OliveTapenade
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User ID: 1729
I'm a bit ambivalent here. On the one hand, as a fellow moderate, I agree that there is some merit in the idea of siding with whoever's currently out of power in the hopes of dragging the polity back toward the centre...
But on the other, I'm not sure it's as linear as that. I think it's possible for far-left to flip to far-right, and vice versa, without ever passing through the sane middle, and that it's therefore better for the cause of moderation to stand up for moderation regardless, even if that means criticising the extremists who are currently out of power. If Team Open Borders is in power, then I'm not actually convinced that siding with Team Let's Eat Immigrants is a route back to sanity. I suspect it is better to continue to disavow Team Eat Immigrants while still fighting against Team Open Borders.
Prioritisation is important, you're right, and I'm potentially vulnerable to being suckered by whichever lunatics are currently in power, but at the same time, you might be vulnerable to being suckered by whichever lunatics aren't currently in power.
At any rate, in this particular context I am anonymously whining on the internet. I feel more license, on the Motte, to just say what I genuinely feel without consideration for how it might affect the wider political landscape.
OliveTapenade
11hr ago
That's probablt a fair point to make, but it is highly contingent on the present terrain, that is to say, the left dominates the culture industries, and the right doesn't. I don't view the right as morally superior to the left when it comes to opportunistically parasitising media like this, because the right's abstinence is not coming from any kind of virtue. It's just coming from a lack of power.
The active ingredients here are not 'left' and 'right'. The active ingredient is power, and nothing else.
OliveTapenade
13hr ago
I'm sympathetic to Jonah Goldberg's argument in this podcast, that is, that El-Sayed wants the Democrats to be a straightforward anti-Israel party.
I don't think El-Sayed supports the full Muslim Brotherhood agenda. The social democrat positions that he holds are honest. He is not, I think, secretly an MB supporter in the sense of everything they stand for. But he is, I think, basically a middle-class western Muslim who attributes a disproportionate level of importance of Israel, and it has become organising for his thoughts in a way that it is not for other people.
(This is primarily a response to the top-level comment - I'm including some comments by naraburns just to try to be complete, and to riff on thoughts that occurred to me.)
I am disappointed that "let me assume a headcanon about a piece of fiction-> rhetorical exhortations -> therefore I present conclusions supposedly about the OG work but actually more about arguments I smuggle in as assumptions" a makes an AAQC. What is the quality, as I am not seeing it?
In this case I just dismissed the whole thing as SecureSignals doing his usual neo-Nazi schtick, and to the extent that Mottizens upvoted and/or nominated it as a positive contribution, I put that down mainly to the Motte having an unusually high quotient of neo-Nazis.
There might be an interesting discussion to have somewhere about heredity and children and loyalty and tradition, and I'd be on board for that, but in this case the whole discourse is so tainted as to make it not worth engaging in.
Downvote and move on. That's my advice.
You don't have to think that's interesting to think about, but if you can't even see why others might find it interesting to think about, you might consider the possibility that you have a serious blind spot (or extremely trapped priors) here.
The Motte unfortunately has a population - I really hope a small one - of unironic pagan neo-Nazis/white-supremacists. Every now and then they get upvotes. Again, the best I can suggest is downvote and move on. This:
With specific regard to this post, it got plenty of nominations but also I did think it made an interesting point. Real people make real decisions every day concerning whether they should or should not pass along their genes, for example because they carry a serious genetic malady.
Okay, that's maybe an interesting discussion. Cursed Child does raise lots of interesting issues around Draco, Astoria, reproduction, and so on. But I think you do have to make some critical judgements about where it's possible to have that discussion in an interesting way in a given context, and... it's not here. I'm sorry, but it's not here.
OliveTapenade
13hr ago
It was good fun, but to be honest my main takeaway from it is that I hate culture warriors.
Malfoid is a cute premise and led to lots of adorable creativity, and within approximately five seconds discussion around it was hijacked by 1) right-wing morons who think that it's somehow evidence that the masses yearn for their retarded combination of racism and ethno-nationalism, and 2) left-wing morons who think that the whole thing is evidence of incel misogyny and radicalisation.
It really makes me want to strangle both camps.
Can you not just... let nice things be nice?
Let people have good things. For once. You parasitic idiots.
OliveTapenade
13hr ago
Arguably this is unfair of me, but consider:
When I originally asked readers about this possibility, they raised a lot of valid concerns: some of them were confused by Substack’s commenting system, others annoyed by its pop-up reminders to subscribe, others were concerned about being stuck outside a paywall. I’ve talked to Substack about this, and they’ve made some really impressive promises to address these things – they’re going to code a maximally-SSC-like commenting experience, they’re going to let me opt out of the subscription reminders, I won’t have to “paywall” anything besides some Hidden Open Threads. This isn’t the time for me to go over the dozens of examples of concerns I had that Substack went above and beyond to address, but assume I had most of the same ones you did and put a lot of work into addressing them.
