or as relevant.
You’re comparing a $2 billion insurance loss to the entire American GDP?
Jesus. Way to lose all context.
Yes, of course. What’s $2 billion compared to $32 TRILLION-ILLION-ILLION? Are you kidding me?!
What exactly were you expecting from the protests? For people to scoop up the entire country and toss it in the fucking bin?
I even made a point of comparing that $2 billion to Elon Musk’s net worth. Compared to that, it’s a tiny loss.
But comparing a $2 billion loss from the BLM protests to the entire American economy is a completely useless comparison. It’s like saying the distance to the Sun is tiny compared to the distance to the next galaxy. Technically true, but utterly meaningless without context.
The American economy generates trillions of dollars in economic activity every year. Of course $2 billion is going to look insignificant when you compare it to a number that massive. That doesn’t tell us anything meaningful about the actual scale of the losses.
Christ. Calling a $2 billion loss negligible because it’s a tiny fraction of America’s GDP doesn’t prove your point. It just demonstrates that you know how to divide two numbers without understanding what the comparison actually tells you.
Context matters. Scale matters. And a loss doesn’t stop being significant just because you can find a bigger number to compare it to.
It is actually and you don’t understand the context. It’s the largest loss in insurance history. How do you find that to be a meaningless metric.
And again. The point of my response was to illustrate the misinformation. As much as you want to downplay it 2 billion is a noteworthy and significant loss.
Insured property damage just wasn’t the purpose or intent of BLM. Illustrating it as such works just as much towards misinformation as the offending meme, if not more.
It most certainly does. It demonstrates just how gargantuan these protests were. They resulted in the most costly protest-related property damage in American history.
And no, it is not misinformation. It is an objectively verifiable fact.
If people cannot comprehend the significance of $2 billion, there is not much I can do about that. That is a failure of our educational system, which is an entirely different issue in and of itself.
But downplaying the damage is disingenuous at best and outright pandering at worst.
Measuring BLM in terms of insured property damage is probably a poor way to approach a movement addressing systemic bias and social awareness. It at least runs afoul of something to:
The impacts of BLM have been met with counteraction, which is neither new or unexpected, and no meme is going to be able to fully address a complicated anything.
I love how there are multiple comments downplaying the $2 billion number.
It just goes to show how brainwashed people really are when it comes to numbers like $2 billion.
Of course, compare that number to Elon Musk’s wealth, and $2 billion doesn’t seem like all that much. Compare it to what I have, however, and the difference is almost incomprehensible. I make $80,000 a year. Even if I saved every single dollar I earned, it would take me 25,000 years to accumulate $2 billion. Let that sink in for a moment.
$2 billion in insured property damage is an absolutely massive amount of damage caused by the BLM riots. However, that still doesn’t change the point I’m making, which is that the meme is misinformation.
Your argument is that memes don’t tell the whole story and never can. That’s a completely different argument, and it doesn’t address my point.
My point is that the meme is deliberately presenting a misleading picture of what happened. The fact that the damage amounted to $2 billion is directly relevant to that discussion.
The meme implies that the BLM riots caused relatively little property damage. They did not. The estimated insured property damage was approximately $2 billion.
Downplaying that figure to make the damage appear insignificant is textbook misinformation, particularly when it’s being used to push a very specific political narrative.
And let’s be clear about something: my personal opinions on BLM and the riots are probably very different from what most people here assume. In fact, the person I originally responded to would probably disagree with a good deal of what I have to say about both BLM and the riots themselves.
But that’s beside the point.
I am specifically and intentionally calling out the propaganda and misinformation presented in this meme. Nothing more, nothing less.
You don’t have to agree with my opinions about BLM to acknowledge that a meme misrepresenting the scale of property damage is misleading. Those are two entirely separate issues, and conflating them is exactly how political misinformation gets a free pass.
It’s a $32 trillion economy, so I wouldn’t consider it a stretch to say that BLM caused the slightest amount of property damage in a meme. The $2 billion figure doesn’t seem significant or as relevant.
You’re comparing a $2 billion insurance loss to the entire American GDP?
Jesus. Way to lose all context.
Yes, of course. What’s $2 billion compared to $32 TRILLION-ILLION-ILLION? Are you kidding me?!
What exactly were you expecting from the protests? For people to scoop up the entire country and toss it in the fucking bin?
I even made a point of comparing that $2 billion to Elon Musk’s net worth. Compared to that, it’s a tiny loss.
But comparing a $2 billion loss from the BLM protests to the entire American economy is a completely useless comparison. It’s like saying the distance to the Sun is tiny compared to the distance to the next galaxy. Technically true, but utterly meaningless without context.
The American economy generates trillions of dollars in economic activity every year. Of course $2 billion is going to look insignificant when you compare it to a number that massive. That doesn’t tell us anything meaningful about the actual scale of the losses.
Christ. Calling a $2 billion loss negligible because it’s a tiny fraction of America’s GDP doesn’t prove your point. It just demonstrates that you know how to divide two numbers without understanding what the comparison actually tells you.
Context matters. Scale matters. And a loss doesn’t stop being significant just because you can find a bigger number to compare it to.
The context being: insured property damage is probably not a good way to measure the influence of BLM protests when emotionally reacting to a meme.
It is actually and you don’t understand the context. It’s the largest loss in insurance history. How do you find that to be a meaningless metric.
And again. The point of my response was to illustrate the misinformation. As much as you want to downplay it 2 billion is a noteworthy and significant loss.
Insured property damage just wasn’t the purpose or intent of BLM. Illustrating it as such works just as much towards misinformation as the offending meme, if not more.
It most certainly does. It demonstrates just how gargantuan these protests were. They resulted in the most costly protest-related property damage in American history.
And no, it is not misinformation. It is an objectively verifiable fact.
If people cannot comprehend the significance of $2 billion, there is not much I can do about that. That is a failure of our educational system, which is an entirely different issue in and of itself.
But downplaying the damage is disingenuous at best and outright pandering at worst.