TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
User ID: 103
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
I deleted my LoTT stuff because, in one of the worst moments of my time online, it was too much for me to engage with the community I had come up within as they reacted less charitably and more harshly to me than everywhere else on the internet. As for this one, don't worry. I meant every word of it and have no intention of deleting it. I reiterate the same to you. Go screw yourself.
People build the communities they deserve.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
Yes, that’s how every social group works, and there are consequences for every “not.”
Anyway, you’re one of the highest-volume, lowest-effort partisans here and you’ve been that way the entire time I’ve known you. If this forum hated Darwin for the reasons they said they did, you’d get at least as much criticism. I hope you enjoy the forum you’ve helped build. Take care.
That's fine. Participating someplace where a significant minority of the community care about nothing but digging through old grievances every time I post gets old very, very fast, and there's not really a point to beating around the bush on that. Once, this forum meant a great deal to me, and many of the individuals on it still mean a lot to me, but the space as a whole lost the mandate of heaven long ago despite your own good work and the good work of the other mods.
In the past couple of months, I've met more than a dozen motte users I read avidly, respect, and have fond memories of in real life, at several events tied to this broader community. Almost none of them post here anymore. The Motte had a good run and contains a lot of good memories, but for all practical purposes, I think its run is over. Here’s to a glorious diaspora.
I encourage those of you who enjoy what I have to say to join me on Twitter or elsewhere. At this point, the conversations there are richer, the community there healthier, and participation there is more meaningful than it is here, and I have very little to gain from kicking around someplace where some 1/4 of the userbase want it to be crystal clear that they loathe me every time I post. There was a time this was the best discussion space online, but that time has passed and it's time for relics like me to move on.
All the best.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
Some of the most obnoxious moments here are when someone dredges up a historical feud and the peanut gallery thinks it’s productive to opine at length on the object level of that feud.
The people still beating this drum hated me before that moment and see it as simply the most convenient attack vector. You’re welcome to play along, but I’m not going to validate it. Enjoy your site.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
Have you yet been forced to perform a maoist style self-criticism session IRL where you admit to your sin of being white-ish and promise to do better ?
There is precisely one place where people have tried to force me to do something like that. It’s here, by posters like Coil but unfortunately also posters who are otherwise good, and I find that sadder than anything else about this place.
I respect and appreciate that.
The reality is that their needling has been effective. Not on my life, my career, or my writing as a whole, all of which are on a trajectory I could never have imagined or hoped for. But they have caused serious long-term damage to a place I loved over many years, made things unbearable for people I respect, and made this forum increasingly one-note and lifeless. Letting them know that they get to me personally does nothing to impact any of that, it just makes this a place I no longer want to spend my time.
At the same time, having watched it for years, I did want to share my sentiments with them directly before I left. I don't know whether they're bad people in some abstract sense, but they damaged something I loved and are now jealously guarding its corpse. So be it.
It doesn't matter whether they know they got to me or not. If they want to follow me elsewhere, I don't have to dance around the way I do here, and the chorus of malcontents on Twitter is large enough that another voice or two makes little difference. One way or another, I'm leaving this site, though, and it did matter to me whether I said how I felt before then.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
Hey, you've known me for a long time—long enough that you can know I am wholly capable of maintaining equanimity and responding with grace when I want to do so. Tonight, I did not want to do so. I wanted to react from the heart, without my usual filters, to the small group of people who have made it their mission to damage this space for years—and who have succeeded in doing so. I'm responding to everyone who made this place unappealing for CanIHaveASong, for paanther, for heterodox_jedi, for Gemma, for Yassine, for countless other posters a thousand times better than the miserable ankle-biters who drove them away in a quest for a twisted sort of purity. The miserable scolds are here, and the rules here are incapable of seeing the miserable scolds and chasing them away before they chase everyone else away, so it's time to let them have it and continue to build elsewhere.
My foot was already mostly out the door. Now it's out, and I want everyone I like here, and everyone who likes me here, to understand exactly why.
See you on the other side.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
It's more personal here, because this place used to mean a lot to me and it's tough to come to terms with it now being the only place on the internet I interact regularly with people who hold long-standing, deep grudges against me and want me to remember that every time I post. I'm not interested in shaking it off or in displaying a thick skin here. Anyone who nods along with their behavior here is not someone I want to share a community with, and I am more interested in loudly signalling that than in presenting in a stoic way.
As far as insecurity and things following me—look, I participate in a lot of online communities, and only one has a large sub-population of bitter grudge-holders who want to drag their conflicts with me into every interaction. Yes, that group has successfully ruined my perception of this community, but that has happened while I've been in the most successful part of my online career by far. You're not seeing insecurity here, you're seeing frustration at what's become of a place I once loved.
