The son of the creator of D&D came out with a new TSR (the original creators) came out with a product recently that some people did say would fall afoul of the "no hateful content" policy. Conduct is a different story altogether, especially in a world where so many people view any sort of criticism as abuse. I actually think that's the bigger threat in terms of this policy.
You have to take into account, I think the larger story of what's going on. This is really targeting Virtual Tabletop providers (VTT) such as Fantasy Grounds and Roll20. That's who they really want to shut down. They're in the works making their own VTT program, and my guess is that the next version of D&D is going to be entirely based around it. To the point where I wouldn't be shocked if the next core rules simply don't include any dice formulas at all. You're expected to be logged in on your cell phone if you're playing at home, and push a button and the server will determine the outcome.
Where these things come together, I think, is to restrict the ability of these services to exist, under the guise of keeping out bad content and the bad people.
The whole point of this, is either some sort of subscription service or a Gatcha style game. The whole point is that basically WotC gotta turn D&D into a billion dollar brand and soon. That's the pressure. Which is something like a 500% increase. It's a sort of go big or go home thing. And I mean that. Apparently Hasbro is trimming the fat of their "underperforming" IPs, and this might be a gasp for that team to keep their jobs.
It's almost if people believe that men can't catch feelings. What I mean by this, is that there's the idea that men have to (and are able to) make their decision about what bucket the relationship is going to go in right off the bat.
I have to say, the more I think about this type of situation the more misandry I see in it. Not that I think the guy was correct in this case, to be clear. I can understand why the guy did it, and while wrong, I do think it's understandable. But I think even forget the FwB thing. If he asks her out on a date, which is the more conventional thing....this situation is maybe what...80% of what it is? I don't think it's THAT sizable of a difference.
Again, I think there's a lot of misandry, and yes, objectification of men involved here.
Karmaze
1yr ago
I mean, I'll give mine.
After the whole EG thing, I started talking about how they needed to change the code of conduct/create a schedule to make these events more professional on the whole. Sure you could have your fun/flirty drinky time, but they'd be limited to certain events that people could opt-in/opt-out of.
Went over like a lead balloon.
It's when I realized people were full of shit, they didn't want any actual change, they just wanted the power to enforce arbitrary rules to both get rid of undesirables and to protect themselves.
Karmaze
10mo ago
I think reducing it to sex/gender really hides what's going on, at least in my mind. I can absolutely respect women as agents. What I can't respect is narcissistic attitudes. And of course, not all women. I know plenty of women who are wonderfully good and what they do and maintain a very healthy center. But I will say that I do think that cultural pressures have been creating more "Girlboss" attitudes. And stories that feature those attitudes....no thank you.
Karmaze
1yr ago
So socialism is particularly attractive to High-IQ people who are ill-suited to a capitalist society (intellectuals, journalists, other wordcels, etc.). These people can then recruit various types of resentful underclass people (addicts, generally stupid or lazy people, ethnic and sexual minorities, weirdos of all kinds) who, since they have nothing to lose, are much more loyal and politically active than the people who are content with the system as it is.
As far as I'm concerned, this is THE challenge for Socialism/Communism, and I say that as someone on the left. How do you make a leftist society that isn't run by the Managerial Class (because that's who we're talking about here) for the Managerial Class? There's a reason why I actually think a lot of the modern leftism is "speedrunning" Communism past the utopian for the workers stuff, straight to the "We are the new elites" phase, or at least that's what it wants.
Karmaze
1yr ago
Oooh I have thoughts on this. I'll be honest, I actually think Atheism+ is the "root" of what makes up much of Woke/Neoprogressive culture today. Or more specifically, it was the vector that took this stuff from forums to social media. I was actually there for it. In fact, I would say that during it was when I "switched sides"....or more specifically, I realized that me, as a liberal, really had nothing in common with this form of Progressivism. What I saw, was people wanted power more than actual systematic change. Simple as that.
Later on, I came to the conclusion that Elevatorgate more than likely was always "inside the house", that is, it was specifically a problem for this Neoprogressive/Polyamorous community. And in reality, so much of the problems that were being claimed were linked to that. I still find it hard to believe that nobody actually knew who "Elevator Guy" is, to be blunt.
