Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
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User ID: 297
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
@ZorbaTHut explained it (which is to say, there really isn't much more explanation than what we've said before).
My personal opinion is that we probably weren't in as much imminent danger of being banned as many people (including Zorba) believe, but it was inevitable that we would be banned someday. I always watched /r/CultureWarRoundup as a kind of canary, because despite their much smaller footprint, I honestly thought they'd get banned before we would. Their witches are pretty open, and SneerClub definitely knows about them, which means presumably they must get reported fairly frequently.
But I do have two things to contribute which I never would have posted on reddit. First of all, I will confirm that it was indeed Chtorrr who visited us and dropped the "friendly notice" in our mod channel.
And that being said, a few months back there was a "Mod Summit" (via Zoom) to which all subreddit mods were invited. I was the only motte mod who I guess was bored enough to zoom in (I even sent them questions! None of which made it to the queue that got answered, naturally). As you might expect, almost all the talks were about things like "How to build safe communities" and "How to self-care and preserve your mental health while having to deal with all these terrible people," etc.
The most valuable thing I got out of it were screenshots.
Without further comment: https://imgur.com/a/4oIS59D
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
We've never modded posts just for being one-liners if a single line expresses a point succinctly. The vast majority of posts on themotte, even those that received AAQCs, were not long essays.
What we dislike are "lol," "I agree," "These people suck," etc. (even if expressed in complete grammatical sentences), and various forms of shitposting. The more you tolerate one-line zingers or adds-nothing "likes/dislikes," the more the place starts to look like every other Internet forum.
Maybe the end result is that we tend to select for wordiness. Shrug.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
I did allude to it once by linking to the cover of War Against the Chtorr. I have never read the books, though.
As for that scene: it strikes me as some really fucked up sublimation. Like, "Can I construct a scenario in which fucking a child is actually the right thing to do, and then write it convincingly into my sci fi novel?" is Piers Anthony territory.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
I am still unsure to what extent I can advocate political violence here.
We're not going to be as strict as we were on reddit, where we had to consider what an admin might (un)reasonably consider a threat of violence, but that doesn't mean a free reign on fedposting.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
I'm not entirely convinced by his argument, but it feels like a question worth asking.
Golly, we've never seen this pattern before, doesn't seem at all familiar.
Since you don't have to police your words as much here as you did on reddit (though as @ZorbaTHut, said, that doesn't mean you can go full mask-off "Raar Da Jooos!") why don't you be original and instead of JAQing off with this phony "I dunno guys what do you think?" schtick, actually state your own thoughts? What is Keith Woods's argument? Why do you think it's a question worth asking?
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
Reading the CW thread, it seems to me people are subconsciously talking as if the threat of AEO still exists.
Well, here's my personal view ( @ZorbaTHut can chime in, I think we're all kind of getting used to the "new normal" and will be for a while):
Yeah, you can use all the no-no words that risked getting you admin-banned back on reddit. Go ahead, retardniggerfaggottranny it all out of your system.
That being said, we don't want threads full of retardniggerfaggottranny. The Motte never has been and hopefully never will be that kind of place.
You want to call something retarded? Fine. You want to talk about the word nigger or quote someone else's use of it? Fine.
Actually referring to people as niggers or faggots or trannies is not fine.
As for all those sizzling hot topics, like Holocaust denial and whether trans women are men (or groomers) and whether HBD says blacks are too stupid to ever build rocketships, yeah, we can have those discussions now without worrying that AEO will come and put a boot on us, but we still expect a reasonable attempt at quality discussion, not just manifesto-posting and baiting.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
No one fears him. The problem is that his small-dick energy compels him to obsessively troll and set up innumerable sock puppets to convince everyone how smart and superior he is, making him a persistent, annoying pest. He's disliked for the same reason every other anti-social victim of IAmVerySmart syndrome is disliked.
