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ZorbaTHut


				

				

				

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ZorbaTHut


								

								

								
								
									
								
								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 01 11:36:40 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've been thinking about culture war in media lately.


For those who don't know, I'm a game programmer, working to kinda move into the game-director role. Obviously at some point I am going to have games with humans in them [citation needed], and since they're humans I need to decide what they look like both in terms of dangly bits and skin color, which is of course now highly politicized, joining the ranks of literally everything else in existence.


But I'm not looking for an excuse to put characters in of one skin color or another. I want a universe that feels reasoanbly alive, with characters who are interesting and not just inserted for politics reasons. So a big part of this ends up being "how do I choose interesting characters that don't feel like a political statement, or at least, if they do feel like a political statement, it's a political statement I don't mind making, or a political statement I'm intentionally making as part of the game, and also, boy it would be nice to come up with a way to insert characters of literally any type without that also being a political statement, and I guess as a side note this involves talking about explicitly political media and what makes it work well or badly".


This has, in fact, been done well.


Let's talk about that.




One good technique is to put in characters that are politically sensitive and then just never call attention to it. Uhura was black, and everyone watching Original Star Trek knew it, because she was, you know, on screen, consistently reflecting fewer photons than Captain Kirk, as black people do. Kirk didn't seem to know it, though; Kirk just kind of ignored it. In fact, I'm not sure this ever came up during all of Star Trek. Uhura was black because Uhura was black, and the show carefully avoided ever making a thing out of it.


Another good example here is Miles Morales in Spider-Verse, who is also black, and again, I'm not sure the movie ever really mentions this. The movie is explicitly not about Miles Morales' skin color. Another example: a lot of characters from Borderlands 2, such as Ellie, who is a fat woman which is essentially never relevant to the plot, and Sir Hammerlock, who is gay.


Sir Hammerlock being gay is an interesting case, so let's talk about it more! With most characters, either you find out their skin color the instant you see them, or it turns into a serious Face Reveal thing (imagine the controversy if the Halo TV series had revealed that Master Chief was black!) But media in general tends not to show much about character's sexualities, and the game industry even less so. Even mentioning romantic choices feels like something that can't be done subtly - all characters could be seamlessly replaced by asexual beings that reproduce via mitosis unless your work is about the fact that sex happens.


(Tangent: Can we, like, do something about that? Have some main characters who start out married, and end married, and the story is never about their difficulties in marriage? Seriously, how many happily married main-character couples exist anywhere in fiction? Note to self, do this sometimes. End tangent.)


(Tangent addendum: I just played Guacamelee 2 and it does this. That's one! Anyway, moving on.)


But in the case of Hammerlock, he sends you on a quest to check out what happened to an old friend of his, and if you happen to dig into the quest details, which most people don't, you find out it's an old boyfriend, and honestly I really like how this is handled. Hammerlock is just a guy who likes guys, and he's worried about his old fling, and this is never turned into a Explicitly Political Thing, and that's cool. 10/10, very human.




Let's talk about another technique! Another technique is to, instead of making the plot not about something, make the plot extremely about something. I did a search for "movies about black people" and one site recommends Malcolm X and another hit provided by Google is a list of "11 movies that confront American racism". You can guess where that is going! Uhura could have been white, Ellie could have been a thin guy, Sir Hammerlock could have been asexual, that wouldn't really have changed any of those pieces of media, but you can't turn Malcolm X into an Asian without some pretty serious plot adjustment!


There's nothing wrong with this solution either. I am generally not interested in this kind of media, but if that's the movie someone wants to make, hey, have at it, all up to them. But because I'm thinking about this for the sake of my own games, I'm discarding this because, as mentioned, I'm just not all that interested.


But while we're on the subject . . .


. . . I can't help but wonder if this is counterproductive.


A painful thing about human beliefs is that we are very very very bad at changing our mind. And having arguments shoved in our face really doesn't help. Walk up to someone who hates skub and shout pro-skub catchphrases at them, if you like; this will not make them more positive about skub, they'll probably just become more certain that skub is bad because all skub-lovers are fuckin' jerks, man. But show them movies that just happen to include skub, in a way where it sorta just . . . doesn't matter? Maybe they'll stop caring so much about the horrors of skub. Desensitization is a hell of a drug.


Show them movies that claim to involve this, but have the movie constantly shouting pro-skub catchphrases?


Well, now we're back where we were before. Or even worse, frankly, because now they'll be expecting any movies with skub in them to be a thinly-veiled propaganda piece. So not only have we failed to convince them with subtlety and care, we've fucked up future attempts to do so. Good fuckin' job, man, way to go.