Now, let me make it clear. I have nothing at all against Polyamory. In fact, I am Poly myself. However...I do think that this combined with a sort of moral license that can come from political activism can be a negative thing. And I don't think it's limited to the left...or even directly linked to polyamory actually. Certainly it's a problem you see on the religious right as well.
I am disappointed that EA is used in this way, although in retrospect it's probably impossible to avoid.
I have to say I find this funny. People discovering that looser social and sexual norms allow bad actors - or merely "people with more status than me who don't want to treat me as I think I deserve" - to accrue sexual and social benefits and blue the lines. Quelle surprise.
See, I'm not even convinced that it's the looser social and sexual norms per se. I mean in a way it is. But I do think the second half of that..."people with more status than me who don't want to treat me as I think I deserve", preys on a lot of status hunger among people. Frankly, that's what makes people vulnerable, both because they want the social status power, and they're also afraid of it being used against them.
The term I used way back when was "Theme Park". It seemed to me that people wanted this edgeless, curated environment for them to explore whatever they wanted to. However, that's not realistic at all.
Karmaze
1yr ago
Yeah, I saw the anti-CBT stuff. I also noticed that it really set off the anti-anti-woke people that I tend to see around (I.E. the people who are not particularly woke, but have a strong dislike for communities like this). I would agree this is fairly similar.
One example that really struck me happened way back in 2016 after Trump got elected, and a lesbian I knew was literally shaking for fear that it would be at most a couple of years before she would be sent to death camps.
The thing is, some people just don't get the message that you're not supposed to actually believe this, that this is just hyperbole and exaggeration. That's along the same lines of what I'm talking about, which I do think is somewhat narrower than the anti-CBT stuff, but I also think the effects are substantially more drastic. And the other part of it, to be blunt, is that I think there are people who are just "wired" in such a way to take things seriously. I'd identify as that type of person. It's not that I'm overly serious...it's just that I strongly believe you should live whatever beliefs you have. That you should say what you mean and mean what you say.
Down below there's a thread about living rather than professing your values. That assumes that said values/ideology is actually meant to be lived anyway. Which in a lot of these cases, I truly don't believe is the case.
So, I've actually done this sort of chat support before. It was a long time ago, probably right at the beginning where it was even a thing. We're talking 2005 or so. So here's my take on the whole thing.
First of all, yeah. This is probably someone in India. "Kindly" is the big giveaway here.
But here's my guess about how these things are run. First, "Sarah" is probably doing between 4-8 chats at the same time. Truth is, when I did this, there were times I ran up to 12 at the same time. Maybe it was bad for me to do this because it set expectations, but I also let people know that you needed someone really good at this to do this.
Probably more controversially, I doubt that there's any sort of standardized script. It would be MUCH cleaner. There's almost certainly a standardized workflow, but no actual help in doing the work. My guess is that the client (this is undoubtedly an outsource company after all) is demanding original interactions in order for it to feel more "authentic" and natural. So you have a situation where maybe there's an unofficial text file passed around the office, that people cut and paste into the chat. The intent is that everything is freshly typed in by the agent....not realistic at all given the metrics and demands...but that doesn't matter. So this is kind of the work-around to survive.
A lot of the stuttering and everything is again, designed to meet metrics, so the supervisors can meet THEIR metrics, and the higher-ups can meet THEIR metrics so the center as a whole can meet their contracted goals and get sweet sweet bonuses. But that latter part doesn't matter nearly as much as everything beneath it. The stuttering refreshes a delay/time to respond counter that's actively measured.
More than anything, the point is that the problem above everything else is one of the combination of Corporatism and the Iron Law of Institutions. (I'd personally consider these the same thing, or at least there's substantial overlap here). Who gives a fuck if the customer experience is gawd awful. All the managers are getting paid for it on both sides. You just have to create the illusion of success, which is much easier than actually creating success.
