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aiislove


				

				

				
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joined 2022 October 07 11:25:19 UTC

				

User ID: 1514

aiislove


				
				
				

				
0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 October 07 11:25:19 UTC

					

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User ID: 1514

When I was in highschool in the US midwest around 2007, I would flip through the cable channels when I was bored and note the race and sex of each person that was being shown as I changed to each channel. It was almost always white men. I pointed this out to other people and they thought it wasn't good. I haven't done this in years but I'm sure the demographics are not nearly as skewed in this way anymore.

Another conclusion that I could add to your list above is that the people in charge of casting in advertising are very worried about being seen as propagating white supremacy or making microaggressions toward minorities. They are not worried about white people being mad at them for not being represented because in the US it's culturally taboo to point out a lack of representation of white people. Basically advertisers are being socially conditioned to cast fewer white men.

I personally can't stand advertising and use ad blockers religiously. I would recommend it.

Merry Christmas to you too! Last Christmas I was by myself in South Korea and I mostly ignored it so that I wouldn't be sad I was missing it at home. I think I facetimed my mom and probably ate western food but otherwise didn't do much. Hope you and your family enjoy your Christmas in Japan.

This sentence confused me as well, I knew he was referring to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as voxelvexillologist notes below but the 200k figure surprised me. The wikipedia entry states that 230k ethnic Armenians have been displaced by the conflict. I assume moldbug was using "ethnically cleansed" to mean "displaced" while I imagined he meant that there were 200 thousand casualties.

I was a digital nomad for over a year. I grew a bit desensitized to the place vs place, Japan thing. One of the first things I noticed was that when I was walking around a foreign country, everything seemed magical just because I knew I was in a foreign place, but eventually I started to realize that things aren't always super special just because it's foreign. Sometimes the small things are just small differences and don't really have any meaning. When I started traveling I was really annoyed with the US so every difference I would see I would make up some story to myself about how it's so much better than in America. Eventually I developed a better and more keen sense of where things lie and I can appreciate differences in culture and aesthetics while understanding the downsides to differences as well. I still enjoy traveling overseas and exploring new cultures but I think the most important thing I learned is to respect whatever I see everywhere I go, whether that's a foreign country or my small hometown.

Exploring more of Asia also brought greater perspective on the Japan thing as well, having been to Thailand and South Korea I feel like I understand Japan better and can see it more for what it is. I was always a total weeaboo for a long time and visited Japan a few times growing up but stayed there for three months recently and it was great to live there while working from my computer but having been to Seoul it's easy to see how the stagnating economy has been hurting Japan, compared to the up to date and high tech vibe of South Korea which Japan used to have a few decades ago.

Speaking as a designer I will say that Japanese aesthetics and design are objectively better than in most of the world though. There is something different about the sense of space in Japan and attention to detail that I find really attractive to the country.

To directly address the question you posed, what are some lesser known examples of place vs place, Japan?

I think the Appalachian mountains are ridiculously beautiful and extremely underrated. Every time I drive through West Virginia I'm impressed by the scenery. I would consider moving to the region.

the only remaining alternative to punishing social transgression is mob rule, [...] even a purely-black community that does not police or imprison its members will eventually turn to lynching or exile.

Yes, exactly, that's why I find the concept of police abolition/defunding the police so frightening. It doesn't mean that suddenly there are no cops, it means that suddenly everyone is a cop.

The first topic reminds me of a ridiculous story from sixth grade. Someone told me this kid in my class had a gay cousin, and since I was gay I asked this kid if his cousin was gay. He got mad at me for implying that his cousin was gay, and then complained to my science teacher, who I was sure was a lesbian because she was a soccer coach and I saw her buying wine with women at the grocery store multiple times. My lesbian science teacher scolded me for asking this kid if his cousin was gay, even though I was just asking because I was gay and wanted a gay friend. (Granted I probably didn't ask with a very polite tone.) Either way, the kid I asked was more homophobic than I was, since he was offended that I'd imply his cousin was gay, whereas was just asking for a gay friend, and it ended with me getting scolded by a lesbian teacher for homophobia instead of the kid who was actually homophobic.... anyway I'm just relating this to try to illustrate how the "homophobic public offense" law is terrible and will lead only to ridiculous outcomes. Am I allowed to be homophobic as a homosexual? If not then I can only see this law being worse for me as a homosexual who interacts with homosexuals all the time and happens to do things that can probably be framed as homophobic if they need to be, compared with someone who knows no homosexuals and runs little risk of doing homophobic things unless a lesbian cop shows up at their door...

