Bombadil
3mo ago
Right, but using "men" as your outgroup is ridiculous, no? Like, we are talking about literally half the population here, including the speaker himself.
I understand that there is political power in uniting behind a common course, and that there is utility in naming a smaller but still decently big group (immigrants, jews, roma, etc.) that you can blame for all your problems. But the fact that it is possible to just blame "men" is wild. Even wilder that so many men men go along with it. The same "bigots who think all men are racist patriarchal scum" will absolutely turn on him the moment it becomes politically opportune to do so.
German police chief Dirk Peglow has stated on national television that his advice to women who want to avoid violence is to avoid relationships with men. This has naturally caused some controversy, and although it will likely be forgotten soon, I do think it shines a spotlight on some topics worth discussing.
First, this is clearly not meant to be taken literally. In the broader context, the comment is based on the fact that reports of sexual assaults have increased over the past year in Germany, and he simply meant to highlight the fact that most assaults are not perpetrated by strangers but people you know. Still, the way he chose to frame it matters. Public perception would have probably been much different if the man had specifically highlighted men with Arabic backgrounds as being dangerous, even though a similar argument of "just educating people on statistics" would still have been accurate. He could have also chosen to to warn women against certain behaviors. "If your man is violent, get out before it escalates" is a complete sentence with a clear call to action that fits neatly into a soundbite. If the goal was to help women, this advice would also be much more actionable than the ridiculous "don't date men at all", making it more likely to actually help people. Alternatively, he could have chosen to not be alarmist at all. "German streets are quite safe, and crime overall is down" would have emphasized that women are unlikely to be assaulted by strangers in public, and would have helped to spread some confidence in the population.
The field of medicine is very aware that undue anxiety presents a risk to personal health. Doctors are generally quite conservative when it comes to recommending blood tests or other diagnostic procedures to seemingly healthy patients. This is because false positives and the associated stress can lead the patient down an expensive and anxiety ridden path of uncertainty and increasingly invasive medical procedures that can significantly affect quality of life and mental health. The risk of overdiagnosis is great enough, that even if you were a billionaire with ample money to spare, a good doctor would still recommend against screening for illnesses when you show no significant symptoms. When you are a public official though, care for the mental health of your citizens apparently goes out the window. Making inflammatory statements that cause anxiety among women, shame among men, and divide the population are apparently fine as long as they result in viral video clips and conform to feminist dogma.
So I wonder: Why did he phrase it like this? Telling women to blanket avoid men is a borderline impossible ask. If he really wanted to help women, he should have spoken of specific character traits (violence or addiction for example) that they should stay away from. Is he part of some invisible cabal, attempting to lower German fertility rate and weaken the nation?
Maybe he just doesn't care about the repercussions his words may have on the German people. Politics seems to often select for people that care very little about their constituents, and are mostly just there to climb the social hierarchy whatever it takes, so maybe this message was a way for him to fit in with his peers. If so, this is potentially quite worrying. The incentive structure should ideally reward public officials who have the best interests of the citizens at heart, and punish those who use their position as a means to a selfish end. If this is not the case, the we could see some truly horrible politicians in the future.
Or maybe the man is actually a devout feminist. A true believer who legitimately thinks that "Men are dangerous" is an important message that must be spread in order to turn society into a better place. It just seems insane to me that an adult man would believe this. Surely he must see that his warning implicates himself and his friends as dangers to women as well. Do men like that even exist?
Bombadil
3mo ago
In other words, your main worry would be your outgroup converting outsiders to their worldview, which happens through the internet?
Bombadil
3mo ago
Your link goes to a wikipedia page about a mathemathical theorem. Is that on purpose?
Bombadil
3mo ago
As to your second point, I do kind of like the idea of just banning social media completely. The issue with that is I can't think of a way to do that without obvious workarounds, while also not banning the entire internet. At least with children, age serves as a clear dividing line, and adults are generally better equipped to handle the internet than kids.
I don't think I understand the Agatean wall. Would that just be a verbal agreement that the social media companies would not optimize engagement for revenue generation? If so, I don't see why these companies would ever do that.