Edit: Some background on what I did. I was on a team who did the original testing for the chat support functionality of a major US ISP when it first rolled out. Because of this, for the most part it was e-mail issues, although we got the odd intermittent connection issue. Yes, I had a text file with solutions for common problems/requests that I just copied pasted into the chat. But because I was good at diagnosing the issues, I'd say it was correct the vast majority of the time. If I had to type something in manually it's not like it irritated me and I just scoffed the client off...those issues were interesting to me and I was more than willing to give good instructions. I'd just take those instructions and add them to my text file in case the problem came back. I didn't do it because I was lazy or I didn't want to help the customers...there was just no point reinventing the wheel for every person who wanted to know how to set up their e-mail in Outlook, or at the time, were dealing with spoofed/virus e-mails. (This was actually the big contact driver for my department)
Karmaze
10mo ago
The left has a clear idea of what it means to be "woke." They believe that since American life is built on a white supremacist foundation, equality demands race-based redistribution policies. These include mandatory racial quotas in hiring, DEI indoctrination in schools and businesses, and criminal justice reforms designed to benefit POC. Race is central to how the left understands "wokeness." Everything else follows.
I actually don't think that's the case. Sure, that's the message...but in reality, note that anything that actually negatively affects them and their circles are omitted from this. I would actually argue that this "Woke"...this modern Pop Progressivism is more defined by what it isn't rather than what it is, what it excludes rather than what it includes. That is, protecting and enhancing the role of class and status privilege in our society. The focus on certain identity characteristics...first it was sex, then it was race, and now we're on gender in terms of a strict oppressor-oppressed dichotomy serves that purpose.
Because not freezing out those facets, frankly, things look awfully different. It looks a lot more like the dismantling of the managerial class, both private and public in favor of lower-class workers, giving the latter more status, power, and most importantly, money and wealth. We don't see quotas in hiring, we see pressure to increase the churn among established workers along with a post-bias process for new hiring. We see largely a dropping of those DEI departments, to be frank, to increase funding for front-line positions in terms of additional wages and manpower (so their jobs are less difficult). The criminal justice thing? You know, that would probably look like both a more responsive and a more responsible police policy. Basically what liberals (I.E. the south of center range of people flowing from materialist Marxists to Classical Liberals.) have been calling for.
I think it's a mistake to actually take these ideas at face value.
Karmaze
1yr ago
People who believe that it's an unalloyed good since you can meet your soulmate or something are, probably, just not ugly; for less lucky ones (and who are also not exceptional in some way), flirting in the workspace is a non-starter, so they just lose the possibility to make a living without humiliation.
I think people really miss how dehumanizing that is, the idea that you can't do something that other people around you can do. And I'm not even saying it's necessarily wrong that we are that way. But it is going to impact people, no doubt about it.
Karmaze
1yr ago
I mean, I'll answer your question in a strictly political sense. Women are a protected class in a way that white people are not.
I think that's the long and the short of it. That's the core of the conflict, I think, and why this sort of thing is so nasty. We've set an expectation that asking women to give up their spaces is an anti-social thing to do. And people are fighting for that expectation to be met. But at the same time, we've also set an expectation that marginalized groups should be able to gain access to those sorts of things.
Essentially, what you're seeing is the Progressive Stack being actualized, and how it creates conflicts.
Now, I think it's more complicated than that, and there's a lot of moving parts (I strongly believe "The Movement" as they're calling it, or at least is my understanding I.E. the Gender Criticals, played a huge role over the last few decades in normalizing the Progressive Stack to the benefit of women. This alone makes things REALLY complicated I think)
I could go on a long discussion about what I personally believe...but I think it's irrelevant (something something eliminating protected classes and replacing them with a liberal focus on maximizing individual liberty and happiness). But understanding the underlying politics...that this is essentially people who model the world, on both sides, in strict oppressor/oppressed frames, and believe that the latter should gain absolute privilege over the former.
Note: This isn't all feminists or all trans people. I think this is the view of a relatively narrow slice of activists and influencers, for whom complexity over power dynamics in our society reveals some undesirable light onto the way we/they live.
Karmaze
1yr ago
I'd like to discuss the best ideas my political opposition has, but I'm increasingly concerned that "signal boost liars" is the best idea my political opposition has--or, if not their best idea, maybe just their most pragmatically effective.
This is going to sound harsh, but I do think it's accurate, in that I think there always has been a sense that the best argument actually is "We will have the power". You know...that whole "Right Side of History" thing? And sometimes that "will" in the first phrase gets lost, so it's just "We have the power". And with that comes all sorts of Moral License and all that. In reality, we're talking pure Toxoplasma of Rage.
I really am very progressive myself, as well as liberal. Small-p. But I do think the full-throated embrace and exploitation of post-modernism is worrying for a whole host of reasons. Again, I'm not even opposed to post-modernism in a reflective, sober perspective. But what we're seeing here is something more like a search for power. The further you can go, and get away with if not outright cheered and supported the more pressure it puts on people to adopt your views/join your group.