"Just ignore and downvote" is always offered as the solution to bad actors, and while technically this would be the correct solution if everyone did it, you can't rely on the entire community to do that, ever.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
You're almost correct. It's not that he's concealing "problematic" beliefs, it's that he's concealing his beliefs. I dislike Dark Hinting (and consider it a violation of the Speak Plainly maxim) because it's trying to cloak one's true intentions. It's sleazy and dishonest. The OP did not come here "not entirely convinced," the OP came here hoping to start a discussion about the JQ while pretending he's Just Asking Questions.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
If you're allowed to call me a troll, then I should be allowed to call you a fool.
Wrong. Report the post, don't escalate.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
Incorrect. Now stop trying to start fights.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
I kind of sympathize, but for every person who hates the voting buttons there's another who wants more visible voting and even more elaborate ways to vote and track voting.
You're right that votes aren't supposed to be "I agree/I disagree" buttons, but that's just the way it usually works because people are lazy.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
I have to ask myself; was I, in turn, being pandered to in the previous eras of scifi in the same way that different demographics are being pandered to now? Am I just primed to like things featuring men or manly women set in space, or that feature nanotech and computers at the expense of character development or good writing? And honestly, the answer is probably yes. There probably is some cosmic Ginsbergian justice to Woke sci-fi taking over traditional awards ceremonies. I don’t think there is a principled, objective stance where William Gibson is a better writer than Octavia Butler and it’s not like we read any of these books because the prose and mechanics of the writing are top tier. Perhaps we’re fated to live in our own little cloistered media bubbles that tell us what we like to hear.
This is a good thing to examine, because I think you're right. My initial reaction to the recent Hugo slates has been similar to yours: it almost feels now like an annual victory parade marching over the bones of all those dead cishetwhite dudes. I've read a few of NK Jemisin's books (bleah) and I tried Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning (it's genuinely speculative and interesting SF, I'll give it that - but it wasn't for me), and I've read a few of Seanan McGuire's books (very YA, fun enough if you like fanfic and the same plot retreaded multiple times) but mostly it just seems like celebratory woke awards.
I never thought I'd become one of those guys who just starts refusing to read books by, as Vox Day puts it, People Who Hate You, but I'm becoming one of those guys.
All that being said, you are right that previous eras just pandered to different demographics. (And bitching about the Hugos, and more worthy books being ignored in favor of books that didn't deserve it, goes back to the first WorldCon.) I mean, I really liked Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle when I was younger, but I've recently reread a few of their books, and besides being cringe and soapboxy in their own way, the writing is just bad. They didn't age well.
I will always think Ringworld (and the whole Known Space series) is a magnificent epic, but Niven and Pournelle are both cranky old bastards who kind of embody the "stale pale male" stereotype, if we're being honest. And lots of other previous nominees and winners have been equally full of wooden characters spouting stilted dialog in service of the author's political theories.
I also read Neuromancer recently. It, too, did not age well. I know that's not the book's fault: it's not entirely fair to judge a book in 2022 that was written about the mindblowing cyberpunk future before the Internet was really a thing. But it's just not that great except as an artifact of its time.
So yes, times have changed, the fandom has changed, old fans don't like it, and I just accept that Hugo nominations no longer mean much to me. For all that people complain that "Nothing good is being published anymore," this is flatly bullshit. There is a vast quantity of new SF&F being published. The problem is not that there's nothing to read, the problem is sifting through the ocean of crap new books to find something you like. For this, we mostly rely now on word of mouth and communities known to recommend things that are good - ironically, the function that publishers and awards used to serve.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
The problem with every attempt I've seen at "explicitly non-woke reviews" is that they just end up pushing right-wing authors because non-woke.
So like, I enjoy Larry Correia and Tom Kratman and John Ringo and John C. Wright, but of those guys, only Wright is what I'd call a literary stylist, and he's hardly innocent of didactic writing.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
None of these one-word (or one letter!) responses, please.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
The concepts were cool, I just didn't think the writing or the characterization was very good. And like I said, it's not really fair to judge a book for not doing better than any other SF novel in predicting what the near future will look like, but still... coin-op pay phones!