Bombadil
3mo ago
Healthygamergg seems quite well adjusted (or was a few years ago, I haven't kept up much) and semi-viral. As far as I know, This is the closest thing to what Ponder is asking for.
That channel got big by appealing to spirituality, teaching emotional awareness, and most crucially the interviews. The host, Alok Kanojia, is a psychiatrist with spiritual training and a flair for storytelling. Through interviews he would help his viewers understand their feelings and situation, usually culminating in some moment of emotional catharsis. To the viewers who were not being interviewed, this provided a conversational style that they could emulate in their personal lives, and potentially a new lens through which they could view their own situations.
In addition, he does online lectures that serve as introductions to various concepts within psychiatry and Hinduism in a way that has proven very popular within his fan base.
The channel turned viral when it started doing interviews with popular streamers such as Reckful, Pokimane, and Destiny. So it still depended on the clout of others to achieve its reach.
The main controversies have been related to the ethics of a psychiatrist doing live interviews which look very similar to therapy. My understanding is that the channel is very aware of this, and does a lot of work to draw a clear line between what they are doing and actual treatment though. So overall, the content is ethically defensible and definitely a net good.
Divisiveness sells on social media. Controversial and sensationalist content will always get a larger audience than the sensible guy telling you to get an education and not destroy your future through drug abuse and cosmetic surgery.
Past attempts to make social media take responsibility for their effects on society has mostly resulted in the attempted silencing of dissident viewpoints, while the actual issue of the algorithm boosting extreme content remains unchanged.
I think the redpill/manosphere is a good case study of this. /r/theredpill was an attempt at offering a viral competing worldview, giving young men a clear explanation of how a man succeeds in the world and how to be attractive to women. But the only aspects of the red pill that went viral were those laced with misogyny and intense sexism. The big "red pill" content creators of today are the Andrew Tate types, which are essentially grifters selling BS courses to young men. Meanwhile, the rest of the manosphere has more or less drifted into obscurity, hidden away through censorship and stigma.
I think the simple solution is to get children off of social media completely. This would limit the risk of being continuously exposed to viral memes and addictive content, while also significantly reducing the viewerbase of Clavicular and those like him. This way we are actively disincentivizing his type of business while also protecting the kids, and forcing them to socialize in person. How we go about doing this is another question though. I really dislike the idea of ID verification, but on the other hand, parents at large are also unwilling (or unable) to do their part, at most preferring to monitor the social media accounts of their kids instead of banning it outright.
Bombadil
3mo ago
How hurt is the Iranian leadership and army though? Being a dictatorship, Iran is a lot less vulnerable to the will of the people. So Trump is gambling that Americans will allow the war to continue despite an increased cost of living, while Iran only needs to worry if the people are dying in the streets.
Bombadil
3mo ago
Is there not value in the Democrats showing that they hold distinct values to the republicans? At least online, it is not uncommon to hear that the two are no different and equally bad for your country. Voting to end the war shows a clear dividing line between the two parties, on an issue important to the voters.
Next time someone says that the dems are just as much puppeted by the Israelis as the GOP and would have done the exact same thing if given the reigns, this vote will be a point of evidence that no, this is in fact not the case. They are clearly against wars in the middle east. And if the bill had passed and led to the war ending, they could have then taken credit for saving a situation of chaos created by Trump.
As a non-American, I am probably missing something. But the decision seems pretty sound to me.
Bombadil
3mo ago
It's important to remember that this is a particular, peculiar subculture/mental illness being reported on.
But the "illness" is spread through information. So when people of the media class are afflicted with it, their vast reach spreads it to others. As their words reach more people and start to dominate on social media, more people will assume that this is now the default, socially acceptable outlook.
So politicians start using these opinions to formulate policy, and ordinary people start to adopt them as a way to fit in. Initially this only happens to terminally online folks and activists, but over time a feedback loop is created, as the more people believe in it, the more it actually becomes the dominant idea. Thus, even ordinary people will adopt theses beliefs as a way to fit in, which is when they really start to affect the world.
Bombadil
3mo ago
Thus why leftists critique the capitalist system and claim that there are no ethical ways to get rich.