I like the song you are asking about. As a rich man north of Richmond I empathize with him and people like him more than most of the people in my class FWIW. Rich people lording their power over the poor is really bad and every time I see it I cringe. I thought about writing out a response to this piece in the NY Times but don't have much to add. The rich are increasingly divorced from the realities of the poor. All everyone with a college degree has been doing since 2008 is throwing poor white people under the bus, pointing at Trump voters as racist hicks while trying to differentiate themselves in increasingly extravagant ways. I think (hope) this has basically run its course, even the Barbie movie seems to be illustrating the horrors of "going high" while everyone else is struggling in the gutters.

It's because luxury beliefs are also aspirational beliefs for people who want to see themselves as being in the luxury belief class.

For example, I have a friend who works in NYC. He doesn't make much money but his partner and many of his friends and family are rich. Many of them espouse anti cop beliefs so he tends to espouse these beliefs as well, even though they live in much more expensive parts of NYC than he does. He doesn't want to have to lose face by admitting that the cops protect him in his high crime neighborhood so he acts like he dislikes them, like his richer peers who are more shielded from the consequences do. That's just one mechanism for where these "magical beliefs" come from. He doesn't want to engage with the reality that he should be afraid of criminals rather than the police because it would mean engaging with the reality that he's of a lower economic status than his peers.

And why is the more practical worldview (that people respond to incentives) so looked down upon?

It's irritating and low class to admit that you have material practical concerns. We like to imagine the rich just walk around life unbothered by consequences, and that all we have to do is imitate that lifestyle and we too can live that way. To give away the fact that we have to wash laundry and be protected by cops and face consequences for our actions feels degrading to many people.

Google has been failing to innovate for years. The last time they put out a useful innovation was Google Images, and every change they've made to it since its debut has made it worse. (Most recently hiding the link to images under a "more" button, dumbing down the "size" option years ago, and a handful of other things I can't recall at the moment.) Even the Russian search engine Yandex's image search is better than google images. The search pages are loaded with ads and irritating "helpful" information that just makes me spend more time trying to find what I want. Don't get me started on trying to find the names of songs by song lyric, the one thing a search engine should actually be good at 100% of the time...

I don't know if it's specifically "AI chatbots" that are going to threaten google but it seems like they've been stagnating for years so I'm sure some emerging technology is going to make them obsolete if they continue the same trajectory. I don't know why they're not incorporating AI into google images for example, the possibilities there are endless, it's like they're stuck in the 2010s while the rest of the internet has moved on

I empathize with your sentiment but I think it's a little bit uncharitable, I mean people had a valid right to be afraid of the virus as well. My father was high risk and ended up dying from it, so to paint everyone who freaked out about the virus as a sheeple is slightly insulting, though I realize that for the majority of people they didn't have nearly as much reason to worry. I also wonder if you're living in a blue tribe setting or somewhere outside the US as the response from where I was in a more rural area wasn't nearly as sheeple-y as your post seems to indicate, plenty of people were rolling their eyes the entire time in the small town I was living in

Alternately, just don't build culture around proprietary intellectual property. Having your cultural identity as an American tied to the whims of corporate interests is a recipe for disaster. See: Disney's Black mermaid. Millions of white Americans grew up identifying with Ariel and Disney World as part of their core identity, and now when the globalist interests of Disney shareholders decide that white America is a liability and not an asset, white America's cultural heritage is in the crosshairs.

At least when white American identity was more closely tied to Christianity you didn't have this problem. It actually really bothers me as a white middle American to think about how much of my own childhood and shared culture is owned by corporations or even just by people who wrote and published books or created something of their own. I envy European and Asian cultures who in many cases have many thousands of years of folk tales and traditions to draw from when American culture is locked behind IP protection laws from decades ago.

Your proposed solution is to end copyright protection sooner, but to me the ideal solution is to avoid building identity on anything proprietary to begin with. Admittedly I find Marvel and mass market films kind of gauche to begin with and the idea of people rallying around these properties as cultural entities worth tying identity to makes me uneasy.

What do you guys do when you feel stuck in a rut? It feels like all I think about is food, sex and money and it's really irritating. I'm constantly preoccupied with what I'm going to eat for my next meal, how I'm next going to get laid and how I'm going to make more money. I don't like spending time on activities that are nonproductive so I try to avoid video games. I spend a few hours every day on my computer but it's kind of a half work half mindless visual processing thing. I make money passively so I don't have to really work more than an hour or two a week but I usually end up spending a few hours more developing ideas and doing work that's not really necessary. I have a lot of free time but I spend a lot of it organizing stuff in my house and cooking. I am dating a bit but I don't really like any of the guys I'm talking to for anything long term so it feels like a dead end there. I also don't really generally like people and would rather spend time alone, I feel like these convos always go to "go to church" or "join a community" but it just sounds irritating to me.

