MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
No.
User ID: 58
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
5d ago
I suspect to the people who label Charlie Kirk as a “far right white nationalist” (apparently that’s what it says or has said in the past on Wikipedia) whatever constitutes a “moderate” conservative is purely functional; it’s just by definition a conservative that plays within their framework and they can control and don’t feel threatened by.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
5d ago
I’ve seen enough ass covering in the last 48 hours from the same people who had been calling Kirk a Nazi for years to not take these people seriously.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
6d ago
I appreciate your perspective on this and offer a counterweight, if you will.
There was a joke going around on X, that I’ll paraphrase;
Red state republican: “Democrats have some crazy, stupid ideas and I’m sure glad they aren’t in charge here but I know a few and they’re not all bad.” Blue state republican: “I, personally, am willing to volunteer to pilot the helicopters throwing democrats overboard over the ocean if it means there’s a 1% chance to escape this never ending hell.”
While this is very funny, I also think the opposite is largely true; the hicklib, the blue tribe striver living in red states, is by far the most extreme example of what I’m talking about.
If you’re in a comfortably blue city in an area in a blue state, it’s hard to communicate how rabidly partisan these types can be.
I travel a lot for work, and not just from urban center to urban center, I spend a lot of time in little mountain towns and beach towns, places really just for locals.
The stereotype of the urban blue tribe applies triply to blue tribe people in smaller towns & rural areas as their identity is so tied up with bitter struggles with their own background and family.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
6d ago
Yes, I do.
In the year 2025, the remaining rank and file registered democrats are amongst the most successfully propagandized people in the history of the world.
I’m not talking about the occasional voter. Imagine the modal democrat primary voter; the habitual democrat who votes down ballot every election. The people that really form the core of the Democratic Party voting bloc.
I genuinely think of you handed that person a button which would explode a bomb underneath Elon Musk’s feet they’d wait about a millisecond before slamming it.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
6d ago
Sure, there’s gradients to this whole thing.
When I learned Osama Bin Laden died I went out and had a celebratory beer and enjoyed it in quiet, satisfied contemplation. He was unambiguously and directly responsible for the mass murder of thousands of my fellow citizens, and I was glad he was dead. But even then I didn’t gloat or grab a megaphone and shout it from the rooftops.
The behavior I see from leftists en masse from the death of even the mildest right wing figure is so routinely ghoulish that I’ve come to expect from them that I struggle to think of these people as actually human. This isn’t new, either, it’s been this way basically my whole life.
I’m not expecting his political opponents to theatrically shed a tear for him, just not acting like literal demons cackling with glee would suffice to temper my rage towards them. I consider it well earned at this point.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
6d ago
I think this, combined with much stronger deterrents against violence like virtually omnipresent surveillance & a much stricter identification system, actually suggests that as a society we are actually more violent than before, at least on the long tail of extreme violence.
It does certainly seems true that low level violence like fist fights or domestic abuse seems to have lessened, but that seems to me a function of deterrence against relatively rational actors. Extreme violent actors are less easy to deter, maybe near impossible.
I think the desire and ability to conduct extreme levels of violence has plainly never been easier, and I think on a memetic / psychological level the desire for violence is through the goddamn roof.
I think in ways that are difficult to point to statistically, we very well might be in the most violent age of man since we lived as hunter gatherers and the most likely cause of death for men was murder.
A forum / memeplex founded by rationalist quokka types are going to be logically one of the last places to really feel this in their gut. I applaud the pro-social nature of some of the puzzled faces around here but the heat just got turned up a whole lot and I’m nervously looking at the clock tick up towards midnight.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
6d ago
Allow me to rephrase;
“If someone is glad that Charlie Kirk, a moderate conservative squish, is dead and deserved to be killed for what he believed, they’d be ecstatic if I or people like me died / were killed based on what I believe.”
This thought occurred simultaneously to maybe tens of millions of people all at once yesterday.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
7d ago
It’s like Trump said “They’re not after me, they’re after you! I’m just in the way.”
If you’re understandably skeptical of that coming out of Trump’s mouth, it’s ten times more credible when you shift the subject to Charlie the relatively milquetoast debate bro.
All over social media seems to be the common refrain; “If leftists wanted Charlie Kirk dead, they want you dead, too, they just don’t know your name yet.”