Bombadil
3mo ago
I assume China is scary to you because its interests do not necessarily line up with those of America, and if the Chinese government deems it necessary, it might take actions that are detrimental to American citizens if it becomes too powerful.
I would argue that the same is true for the mega corporations though. They did not get rich by being nice, and will tend to look out for their own interests first and foremost. Those interests may not always align with those of the local population, so if they become too powerful, they may take actions that are detrimental to American citizens. The main advantage of the mega corps being local then, are the jobs, taxes, and the fact that you can regulate them.
Unfortunately, the last two factors only work if the state is significantly stronger than the corporate entities, and willing to regulate them. When social media companies become big enough to sway public opinion though, they get the power to significantly reduce the will of the population, whilst lobbying for politicians to deregulate. So for large enough entities the advantages of taxes and regulation are bound to lessen over time.
So only jobs are left. This is important of course, but I would argue that mega corps are not necessary for this. After all, several countries exist without mega corps and still manage to have low unemployment.
So I suppose I don't see much of a difference between having the mega corps in America or in China. They don't seem to care about how their activities effect the world regardless.
Bombadil
3mo ago
That seems a bit defeatist. I am not saying people shouldn't be allowed vastly more wealth than me, or to retire early. Just that the current richest people are clearly too rich and powerful for the good of society. I am essentially asking for policies that would prevent individuals and companies from getting this big in the first place, and to break up the existing monopolies into smaller, competing groups.
While wealth taxes and antitrust legislation come with their own downsides, and taxing people because they are wealthy is in some sense unfair, it seems to me that the current situation is so undesirable that it would be worth it. Fundamentally, money and power go hand in hand, so having ultra wealthy individuals in practice means that power becomes centralized within an increasingly smaller circle. Worse, the longer this goes on, the harder breaking up the circle becomes, as power is transferred through wealth from the people to the rich.
Bombadil
3mo ago
As I understand it, Rowling donated so much money to charity that she actually lost her billionaire status. Before the trans stuff, she was seen as the exception that proves the rule.
However, one could probably make an argument that where the money comes from matters a lot. Rowling's hands are clean, but can the same be said for the companies that paid her? How exactly could Warner Bros manage to get so big without underpaying or overworking their employees? Is such a thing even possible in a world of cutthroat competition in which every company is trying to be cheaper and faster than the others?
Bombadil
3mo ago
Your terms are acceptable. I would consider a world without gigantic monopolies with huge sway over public influence to be a better one.
The amount of power these mega corporations have is, I think, incompatible with liberal democracy. Having public discourse be decided by algorithms on a handful of global powerhouses is actually an insane state of affairs with huge potential for abuse.
So yeah, let Zuck and his ilk retire early. Have Facebook fade to obscurity. Let Google fall before internet search is optimized. The entities that buy the companies should also cash out, or break up into smaller parts. Give me a bunch of multi-millionaire medium to large entities instead of the titans we see today. Spread out the money and power, and I genuinely believe the world would be in a much better state than it is today.
Bombadil
3mo ago
From an artistic standpoint, censorship of this particular game is quite bad. It is one of few games I know about that manages to pretend it is haunted in a way that works alongside both gameplay and storytelling. I think the
Of course, DDLC is old enough for everyone interested to have played it at this point, but it certainly does seem unnecessary and like a step in the wrong direction for such a large platform to remove it. Especially when many other horror games still exist on the platform.
The US though, is in the fairly rare position of actually being able to literally bomb the world into the stone age through nuclear arms. Furthermore, they are currently an active part of a war. Thus, the threat carries a lot more weight. It is the difference between your mom saying she's going to kill you for destroying her favorite plates, and a thug pointing a gun at you saying the same thing.
Bombadil
4mo ago
That is also what I have been told by women, so it is probably true. But the direction that they influence each other in matters a lot. If they encourage the behavior I describe, or police those who value self control and long term planning, then my point still stands.
At least in my experience, women are the first to claim that sex is not a big deal and discourage anything that shames promiscuity or a lack of self control.
