Aapje58
1mo ago
GG offended sensibilities by applying the same level of catastrophic scrutiny to folks that most would consider 'normal people', names you've never heard of who don't own a vacation home and don't have much real-world influence.
Yes, like Eron Gjoni, who was an abuse victim, abused further by anti-GG.
Aapje58
21d ago
Why do you think that the right sort of women would not apply? Would they prefer to be among themselves for that kind of banter?
Aapje58
5mo ago
Yes, ignorance makes for easy retorts.
Fascism (like communism) was a movement primarily in response to the dissolution of states where power lay in the hands of a hereditary elite, who would maintain that power by doing things for the commoners that they thought the commoners needed, while extracting wealth and making the commoners do things for them. Downtown Abbey is a good example of a show that celebrates the old world order, with the hereditary rich living in mansions and being served on; taking their cut from the farmers, while justifying their position by arguing that they create jobs, help those in need and organize feasts (where they themselves expect to get applauded by the commoners). Saudi Arabia is pretty much like this, with their system of patronage depending on clan relationships.
The actual cause for the social changes that led to the rise of communism and fascism was the Second Agricultural Revolution, which pushed very many people out of the farming life, which in turn enabled the Industrial Revolution. These technical revolutions led to urbanization and capitalism, both of which were much more brutal than today, causing much unhappiness and therefor revolutionary spirit. The elites that ran these countries were seen as doing such a bad job that very many people wanted something different.
Communism in theory sought to abolish the elites, instead of replacing them, by means of radical democracy & shared property. Although in practice this could not work for various reasons and so communist regimes inevitably just descended into authoritarianism, based on power games rather than hereditary power. In that sense, the statement that 'true communism has never been tried' is true, although true communism can't actually be tried and inevitably seems to devolve into what it was intended to fight against.
Fascism sought to replace the hereditary elite with a technocratic elite that would seek to improve society by aligning people towards a societal improvement, rather than their selfish desires. Hence the bundle of sticks, the fasces. All people in the nation united for a common purpose. Unlike communism, it rejects the idea of radical equality, so it accepts wealth differences and differences in hierarchy, but only in so far as to help achieve the common goal. The fascist capital owner may own a big factory, but is not supposed to hoard wealth, have an excessive lifestyle or take advantage of others. Fascism rejects democracy, as it considers the common man to be stupid. It doesn't really answer the question of how the right goal and right leadership is selected. In practice, the autocratic nature of the leadership and lack of goals within the ideology itself, tends to lead to fascism being easily combined with other extremist ideologies, like Hitler's racial beliefs.
This lack of inherent goals within the fascist model tends to lead to a lot of confusion about what fascism actually is, which why it is so easy to claim that something is fascist, as there is no pure fascism. It's always fascism plus some other ideology or some other goal, that is not inherent to fascism itself.
Aapje58
4mo ago
No, they sent out 6,000–8,500 knights and mercenaries to suppress the peasants
Yet check out the comments under the latest army recruitment videos that stopped targeting liberals, but went back to targeting the traditional red regions. Many parents from military families state that don't want their children to join the army anymore.
The current elite is not Prussian. They don't see honor in soldiering and their culture rejects guns and law & order. They can't hire mercenaries anymore like in the olden days. So who is going to suppress the peasants, when police and the soldiers are peasants? Why would be elite be able to count on them when the peasants truly lose faith in the system?
Aapje58
5mo ago
I don't think the GG side was claiming to be evil and stupid?
There is a difference between believing you are good, but arguing that you have better policies and such, versus arguing that your side deserves to own a space because your side consists of a better kind of person. The anti-GG side went all in on arguing that the GG side consisted of horrible white male neckbeards who harass people and who should be kicked out of gaming for that reason, while they themselves were inclusive lovely people.
At the point where they argued that they were better than the GG people, it seems perfectly valid to point out when prominent members are, or defend abusers, pedophiles and other horrid people.
Aapje58
6mo ago
That's a fine theory, but it goes against human nature to expect people to not detect patterns like: each time I investigate, it turns out to be a rat. So you then need a mechanism to prevent people from acting normally, which is a hard problem to solve.
Aapje58
1mo ago
So a conspiracy of 3 people only needs 9 friends and family willing to turn a blind eye to anything suspicious and give the occasional alibi.