Have we all just forgotten the fact that this was a complete lie?
This was just a blatant lie, and ACT does not look like SSC, or have an SSC-like comment experience, or anything like that. Substack promised that ACT could be just like SSC, and it is just not.
I believe you when you say that you could vibecode a better experience than Substack, and I cannot think of a more piercing criticism of them. If you can vibecode a better version of something, that something was never worthwhile in the first place.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
It's always a bit of a mix, I think. There were some good discussions last week, but also, I'd say, plenty of the usual.
OliveTapenade
2d ago
On the other hand, this may be part of a strategy to connect with the lower classes 'we love the poorly educated'.
I doubt any genuinely poorly-educated working-class person even knows the word 'goy', much less the language of the meme-ified online far-right.
That doesn't mean it's not a strategy to connect with the lower classes - just that, if it is one, it's an incompetent one.
OliveTapenade
2d ago
I thought that ad was just too on-the-nose, unsubtle, and poorly-acted to be convincing, but otherwise just unremarkable and mediocre, until I got to the intended stinger at the end.
Obviously an ad about Israel or foreign policy in general can't be accused of anti-semitism, but the spooky picture of a bunch of Jews while calling them 'They/Them' feels either pretty close to that line or outright over it.
Anyway, I think it probably won't matter. My prediction for Michigan is that El-Sayed wins while substantially underperforming the median Democrat, and everybody will freak out as if this is meaningful, or proves that left-wingers or DSA types can win anywhere, or as if the situation is anything other than the Democrats nominating a weak candidate who still managed to blunder into victory in a heavily D-favoured election.
My problem with it is that the UX fucking sucks. They're now the Anglosphere's premier place for long-form political commentary by writers outside of traditional media. It would be nice if they unfucked the UX.
This is my problem with Substack. The paywalls are annoying but perhaps inevitable. A wholly avoidable problem, however, is the terrible UI.
Their product is words on a page.
How hard is it to put readable words on a page? Wordpress had this solved decades ago. If you go from the original SSC to ACT, the first thing you will notice is that SSC is infinitely better. It is more comfortable to read. It loads more quickly and is lower bandwidth. It fits the entire archive on a single page which can be easily searched or skimmed, rather than the useless mess that is Substack's 'archive' page. Half the time when I open a Substack page on my phone, it locks or crashes.
All you have to do, Substack, is render text. That's it. Maybe a picture or two, come on. How are you failing at this? Is Substack just part of the grand software slowdown? Why?
And this isn't even mentioning the part where you cannot read a Substack article without them harassing you about registering or giving them your e-mail. Actually, Substack, no. I hate reading articles in my e-mail. I would like to just read it on a web page, and incidentally, I hate the idea of giving you analytics or other data. Just let me read the dang text.
If Substack provided a better service than the free blogging services that had preceded it, I might see a case for it, but from the user perspective, Substack is a straight downgrade from what we had before. Maybe from the writer perspective Substack makes it easier to monetise, but as a user, I don't see that. As a user, all I see is that reading online writing is now more annoying than it used to be.
OliveTapenade
5d ago
My running theory at this point is that male and female sexualities are mirror images that are supposed to compliment each other, but are not symmetric. So, before one should adjust a visible piece of, say, male sexuality, you then have to back-derive which aspect of female sexuality maps to it, and then ask for moderation in that piece for compromise.
That sounds plausible to me - male and female sexualities must connect at some point, because that's how the human race continues, and the fact that most men and women enjoy sex with each other suggests that it must be possible for the man and the woman to satisfy each other's desires at the same time. That doesn't mean there aren't differences or that there isn't going to be a level of negotiation around any sexual act (that is, you're going to do things that your partner enjoys even if it's not your favourite thing personally, and vice versa), but there must be some large area of overlap.
OliveTapenade
5d ago
Well, let me admit that I don't have reliable statistics based on a cross-section of the whole population. I'm not sure any such statistics exist - comparing different 4chan boards is interesting, but 4chan itself is not a neutral sample.
(I apologise but I do not know all the boards you mentioned by name. I'm aware of /d/ by reputation, but I don't know what all the rest are.)