Skub is an allegory, but you've figured that out by now, so let's move on.




Specifically, let's talk about allegories.


There's an episode in Original Star Trek where the crew finds some guy in space. The guy's face is white on the right side and black on the left side. Wild, right? Aliens! Shortly thereafter, they find another guy whose face is white on the left side and black on the right side. These two people hate each other because they think the other person's face is wrong and their respective countries have destroyed their entire planet in the ensuing war. Also one of them was used as slaves by the other. What is this story really about? Who can say! It is a mystery! We shall never okay it's obviously about racism. Like. Transparently so.


(In one of the weirder and less socially-acceptable examples of nominative determinism I've seen, the script for this episode was written by a stereotypically white guy named Gene L. Coon.)


Star Trek never fucking blinks. At no point does Captain Kirk turn to the TV and say "by the way, black lives matter", or any less anachronistic catchphrase. This is doubly impressive because Uhuru is still in this episode obviously and she doesn't even mention it. There is a single mention that Earth was perhaps not entirely copacetic in the past - by Chekov, not even by Uhuru, and in response to a question that does not feel shoehorned in whatsoever - and then that's it! It just moves on.


This being Star Trek, Kirk of course has to draw a lesson at the end. And he does . . . but fascinatingly, it's a lesson about hate, not about racism. Racism does not exist for Kirk. He is not even considering the issue.


And Kirk's utter refusal to even consider racism frankly drives the point in both harder and more subtly.


It's a brilliant episode. I love this episode. It's a perfect example of how Star Trek writing, while hamfisted at the best of times, was elegant and refined in exactly the right ways. With so little effort they could have turned this into a cultural war! And they didn't!


I want more things like that. I want episodes that don't hammer in the point with a sledgehammer. I want allegories, not blatant propaganda; sure, it's still propaganda, I don't think anyone would claim that Star Trek wasn't. But it's careful propaganda. It's subtle propaganda. It's propaganda that doesn't come across like paid advertising, with the characters mugging at the camera while carefully holding soda cans so the label is visible, and the label says "vote for me in the next election, but not the other guy, he's a fascist, which is proven by this movie about comedic squirrels wearing silly hats".




And here is the point where I run out of clever inspiration.


I'm trying to figure out how I would make either characters that are never called attention to, or characters that are an allegory . . . for trans people.


And it's goddamn impossible.


The problem with trans people (if you are getting linked here in anger because I said there's "a problem with trans people", finish the damn sentence first, christ) is that the entire classic concept of being "trans" is linked, kind of intrinsically, to being invisible.


Not to the person themselves being invisible. But to the trans-ness being invisible. The platonic ideal of a trans man is someone who everyone looks at and says "yes, that is a man, I have no doubt in my mind", and then never thinks twice about. The "trans" part, ideally, vanishes. And this makes it really easy to put a trans man in a game or a movie: you just put a man in.


But that doesn't help. Uhura does not work if she looks exactly like a white guy. The point of Uhura is that she is obviously black and nobody cares. But you can't have someone who's "obviously successfully trans" - it's contradictory! You have to drop a Sir-Hammerlock-esque hint somewhere, and, one, it's really hard to do so when any mention of a trans person's birth gender is "deadnaming", while, two, Hammerlock is totally cool with casually mentioning that he used to pork a dude with a dong, but trans people themselves generally do not want to talk about their birth gender. It's similar to the whole reveal-a-character's-sexuality problem except massively boosted. Put a character in who keeps talking about all the people they're boning and they come across as oversexed and somewhat disturbing; put a character in who keeps talking about how trans they are and you get Hainly Abrams.


So, then what? An allegory? But what allegory can you possibly use?


How do you make a respectful allegory about something that you're trying to show is conceptually acceptable but whose ideal form is intentionally invisible?




Honestly? I don't know.


My best idea here is to do something with aliens; some species of alien with extremely flexible sexual characteristics, who don't mind talking about them but which are never relevant to the plot, just roll it into background worldbuilding. I guess it's ironic that I'm coming up with this idea while also playing around with the concept of an alien species with extreme inflexible sexual dimorphism, but so it goes. But this is inevitably going to result in people yelling "zomg are you saying that trans people are aliens" and so that frankly isn't even going to work.


I cannot come up with a solution here, and this makes me very sympathetic to people who are trying to do it the right way. There isn't a right way. There's never been a right way. There's just a lot of wrong ways.


Feels like a tool missing from my toolkit, to be honest.




I don't really have an ending to this post.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for June 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll miss you, for what it's worth.