This assumes that the people who are part of the conspiracy tell their friends and family, but there are many possible reasons why they would not. For example, some organizations that deal a lot with secret things have a shared culture of not telling even their life partners about it. Another example is that the conspiracy can be very damning to the people involved, so they have a strong incentive to hush it up to everyone. Like a conspiracy that involves 'disappearing' a dead body or one where well-meaning researchers caused immense suffering and damage.
Aapje58
5mo ago
I think it is less that the accusations came from outsiders and more that those outsiders were just using the accusations to discredit her arguments via ad hominem.
That's a pretty poor argument when the main argument by prominent anti-GG'ers was that gamers are smelly neckbeards that harass people, evidenced by cherry picked random tweets by unknowns or fabricated evidence. If they genuinely had a problem with ad hominems, then they had every opportunity to reign in that behavior from their own side, but they didn't.
Aapje58
5mo ago
Leigh Alexander was a key player, who wrote off existing gamers with her nasty "gamers are over" piece. This, together with the support this hateful piece got from the gaming and regular press, who dismissed criticism of her piece as sexism, really energized the GamerGate side. Leigh really was one of the most prominent people on the anti-side, so her support of Nyberg cannot be dismissed as being from a niche player.
Aapje58
2mo ago
But I don't care about abolishing pain. Pain is part of the normal range of feelings that animals, including humans, all experience. It is often necessary and arguably, a full life lived, includes pain.
Feeling pain does not equal suffering, which is something that you seem to be unable to understand. Plenty of pain doesn't rank as suffering in my book, and suffering can exist without physical pain.
Aapje58
4mo ago
Again, I do not want to be right about this, but I have encountered no other plausible explanation why for example posters of kidnapped Israelis has whipped up so many into a frothy rage.
They are utterly dishonest war propaganda, pretending not to be. For instance, in the link you posted, one such campaign is said to have the name 'Let the World Know.' But who doesn't know about the kidnapped people? It is utterly disingenuous to pretend that this is just to inform people. Your link furthermore claims:
"There is no Israeli flag on these posters. There is no mention of politics. They are as anodyne as the missing children that used to appear on the side of American milk cartons."
This is again utterly dishonest. The choice to put these people on posters, rather than the people put in prison without trial by Israel, which to me is kidnapping as well, is a political choice. The choice to not put pictures of killed Palestinian civilians on the posters (as well) is a political choice. The choice to put these posters up in Western nations across the world is a political choice, just like it would be a different political choice to put these posters up in front of the Knesset, or in front of a Hamas building in Qatar.
As another poster said, the milk carton kids are intended to allow people to recognize these kids in the streets or whatever, but there is no plausible way that a person will run into a kidnapped Israeli in SF and will then be able to help them by running to the police.
Unless you are willing to seriously discuss the real goal of these posters, and the dishonesty behind the refusal to openly state those goals, I don't see how you can get to a correct analysis.
Aapje58
3mo ago
The revealed behavior by women seems to show that they prefer single motherhood over marrying below their station of at least, the station they believe they have.
I still don't consider it a believable explanation. Memorials have a fairly standard ritual, involving a shrine in a public space where people can go to light candles, leave flowers, wreaths, leave pictures, put up signs, etc. Very often, the shrine is placed at the place of death or a park. I'm sure that you've seen that kind of thing often enough in the news or real life.
very similar to the "missing" posters of 9/11 victims.
It seems pretty clear to me that those aren't memorials, but attempts to find missing people. That is why you put up posters all over the place, or on milk cartons, to find missing people.
There is no indication that the posters could ever help recover a 9/11 victim from the rubble, but they're likely put up as a way to remember someone lost, and maybe remind the public of the significance of the event.
I disagree and believe that these were genuine attempts (aside from the handwritten sentence on the wall, which seems more like a prayer to god, and the actual shrine in the last picture that probably had no call to find the person, although the entire shrine is not visible). It seems very common for people to have trouble accepting a sudden death without a body as proof. Denial is one of the stages of grief after all. Arguing that people could not feel this way due to rational fact ignores that feelings do not obey reason.
The common cliche in Hollywood where a supposed death where it is not beyond any doubt that the person actually died, is typically a fake out, may also influence how people react.
If someone claimed posters of Israelis posted in Brooklyn somehow helped rescue efforts, I would agree with you that they're dishonest. But if they claimed it was to bring attention to an issue, then I don't see the dishonesty.