I think a better counter is that it is easy to find examples of men who ended up in abusive relationships, when they really ought to have known better. So perhaps this is not a woman-specific issue, but rather just that some people lack self control and think with their genitals.
I would argue though, that women sure seem to complain a lot more about landing in abusive relationships than men do, so clearly there is some kind of gendered thing going on here.
Bombadil
4mo ago
Modern society is quite good at shaming certain crude sexual impulses commonly expressed in men, whilst romanticizing and encouraging the kind of sexual expression often exhibited by women. With few expectations of self control when it comes to how women should behave around men, it only makes sense that some would make terrible choices driven by impulse rather than intellect.
Men are taught to contain their sexual desire from the moment they enter puberty. I might feel a strong force pulling me to stare mesmerized at the cleavage of my female classmates, but if I entertain it, I will be ridiculed and shamed. I am taught quite clearly that just because I have a crush on someone, I should not expect her to like me back. It is sometimes necessary to suppress my natural, sexual desires. Simply being attracted to someone does not mean I should pursue them.
And with this last point, I think, lies the issue. Any young girl who is crude in the way that men are crude, is also likely to be ridiculed and shamed. However, no one teaches women that feeling attracted or turned on is not necessarily a good reason to try and have sex. Instead, women are told to express their sexuality in whatever way feels best in the moment. Wear the slutty close, grind on strangers in the club, and by all means pursue that bad boy who you like so much. Repressing your sexuality is unhealthy and connected to ideas of patriarchs wanting women to be nothing more than stay-at-home baby makers. If you feel a crush you are encouraged to go for it. If you feel attracted to someone, then why not have sex with them? It is great fun for both parties!
When women are encouraged to just give in to their impulses like that, it is no wonder that a portion of them end up in bad relationships. I would imagine that beside all his obvious flaws, the ex in question simply turned her on. He knew what buttons to push to make her want him, and she just gave into temptation like she always had.
Bombadil
4mo ago
I remember her appeal as "climate change is so obviously man-made and bad that even a child can see it. Now start acting before it is too late!"
Then the climate change movement, and Greta with it, became so heavily influenced by culture warriors that many lost track of what it was supposed to achieve. The protests against nuclear powerplants were laughable to say the least. Greta became just another grifter who used activism mostly to advance her own status.
Independence from fossil fuels sure would have been nice by now, but I guess this is what millennials and gen Z deserves for ceding influential positions to people who should have never been anywhere near them.
Bombadil
4mo ago
The funny thing is, that had the US played their cards differently, it is very possible they could have just convinced the Greenlanders they had a better deal, and let them vote to secede as you suggest. However, the rhetoric from the Trump administration burned all the goodwill, and joining the States voluntarily is borderline impossible now.
The negotiator in chief really dropped the ball with this one.
Bombadil
4mo ago
You are straight up just lying. Trump was throwing out different ways to annex Greenland for weeks. He came up with all sorts of arguments, from how the inuits were poor and needed someone strong (not Denmark) to take care of them, to threatening invasion because a country with a weak military has no right to self determination. He ended up threatening tariffs, then backed down when it became clear that the European Union would not stop supporting Denmark.
I would call this sanewashing, but honestly this goes beyond that. You are actually just lying, because the truth would cause your standpoint to fall apart.
Bombadil
4mo ago
All I am saying is that literally bombing people's homes will result in refugees. Not that all refugees come from war.
Although war is correlated with refugee waves, and if a war is ongoing it is very hard to reject the refugee due to the European convention on human rights. The longer the refugees stay, the higher the risk that they are made permanent citizens, as they grow stronger ties to their host country the longer they live there.
Thus, this war will result in more refugees the longer it goes on, and it will be difficult for European governments to reject the refugees without making drastic changes to their laws. If the goal here is to reduce immigration, invading Iran is thus completely counterproductive.
Well yes. I think the western countries in generally lack a national identity that the citizens can get behind. This only works due to a lack of identification with the group that these people are criticizing. Still, I would have expected some general immune response when a decent person is being lumped in with criminals and racist. "How dare you group me with those people!" seems much more reasonable than "You are correct, let me apologize for the actions of people I never even met."
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