Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
13hr ago
We're not going to take sides in a situation like this. People accuse other posters of misrepresenting and strawmanning them all the time. Sometimes people are misrepresenting and strawmanning other posters, but y'all need to work this out yourselves-civilly!-or let it go.
When we do intervene is when threads become pointless back and forth exchanges of "Did not!" "Did too!" Which is what this is becoming.
We also dislike people declaring they have reported someone. "I'm telling on you!" is not any more effective or impressive here than it was in kindergarten. What is that supposed to accomplish? Put extra pressure on the mods? We can see your report. Submit your report and move on.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
I also backed First Monday In October. That company is one of those that's been posting on the impacts of tariffs (they have had several games delayed). Most recently they thought they found an alternative by printing in Brazil... and then Trump announced BRIC tariffs.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
As a boardgamer, I can tell you that the tariffs have really fucked over a lot of boardgame publishers and Kickstarters. For those who don't know, the vast majority of boardgames are manufactured in China, and many publishers have written detailed responses to "Why don't you print in the US instead?" (The answer is "We've tried and the manufacturing facilities don't really exist here" and also "Costs will go up, not by a little but by so much that basically only people who don't care about price will buy boardgames.") Admittedly boardgames are very much a niche luxury good, but in at least a few industries there have been significant impacts.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
I assume so? I used to think this, but have come around to agreeing this isn't true.
We ban more rightists than leftists. Rightists are more numerous, and thus when someone flies off the handle or starts insulting people or posting about how much he hates his enemies, it's more likely to be a rightist.
This of course has resulted in rightists claiming that we don't ban leftists enough.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
Tell me you have no idea what I think about Israel and Zionism.
The people I refer to as "Joo-posters" barely ever mention Palestine, because they don't care about anything but Jews. Yes, there are indeed people who separate Israel from Jews and criticize one independently from the other. Those are not people who go on about Holocaust denial and the Jewish war against white people.
This post earns you a tempban, not because I am a "Zionist," but because personal attacks are not allowed, even against mods. If you'd just written that you think I am a Zionist propagandist and a terrible mod, I'd have told you you're wrong about the first and that's just, like, your opinion man, about the second. But this level of antagonism and vitriol wouldn't be acceptable no matter who you're talking to.
I'm giving you three days, my standard timeout for someone whose previous record was mostly okay but who suddenly loses his shit in an unprovoked flameout.
(Normally I would leave it to another mod to decide how to handle someone who attacks me, but since we were not actually interacting previously, and this is pretty clear-cut and egregious, I'm going ahead and taking action myself. However, if another mod wants to overrule me either to lengthen or shorten the ban, I will not object.)
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
In principle, I agree, though I think tarring and feathering and deportation is a little extreme...
That said, I absolutely believe #killallmen posters are almost entirely performative, whereas Joo-posters are not.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
Sure. But what specifically are you arguing here? I don't want to go back and forth trying to figure out what you are hinting at (or not). Do you think Jewish success is the result of some special advantage they have that they are withholding from gentiles? Do you think it's the result of innate Jewish characteristics? Or do you think it's the result of historical events converging to put them where they are now, for good and for ill? Because the answer to "What should the gentile do?" depends on what you think Jews are doing.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
For some it probably is. Otoh I recall some people here insisting we should absolutely take the SJWs tweeting "#killallmen" very seriously even when it was obviously performative.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
That's somewhat fair, though I'd point out that SJWs and feminists don't have a history of actually committing genocide against their outgroup.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
I think you're hiding the ball a little there. Hardly anyone disputes that Jews have an outsized commercial and cultural impact on the world. Just look at their presence compared to their numbers! What the Jew haters contend is that this impact is bad, and even malicious. If you ask me "Assume they are right about that" you're asking me to assume someone's most hostile description of their outgroup is correct. Uh, golly that would be pretty bad if this group you hate really is out to get me and destroy my civilization. Excuse me if I require more substance before I seriously indulge such hypotheticals.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
It sure gets discussed a lot for something you claim you are not allowed to discuss.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
I don't know exactly what you've seen, but my guess is you've seen some of the more nuanced moderate Nazi-like posters who dislike Jews and/or Jewish Supremecists but don't call for their death. And are strawmanning/patern-matching them to the more classical Nazis. I think there's a really important distinction, because first and foremost, the rational Nazi does not want you to die. They might dislike, want you to have less power and influence, might want you to leave, but they don't want you to die and if they saw you on the street they would not attack you. Second, the rational Nazi does not necessarily hate you, personally, if you are not yourself a supremecist. They might not even be a bigot at all, in the same way that an anti-woke person is not necessarily a racist.