When I used to feel this way I would just take walks outside or drive around or do chores around the house but I have done all of those to death. I have walked every path within an hour of my house, driven everywhere in my state and done many chores. I traveled for over a year and it was great but now that I'm stuck at home again the inanity of daily life is driving me crazy.

Is anyone else considering leaving the US or moving to a secluded area for the 2024 election season? The 2020 and 2016 election seasons had such a negative impact on my mental health that I don't want to stay where I am for the election next year and since I can afford to avoid it I think I will. I will probably also block myself from reading the news and themotte and most social media as well when I'm away. But I can't remember when things really start to amp up where politics becomes unavoidable- the election is held in November, but what time of the year do things start to get ridiculous? I'd like to be gone for all of September through the beginning of November at least but I can't remember if the entire summer in an election year is bad or not. Maybe I'll just wait it out and leave as soon as it gets unavoidable but I fear by then it'll be too late and I'll be too annoyed and I'll chicken out and stay longer than I need to.

Perhaps the greatest political challenge is what to do with surplus young men.

Give them more money and power and respect. Speaking personally, I felt I had very little incentive to contribute to society for a long time. I would do the right thing and not get much in return, or I would do the wrong thing and at least get the satisfaction of doing what I wanted. Once people in my family died and I was given greater respect and means to change my position in life I began to respect my family and the society that I lived in more. The fact that people live very long lives now is leading to fewer young people with wealth, and old people don't have the energy or interest to improve the world around them in the same way that young people do. A wealth transfer to people with energy and a longer time horizon would really help keep them from eating each other alive.

The point of Barbie being "sexually harassed" five minutes after arriving in the real world is to illustrate that her luxury beliefs and wokeism is delusional. The Barbie dream world represents everyone who lives in a woke simulacra of the real world where the horrors of reality are shielded from their view. The point of the harassment isn't to portray the dangers of sexual assault, it is to illustrate the dangers of living in a fantasy world when other people are exposed to real horrors every day. Barbie brought the sexual harassment onto herself by dressing in a sexualized way and not anticipating the realities of interacting with people who aren't in on the luxury beliefs that Barbie got to hold previously.

The sound really irritates me, I'm gay and she's not that pretty so I'm not that interested, I really really want to eat the sandwich, the glove pull and smack weren't really satisfying to me, I don't like how the tall skinny rectangle looks on my fat wide computer screen, I don't drink alcohol so the beer doesn't do it for me but I really want the sandwich (still)

I am a designer, I make all of my money from selling things I design online. The one thing I sell the most is not that exciting to me, so I spend a little time on that, then spend the rest of my time exploring other projects that I enjoy but don't make money from. I like to think that I'm funding my passion projects with money from boring shit I make that people do buy.

Occasionally, I am motivated to make something, but it's because I see someone else's work and think I can easily do better. I always do.

This is sort of a driver for me, as I'm a competitive person. Maybe try to tap into that energy for whatever you want to work on.

My dad's family had lots of alcoholics and mental disorders yet many successful business people, I really think that the addict genetics help me with the "natural urge" to monetize that you seem to lack.

How much money do you want to make in your year off? Do you need to make money or just feel bad that you're being lazy and want to challenge yourself? If you don't need to make money, honestly, I would just try to enjoy the time off. Once I got my passive income to a livable place I traveled for over a year and not thinking about making anything was great.

I have seen this take many times but I have never taken the take from the other side: someone who admits openly that they just want a video game checklist for their own morality. It is so far away from anything I would ever want that it's impossible for me to imagine that real people would reach that conclusion. Do the people who want to live that way know that's what they want? Would they be turned off if they heard their views described the way you've described it?

FWIW if budget is an issue, I didn't even know there was a patreon for themotte until I read this comment and I've been lurking here forever. I really hate ads and begging for money generally but maybe promoting the fact that there is a patreon for the place a bit more isn't a bad idea if you need more money to run things.

Yeah, I can relate. I am mainly interested in gaming from an aesthetic perspective. I think the switch from prerendered backgrounds to fully 3d environments in JRPGs between the PS1 and PS2 eras killed the genre. The prerendered backgrounds of FF7, 8 and 9 are probably the best art that have ever come out of gaming and 3d environments are extremely ugly in comparison. Prerendered cutscenes are beautifully lit shot and angled by an artist to create an attractive visual, whereas 3d environments have a crappy camera angle pointed at random stuff that doesn't look good.