Nowadays, I cringe when I get a comment. I feel anxious when I see a lit-up notification bell. Frequently the sort of responses I engender seem not to be positive or helpful engagement -- often just dismissive one-liners, low-effort commentary that half-makes a point while being maximally personal or inflammatory, without any empathy for other perspectives or attempt to try and understand where I'm coming from.




Yeah, I acknowledge this is a problem. We're running into various problems with long-term shifts, and it's unclear how to fix them; I have some ideas that I'm going to be trying out, but the core issue is just that value drift is hard to deal with. And I haven't come up with a good solution besides "frequent new mods who haven't value-drifted yet" or "clever tricks".


Honestly, maybe I should be doing Doge elections much more often and turn moderation into more of a rotating duty. It's tempting.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not sure we've ever actually had to enforce this, but the official policy with Motte pronouns is:


    

  • You are always allowed to use the person in question's preferred pronoun.
    • 

  • You are always allowed to use "they", regardless of whether the person accepts that or not.
    • 

  • You are always allowed to twist yourself in knots to avoid pronouns even if it looks really silly.
    • 

  • If you're doing something historical, you can also use the person in question's officially preferred pronouns at that time in the story, but don't cleverly split hairs on this one; if you write a story about the Wachowskis, and start out by referring to them as "he", but then switch to "they" when they transition, the Eye of Sauron may look down upon thee.
    • 



The good news about these policies is that everyone finds them slightly uncomfortable, which is probably about as good as we can get.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Anyone want to help me test a thing? Just reply here!


I will not be telling you what you're testing; part of the test is to see whether you notice it quickly or not. Please don't tell people until the test is done (but there's nothing secret about it, feel free to talk about it afterwards.)


(no it is not terribly exciting)


(note: testing still open, need multiple people :V)


(edit: everyone through netstack has been added, hoping to get a bit more feedback before I shut this part down for a while)


Alright, probably not adding anyone more after this, and I'll be turning it off when I wake up anyway. Thanks everyone! More news soon.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, I could've sworn we fixed it, but it appears to have shown back up again. Unfortunately it seems very difficult to intentionally replicate, while very easy to accidentally stub your toe on, which makes it a pain to fix. If you can figure out reliable repro steps I would love to hear them :V


In general, you're welcome to PM me with reports, or post them in whatever thread seems most reasonable and ping me.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Site Rollback to February 3rd
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Test


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the core issue is that you have to heavily subsidize the very concept of childraising. Having children is horrendously expensive, to a point where you can't simply subsidize it by giving money to the people having kids, you have to build systems that make childraising cheaper. And that's not just expensive in a monetary sense, that's expensive in a time sense and an effort sense.


I think, if I were going to try this, I'd be aiming at essentially building an entire new culture around larger familial units; "houses" specifically designed for ten to twenty families living together, with a designated subsidized night caretaker and one or two full-time employees to handle things like food and cleaning. Make it clear that living in these places is easier, in a way that extends beyond simply "having money", but that they're available only for people with kids.


Honestly, this would kinda be aimed at a modern reinvention of tribal living.




For myself, all women with white collar jobs get two year’s entitlement to WFH after every childbirth in addition to parental leave, in which they can’t be required in the office more often than 1x week.




The problem is that people today want careers, and what you're basically offering here is the government guaranteeing that you can cripple your career for your kids if you want. I'm not going to say that's bad - having that available would help - but it doesn't really solve the problem, which is that people don't want to cripple their career for their kids.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Site Rollback to February 3rd
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ehm... Should i be logged in as you?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for June 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't see how this is supposed to help. It's not about the moderation, or the rules, it's the zeitgeist.




The idea is that you pick people who aren't jaded, and as they get jaded, they get rotated out. If you want to remain stationary but you're standing on a slow-moving train, you walk in the opposite direction of the train.




I say give people something to do that is not culture war. Any of you degenerates want to mod a game, or something?




This honestly makes me tempted to set up Reddit-esque subreddits. I'm not sure it would work, but it's tempting.


(The codebase did have this functionality, but we pulled it because it was completely bitrotted. Wouldn't be too hard to reintroduce it though.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
We're not asking you to not post about it. We're asking you to also post about other stuff.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Because people tend to use these things as a way to reinforce their beliefs and make it a hostile environment for others.


I think this falls generally under the "don't be antagonistic", "don't enforce ideological conformity", and "provide evidence in proportion to how partisan your claim is" clauses.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Site Rollback to February 3rd
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I can think of a few ways the site could go kind of weird with regards to login tokens during an incident like that. Easiest way to solve it is just to reset the login signature code.