The link you gave tells us that one such poster stated: "Please help bring them home alive." So the poster seems to match your criteria for dishonesty, because there apparently was an expectation that people would spring into action to help the rescue efforts. The only plausible way in which Americans could do this are all highly political, one way or the other (pushing for continuing the war, to trade prisoners, to make peace, to abolish Israel, or praying for Jesus coming back to earth, etc). I suspect that the people tearing down the posters make assumptions about what the desired means is of liberating the Israeli kidnappees, if only by what is left off from the posters, which is any mention of Palestinian victims.
At the very least, I consider it unsurprising that if a conflict involves Palestinian and Israeli victims, and someone sufficiently cares about Palestinian victims, they get upset over posters that only name Israeli victims. It can be true that this means that they don't care about Israeli victims, but it can for example also mean that they consider each life equally valuable, especially if they can count. It is not necessarily bias against Israelis when one considers the ongoing killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians of more importance than saving up to 240 people (depending on when the posters went up, the number may be considerably lower). And people can of course also be upset by a disparity in attention in general and it may thus trigger an already existing dissatisfaction with perceived unfairness. I'm sure that as a member of this forum you are familiar with people upset over biases in (sub)cultures or in the media, and perhaps becoming rather eager to interpret new evidence in that light.
In any case, I remain of the belief that your statement that the only plausible explanation for anger at the posters is a Manichean view specifically involving an oppressor/oppressed dynamic, does not speak well about your epistemology, at least on this topic.
Aapje58
4mo ago
The dishonesty I'm referring to is the denial in the article that there is a political element to it and that it is the same as the kids on milk cartons. It is simply a lie to claim that they expect Californians to assist in the recovery efforts by helping a kidnapped Israeli that they encounter in SF or such.
And I do believe that a lot of what people communicate about 'issues' is biased and is intended to advance an agenda, even if they do not consciously see it as propaganda, but just believe (or 'believe'*) that their very biased views are just correct.
* Lots of people seem to suddenly believe different things than what they initially say, or put on posters, if you question them a little.
Aapje58
4mo ago
"Punching Richard Spencer will only create a thousand Richard Spencers ready to rise up behind him" is never advanced by leftists as a reason not to punch Richard Spencer.
Of course not, because they have the delusion that their own side is near perfect and won't cause a ton of collateral damage. For example, by having extremists going around punching everyone to the left of Stalin, for being a fascist.
On the right you have people with the same delusions, who think that Israel is surgically hitting Hamas, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Aapje58
4mo ago
bombing Nazi Germany didn't make it stronger,
This statement completely ignores the actual debate at the time, which was the choice between bombing military targets or attacking civilians. Both types of bombings happened during WW II. The available evidence does strongly suggest that attacking civilians creates desires of revenge and thus support for politicians who advocate for the war, rather than making people surrender.
In actual reality, the civilian population of Germany never forced their government to surrender to make the bombings stop, and neither did the people of England, despite the V1 and V2 attacks. And even the Japanese surrender after the nukes didn't result from a lack of support from the people, but the leaders deciding themselves that dying to a nuke was not a sufficiently heroic death for their populace unlike running into a machine gun fire with a bamboo spear in your hands.
So do you want to argue that Hamas can be persuaded to surrender by bombing civilians? My judgment of their ideology, which is different from that of the WW II Japanese, is that this will not happen.
Note that one famous case where the populace did force an end to the war, which is Russia during WW I, didn't involve attacks of the Russian population.
Now maybe there's some advanced theoretical reason why certain targets get stronger when you smash their shit up, but I don't see this articulated
I do, so I guess that you are just in a bubble where you don't read these things?
if they believe that bombing Hamas will only strengthen them?
Well, if you believe that every bomb is hitting Hamas and no civilians are being killed, then it makes perfect sense that you would disbelieve that the bombings can turn neutral civilians into supporters of Hamas, because they want revenge.
I prefer the facts over falsehood, though.
Aapje58
2mo ago
I don't agree with that. The goal of becoming an adult is to fulfill your potential, which can be more, equal or less than that of your father.
In the relationship with God, one can never equal or better, but the crucial part is fulfilling your potential, which is possible.
Aapje58
6mo ago
When feminists say "porn is exploitative" and "all sex is rape", this dynamic is what they're getting at- the former because it means that women for whom having sex is a job [that pays a wage] now have to compete with free.
This doesn't ring true at all. Many of those feminists are against sex work too.
