On Bullying
It's an observation of Orson Scott Card that we don't really like to think about how much of our behavior is genetic.
To what extent should it be presumed that sexless men will become rapists? Certainly we can look at some statistics proving rape exists, that some subset of men will eventually become rapists, or worse, school shooters.
It's only nerds that think of humans as rational agents. It's only nerds that think of humans as rational agents. It's only nerds that think of human ok you get it.
Within the evolutionary pressure to protect the women from harm emerges the high school jock bullying the high school nerd for leering too frequently and making the jock's woman uncomfortable. The nerds would have you believe that this cycle of violence begins when the high school jock slams the nerd up against the locker. "I wasn't doing anything" cries the nerd pitifully.
The nerd hangs out near the woman, drawn to her by the compulsion of the reproductive force. The nerd tells a story of innocence, that they're not there in proximity of the woman for any specific purpose.
For the woman, it's pretty simple: there's a nerd there so the nerd is interested in her regardless of what the nerd says he believes. When the nerd stutters out "h-hi" the nerd thinks that this is playing a script of normal human interaction in which he has maintained plausible deniability for making eye contact, when in reality, for the woman, it's pretty simple: there's a male present so the male is interested in her.
From there the leering or the comments ('maybe I should just try being forward' leads to awkward sexual advances) progress and the woman's discomfort increases past the annoyance threshold into the threat labeling, and the threat labeling occurs when she tells her boyfriend, and it becomes the boyfriend's job to subdue the poor dumbfuck.
So the nerd gets slammed into the locker.
"I wasn't doing anything!"
What's sad about this story is just this: that the nerd believes it.
ImpassionaTwo
10mo ago
if past history is any indication, you will be as unreasonable as ever until we ban you.
I am very reasonable.
The answer is going to be the same, for the umpteenth time: no.
The people you ban are those you have decided are unrighteous. It's not that complicated.
Let's say we are a hive of fascist scum and villainy - does it really make you lose sleep at night knowing this place exists?
I'm here to begin discourse. I don't think there's as much outright fascist scum here as there used to be. I don't personally lose sleep at night knowing this place exists.
do you think that "bullying" them until we ban you will save anyone?
Of the two of us, I'm not sure who needs to worry about being banned more.
ImpassionaTwo
10mo ago
Do you have aims, memetic or otherwise, that you're trying to accomplish by posting this?
Obviously.
it just works to get them to hang out elsewhere.
Until there's nowhere left for them to speak, yes.
ImpassionaTwo
10mo ago
I don't mean to be rude, but who are you?
ImpassionaTwo
10mo ago
I don't think all memes are indicative of mental slavery in those who emit them, just many of them.
ImpassionaTwo
10mo ago
If you exist in a space that functions to allow people to emit wrong ideas unchecked, the purpose of the moderation of that place is to protect bad thinking from being challenged.
ImpassionaTwo
10mo ago
I am in favor of online commentators having no say in what a 13-year-old does in consultation with their doctor.
Do people that latch on to causes because they don't like to think and challenge their assumption of the world know that they have done so?
Do people that latch onto explanations for other people's lack of interest in debate know that they have done so?
Do you know that it is possible to transcend it with thinking and challenging assumptions?
It is not possile to transcend the culture war and anyone who thinks so is
ImpassionaTwo
10mo ago
Nothing is ever accepted by society. The contest over the definitions of righteousness occur in meaningless microcosms. Libraries stop hosting drag queen story hours which include overt sexualization and seamlessly continue hosting drag queen story hours.
ImpassionaTwo
10mo ago
If your politics is based on what some unelected people are doing, your politics is virtual.
ImpassionaTwo
10mo ago
How many of the participants in the culture war understand that they're memetic agents? For instance, a social justice warrior doesn't necessarily think of themselves as a pawn of a multidimensional space ideology, emitting memes and discarded by the movement once no longer useful to the prospiracy. Instead they simply think of their morality and righteousness as an objective truth.
Similarly people who express and articulate the desire for an ethnostate are convinced of the righteousness of their position.
The culture war is as much a commentary on whose righteousness can be expressed as much as it is a contest over the definition of righteousness.
(The correct answer isn't that none of them are righteous.)
(It's that righteous causes like trans acceptance are not made less righteous by the fallibity of the people who express trans acceptance, and foul causes like the ethnostates are in fact foul and should be neatly excerpted from discourse by moderator attention, or, barring that, bullying to make sure the nerds to get the message.)
ImpassionaTwo
1yr ago
Christian Fundamentalist Evangelicals believe a Reality TV Star Is God's Chosen One
Just because the left occasionally overstates its case around matters of race doesn't mean you should forget that religious people believe authoritarian lies. There's overt white supremacy and there's latent white supremacy. Many religious cultures, especially in the south, have a great deal of latent white supremacy within them that in times when overt white supremacy comes to the foreground becomes more and more blatant.
The harsh recognition of the xenophobic impulse is not assuaged by a photo op unless you are.
Shut down.
It's not right.
Distinction without a difference, difference without a distinction, difference and distinction.
Violence against journalists. Criticism of journalists. Politicians who call for violence against the media should be shot in Minecraft only. I am a pacifist this way. But they should be shot in Minecraft as a statement of their failure.
We should suspend the norms and have the world's biggest virtual execution. Let anyone be put forth to be virtually killed, and let the procession sweep along and virtual bullets emptied into a corpse.
If you are going to engage in your 20 minutes of hate and call it discourse, you should really mean it. In Minecraft.
This is a place that is clearly on the verge of losing its hold in Minecraft. "Cowabunga." Your appetite for violence is sickening and crass and it is only here that you dare utter it for you are a coward. I make that argument from fIrST prINciPlEs thus
- If you meant it, you'd have thought it through for long enough to know not to say anything like that.
QED.
ImpassionaTwo
1yr ago
Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
60% of Americans don't want Trump. Journalisms have documented a Truth. The Cathedral is your Culture and you Desecrate it at your Peril.
If you do not believe that the movement under Trump has enough fascistic signals to call the movement fascist, it is your claim which is partisan and inflammatory.
That said, don't think I cannot provide evidence, though it will largely consist of pointing you to where you are.
ImpassionaTwo
1yr ago
the memory of how Trump revealed the depths of the deep state and baited the establishment into scrapping all their old norms will be strong.
It is only because those norms have held that Trump's justice will be certain.
To the extent that norms have been violated, it is Trump who has violated them. There is no law saying we must commit suicide by holding to norms.
If your argument is that we cannot hold one person accountable, let me tell you: this is how you hold the system accountable. There is no universe in which the sane response to a part of the system being held accountable, no matter the story it has told about its persecution, is to complain about how the system is never held accountable.
Campaign finance law has been broken. The full facts of this case have already been read into the congressional record. Only terminally confused. Yes.
ImpassionaTwo
1yr ago
Hello. I am not Impassionata, though I tried writing like/as (and it's not clear to me that there's a distinction) Impassionata when Impassionata retired.
Now that Impassionata is back on rdrama (and in fine form, their documentation of the AI Incursion really has me thinking) I figure I might as well continue the experiment somewhere else. I intend to write in a civil and constructive manner on matters of politics relating to the present fascistic movement which exists under former president Trump.
If you don't like that and are ready to rules lawyer the mods upon me, then you and I are involved in a War of Words. Hit me with your best shot.
This is why you need to worry: you believe that the label you put on the action matters. Civility is how this community has chosen to define righteousness. No community which exiles its members lacks a concept of righteousness. The behaviors that lead a community to exile a member are precisely those which are not righteous, and it's as simple as that.
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