From behind a screen, I have plenty of time to consider my words and my self-presentation. When I want to be calm, I am, and my online history backs that up. What I wanted there was, for once in my time on the Motte, to tell the people who have delighted in making it a petty, vindictive space that clings to grudges to go screw themselves for contributing to the destruction of something beautiful.
The Motte that I loved is dead, and although good people still continue to interact atop its corpse, I would like those good people to know in no uncertain terms that the people who killed that Motte remain, while the posters they loved have mostly moved on to greener pastures. I've been returning here to maintain a point of contact with those who have not yet joined the motte diaspora, but now I want those people to understand that as far as I'm concerned, this community is no longer worth coming to and they should work alongside me to build elsewhere.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
It’s tongue in cheek with a hint of seriousness. There were always better and worse discussion spots, interesting people will always gravitate towards some or others of them, and it’s worth noting where things are happening when. Other places are just a lot more exciting than here these days.
You’re right that there are many worth reading and interacting with here, but to be frank, there is precisely one place online where I have to play nice with people as unpleasant as the worst people here. Rdrama creates a more functional environment around this stuff, for heaven’s sake. Twitter creates a more functional environment around it.
These days, I have more reasonable and good people to interact with than I know what to do with. The ones here mean more to me than most places, because I’ve been around here a long while, but many of my favorite people have moved on, many driven off by the same malcontents who now try to enforce twisted purity tests here, and there is nowhere else among my regular haunts online that feels as dysfunctional and unfun as here. It’s very simply not worth it to put up with them any more, and this forum is no longer the only place I can fill the need that caused me to post here.
See you on the other side.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
It’s going great! Here’s the most recent quality contributions roundup:
https://old.reddit.com/r/theschism/comments/1dsozbw/quality_contributions_up_to_30_june_2024/
Culturally, it has become exactly what I envisioned it being, and I am proud to have helped lay the foundation for one of the healthiest discussion spaces online, even as my own attention has moved mostly to Twitter.
Thanks for asking, and take care.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
People are welcome to pull pistols on me. If someone wants to write an in-depth expose on all of my online activity, be my guest. I leave it open for the world to see. I encourage it, in fact: write your hit piece on me. Write a magnum opus detailing my crimes to the world. I throw plenty of punches and am prepared to receive them in return. But dragging it into unrelated conversations, such that every conversation becomes a referendum on those topics, deserves no respect and serves to do nothing but degrade this forum as a place for conversation.
As for carving out my own little space online where dissent is purged, everyone from Steve Sailer to Zero HP Lovecraft to BAP follows me on Twitter, where I openly and emphatically argue against them. If I'm trying to dodge the online right, I'm doing a terrible job of it.
Anyway, you seem charming. I'll leave you to it.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
Hold on, let's be clear.
I'm not blowing up on a bait post by an obvious drive-by troll. I ignored that. I'm responding to people like WhiningCoil and Dean who have been in this community for years, have hated me for years, and who actively want to push me out of this space. I am responding publicly, and clearly, in a way that emphasizes that they are in this space and people I like are leaving it, and that I, too, am leaving it.
The amount of people surprised at my thin skin should give those same people pause about its thinness. I went my whole time here without a single warning; I spend my time online hanging out on Twitter and rdrama and poking the bears of tech centimillionaires and rationalist grantmakers and government agencies and Wikipedia obsessives who spend decades etching their grudges into the public record. When I don't want to react harshly, I don't. In this case, I am, after some thought, telling people who have antagonized me for years precisely what I think of them in a public enough way that uninvolved people can understand exactly what's going on and why.
I don't care about the community's longevity at this point. People who do are welcome to it, but I think it had a great run for many years and stopped being what I loved in it years ago. I've had one foot out the door here for years, and it's time to step out properly. My burning of bridges is not performative--I have too many spaces full of good people for me to possibly keep up with, and dropping one that has many good people and a few miserable ones with altogether too much local-cultural sway is sad only because of history.
You're absolutely right: my leaving is a conscious choice I am making. I was not forced out. Every top-level post I make here, it's clear that plenty of people here appreciate what I have to say. I appreciate their interest, and I appreciate what this community was to me in the past, but I don't think this is a space where I personally should contribute time, energy, or passion any more.
It's possible that well down the line I'll pop back for a bit--never count anything out--but I wouldn't count on it.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
I've already been gone except to cross-post my articles here, more or less. I miss our conversations, but I don't miss them enough to have them in front of the loud, bitter minority here. Yassine and everyone before him had the right idea; on the scale of things, I've been hanging on much longer than most. It's time to amputate the limb.