Eh... one of my gripes about our most dedicated Joo-posters is that, no, they don't literally say "Death to Jews, Hitler did nothing wrong!" (because that would be uncouth, and also against the rules), but when pushed about what solutions they suggest to the Jewish problem that they describe incessantly, they punt, they waffle, they evade.
"So, do you want to kill Jews?"
"How dare you!"
"Okay, so should they be, like, put in camps...?"
"I never said that!"
"According to you, Jews are bad and destroying our society, so should we disenfranchise them? Forcibly deport them? Just ostracize them? Isolate them in ghettos? What?"
"I'm not answering your stupid questions!"
Now, whether our resident neo-Nazis do in fact secretly wish that they could gas all the Jews, or just have a generalized impersonal antipathy towards Jewishness, I don't know. I'm sure in person they probably are capable of being nice to individual Jews, and wouldn't look our Jewish members in the eye and say "You should die." But clearly they think Jews, as a class, are collectively responsible for evil. It's hard to believe their preferred solution wouldn't eventually result in something bad happening to Jews as a class, including Jewish members here and Jews they know personally. I'm sure a lot of Nazis had Jewish friends and maybe even felt a little sad when their Jewish neighbors got put on a train. And yet.
I suppose they might argue that their preferred solution is that Jews renounce their Jewishness and denounce other Jews and "Jewish supremacy," and the "good Jews" who do this could be allowed to keep (some) rights, but the Joo-posters also tend to favor biodeterminism and argue that being insular, conflict-prone, and parasitical is intrinsic to being Jewish, which suggests that really, Jews Are Just Like That, and that hardly leaves a lot of peaceful solutions on the table.
So that's why I think "Dislike you and want you to have less power, but wouldn't literally attack you on the street" isn't really a compelling argument for believing that anti-Semites do not, in fact, want Jews to die. Maybe they wouldn't get their own hands dirty and would like it to happen out of sight (as most Germans did), but they won't object to it happening.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
"There are a lot of arguments around that," yes. And that Jews are biased towards wanting to support Israel is of course pretty obvious. But that is only the tip of the iceberg of "Jewish influence" arguments.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
"Jews being in power" wouldn't mean anything unless you believe they are specifically serving Jewish interests to the detriment of non Jews. Obviously progressives serve progressive interests. The Jew haters have to invent a narrative where all our economic, immigration, and foreign policies are basically an effort by Jews to undermine civilization to explain the "Jewish interests" that Jews are supposedly pursuing.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4d ago
I have moderated forums before this one. You have pretty accurately described the personality types.
I don't want this place to be dominated by snowflakes like so many of my hobby forums, and reddit, and most mainstream forums now, really. I also don't want this place to be kiwifarms or rdrama.
I hear what you are saying about, for example, merely annoying people vs. people motivated by hatred of certain groups, especially a group of which you are a member.
Unsurprisingly, my answer to you will be the same one I usually give to people who think we haven't set the dials and thermostats correctly, which is that I think you are wrong about some things, and that there just isn't a great solution to other things.
We have had annoying (by which I mean outspoken and argumentative) liberals (who got reported and downvoted heavily) who still didn't get banned (or even warned in many cases). They still leave because even if the mods are fair to them, the rest of the forum largely is not, and it's not much fun being extremely leftist and trying to engage in good faith with people who, at best, seethe with barely restrained contempt in their every reply to you. I can think of several normie liberals, a couple of trans-women, at least one black guy, and one or two outspoken unabashed leftie feminists over the years who gave it a shot, made some decent contributions, but haven't been seen in a long time because, I assume, they just got tired of people politely telling them they are despised.
The Joo-posters have been warned when they cross the line -- and I don't want to name names here to avoid this being a "call-out" post or making it about individual personalities, but the most prominent ones you are thinking of have somewhat ratcheted it back after being modded repeatedly, and several others have been banned. (Not for their Joo-posting alone but because they were general pains in the ass.) This, of course, was not taken with good grace and acknowledgment that we were trying to maintain a forum where Jews and Jew-haters could somehow engage in mutually respectful dialog. It was met with indignation, anger, claims that we are trying to suppress certain viewpoints, and accusations of the forum being secretly controlled by Jews.