It seems more based on on the very conservative idea that women need friendship, support and other things from their partner, which require a lot of effort from the man, but that porn teaches men that they can get sex from women without providing these things. Not: "she had sex with me because I put a lot of effort into the relationship", but: "here's your pizza, sex?"
Aapje58
5mo ago
I personally support the right of anyone to commit suicide for just about any reason, though I think they should be restrained if it's because of an acute mental or physical illness where we can reasonably expect their future self to desist and be thankful we saved them.
The problem is that very, very many people are flaky and short-sighted. Death is a one way trip, with no ability to undo a mistake. Euthanasia always gets sold based on this ideal image of a well-thought out, persistent desire. In reality, the advocates seem to slippery slope themselves into supporting euthanasia for cases that are light years from the ideal.
For example, an increasingly common scenario in The Netherlands is that someone with dementia in the family writes a euthanasia declaration where they state that they want euthanasia when they get dementia. The problem with dementia is that usually, people don't yet want to die as long as they are still reasonably rational. So euthanasia only becomes an option once they are so demented that they are effectively unable to make rational statements. The horror show that family members experience and which results them into making a euthanasia declaration beforehand, is also not necessarily what the patients feel themselves, once the time comes. We have about as much sense of whether a person with severe dementia experiences enough happy moments to want to keep living, as we do for a cat. People with dementia appear to lose the ability to form a long term happiness level anyway and experience emotions much more in the moment. How can we then judge if the good outweighs the bad?
What happens in practice is that the doctor tries to extract some proof for a persistent death wish, from a person with no ability to reason rationally. In the absence of solid evidence, the risk is enormous that the doctor will interpret their own feelings, or the feelings of the family, as being the feeling of the patient, intentionally or unknowingly.
For example, in one case, a patient would declare that it was too early for euthanasia on some days, but would say that she didn't want to live a moment longer on other days. In the face of this lack of clarity, the euthanasia doctor based her decision on statements by the family and the GP of the patient. Then the patient was killed by secretly putting a sedative in her coffee, followed by a lethal injection while she was sleeping. At no point was the patient even told that she would be killed, so there was no ability for her to object.
A Dutch political party is pushing for euthanasia with no medical grounds (either mental or physical illness is currently necessary) for those that have a 'completed life,' which I consider to be a manipulative propaganda word, which implicitly writes off people who do not contribute a lot to society, as it implies that once you get to a certain stage in life, there is nothing left for you to live for (after all, your life is completed). Research into a desire for euthanasia by the Dutch elderly with a death wish found that:
- 72% of respondents have inconsistent feelings on the matter, wanting to die at some times and wanting to live at other times
- 19% of all respondents and 28% of those that want euthanasia (rather than those that have a more passive wish to die, which was a pretty large group) have had a death wish for their entire lives, yet apparently never acted on it, even when they were young and able
- Factors that the respondents who want euthanasia named as having an influence on their desire to die were:
- Worrying (81%)
- Mental or physical deterioration (61%)
- Loneliness (56%)
- Lack of control over their lives (50%)
- Disease (47%)
- The feeling of being a burden to others (42%)
- Financial problems (36%)
- People with a desire to die were disproportionally poor, urban and single
I personally see a lot of red flags in the data, in particular the extent to which the desire to die is flaky and often seems rather weak. Do we really want to kill people who are edge cases and who may just be going through a bad period? Also, a lot of factors that people name as reasons for wanting to die seem like they could potentially be fixed. Excessive worrying might be improved through mental health care or altering people's news diet. Loneliness seems highly influenced by how we organize modern society and was much less in the past. Shouldn't we try to fix society instead of killing the people who are unhappy because of societal pathologies? Similarly, a feeling of being a burden to others seems heavily influenced by modern beliefs, where people are valued on what they can do, versus beliefs of the past where the idea of inherent human value was more important. That the group with a desire to die is disproportionally poor, urban and single, suggests a strong societal component is at play.
Aapje58
2mo ago
The point of the ad is not "you should do this". The point of the ad is "this is who we are."
So:
- We are people who cannot translate archaic examples to match the modern world
- We don't understand the bible
- We are no different from leftists, except for being a bit weirder
Because it seems to me that those are the messages being sent.
The point seems to be to peel back some of the enculturated dismissal of Christians as hateful bigots that the world
Is submitting really sending that message, or would it have made more sense to show Christians doing good works. Because in the modern context, washing people's feet are not good works, but seem more like either weird virtue-signalling or a foot-fetish.