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
Well, at the risk of this turning into a SF&F recommendation thread (I guess there's nothing wrong with that, but would probably be better for Friday Fun Threads):
Ursula Le Guin really was quite a good writer, though most of her books are bit too slow and contemplative for me. But The Dispossessed does a really splendid job of contrasting a futuristic socialist society with a futuristic capitalist society in a way that genuinely feels like "What if?" and not "This is a pointed allegory." (As opposed to Those Who Walk Away from Omelas and other stories she did write as pointed allegories.)
Peter Watts and Neal Stephenson are two authors whose strength isn't in their prose, but they deliver really slammin' ideas with competent writing.
Ken Liu is pretty woke, but I've still found his writing to be very good.
Daniel Abraham (half of the team that wrote The Expanse series) is quite good; I like his epic fantasy series as well. Likewise Adrian Tchaikovsky, who has a rare ability to write equally good sci-fi and fantasy.
I have many others, but obviously it's going to be subjective. I can enjoy books that tell a good story even when I think writing is mediocre at best (looking at you, Brandon Sanderson), but yes, there are sci-fi authors who actually pay attention to the craft of writing, not just storytelling and worldbuilding.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
Haven't read him, had to Google him. He writes BattleTech tie-in novels? I played some BattleTech back in the day, but was never interested enough in the lore to read the books.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
"Saturated" is an understatement. I think you're overestimating how much most people make self-publishing. There are literally thousands of people throwing their crappy books on Amazon every month; for every break-out hit who starts making enough income to live off of, there are thousands of "authors" who aren't even breaking into double digits.
Even if you're actually good (and arguably, this isn't even a requirement, the main requirement is to be capable of churning out many words at a steady pace), you have even more competition than if you were traditionally published. It only seems like it's easier because there are no barriers to entry.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
I'm not sure there's actually a rule being violated here, but let's not encourage illegal activities, mmkay?
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
Note: Crossposting is fine, but in the future, posts referring to rdrama in the header are unlikely to be approved.
Why? We don't hate rdrama! We do not prohibit discussions of or links to rdrama. And we know a lot of people here are members of both communities.
But this place isn't rdrama, and we're not trying to be rdrama, and we still have a leave the rest of the Internet at the door rule, meaning, don't keep trying to make rdrama threads bleed over to TheMotte.
If you have something to share you also shared on rdrama, that's fine, but let it stand on its own merits here.
Also, this is kind of culture warry and probably should have gone in the Culture War thread.
Note: This is coming after a discussion amongst the mods, not just me.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
Not caution. It's just what I said above - we don't want to become rdrama and we don't want a flood of rdrama crossposts. (If people start repeatedly crossposting from other places, we'll probably tell them the same thing.)
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
Don't do snide call-outs like this.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
A little too much heat and sarcasm. Dial it down.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1yr ago
Context: Since we don't have old reddit Doglatine claimed six months ago that the Ukraine invasion would cure all western problems and end the culture war and also bring about world peace. So that is why he is desperate for any good news out of Ukraine
Without needing to dig up old posts, I am 99.9% certain this is an inaccurate, bullshit misrepresentation of anything @doglatine claimed.
TBH I thought this forum was a good idea at first, it felt good to get away from Reddit. I'm pretty sure it's a failure though, it has none of the dynamism that reddit had. It's a circle jerk of the most very online mottezins self fellating. Have fun with your toys guys. I'm out.
And nothing of value was lost.
Since we're going light in these early days, I'm just giving you a three-day ban, but if you intend use the timeout to come back and be this much of an ass again, just stay away.
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
Disclaimer: I haven't read it, I am going on word of mouth.
Originally published in 1997, so "pre-woke" era and more Mistake Theory than Conflict Theory.
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