I've always enjoyed your company as well, but I have gotten almost nothing out of this place since it moved to the new site and my experiences elsewhere are becoming better and better. The one thing I am missing out on by leaving this place is the presence of the people I respect here who have not yet built presences elsewhere, and at this point, the only thing keeping me coming back around here has been nostalgia for what once was.
I'm a fossil around here these days. It's time to pull the plug.
See you on the other side, someday.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
I really do. Substack comment sections, Twitter with the character limit removed, starting a Substack and having Substack post to Substack post conversations like the guys around Walt Right have been doing, Discord, theschism.
I know Twitter has a bad reputation here but the rationalist-adjacent subculture there is massively healthier than the local one, and even though longposters are a bit of an invasive species, half a dozen high-quality motteposters with large accounts at least are keeping the longform spirit alive there. Happy to show the ropes to anyone who wants to dip their toes in over there.
I don't think any of them have consistently higher-quality + higher-output conversations than the Motte at its peak, but it has not been at its peak for a very, very long time. These days, those are the spaces in which I have my longform conversations, and Twitter in specific is where the mandate of heaven has landed.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
There are places I will litigate the events of that time. This is not one of those places, and while you seem like a good chap, I'd encourage you to think about what it's like to have people looking, with every post you make, for excuses to bring up their old grudges rather than trying to litigate and rationalize the specifics of those grudges. See you on the other side someday, perhaps.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
There is every reason to burn this bridge. I'm not interested in politely ignoring the angry drunk ranting on the edges of my conversation every time I go to the local pub to chat with my friends. There are plenty of good people here, but at this point, most have either built accompanying presences elsewhere or can do so, and I think they should. I'm sure there is still magic here for others, but others don't have the angry drunk ranting on the edges of every conversation they have in the pub, and I have enough places without that that I no longer need to cling to what I once had here.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
All the best.
As a postscript, two final notes on the reaction at the time that I was looking for and finally found -- this is the full set of reactions to my original comment, and this is rdrama's reaction to the motte's reaction. Note in particular this comment and the replies below it from people who frequent both forums.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
one person mentioned that Zorba should talk with you about whether you want to remain part of the community.
Reread this and think about the words you wrote, please.
that one guy
You're linking one heavily downvoted jerk, but also--that's the point. Yes, being a somewhat public figure means more people have more opinions about you more aggressively. Having hundreds of people pile on you at once, many of them people you've had longstanding friendly relationships with, feels very very different than a single contentious conversation.
Anyway, since you're mentioning the reaction to the banned books list, look at it. He got some light criticism, a few people questioning his premise, quite a bit of interest. That's it. Nothing particularly notable, nothing dramatic.
The bad reception was because we're highly committed to honesty, not because we're highly committed to the Right.
There are high motives and low motives for every decision. I wouldn't flatter yourself too much here (though I also wouldn't imply that no critics had good points.) I didn't walk away thinking "these guys are highly committed right-wing partisans," I thought, "Huh, these people are willing to make and nod along to false, conspiratorial claims about me and hop in on a massive dogpile in which my character, my motives, and my membership in this space all become topics of heated controversy, thinking the worst of me and extending no grace whatsoever in a time when I could really use it." Unless you've been on the other end of something like that, I suggest not acting too much as if you know what it's like.
Similarly, you can choose to believe that it's just partisanship making people react in silly ways, but I've been around here a very long time and watched many of the best people here move on due to one or another comparable frustration. Explanations of why this forum zeitgeist was acting reasonably and nobly every time only go so far. At some point, it becomes simpler to leave than to explain, and poster after poster has made that calculation.
Anyway, that's enough talk of the bad blood. I usually don't bring it up because at this point I'm in a very lucky position on the whole and I prefer to remember the good memories here. There's plenty of good here, now as ever; I'm just some guy who's been around far too long and seen far too much.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
“In your digital hometown” is the key phrase you excluded. I have large crowds yell at me every time I post anything vaguely controversial. Heck, half a dozen people called me a fascist for this. But “cancellation” and online mob dynamics mostly have any impact when it’s people you care about and have longstanding positive relationships with. They’re the ones who have some degree of power over you. The lesson from it was screamingly obvious: build elsewhere.
It’s not the fundamental differences, either, or not just that. It’s that this place takes them so dreadfully seriously. The same dynamic proceeds in a much more lighthearted way at rdrama, where those fundamental differences obviously exist but everyone just yells at each other until they basically get along regardless.