Similarly I strongly prefer the art and music of SNES era to N64 era. The creativity after N64 era really took a dive, the industry was no longer about innovation but rather the genres became very rote and the industry has become much more bland. I blame this also on Japan's economic stagnation after the 90s, and though American tech companies had plenty of money to pump into gaming they lacked the taste and creativity of Japanese designers in the 90s and early 2000s. I believe creativity in gaming has basically died after We Love Katamari was released.

I took the Gamer Motivation Model you linked to and scored highest on creativity as well. I like games like Animal Crossing and the early Harvest Moon games where you can decorate/arrange things. I also used to spend an embarrassing amount of time on crappy Korean farm sim games on my phone so I could design beautiful towns with their assets. Actually, I would prefer to play a game like Super Mario RPG or Persona 1/2:EP/2:IS which all have really really good art direction, even over games where I can be creative, because it's enjoyable to see the art that other people have made.

You mention games that you don't like in your post but none that you do. Which ones do you like?

Thanks for the analysis, I think you're correct.

The piece of media that really illustrated everything you're describing, for me, was the Ghibli film The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. I could write an entire essay on it as well but it really strikes at the same situation you're pointing at. Kaguya-hime's father becomes obsessed with material and societal wealth, pulls his daughter and wife away from nature and raises a girl who is so empty that by the time she ascends to heaven she has nothing to live for. This is basically the same as Susan's pursuit of material/societal wealth that drags her away from the world of Narnia (which, while a fantasy world, actually represents the world of truth/nature/God in the same way that Kaguya-hime's birth village represented truth/nature/God.)

Kaguya-hime is completely heartbreaking, by the way, and the older I get the more upsetting it is. It kind of shook me out of the path of material status chasing, it was so profound.

I hate it, it's hideous. It's kind of degrading to look at because he has so much fuck you money that he doesn't even bother to give the rest of us something pretty to look at. I'm guessing the location was exactly what he wanted or something and he has so many things already that he doesn't care about aesthetics. It also pattern matches to the irritating impulse many rich leftist Americans have where they feel so guilty about their money that they think to flaunt it would enrage the proles when in reality, not flaunting it is even worse (a la Marie Antoinette's peasant dresses, many of the people of France in the late 18th century weren't mad that she was a queen flaunting her wealth, they were angry that she dressed like a peasant in her spare time)

All right, reading this feels like you're kind of pointing to some interesting observations but have come to different conclusions than I have. As a gay man I have complicated feelings about the matter but let me try to unpack some of your points from my perspective. This is going to be really long and informed by a ton of personal anecdotes combined with pop psychology that I literally just made up from my own experiences, so if anyone objects they can feel free to share their experiences instead, but otherwise here goes:

First of all I want premise this with a certain framing that I don't think many people are privy to, even among gay men and certainly not more broadly understood outside of gay circles*. That is to illuminate the dynamic of being a "top" or "bottom." Now, I was misled by this premise for years, believing it only referred to the sexual position of each partner during anal sex: The top puts his penis in the bottom's rectum. This is the broadly accepted and understood meaning in American mainstream society today. And according to your shiny mainstream LGBTQIA image, the top/bottom dynamic basically ends there.** But outside of that narrow American perspective on homosexuality, these terms are more loosely interpreted: In many languages, the terms for top and bottom are more translatable to "active" vs "passive," (aktiv vs passiv in German) for example. And indeed, at the end of the day, what determines who is the top and who is the bottom in a homosexual relationship has literally nothing to do with self identification as a top or a bottom: this sorts itself out naturally. There will always be one partner who is more dominant and one who is less dominant. Any third party can see this. It is strange and disorienting to see a bigger, stronger, taller guy be bottom to a smaller, weaker, shorter guy. It happens but it is weird. It is basically against the way of nature. Homosexual relationships that last are nearly always ones where the top has legitimate, physical, material claims to being the top over his partner. Gay relationships always fail when the bottom is sick of being the bottom, or he believes the top isn't worthy of being the top anymore, or the top starts doubting his ability to be the top.