Aapje58
2mo ago
Instead he found frightening, awe-full power beyond his understanding, which worked to compel his faith despite heroic tragedy.
Yes, Christianity is deeply patriarchal. The children do not understand the wisdom of the father, and they don't want to get their vaccines, because the needle hurts, and they do not comprehend the suffering they are being saved from. So they need to trust in the wisdom of the father, and trust that he loves them, even if they don't understand why he asks the things he asks.
Yet this is a very hard sell in a deeply individualized society that rejects patriarchy.
That's a false dichotomy in my eyes. We can do both, and should do both.
But in my society we are not actually doing both. At least some of the issues are caused by choices that people are doubling down on, if anything. Loneliness is now only on the agenda because it is becoming such a huge issue, but no one is undoing the cultural and political changes that caused it, or coming up with any real, new solutions. Unless you count euthanasia as a solution.
What I see is a pathological unwillingness to even face facts and instead, everything gets viewed from extremely dogmatic viewpoints, like the idea that all problems will be solved if we achieve things like inclusivity, gender equality, racial equality, etc; despite a completely lack of a rational analysis of what we would actually need to achieve such things; let alone an honest analysis of the up- and downsides of the policies being implemented (politically, culturally, etc).
In the face of such irrationality, 'solving' issues by getting rid of the evidence as much as possible by killing the victims of modern culture and modern policies, seems like a logical outcome that will lessen the pressure to recognize or fix the pathologies of modernity.
All associated with severe unhappiness and poor life outcomes and for good reason. Being poor, "urban" and single against your wishes sucks. If you have a means of turning such people into rich, rural and married individuals, then I'm willing to hear it, but I doubt anyone does short of waiting for the world to get much wealthier.
And yet people of modest means seemed to have an easier time in the past of actually getting the main things that most people want, a house, a partner, children and a decent level of respect (which may have just been 'successful while knowing your place,' but that is a lot better than just a bare 'loser'). And they were poorer than today, so this idea that wealth can fix a broken society seems false, as things have become increasingly broken despite increased wealth.
In my country even the progressives have woken up to the reality that people increasingly see lower education as a path to failure. Of course, their solution is foolish, to rename it to 'practical education,' due to their post-modern belief that words create, rather than reflect reality.
And rural living is itself failing as well. Rural women get convinced that they need to find a leftist yuppie and be part of city life, so they leave for the city, leaving a large gender imbalance, forcing men to leave as well and to become yuppies, but those men often fail, since the official messaging is sabotaging. So many boys don't see this as a path to success. Again, the progressives seem to have finally woken up to this too, but of course their answer is to vilify and censor people like Andrew Tate, rather than fix their own messaging or even just giving a shit about boys/men.
And it is not just sabotaging for men, but also for women, many of whom now seek out parasocial, dysfunctional substitutes for real friends and a real partner, for instance by streaming (although men do that too).
And of course, globalist culture stimulates breaking physical bonds with family and the friends you grow up with.
I could go on, but I think you get the point that I disagree very strongly with sentiments like 'of course the poors/urbans be sad' or with ignoring that society has a big influence on how successful people are at finding and maintaining relationships (romantic, but also friendships and family relationships). I see your beliefs as part of the pathological culture that refuses to learn from the cultures of the past and pretends that its dysfunctions and problems are inevitable.
Aapje58
4mo ago
If a gay person loses the court of public opinion in some sort of conflict with a Hispanic person, people on here will ask questions like 'Does this mean gay people are lower on the progressive stack now?'.
I think that the progressive stack is not so much about who wins, but how strong certain arguments are considered to be and in what situations they can be used. For example, a black person can use "I'm being discriminated against" even in some situations where they themselves messed up and are simply held accountable, while a white person who is actually being discriminated against, can't use that same argument unless the discrimination is very extreme indeed.
In social combat between woke people, you can expect them to use arguments that work for their identity in the situation. But that still doesn't mean that a black person can always just defeat a white person in social combat. The former just has more options.
Aapje58
3mo ago
I agree with Andrew Breitbart entirely when he said politics is downstream from culture.
But is it downstream from the culture of the people or the culture of the elites? These are two very different things.
Arguably, democracy is merely a way for people to have some influence on which elites are in power.
Federal courts have decreed that police violence should be justified by the circumstances, primarily the risk to officers and others, so they would presumably need to be able to argue some proven risk.
Which in this case seems to be absent.
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