A sign hung in Port Coquitlam advertising a “whites-only” moms and tots group is causing outrage online after photos of a poster were shared on social media.
It’s wild to me that after the last six years or so, people are still happy to conclude this must be a troll or fake. Like damn, what is it going to take to convince you that racists are fucking brazen?
I’d say it’s also that a lot of folks are very invested in making other people second guess if something like this is actually real or if it’s just Black folks with ulterior motives. It makes it easier for more people to dismiss overt racism when it happens.
Maybe some investigation Journalism that actually checks if this is real, or not? Because yes, a lot of these posts have turned out to be bullshit from trolls
Like damn, what is it going to take to convince you that racists are fucking brazen?
Call me crazy but I don’t typically associate racist trash mom and tot groups with the sort of people who make very clean and legible flyers with fully formed clear english and even properly used apostrophes, as well as a QR code (centered too!), a telegram group, and a proton email
The deeper you look into all the context surrounding the flyer, the faker and faker it looks.
It’s amazing how well the average white supremacist can blend into society.
Please stop being so closedminded. These people want you to think since they aren’t toothless rednecks in a Maga hat that they can’t possibly be racist. This shit comes in a sizes and flavours.
Sorry but I go with Occam’s Razor on this one. The possibility of some racist going through all the necessary motions to make this scenario occur are incredibly specific and incredibly unlikely.
The facts don’t add up to this being real. It’s a narrative that just doesn’t make sense and seems so deeply unlikely that I can’t even imagine it happening. There’s way way too many coincidences and holes and unlikely occurrences.
Whereas the scenario of “a person wanted their social media to get a huge boost, so they made a fake flyer, a fake telegram, a fake email all within a couple hours, took a picture of it, made a post on their social media, and then shared those posts minutes later with the local news to gain a bunch of traction”, is way more common and doesn’t have any holes in it.
Of the possibilities, the latter is astronomically more likely and requires no mental gymnastics to arrive at, so I assume it’s the case. It’s that simple.
The City of Port Coquitlam also commented to say, “Thank you for bringing [the sign] to our attention earlier. Bylaw officers are out taking them down.”
They also apparently put the fakeflyer out there.
While the Telegram group is private, messages from the chat can be previewed. In the previewed messages, the administrator says they are “encouraged by the response” the group has gotten […]
And populated the telegram channel with fake messages.
I’m not sure how you wiekd Occam’s razor but it’s becoming a pretty elaborate con for just some internet clout.
They also apparently put the fakeflyer out there.
Not sure what you are talking about. The City itself was told that the flyer existed, they dont have to be “in on it” to respond like that.
If you post up a fake flyer, the city will take it down and respond the way you said. It’s not that complicated.
And populated the telegram channel with fake messages.
Indeed, theres a whopping two whole messages on the telegram, posted minutes apart, and both of them were posted about an hour before the post of the flyer was put up on instagram/twitter, and no further messages have been posted to the channel since then, no members added, etc. It appears to be effectively abandoned minutes after it was made.
It literally only has those 2 messages and thats it, and they come out to a grand total of like, 4 lines of text total.
Do you think that sounds like a totally legit telegram account chat group? Cuz that sure sounds fake as fuck to me lol
I don’t really think you’re applying that razor quite right. And there’s not really any mental gymnastics involved in “racists exist.”
And there’s not really any mental gymnastics involved in “racists exist.”
That is not what the question is, nor the conclusion.
The question is, “Who put this flyer up?”