At any rate... I suppose one could look at the popularity of different searches on major porn sites, or one could look at sales in terms of romance content, but I think it'd be hard to find something truly comparable, because men and women not only have different tastes, but consume totally different types of media. If I try to look up best-selling romance novels, it's all books marketed towards women (and predictably the answer is Sarah J. Maas), and just skimming the list it does look like there's a combination of cosy/cute romances and romances with dangerous bad boys with lots of angst. But men generally don't go to romance novels to get the romances they like - it seems more common for men to read books putatively about something else, with a romantic subplot mixed in. And of course that's just books, but I think the same pattern replicates in cinema, where explicitly-marked romance films are for women, whereas men prefer to have their romance mixed in with something else. (Or sometimes not even that; supposedly romantic subplots are sometimes put into movies aimed at men just for the wives and girlfriends.) And then explicit erotica brings in its own issues, though I confess I am not willing to risk googling it.
So I guess I confess that my observation was based on vibes and anecdotes. I'm not sure where to find better than that, though.
OliveTapenade
5d ago
To be fair, how much of this is a genuine reflection of the median female Asian-American experience, and how much of this is just because this is what the publishing industry is willing to pick up?
OliveTapenade
5d ago
It's true, he was given a slightly different personality for the fifth book. It was hardly a better one, though!
The first few books are very good, and the setting and premise of Hogwarts are fantastic. I completely understand people who want to take that premise and remix it into something more coherent and creatively successful.
OliveTapenade
5d ago
I think that /d/ is clearly a category self-selected for gross perverts.
I agree that on the surface level, male heterosexuality tends to be more raunchy and explicit than female heterosexuality, but that's not where the story ends, it seems to me.
To give an example, a Western criticism you see of Islam sometimes is that it's patriarchal, sexist, obsessed with sensuous pleasures, and so on, and one point of evidence given in favour of that is the allowance for four wives, or the promise of houris in Paradise. However, what you tend to find in practice, on the ground among young men in Muslim countries, is that the idea of a harem, multiple wives, lots of houris, etc., is a fantasy of lecherous old men, and what young men fantasise about is devoted monogamy. I think it's similar in the West, to an extent - harem fantasies exist, but they are generally perceived as being, at best, a bit gross. I'd bet that the most common young heterosexual male fantasy is indeed still a loving, hot girlfriend, singular.
OliveTapenade
5d ago
(Of course it doesn't hurt that Malfoid is coded conservative. I think a lot of men are tired of the very common trend of women being into progressivism.)
I did notice Balioc being confused about this the other day, and I think that's a big part of it? Ginny is of pure-blood ancestry and from a large family, but the Weasleys are coded lower-middle class. They have ordinary interests. They're not classy. The father is a civil servant working for a salary. I'd say they come off as pretty centre-left. Moreover, Ginny is a character who was first introduced as a young girl with a crush on Harry, so in a sense going out with her feels like settling.
There's an element where, for lack of a better way of putting it, picking the Weasley is 'marrying down', while picking the Malfoy is 'marrying up'.
Moreover, I think the implicit message one gets from Ginny is "I love you just the way you are", and the implicit message from Malfoy is "you better shape up", and I think there is something about men that responds to the latter message? We like rising to the challenge. Proving yourself isn't a cost - it's part of the appeal!
(That was why, when I wrote positively about them, I was focused on growth? Both partners overcoming their moral defects?)
The Harry Potter series is sort of shaped like a bildungsroman, right? It is a story about a young man's adolescence and maturity, as he grows from callow child to capable adult. However, the Potter series as published does not really fulfill this potential. It's often been remarked on, I think, that even by the last book, the theoretically-eighteen-year-old Harry is still written the same way he was when he was twelve, where he's a bit passive, a bit incompetent, and has too many of his victories served up to him on a plate. (It is, to be fair, not unique to Harry - almost nobody in the series meaningfully changes.) If you diagnose that problem, well, one of the implications of the Malfoid romance is that Harry is pushed to sort himself out and grow more mature. I think that growth in competence is something male readers really enjoy. The wider genre of stories about male protagonists who start out mediocre-to-incompetent and then achieve self-mastery is a huge one.
At any rate, if we're putting a political lens on this, I can see the stereotype that the left, perhaps in a more feminine-coded way, says "we will look after you", and the right, in a more masculine-coded way, says "we will give you opportunity but you have to pull yourself up on your own".
OliveTapenade
5d ago
It's Gareth and Lady Linet all the way down.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
I don't think that story is representative of all of Dramione, which is an incredibly prolific genre all by itself.
In the abstract I don't think Dramione and Malfoid would be mirror images of each other - if nothing else, heterosexual male sexuality and heterosexual female sexuality are different, and I find it plausible that female sexuality is, in some contexts, 'rougher' or 'nastier' than male equivalents. Teratophilia, as far as I can tell, is predominantly female, for instance, whereas you don't have to poke male sexual fantasies too hard to find that, beneath the surface level of porn, big-breasted bimbos, etc., there are some softer yearnings there.