Now everyone gets to log in again also, which inevitably means I'll get like six emails from people who entered a random password and didn't bother to save it and also didn't set their email so they could recover it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, in some ways, that's sorta the point, right? Imagine I decide I'm going to turn 1% of my NPCs trans, and I end up with "that weapon shopkeeper in the third village". How do I make them trans without making a big deal out of it? Is there a way?


Going back to Borderlands 2, which I honestly think did a marvelous job of gay characters, there's an audio tape you can find where a female character casually refers to her wife. Again, it's not emphasized, it's just sorta dropped in there and the world moves on. I can do that in a video game by having some characters be married and having this one character married to a same-sex partner. But what's the equivalent of this for trans people?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				[META] A Whole Host of Minor Changes
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hmm. You could be right. I'll toss this into the list of stuff to check.


Might just be that the symbols should remain the same size but the hit area should be boosted.


This is all kind of awkward for me to test because I hate browsing on mobile devices, so I may not be the best judge here :V


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for June 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, the core issue is that there are a lot of questions about what exactly "the feature" is. We don't have any support for non-admin moderators, for example, so do we want to implement that? Suddenly the work is like three times harder. Or do we want the existing admins to take the load of entire new communities? I don't want to do that. Who gets to make new communities? Who gets to edit community pages (which right now are just hardcoded .html)? If someone is a moderator of multiple communities, do they get to see shared usernotes? Can someone be banned from one community and not another?


If you did the work of reintroducing the feature then, hmm, I'd have to run it past the mods, let me know if you're seriously thinking of doing this, but yeah I think we'd probably figure out a way to get it going. But I think "the feature" is going to prove to be a lot of work.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				[META] A Whole Host of Minor Changes
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, that's probably the first good argument I've heard against it :V


Hrm. So, hypothetically, if we'd made it a thing that admins could apply on request - or made it a button you can hit to request privacy - and we'd approve the privacy flag if you weren't spamming/etc, would you have requested it instead of just deleting stuff?


(edit: all that said I have no idea how someone would trace you from your post history to your job, but not from your username to your job)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				[META] A Whole Host of Minor Changes
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I hate to say it, but I'm not sure working on ancient obscure browsers is a good use of dev time. If you can find the issue I'd happily take a pull request, or even a solid diagnostic, but I'm not gonna direct anyone to work on it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Should lifetime prisoners be incentivized to kill themselves?
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think there's a lot of definitions of "utilitarianism" and they get kind of incorrectly smooshed together. On one level there's "human pleasure is the only goal and we should optimize for human pleasure". If you're optimizing solely for the short run, yes, it leads to that; if you're optimizing solely for the long run, then in the long run it perhaps leads to that; but sort of counterintuitively, if you're optimizing solely for the long run, then in the short run it reasonably doesn't lead to that, because in order to have the most humans to eventually be happy we need to accomplish a lot of other things before exterminating humanity.


Another thing that it's used to mean, though, is "any philosophy that optimizes for something", and there's plenty of somethings that don't result in that at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Motte: A Working Glossary
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you hit "edit" and just try to leave it as it is, do you still get the same error? It's possible editing is using the old wordcount limit, which should be fixed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As I said, "everyone finds them slightly uncomfortable". I'll take that over "one side is perfectly happy with it and the other side is not happy at all".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Eh, this really depends on the person. About ten years ago one of my co-workers announced they were trans and asked us to use new pronouns and names for them, but acknowledged that we'd been working together for years and we'd slip up occasionally. So we did our best, but we slipped up occasionally, and she corrected us when we did, and we said "shucks, sorry", and she laughed and said "don't worry about it", and we gradually got better at it.


There's definitely people who are dicks about this but there's also people who are not dicks about this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Site Rollback to February 3rd
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, it's a little weird because this implies that @loper happened to be the one who made the admin account, and I'm not convinced they're the one who made the admin account because I think they would have mentioned it.


(loper are you the one who made the admin account when the database melted a bunch of hours? if so, that answers that question, I guess)


(also, if so, I'm so curious what you thought was happening)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From the topic text:




Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:






    

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
    • 





Please don't post things like this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Motte Moddes: HighSpace (July 2023)
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, top-level posts really do still need approval. Comments don't, once you're a regular, but top-level posts always do.


I think we actually just recently changed how that works and it should no longer display "deleted by user".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for July 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Rimworld specifically uses a lot of dnSpy, coupled with a tool called Harmony to patch code at runtime. I don't have a link to this, but go hunt down the Rimworld modders discord - I haven't been there in years but they were always a good bunch of people.


If you're doing something of the form "add new stuff to the game" then you won't need dnSpy/Harmony; if you're trying to change existing mechanics, you probably will.