And of the answers:
Option 1: Genuine Racist
- They possessed the capacity to produce this fairly well made flyer, despite the fact the venn diagram of “person who can make a flyer of this quality” and “person who is openly racist” is a very thin sliver (unlikely occurrence #1)
- They did not have any existing members of an “in group”, and made the telegram “pre-emptively” (extremely uncommon, typically people of the group precede the creation of a chat room to chat in, unlikely occurrence #2)
- They setup a proton email, an extremely uncommon tool typically only used by extremely tech savvy individuals, but didnt put in the extra work to make it have a real account name which is extremely uncommon (unlikely occurrence #3)
- They telegram group has a photo of the exact same paper that was “discovered” shortly after, but on a table, and the photo was set only a short period of time before it was “discovered” and posted to social media. Which means the individual took the photo, set the picture of the telegram group, went outside to put the flyer up, and in under 1-2 hours it was already posted up to social media and shared with the news. (unlikely occurrence #4)
- The group who discovered and shared this picture happened to be discovered by the owner of a social media group “BlackVancouver” who happens to also be a group specifically focused on spreading awareness about racist acts in the area. They were exactly in the right place at the right time to find this picture literally moments after it was put up? (extremely unlikely occurrence #5)
- Despite this, no other pictures at all of these flyers have surfaced anywhere else, which seems to mean that one single flyer was posted and was taken down as soon as it was found. No one else has any info on this flyer except the couple pictures shared by BlackVancouver. It’s very unlikely that a person who made flyers for their group would put all that effort into making the flyer and proceed to post up literally just one of them. (unlikely occurrence #6)
- The telegram group has had no members added, and no posts made after the sharing of the flyer with the news outlet (unlikely occurrence #7)
Option 2: Someone fostering fake outrage to boost their social media
- A person who manages a social media account is not that unlikely to possess the skills to make a fairly decent looking flyer
- If they were making a fake telegram to add “face value” authenticity to their flyer, the lack of any members of the telegram group is not unexpected
- A proton email would be not unheard of to be utilized by someone looking to setup a quick and dirty fake email to add further authenticity to their flyer
- Wanting to quickly slap together the telegram group in as low effort as possible while still trying to create the appearance of being real at face value, using the flyer itself as the picture of their fake telegram group is a quick and dirty solution, and it would make sense that they would have taken the picture for it shortly before going outside to put the flyer up
- The group discovering the flyer being the one who made it is self explanatory at this point, as that is the goal, no longer a coincidence but by design
- The individual would not want to get in trouble, so they would have only made a single fake flyer, tacked it up, snapped a picture, then took it down asap, explaining why there aren’t any other photos that have surfaced of the flyer and why it seems like only a single flyer ever got posted up.
- The individual, once satisfied that everything looks legit and enough outrage has generated, locked the telegram group and abandoned it, as it has now served its purpose.
Note how the first option requires enormous mental gymnastics to make sense, whereas the latter largely fits within its own context and doesnt require any stretching to conclude. All the “unlikely coincidences” in scenario 1 become expected results in scenario 2.
Thus… Occam’s Razor concludes that situation 2 is way way more likely, and is the one to default to.
If you can come up with an even more likely scenario than situation 2 though, by all means, lets hear it. But I don’t see anyway this narrative fits some random racist mom and tot group founder without having to make numerous extremely unlikely assumptions.
The real investigative journalism was here in the comments it seems. /jk
You say /jk, but it’s true…
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a trolling of sorts.
We can hate racism and still call bullshit on liberal upvote and outrage pandering.
The second you typed liberal out we all knew who you were.
Don’t say that. When they identify themselves it’s easier to pick them out. I love me nazi armbands. Much easier to tell at a glance who’s the nazi.
I’m a progressive that knows when liberal outrage media is pandering towards me. It’s pretty clear this isn’t pandering towards conservatives.
A progressive what…
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Did you read the “article”? There was no research or investigation. It was literally describing a social media post with no investigation to corroborate anything. This is the news community. There should be quality standards for news posts. This is a pretty clear low effort “article” to capitalize a upward trending controversial social media post to grab clicks and ad views.
So does that mean any article that reports on any social media post is pandering? Or just ones you don’t like?
Reports that don’t corroborate the social media with verification from other interviews, other social media with similar reporting, etc. are pretty bad. This thread has a pretty good break down of why it seems pretty sus that this is a legit flyer: https://lemmy.world/comment/376517
Every accusation is a confession.
Every. Time.
What does that even mean. I’m not sure why recognizing local news click bait meant to trigger my liberal sensibilities outs me as a conservative somehow. This headline and post isn’t meant to trigger conservative outrage, it’s liberal outrage. (Also the OP tagline says the news is about sparking outrage.)
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Where’s the evidence this group really exists? This article is basically fluff around a social media post with little investigation
Daily Hive has reached out to Coquitlam RCMP and the City for comment.
So the journalist reached out to the city, but not the telegram account for comment?
But then how do they have a quote from the telegram administrator?
because it’s from a screenshot on the link from the flyer. They are quoting that. https://t.me/s/whitetricitiesparentsandtots but now that quote has been taken down and linking to a white supremacist website unabashedly. Do you think this is still a legit flyer of someone trying to start a whites only daycare, or someone just trolling?