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
7d ago
Relatable.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
9d ago
Yeah that place got squeezed to death I think more directly from being in the eye of Sauron, its users just got systematically purged over time I imagine and the ranks never got refilled.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
15d ago
Not to be flippant, but how do you respond to “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”?
Because increasingly to anyone who even has a shade of American nationalism in their body, the actions of the blue tribe writ large are unambiguously suicidal / homocidal (depending on your perspective on who’s included) to the American Nation as traditionally defined up until now or the very recent past.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
17d ago
I know you're American in your heart of hearts, don’t worry pardner.
Do you think there’s more southerners that west coast people? That’s the interesting question for me; I’m technically a southerner but like most people in the south I know the major urban areas are still super blue tribe & full of transplants and strivers.
Hicklibs are the most militant recent converts of the blue tribe, they might as well be their own weird third thing.
The ratsphere is super west coast but since this is TheMotte I’d suppose that the cultural core of SlateStarCodex would be underrepresented rather than over. We are exiles, after all.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
18d ago
This makes me mildly curious about the geographic breakdown of this place; although I know we have several desi & European poasters, I assumed like 80% of the people here are American or live in the US.
Are there more east coasters or west coasters, southerners or heartlanders?
That alway remained mysterious to me, although I assumed the west coat was more common due to the ratsphere influence.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
27d ago
You’re interpretation is the correct one, which I thought was rather obvious. It was a paraphrase of an earlier comment I made about a similar subject;
There comes a point when a house is so pockmarked with termites and water damage that the only sensible solution is the wrecking ball.
Are there some sections still good and salvageable? Yes. Could you theoretically save sections of the house? Yes but the time and effort needed makes the opportunity cost too high.
Or to put it in more bloody terms it’s like Iwo Jima; eventually you just learn to throw grenades in every cave and light fires at every entrance. Sometimes there’s enemies there and sometimes not. There may or may not be scant civilians clinging to life in the caves.
The rational conclusion is to not care, and go forward in a workmanlike manner and get it done, and quickly. Delays only serve to weaken you.
Which is why I found this ban to be particularly annoying even if it was so brief.
But I’m a bit surprised that it’s against the rules to say something to the effect of it being rational to consider an entire institution including every single member a target. That’s not what I was saying exactly but that’s a perfectly legitimate point of view.
When you’re a marine in Iwo Jima, you light fires at every cave entrance after you’ve thrown 3-4 grenades in. Then you move onto the next one. And the next one.
There’s nothing worth saving in there that just won’t slow you down and get your people killed.
That’s just where we are in the culture war. How could anyone be surprised at this point?
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1mo ago
Did Kulak eat a ban? I must have missed that, I just thought he got really involved on X / Substack and drifted away.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1mo ago
It hasn’t been quite that long since I’ve deleted my account, only a few years, but I’d put the probability of me using Reddit again on any substantial level again around 5%. It would take a miracle to get me to use it again even on a weekly basis.
It’s joined a bunch of other sites in the dustbin of things I don’t use. Might as well be Friendster or Snapchat at this point.
I’m as much a redditor as I am a Digg user, or a 4chan User, or a SometingAwful user (goon), or a MySpace user, or a Facebook user.
Which is to say, not at all. I don’t use any of those things much at all anymore, even if I have a still active account.
You’re projecting since you’re still using Reddit. I probably spend less than an hour a month on Reddit, only reading it when shared in some other context on some other site. Or when I do a search and the other results are Reddit. Been that way for 3 years at this point.
It got boring. I appealed my ban in a sort of weary indifference, mostly out of curiosity. I knew it wouldn’t work, the site was too far gone and had been that way for years.
When I finally copped the ban I was using it maybe 2hrs a week when I was very bored, I simply didn’t enjoy it much anymore and most of the good communities had long ago gotten zapped by the eye of Sauron. I knew it was just a matter of time before there was literally nothing of value left so I pulled the plug early.
Just like Digg; not with a bang, but a whimper.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1mo ago
Maybe in general, but not in my case. A few years back, after a long downward pattern of less & less use, I copped a permanent ban on absurd grounds, and had my appeal rejected.
I had been for many years, as early as 2016, been slowly enjoying the app less and less. Just took it as a sign that my time was done, deleted my profile, deleted the app, never reinstalled it again.
