there is a post going around about how apparently a bunch of Nazis are using “pattern noticing” as a dog whistle about coming up with antisemitic conspiracy theories

and as the resident Pattern Recognizer in the Tron fandom I feel like they are incidentally also attacking me

am not Jewish so I am not gonna get involved in any of the debate over whether using this term is “really” or “always” problematic, I am just gonna make my own position very clear

1. am glad that at least the term “pattern recognizing” does not seem to be included in the controversy because I swear to Users, if the Nazis take that whole concept away from me I am gonna explode

2. The ridiculous prowess of my pattern recognition subroutines is a big part of why I am NOT going around conspiracy theorizing. I have lived in this brain long enough to know it can take any two randomly selected bits of info from any two places in the universe and make up a connection that sounds as plausible as any conspiracy theory so I KNOW that bitch is not to be trusted with real world shit

3. If you have a Pattern Recognizer in your head and you are using it to make bigoted conspiracy theories you are using it wrong. That thing’s purpose is 1. Puns and 2. extremely specific in-depth headcanons about 3.5-second background scenes from cult classic 1980’s movies and 3. Applying techniques from macrame and shibari to improvise methods of mounting a computer monitor and 4. More puns