Gotta say the investigative journalism on this one left a lot to be desired, like investigating and journalism. Anyone can write “hey I saw this thing on Instagram, might be real might not thanks for the click.”
no time to investigate, gotta post rage bait ASAP
Yeah I was going to say this is like big Poe’s law. Could be real. Could be satire. Could be just made up for trolling.
The telegram has only 2 posts by the creator, conveniently only an hour or two before the picture was posted onto Twitter.
The telegram picture is also conveniently a picture of the exact same piece of paper featured in the twitter post…
Whats the odds that someone made the Telegram account with a picture of the paper on what looks to be a table, then took it outside, hung it up, and in under an hour or two it already was posted up onto twitter and being reported by, coincidently?
Moreover, why was the telegram created first, and yet also has zero members? Who does that and when does that happen? Typically such groups would already have a circle of individuals participating and the telegram would be created for them to chat easier, so the telegram would have users added asap.
But instead the telegram was made, zero members ever added, the photo uploaded asap of the already printed off paper, then only an hour or two later this twitter account happened to see it so fast and snap a pic, and didnt even bother to edit out the URLs, and uploaded it to twitter?
Would have been more believable if they had edited out the URLs, but nope, leaving them up like that is something someone trying to make it look legit would do.
It took me literally like, 30 seconds to just look that telegram up and see what was going on, and yeah lo and behold it looks fake as fuck.
The deluge of people believing this shit at face value and not even checking out how legit it looks is concerning. Like come on, it wasn’t that hard to check.
Not everyone operates in typical ways. Isn’t it also possible that someone started the telegram in hopes like-minded folks would join?
If a fire alarm is pulled, assume there’s a fire.
It’s the internet… we should question everything. That’s not to say this is false or that racists don’t exist. Just that being skeptical should be the default position.
If a fire alarm is pulled, assume there’s a fire.
Sorry but you aren’t going to convince me to just trust random strangers on the internet with a vested financial interest in gaining clicks/likes/shares/subs about random stuff they say, especially when its something so brazen.
The whole thing clearly looks fake as fuck. People need a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to shit like instagram/twitter/tiktok and whatnot, which was the medium this was shared over.
Nothing about that picture remotely looks like what it claims to be, the fuck kind of “moms and tots” group posts and shares that way, come on, use your head for a second and imagine the scenario playing out.
Even going with the absolute maximum benefit of the doubt, whatever way you try and frame it you still end up painting an incredibly bizarre nonsensical scenario that just. doesnt. make. sense.
The only scenarios that make sense based on the way it was shared, the way it was setup, and the way it has been followed up on are:
A: It was manufactured upset by the person who posted it. They created it all as a hoax to gain further subscriptions to their platform, which they have a vested financial interest in expanding.
B: It was created by a troll, who thought it would be funny to see it spread virally
Ask yourself some simple questions here:
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How come the paper for the telegram post was the exact same one that got caught and put up on twitter? What are the odds?
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How come there has only been one of these posted and shared anywhere, and how come only once? Surely there must have been other pictures of these flyers by other citizens?
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The only conclusion you can make is… there was only one flyer taped up? And that one got taken down as soon as the picture was taken? Who goes to all that length to make the telegram, make the group, get a QR code, setup a (supposedly real) email, make a flyer all typed up… and then just only posts up one solitary flyer?
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And what are the odds that that one solitary flyer gets found moments afterwards by, coincidentally, the owner of “BlackVancouver”, a twitter/instagram that is pretty much entirely all about spreading around posts about trying to find racial injustices, and has recently been trying to get more subs/likes?
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And despite all that, the telegram still today has no members/new posts.
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And the email is a proton one? The fuck? What mom and tot group have you ever met that seriously uses fucking proton mail as their provider?
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And jesus look at the chosen email and the chosen telegram name. It’s twenty eight characters long. No normal person, especially one looking to share the group via flyer, ever makes something like that
I mean come on, this isn’t sherlock holmes here, the thing is riddled with so many goddamn holes, a sieve would hold water better.
People like to be outraged. It makes them feel correct for not being the racist one and confirm how they already want to feel about others.
It’s also easier for a brain to confirm what it already wants to believe. Good write up but I am unsure how good it would do of convincing those that need it that sometimes people just make rage bait to get people to think alike with them or because they are edgelords that think it’s funny.
But you know as a wise Republican white commissioner in PA once said “I’m a black gay guy”
Theres tonnes of actual racist shit out there that gets dumped onto social media constantly.