And of course, on top of that, fan artists on Twitter, Pixiv, etc., in 2026 are just a different demographic to the teenage girls on the internet in the 2000s who made Dramione such a big thing that it propelled fan fiction authors into real publishing careers.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
Whereas in the case of Dramione or Zutara, Hermione and Katara are already great, and it's only the bad boy who needs to reform? That's a fair comment. That's also one of the issues I have with something like Twilight - minimal character growth is required.
In general what I want from a romance story is for both characters to have an arc, where they grow and change in order to fit together better. In that light I think I'll agree that Malfoid has more potential than these comparisons.
I suppose that's also part of its appeal. It sketches out an alternative character arc for Harry, and since the default, canon arc for Harry is disappointing in several ways (in particular, yes, he never seems to take the initiative or truly grow up), there's a real need for an alternative.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
You're clearly more optimistic about bots and agents than I am...
I agree that this shows the fundamental failure and unseriousness of government at the moment, though. It's okay for governments to occasionally make cute little gestures to things popular in the community (I remember, for instance, the Obama administration responding to a proposal to build a Death Star - I think that was tasteful), but I don't think this is an example of that. I think probably what happened here is that a bunch of people in the Trump administration are too-online Twitterheads who are completely out of touch with the country as a whole.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
I mean, fundamentally it's just Dramione for men, isn't it?
It reminds me a bit of a comment (a tweet, I think? or maybe Tumblr?) I saw once describing a gender-flipped Twilight, where an everyman, maybe slightly schlubby, self-insert protagonist meets a hot goth vampire chick who is inexplicably into him and fights a similarly hot wild werewolf chick for his affections, and male replies going, "Oh my gosh. I get it now."
Malfoid feels like that but for Dramione or Zutara or any of the other famous 'bad boy' ships with screaming female fandoms.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
Okay, I find this genuinely dispiriting.
Part of what was appealing about the whole Malfoid trend was the explosion of creativity in fan art (i.e. real fan art, drawn by actual humans), and fan fiction. There's a whole online fan artist space that likes to jump on trends, they jumped on this one, and they produced a lot of really sweet material. Moreover, though arguably some of it was politically inflected, for the most part it was apolitical. Cute girl, everyman hero, they get together. It was fun. I'm in favour of romance stories for boys.
It's frustrating for a bunch of highly politicised jackals to jump on that and try to appropriate it, especially when they're doing so with low-effort AI garbage.
Even just in-character, presumably part of the appeal of the Malfoy character and family is that they're meant to be aristocratic and traditional - hearkening back to an older, better way of doing things. They're also meant to be elitist; they have high standards, and so part of the story is the everyman studying and measuring up. Every part of this premise seems like it should cut again populist botslop.
I realise I have no power to accomplish this, but what's in my heart is an offended, "Get this rubbish off the internet. Now."
OliveTapenade
6d ago
It does remind me of the GamerGate-era accusation that a lot of games journalists were actually frustrated culture journalists or lifestyle journalists or something. They wanted to be writing in some more prestigious field, unfortunately had gotten stuck in games, but were still in love with the idea of being a journalist, so they were grudgingly writing about something they disliked and had no real appreciation for.
In this case, it sounds like Hepler wanted to be a writer, and enjoyed writing, but did not like video games. She probably would have been better off just writing short stories or something. But she might not have been able to make it in that field, or it might not pay the bills as well, so video games it is...
Still, I would want, ideally, games writers to understand and appreciate games, as a medium.
OliveTapenade
7d ago
I've lived in Melbourne all my life, though I only know of Shanghai through word of mouth. What I've experienced and heard would suggest to me that it's the other way around, though I admit that I'm 10-15 years out of date on Shanghai.
Obligatory Sarah Haider reference, I suppose? What Islam as a tradition and a body of doctrine teaches is less important than what specific Muslim-identifying people hold to be important - and in a case like Abdul El-Sayed, it's pretty clear that opposition to Israel is central to his worldview and his political advocacy whereas opposition to gender ideology is pretty clearly not.
The fact that Islam as a body of doctrine takes no special position on the existence of a state of Israel (that is, from an orthodox Islamic perspective, there is nothing special or interesting about Judaism qua Judaism, nor Israel qua Israel), and takes a much stronger position on gender, is not consequential. 'Islam', in El-Sayed's case, is an ethnic and a cultural background that informs his identity, rather than a set of propositions to be affirmed or rejected.
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