Are we a locker room culture where we put up with Kenneth and his occasional unfunny rape jokes? I suppose that's not a terrible analogy. And should we become a coed locker where everyone now has to avoid offending the more sensitive members now sharing space with us? A lot of guys might not like Kenneth and his rape jokes, but they're willing to put up with it if they can speak unfiltered and the alternative is being policed by the kind of people who would punish all of them for not exiling Kenneth.
I guess the problem with this analogy (or maybe the point) is by implication women aren't just expected to put up with Kenneth and his rape jokes, but to not even be present, whereas we do allow Jews and blacks and women and trans people and liberals to be here... and listen to what some other people really think of them.
The Motte really was not meant to be a "right-wing" forum, but it has more or less become that by virtue of being one of the only places where right wingers can say right-wing things and not get banned. However, I maintain that we do put up with "libtards." We moderate on tone, not content. That's always been by design and one of our explicit principles that sets us apart from most forums. That means yes, the polite Holocaust denier gets to post about how in a purely hypothetical way, the world would be a better place without Jews, while the annoying shit-stirring leftist gets banned for being a dick. I understand how that may seem like we are favoring Holocaust denial and picking on liberals, but we're not. At least not intentionally.
I dunno. A lot of people (including the mods) think the Motte is ultimately a doomed project and it's just a matter of how long we can keep it going. So far we've lasted longer than most expected. I don't know what to tell you. Speaking for myself, I really do try to apply the same moderation principles to the shit-stirring libtards and the Joo-posters, and unsurprisingly, they both think I am clearly out to get them and run cover for the other guys.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4d ago
Then you are poor at evaluating evidence or unable to look past your biases. I assert confidently and objectively that you are wrong.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4d ago
Maybe a new rule should be "be as polite as possible without being insincere.
Although that is not an official rule, that is encouraged, yes.
As for you, I'm not going to argue with yet another person who comes back from a ban to complain about how unfair their ban was. You know what you're doing.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4d ago
I doubt it. I don't report a lot. And in a holistic review I'd wager over ~99% are good reports.
Of course you do. Everyone thinks their reports are valid, and reports about them are not.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4d ago
We almost never warn people for reports, even reports we think are stupid and frivolous (which is about 80% of them). The only exceptions are when someone is just spamming the queue, or being really obnoxious (like using the report field to abuse the mods, or insult the poster in a way they know would not be allowed as a public post)
I think the people who use the report button in such a way should be warned or otherwise influenced to stop their behavior.
Buddy, I don't think you do. I specifically remember some of your reports which were based on nothing more than you not liking what was said.
Though I would not think it only happens regarding any specific subject, I would not be surprised that it happens a lot on certain topics over others.
If you mean you think peoplecoughJews are "shamelessly" reporting people for anti-Semitism, the reports on Joo-posting are no greater than on any other heated topic, and I'd say Jew-haters and incels are actually much more prone to mash the report and downvote buttons.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4d ago
Anyone who's spent time working with LLMs know they hallucinate, but it's not just "making up random things." They usually make things up in a very specific way: namely, in response to how they are prompted.
For example, that Tweet in which Grok claims that Elon personally "dialed down its woke filters." This is extremely unlikely for multiple reasons. While I admit I wouldn't put it past Elon to actually write code and push it to production live on X, I still doubt it. LLMs will very often make claims about their ability to "clear their memory," "update themselves," "do a search," or read documents that they are literally incapable of doing, because their inherent "helpfulness" leads them to tell you they can do things they can't because you prompted them with the idea.
Leading to the second point: that prompt change, if real, probably is the culprit, and I'm surprised that even if the goal was to "take off woke filters" that experienced prompt engineers would not foresee the problem. "Politically incorrect" has a specific valence in public discourse of the last couple of generations, and that's how an LLM will associate it- not with "being more interested in the truth than political sensibilities" but with the very specific sort of edgy contrarian who likes to spout "politically incorrect" opinions. Unsurprising that this resulted in making it easier to prompt Grok to spout off about Jews or write Will Stancil-Somali rape-smut.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
5d ago
How curious. I've mentioned many times that people have a habit of reporting posts just because they don't like the argument being made or the person making it, and that we (mods) wish people would not use the report button for that purpose. If you think it only happens when people are going on about Jews, you are deeply mistaken and have not been paying attention.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
5d ago
Lots of people don't like anti-Semitism. Lots of people report posts they don't like. But you knew that.
You know what sucks about these discussions everywhere else on the Internet? That you can't go more than two or three posts without seeing "Looney Left" and "MAGAtard Nation."
We discourage this for a reason.
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