It’s wild to look at this and even remotely think “aw yeah this one definitely happened, looks super legit”
You have to live under a rock and never have actually encountered racist trash to think anything about this sign looks like it was made by such a person.
There’s something about it that makes me think it a “to catch a predator” type meeting to out a bunch of white supremacists. Are they really trying to fish for contact information or get them to actually meet in a room? On the telegram link: “Hello everybody, we are encouraged by the response already and hope you can hang in there until we are all comfortable going in person.”
The thing is that post was made almost as soon as the group was made, which doesnt even make sense, as no members were added yet.
Smells like fish.
Also curious if there have been other sightings of this flyer, or if it was the only one? If you only post one flyer in an obscure place, it’s a lot easier to be the main source of documenting a flyer was posted on social media.
I looked around and all I could find was that one single solitary post/source, uploaded once, and literally zero other sightings/info indicating actual flyers were distributed.
This article refers to multiple signs, in two municipalities. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/whites-only-mother-tots-group-condemned-british-columbia-1.6977449
Why is having a telegram with no members suspicious?
Because thats one of the only 2 things the flyer has a link to. It’s precisely the sort of thing a person who’s trying to create a “face value” seemingly real outrageous flyer would do.
They made the name for the telegram and the email incredibly long and difficult to type out, I am willing to bet the vast majority of people outraged and responding to this post havent taken the 30 seconds to actually go look at the telegram themselves, because its a lot of effort to type out by hand.
But if you do check it out, it looks fake as fuck. It has 2 whole posts of only 1-2 lines each and thats it, its empty and was made about an hour or so before the flyer was “discovered”, and has been abandoned since then.
You have to be pretty out to lunch to look at that and conclude “aw yeah this looks super duper real, very legit, definitely was made for a real group by real people that definitely exist” lol
Cope snd seethe harder
I dont have anything to gain and I think you’re a fucking knob. You wrote a whole ass essay on why you think a racist action isn’t real. How about spending five minutes with some country folk? You’ll shut the fuck up real quick.
How about spending five minutes with some country folk?
Ah yes, the type of people who will make a well formatted and very clearly legible flyer, complete with a qr code, telegram group, and proton email.
That definitely sounds like the sort of thing “country folk” are so well known for doing all the time.
You are out to lunch if you think this solitary piece of paper looks real, lol
There are definitely smart, tech capable racist people. I know. I’m related to a lot of them.
Sure, but each step you have to take of narrowing the scope of reasonable occurrences re-enforces Occam’s razor.
Who is more likely to be a smart, tech capable person? A racist who seriously thinks posting up this flyer is a good idea? Or someone who already manages a social media account?
Each point individually can be chalked up to a coincidence, like yeah okay sure maybe you have this person who is simultaneously tech literate enough to make the nice well formed flyer and setup the centered QR code and setup the telegram account and setup a proton email BUT they are also stupid enough to think this flyer is a good idea?
Thats a mighty specific type of individual, they exist sure but, thats just one very narrow scope in this situation.
There’s several more of these weird oddities about the flyer, and when you stack all of them up the whole thing seems extremely unlikely to have been put up by such a person.
Meanwhile, a tech literate person managing a social media account would be very much capable of making such a flyer, setting up the accounts/group, and is smart enough to know that 90%+ of people will be outraged by the flyer and not bother to dig any deeper than face value, and they know they wont get in any trouble over it because no one would believe the people who actually dig even a little bit into it and point out all the weird shit about the flyer.
There’s no extra mental gymnastics required for that second conclusion, it’s pretty straightforward and it’s not an unheard of thing to do, people purposefully putting up inflammatory marks in public and sharing them.
looks like the telegram preview is updated with a more unabashed white supremacist forum link.
Occam’s Razor, hmm… “Lots of white people are still racist” vs "[5000 word essay on …]
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Eh, walk around with a Nazi flag and see how long it takes before you’re on social media…
The person would have created the telegram group so others who wanted to take part would have somewhere to communicate after seeing the advert?
Honestly this kind of attitude is only diminishing a problem that’s very real, i.e. the rise of racism and bigotry.
The telegram has only 2 posts by the creator, conveniently only an hour or two before the picture was posted onto Twitter.
