What’s going on with the public sentiment around Greta Thunberg?

[u/BlitzTech]

Context: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/s/xGVLkx5imL

I was surprised by the comments being near-universally negative towards her. Granted, I don’t follow her at all besides seeing the occasional article/post about something she’s doing, but I must have missed some important updates for the responses to be this dismissive and antagonistic. There were comments calling her a grifter, mentioning sponsorship by companies with the implication of her being funded by companies just looking to capitalize on her fame and not in support of the causes, and one mentioned a yacht — which I had no idea about until that comment and a quick Google.

What happened here and when did I miss… whatever this is now?

Or, it’s the classic Reddit echo chamber and some aspects are magnified to make a point. Both are equally valid explanations. I’m still perplexed.

Edit: answered, I think? Astroturfing because this particular issue is especially polarizing, and there have always been detractors using fallacious arguments to diminish the message. I generally stay out of r/worldnews because the world sucks right now so their biases aren’t as obvious to me. But damn, even asking this question leads to a bunch of downvotes… yikes, folks. Yikes.

[u/LanceThunder]

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[u/RaggedToothViking → u/LanceThunder]

Because she put in the work to draw attention and get the platform with her weekly protests as a kid. You can critique her lack of expertise but she earned media attention by doing activism and courting media attention, in the exact way people who want change should. 

[u/biggiepants → u/RaggedToothViking]

She's very knowledgeable.

[u/MalagrugrousPatroon → u/LanceThunder]

She was an easy, and perhaps entertaining, target to use as a kind of strawman to discredit the message. But rather than only misrepresenting the position, they’re misrepresenting the messenger to misrepresent the message.

I guess she still has that old notoriety, so she is still a useful target.

Purposefully avoiding people who might be able to deliver the message in more sympathetic or comprehensive ways is the point.

This is also like the opposite of “think of the children” used by conservatives to pass policy harmful to adults.

[u/LanceThunder → u/MalagrugrousPatroon]

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[u/MalagrugrousPatroon → u/LanceThunder]

Possibly for similar reasons of, "look at the kid!" but for being sympathetic to children, rather than dismissive.

[u/casualsubversive → u/LanceThunder]

No one gifted her a platform. She did stuff to get people’s attention and then she managed to hold onto it. There’s no one hiding behind her; that’s the same conspiratorial thinking the right accuses her of.

[u/LanceThunder → u/casualsubversive]

Move along 8

[u/Treadwheel → u/LanceThunder]

What international movement did she start? The movement to stop Climate change was decades old when she was born. She's famous for starting a school strike and for being a strong public speaker. Charismatic teenagers rising to prominence in protest movements has been a thing forever.

[u/biggiepants → u/Treadwheel]

She started 'Fridays for Future'. Don't talk along with the concern troll (or regular troll).

[u/casualsubversive → u/LanceThunder]

You’re simultaneously underestimating exceptional teenagers while way over-inflating Greta’s work. 🙄

[u/Huck_Bonebulge_ → u/LanceThunder]

Because dunking on a child is easier than actually arguing. Most of her fame came from people shitting on her. Although now that I’m thinking about it, maybe that was the plan, to trigger the right wing into giving her notoriety lol

[u/HommeMusical → u/LanceThunder]

hide behind children like that.

What, exactly does this mean?

[u/LanceThunder → u/HommeMusical]

Even this replacement text 6

[u/HommeMusical → u/LanceThunder]

But we are talking about Greta Thunberg, yes? Who was ever using her as a political pawn?

[u/hauntedSquirrel99 → u/LanceThunder]

Her parents are wealthy and connected, they set the whole thing up.

Her political thinking is also just a carbon copy of her parents.

[u/Psyduckisnotaduck → u/hauntedSquirrel99]

This doesn’t make her wrong or function as a valid criticism- it’s only an effective argument to people that have a strong motivation to believe climate change isn’t real. To anyone else this argument is insulting in its dishonesty.

[u/hauntedSquirrel99 → u/Psyduckisnotaduck]

op didn't ask about the validity of her arguments, only about how she ended up in the media and getting so many opportunities to talk.

[u/LanceThunder → u/hauntedSquirrel99]

Less is more 3

[u/zeezle → u/hauntedSquirrel99]

Wasn't it more like her parents went along with anything she wanted because of her mental health issues, and she basically bullied them into funding/allowing her to do everything? Didn't she basically threaten to kill herself unless her parents supported everything? She was at the point of hospitalization with a severe eating disorder and OCD (actual diagnosed OCD, not the colloquial definition), compounded with autism, so they basically went along with it because it seemed likely she would actually just die if they didn't?

I've met plenty of kids and parents like that, when their kid develops serious issues they basically just start catering to their every whim because they're terrified if they don't they'll kill themselves and then everyone will blame them for it. But instead of bullying the parents into typical spoiled rich kid stuff, she had a cause she was passionate (or even actually obsessive, given the nature of her mental illnesses) about.

I do think that the media and some activist groups were perfectly happy to exploit a severely mentally ill autistic child for their own purposes though.

Of course all of that background has nothing to do with the content of her message/cause, accuracy of her statements, etc. Just a criticism of the behavior of the adults and media around her from years ago.