Every once in a while I’d get a link from somewhere else and just reading the comments for a minute before I inevitably closed it, I’d felt like I’d roll my eyes so hard they were about to pop out of my skull.
We are having this conversation at TheMotte.Org , whose very existence is proof of how shitty Reddit is and has been for a long time.
It’s been clear to me for years that Reddit is mostly just a botnet & super astroturfed influence peddling platform that’s been shrinking itself into an irrelevant echo chamber. It’s honestly incredibly boring.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1mo ago
I’m in sales. Apparently, I’m very good at it.
Much like the modal mottezin I imagine, I grew up a pretty nerdy & introverted male with a high IQ. I would have never guessed I’d make my way in the world in possibly the most common high extroversion / competition/ charisma based job there is.
My Rolodex is filled with literally hundreds of individual people who represent business relationships which all are different, all have to be managed differently, whose individual idiosyncrasies have to be understood and handled, from the most humble little shop owner with a 3 person crew, to corporate structures of thousands of people.
Although I’m a very genuine & straightforward person by nature, getting people to like you is part of the job. I’ve found consistently finding the area of minimum tension between full honesty and being diplomatic is the key.
My whole job, other than the technical know-how which I have and is very important as a baseline, is managing and nurturing relationships.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1mo ago
We could do a Mr Glass / Unbreakable cosplay lol
True story; in college me and my buddies were fucking around in the park at night and my friend jumped out of a tree and accidentally did a flying knee with his full weight right to my collarbone from 10ft up, hurt like shit but I got up and we kept messing around, went and got beers.
Next morning I went to class and then went to work. My shoulder was killing me but I just kept working.
Finally after a week without it getting better I went to the doctor after my girlfriend wouldn’t let up.
Turns out I had a hairline fracture and I had been just walking around like it was nothing. Only time I’ve ever “broken” something.
Both my girls are built like tanks too, so it’s definitely genetic.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1mo ago
That’s got to be it; I think I might have given you or someone else here a hard time about being 6’0” & 160 as when I’m the same height and the last time I was that weight I was a cross country runner in high school and super skinny. I was in good cardiovascular shape but I had essentially no upper body strength.
The difference for me is that I have never broken a bone, I’m likely a true outlier in bone density. During college I gained a lot of weight but started lifting heavy and my best health I was like 225 & 20% body fat which means even with literally no fat I’d be heavier than 160lbs.
I wasn’t even that jacked, but I’m also primarily German / Nordic with significant west African admixture and I’d been athletic my whole life so I think I’m just genetically very dense both in terms of musculature & bone.
Funny enough when I gained all that weight I did it by cutting out all land based meat entirely; it was all fish, eggs, beans, and rice which got me in the best shape of my life.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
1mo ago
I think your instinct is correct in general with regards to how much the game is up in terms of being able to “hide your power level”, I’m just an extreme outlier living in an extreme outlier environment.
I have a very social job that requires me to be everyone’s buddy and have an “always on” personality. Disagreements, even polite ones, are not tolerated and heavily punished.
The area I live in is not only deep blue like the Pacific Ocean, it’s extremely isolated from trends that are obvious to outsiders.
I live in the DMV area and close enough to the dark heart of the stay-behind operation of Obama’s America that I’m dealing everyday with maximum ideologically motivated reasoning. I call it the “Iron Bubble”, people are extremely out of touch and in denial with what’s been shifting underneath their feet in the culture at large. Ironically, it’s very “Hitler & his closest associates in the Bunker” vibe, or reminiscent of “Baghdad Bob”.
It’s not surprising, there’s real money and power at stake here with the fall of the old order. Things like DOGE & the fall of DEI broadly have extreme direct consequences to these people. I’d love nothing more than to loosen up and be sincere as is my nature, but it’s like being in a squad of Japanese soldiers who are holed up in an island and don’t know the war is over.
It’s one of the cheapest and most widely commercially available hunting rifles in the world. A single shot, bolt action hunting rifle.
The kind of firearm that is available even in countries with strict gun control.
The idea that gun control would have prevented this is nothing short of farcical.
It’s the firearm equivalent of like… a common chef’s knife. Or a two door sedan. A claw hammer. Or bleach. Or gasoline. All incredibly common things that can nevertheless be used by a determined attacker to kill someone.
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