Thanks for posting this. You are showing what people SHOULD be doing instead of immediately going into some race-baited tirade. The problem is that these days, people seem to WANT to get baited into some race argument. Lots of blue-haired, black nail-polish zoomers with nothing better to do started fuming before before they should jump into the comments and read a post like yours which shows that this is probably some total bullshit. Either a joke or something posted to purposefully cause controversy.
Lots of blue-haired, black nail-polish zoomers
Ya I am one of those types of folks still, I just took the 30 seconds to look into what I was reading.
When you make statements like the above, you just shove yourself over to the other end of the problem. You do realize that blanket referring to a large group of people as all behaving the same way is bigotry right?
Like, you realize you can critique a post without resorting to bigoted ad hominem attacks on a massive group of people?
Please don’t associate with me, lol. You aren’t behaving much better. Literally everything you wrote here was unnecessary and you’re post would have been much better without it included:
Lots of blue-haired, black nail-polish zoomers with nothing better to do started fuming before before they should jump into the comments and read a post like yours which shows that this is probably some total bullshit.
Literally all of that was totally unneeded, and makes you sound extremely bigoted.
Jesus this sounds like something straight out of a nazi poster in Germany 1933
Legal antisemitism didn’t really happen in Nazi Germany until about 1935 with the first Nuremburg Laws. In 1933, the Nazis were more concerned about consolidating and holding power than they were with the Jews. The antisemitism really wasn’t a popular policy of the early Nazis, either, and it took a few years of brainwashing through state media to get to that point. If this poster was in 1933 Germany, it would probably read “No Communists,” if anything.
(Sorry for ruining the fun)
Damn that’s interesting. Thanks a lot for the insights
NPCs reading about history: >:[
first thought it was just a troll, but really, that’s not much better
It’s definitely a troll.
It doesn’t really matter. Give it a pass as a bad joke and people will eventually start doing it for real.
I think that’s the question. If trolling, was it someone on the right trying to spout some vitriol to make people of color of leftists uncomfortable? Or was it someone on the left trying to stir up outrage among like minded people.
Considering the context the most likely and simplest scenario is just the instagram/twitter account(s) that posted it are trying to farm more subscriptions/likes/etc, to gain following.
If it’s that, I’m afraid it might backfire
Unlikely, they already got the engagement they wanted and you can literally see everyone its been posted the ratio of “oh my god racism aaah” responses vastly overwhelm the small handful of folks going “yo this looks fake as fuck lol”
I meant backfire for people in real life through some people feeling less safe about possible existence of racists and some racists feeling more secure about their thoughts but maybe the clout seekers don’t care about that at all in which case it’s not backfire I guess
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Nobody should be surprised that there’s fascists in Canada. They’re everywhere.
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CBC wrote on it as well.
‘Proud parents of European children’ is a big call-sign there.
What’s that? A sign that can be placed by literally anyone? And it’s obscenely racist? Must be real. Why wouldn’t somebody proudly advertise a thing people would be angry about in a public place.
If you don’t think that there’s white supremists in Canada, or that they aren’t this brazen, you’re dead wrong.
So there’s lots of brazen white supremacists in Canada? You must have a ton of similarly-brazen examples then?\
This is noteworthy enough that I’ve seen it more than once already, on Reddit and here, in a world news community. That suggests that this is pretty frickin rare, which kinda undermines your argument.
Uhh, have you heard of starlight tours? Residential schools? The Nazi they literally had a standing ovation for in parliament the other week?
The Proud Boys were also founded by a Canadian.
It really kind of doesn’t matter. Joke or serious, it could have an oppressive effect on minorities wanting to use the park. It sows doubt and mistrust whether it’s one person’s idea of a joke or serious idea.
If a fire alarm is pulled, assume there’s a fire.
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Are you seriously suggesting that people aren’t credible because they’re black?
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This is totally shit (assuming it is real and either not a joke or not some planted sign to stir controversy), but if the sign said any other race, there would be a whole lot less outrage. Or no outrage at all.
I think the sign is racist as hell from the undertones it gives off. However there are plenty of black only, indian only, jewish only etc baby groups. No one seems to bat an eye at them. I would just like an answer to why segregation imposed by certain groups is acceptable and not others.
Very good question. Why is it OK for thee but not for me? It shouldn’t be OK for anyone, quite honestly. Get everyone mixing together as young as possible, but only when one group tries to separate themselves does it become an issue. Hmmm.
The reason why is because historically in Canada people who weren’t white were treated way worse by white people and even though things have improved today, the effects of that mistreatment still affects many people today.