But yeah, that even here you label me as a “prog” is the sort of thing that makes me inclined to say goodbye and good riddance to all of this. I’m being direct because I do think you’re a good representative of the zeitgeist view that was embraced here; you’re pleasant to chat with and you also remind me regularly of what I began to find insufferable here.
You’ve built your culture, now enjoy it. People who have come from here don’t trumpet their associations with you? Not a lot of people you really disagree with stop by to argue quite so much these days?
Whoopsie.
So it goes.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
I do relate, honestly, to being a believer in a space full of nonbelievers and the sense of isolation it can provide as people attack your deeply held beliefs. The particular reply you link is obnoxious, low-quality, certainly unpleasant to receive—and downvoted, with no meaningful support from others. And it’s true—you were staking out a minority viewpoint difficult to defend in a forum like this, and receiving harsh responses for doing so.
You very badly misunderstand the situation and the comparison at hand, though. I’ve been in heated conversations before. I’ve had slapfights, I’ve had controversial posts that get a lot of pushback. That’s all well within the norm.
What is extremely far from the norm is having people en masse accuse you of being a shill, tell you your reputation has been destroyed, tell you you don’t belong in the forum, and receive mass support (see eg upvote totals) for doing so. You’re fixating on one person who respects me—and was still calling me a shill—and a handful of supportive replies, in the middle of a flood of vitriol. I didn’t link the worst ones—I linked some of the ones with the most support and one drive-by potshot in the middle of the flood. At the end of your conversation, nobody was threatening any longstanding impact or indicating that they would treat you differently moving forward. There were no spiraling ramifications, no deep-felt expressions of hatred. It’s apples and oranges.
Dismissal isn’t comparable, either. People weren’t coming around en masse to tell Kulak he didn’t belong in the community after the article. They just disagreed with it!
Like, you can see in the links—note particularly the one mentioning it was clearly costing me a lot of goodwill. People there were extremely well aware at the time that it was an extraordinary reaction in an extraordinary situation; to treat it otherwise is to badly misread it. I’m not going to act like nobody on this forum has ever faced worse—particularly around flameout posts—but I can emphatically tell you that the reaction here was uniquely ugly, of all the places that took note of the event.
Sorry, I don't buy it, and I'm pretty frustrated that's what you jumped to in response. Give one example you faced of "worse treat[ment]" anywhere near comparable in vehemence, scale, and forum support (keeping in mind that these were only some of many) or I simply do not believe you.
It is a reflection of that sense of betrayal. I'm not sure what's odd about feeling betrayed by a large chunk of your online community rallying behind the idea that they don't want to share a country with you. That you would struggle to understand it is a bit baffling.
Like, c'mon: "I don't even want to live in a group of hundreds of millions of people that includes both me and you. Your ideals disgust me on a fundamental level. But hey, now that you've broken out, where's the promotion for us hometown lads?" Surely you can see why I'd find that a bit rich. You cannot at once reject someone as unworthy to share a polis with you and expect them to treat your companionship as meaningful.
The friend-enemy distinction matters. Put bluntly, I see you personally as wanting to put me on the enemy side of the friend-enemy distinction, repeatedly defend that choice, and then post in resentment about a lack of friendship resulting from that. Choose one.
I don't at all think I'm reading too much into a single word, no. It's obnoxious for people to treat me as a representative of a coalition that rejects me and that I reject, and it is a specific coalition, not simply a relative term. Using it suggests neither understanding nor a wish to understand, and I find it much easier to simply build elsewhere than to bridge a determinedly unbridgeable gap.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
I understand and have understood what you’re saying, but I just don’t think “suspiciously little pressure” is a good descriptor here. The schools weren’t influential after the change! They were shoved to the side altogether and granted only the slightest bit of attention. Pressure had to come from outside the org, because that’s where the injured parties were.
I extended, and extend, little charity to those who made the mess. As for extending charity to people who inherited it, since nothing happened about it in the Trump admin, I’m disinclined to blame the Biden admin for nothing continuing to happen.
I do think the circumstances were not particularly unusual; I don’t think we have an alternative that would properly right the ship.
I don’t think it was a fluke and didn’t convey that it was a fluke—I just highlighted and emphasized the incident.
Anyway, all of this is stemming from you coming one step away from calling me a liar for a framing you would have presented differently. I am not persuaded, and given the amount of time I spend criticizing progressives and trying to build alternatives, it takes an incredibly strained reading of my position to treat me as fundamentally aligned with them.
Thanks for the chat, at any rate. This will be my last response on this topic, since I’m headed away from the forum now-ish. All the best.
Enjoy your feud, Jiro. You, like Nybbler, have mostly damaged this website, and you remain the same as ever. Take care.
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