Note, this applies to parts of the right as well, I think.
Karmaze
1yr ago
And even after this fairly comprehensive vindication of Singal, I doubt a single person on the other side actually had their mind changed or their priors shifted an iota.
This is something that's never going to happen, largely because of Kayfabe politics. I don't think we're going to see activists on this give up a single inch. And I mean...I do think objectively there's room to give given up, right? I think it's OK to say that it's bad if there's no assessment done and that shouldn't happen. I think that's giving up an inch. And that's in line with what Singal's argument is for what should happen, is high-quality individualized care.
It's possible maybe this could become a new windmill for me to tilt at, and maybe I'm wrong, but I feel it strongly. I don't think they can give up a single inch. Because an inch isn't an inch. It's actually a mile.
I do think there's an underlying question that's being ignored here. Can exposure to Progressive/Academic models of sex, gender and power or at least, the popularized crude forms, result in Gender Dysphoria or something approaching such? Not universally, of course. But are there people susceptible to this in a way, where exposure to these things might result in significant mental and emotional trauma?
Because I'll be blunt. If we're talking about a recommendation for support or therapy, largely speaking I do think this is the road it's going down more often than not. And if that's the case, if this is something that we should be aware of....then maybe the good guys are not always the good guys. Maybe there needs to be some level of care, or safeguards or whatever put in place. Maybe the world is more complicated than babyfaces and heels, of good guys and bad guys, of white and black.
Karmaze
1yr ago
Maybe it's just me, but what I've seen a lot of is people complaining that it's ruining the whole 'Verified Only" mode. Which...is not something I have any sympathy for at all. It's a sort of social class based siloing, and I do think that does have ramifications for our society.
Karmaze
1yr ago
Rural Japanese cuisine good girl is best girl. Seriously, her story arc was the best thing about that series.
In any case, I think this is an interesting question. I think we need a term for the sort of hyper-online partisan political engagement culture. I have no clue what it could be. In any case...would Twitter be better off if it basically ignored that? I think the argument you're making...and I agree...is that it seemed that it leaned in to that culture over the last few years, pretty hard, and maybe it would be better off if it didn't. And I think that lack of value...I'm certainly seeing people want to leave Twitter because frankly, they don't want to be in a space that they see as fundamentally hostile to them. And I'm thinking...welcome to my world where practically every place is hostile to me.
In any case, I do think that's where things are heading to some degree, is a deprioritization of politics overall. And honestly that's a good thing. That's where most of the toxicity comes from.
Karmaze
10mo ago
In theory the lockdowns made sense to me.
But when I saw that aspect of it starting to form, I realized how much of a shitshow it was going to be.
Karmaze
1yr ago
Iron Law of Institutions?
Doesn't shifting the process to a writing room dramatically change the incentive structure? If it's your name on it, I imagine you want to do something bold to catch the attention of the audience and critics. However, if your name isn't to go on it...what's your game? I would think it would be to build status and reputation INSIDE the writing room. You're angling for the next job. And in that case, I do think that's where all the signaling politics could certainly come to the forefront in the right kind of environment. As well as creating something..well...bland.
Karmaze
1yr ago
The we is society as a whole.
What I would argue, is in the effort to eliminate the male gender role, activists have created this thing where we're not helping men actually succeed the male gender role in a healthy, sustainable way. (Note: Just because I think we're not getting rid of the male gender role doesn't mean I think the same thing about the female gender role. I absolutely do not) That's what we need to do, that's IMO what the guy in this story did wrong. But I also think that so much of this relies on unstated assumptions that IMO are entirely unfair.
Karmaze
1yr ago
I think he fucked up. But let me say this.
If your social media...and hell...maybe your social experience tells you that FwB relationships are very normal, maybe in that case you think that maybe that's LESS intrusive than asking someone out on a date. I can easily see how someone would think this. Again, I still think that's bad advice, and a dumb thing to do.
(I'll be honest, I don't understand how anybody can ever ask anybody out on a date, but that's just me)
Karmaze
1yr ago
The vast majority of 'dating advice' young men are given (by the mainstream liberal feminist zeitgeist) is absolutely terrible and only land them in situations like this if they follow through with it.
Yeah, this is "Nice Guy Syndrome", something that absolutely I would argue is pushed by that zeitgeist, combined with the modern sexually libertine environment. This is what you get. Actually, it's not even that unreasonable if you ask me, although certainly it's not a route I'd actually recommend, depending on what advice/worldview you're seeing. Let's say that you wanted to be in a relationship with someone, you might feel the need that you need to prove your sexual abilities in a non-committal way. Thus, FwB.
There's always going to be danger for the neurodivergent who take the world at its word rather than trying to read between the lines.
My personal feeling is that American media of all types really lacks charisma and drive. It's less that the actor's are attractive or not or whatever, but there's a charisma and flair there that I think that is lacking from most modern American productions. And I do think while it's not driven by politics it's linked to politics. People just got more important things to think about than art. Better and easier ways to gain status and be successful.
I watched Hot Fuzz again last night. And it's a shame that we don't get more things like THAT. Everything coming out of America just seems so stale these days. I don't think it's always been this way. I think there was a time where pushing the boundaries creatively was seen as a more respectable thing to do. And I don't like talking about it that much because it just feels harsh...but I also absolutely believe it, and I don't think it's just getting older. I do like newer things. Just I tend to not like things that come out of the US. I think it's a stale culture culturally. Movies, TV, Games, Music, all of it.
Karmaze
1yr ago
Trans rapists don't invalidate every single trans person. They do cast a really negative light on the thoughtlessness of some significant strand of trans activism, who prefers they just be swept under the rug and never figured out an "acceptable" answer.
I'd go as far as to say as this should be entirely what we talk about. This isn't meant to throw any sort of shade at trans people, to make it clear, the intention is exactly the opposite. In fact, I think the argument should be made that this really doesn't have anything special to do with Trans people.
Someone on Twitter asked an interesting question, which was essentially, why is this topic so fraught? And the best answer I can give, is that it's the first topic (maybe) to be "born" in the forge of Postmodernism and Critical models of power at a popular level. Sure, they existed in academia before this, but I do think there was this divide between these ways of thinking and a much more transactional, retail, boots on the ground level productive politics. Frankly, it's possible that the other candidate for the "First topic" is COVID, and I do think you see a lot of the same patterns in that debate as well.
But this creates an activism, where anything less than everything is nothing. And I think that's what we see. And I'll be blunt. Even though I do think, on an instinctive level, that brain-body gender/sex mismatches make sense at the extremes...we're talking about more than that now. We're talking about people who internalize these Critical models of sex/gender and develop something approaching gender dysphoria (ROGD). We're talking about people who do this not from a gender, but from a sexuality PoV (AGP). And frankly, we're also talking about narcissists and sociopaths who understand the underlying power dynamics that come from these Critical models and seek to exploit them.
Covering for the latter is just going to drag down the whole thing. But that breaks kayfabe. That all the bad people are on one side and all the good are on the other. Frankly, same with the Critical model stuff.
That's where we are, I think.
Karmaze
1yr ago
Similarly: the Culture war doesn't actually represent lived reality, it is just a loud form of kayfabe, especially on the Left. Women and men pair up and go about their days, regardless of the TikTok rhetoric
This is my view right here, although it goes past gender. I think when it comes to Progressive concepts of identity, you're not actually supposed to internalize/actualize them, and they live in more of a theoretical/political space. As someone who has internalized these concepts, I've been told many a time by advocates for these concepts that you're not supposed to do that. Of course, the out-group doesn't get the message on this (and how could they, considering how often they're analyzed and deconstructed using them), and it's that which creates the bulk of the conflict.
In that first bit, I notice how they scooted RIGHT by a discussion about class. Nope, can't talk about that, have to go right to race. I'll stick with my stance that the current favor of various forms of monodirectional power dynamics (and let me just say the assumption of this is absolutely a form of bigotry going in every which way) is exactly to freeze out these discussions. Because when you add class inequality to the discussion, suddenly, it changes from trying to gatekeep and control the pipeline to give the people you want an advantage over the outgroup, it suddenly becomes a talk about how to manage and encourage relative socioeconomic decline (I.E. term limits for jobs, end of tenure, catering your programs to the lower classes, like Ivy League schools opening up sections dedicated to teaching trades to local people) among the in-group. And that's a huge third rail.
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