From my experience, what I've outlined above is exactly how things play out, constantly, even though no one parses it into plain english the way I have. Basically, all gay men exist on some hierarchy or spectrum, that is sort of opaque to each of us at first, but that always sorts itself out in the realm of sexual play. The more dominant man will always become the top to the more submissive man, regardless of who's trying to put what body part where. Bad gay sex is when a submissive man tries to top a more dominant man. You can put up with being a bottom for a man who deserves it, but to be made a bottom of a man who doesn't deserve it, is horrible and degrading beyond the regular degredation of bottoming for a man who you do respect.

I'm rambling a bit so let me get on to some direct responses to what you've written now that I've gotten my own framing out of the way.

I feel like homosexuality is correlated with a lack of thirst of competition. Homosexuals like to win but they want to win without a struggle. It seems to me that non-gay men LOVE to be engaged in competition.

Here I get to talk about my observations of straight men, which have really enlightened me greatly about myself and about other gay men. Straight men are motivated to reproduce. But evolution has complicated things: It wants the most fit males to reproduce. So straight men must compete for the right to reproduce with women. It is not that straight men "LOVE" to engage in competition, it is that straight men WANT to engage in the competition, and believe themselves worthy of doing so. Now, an anecdote. When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I saw a pornographic film of a man having sex with a woman for the first time, and this video really shocked me. I saw how huge his penis was, compared to my 8 or 9 year old penis, and how his body was so much more mature and fit than mine, and at that moment I was sort of "cucked" out of ever wanting to compete in the sexual arena with women. I thought, there's no way, this dude is obviously way more fit than I am to reproduce so I better just not even try. Having sexual energy in abundance, and mortified that I'd never be able to compete in sexual competition, I began rather to see myself as an object of sexual desire and tried to repress my masculine urges as I was so unconfident with my own ability to compete with them that my ego couldn't bear being rejected as a male. So I was drawn to conceiving of myself as a bottom, to be used as the sexual gratification of other men- because at least then my ego wouldn't be damaged when I tried to compete with other men.

Near the end of my 20s this role began to really grate on me. I was frustrated in love and sex; I would date many older men, who I was drawn to because it was easier for me to respect someone with more experience than my peers. But I didn't respect them particularly at the end of the day because I didn't see them as good enough to satisfyingly top me. So none of those relationships ever went anywhere. But I also dated a handful of men who were my age or a bit younger, and I always dragged them out, never going anywhere with them, and I never understood why until I realized that at the end of the day I wanted to be a top but was worried about rejection from these guys. In these relationships I was basically their top but too scared to actually make a pass at them because I was afraid of being rejected by them. I spent a few years at the end of my 20s not dating anyone, because I was tired of playing the bottom role and hadn't yet realized my desire to play the top role. Finally I did some self reflection and came to the realization that what I wanted was to be respected and play a top role in a relationship and once I got over my fear of being rejected, and accepted that I'm actually valuable and worthy of being someone's top, I've had much much more fulfilling relationships with men and dating is much more gratifying.

In summary, I'm trying to say that straight men perceive themselves as being a good fit for reproduction. They are driven to compete with other men to reproduce. In a way, my ego was too fragile to risk the rejection of women so I decided not to compete with other men for sex with women. It's as though part of my brain thought I should instead, seek the role of the female, and become the object of men's desires.

More directly:

Gay men are afraid of losing more than straight men. Our egos can't bear to be rejected by women so we create a new game within our own minds where we can become the object of affection of other men, who we know are horny so it seems impossible to lose.

I feel like non-gay men like the back and forth between opponents ALMOST as much as winning.

Actually, the most gratifying gay sex you can have, in my experience, is when the bottom is trying to do his best to be the top but the top is always secure in his position and brings up the bottom to his level but they both know who's in charge. Which echoes the back and forth you are describing here. But is this type of gay sex super common? Not really, in my experience. Usually it's the sort of safe sex where the top and bottom agree beforehand which position they're taking, and then they just do that, without any play or experimentation. It's better when the bottom can try to push the limits of the top, and the top is secure enough to be like, yeah dude you like that and play into it, while maintaining his status as a top. If a bottom tries to top the top and wins, it's gross and bad because the top has been degraded and the bottom feels bad about it too.

The point I'm trying to make here is that gay men probably aren't really predisposed to this sort of back and forth competition, but it is very gratifying when it happens in a good way where both partners are secure and enjoying themselves. Does straight sex have a similar dynamic? I'm curious to know.

It would explain why gay men are found in careers that don't necessarily have the strictest of win conditions. (Fashion).

I have a degree in fashion design and I don’t know what you mean by this. The fashion industry is extremely competitive.

"Competition is for losers"

At the end of the day, the barrier for gay sex is so insanely low that any “competition” that happens is purely elective. Like, as long as you aren’t aiming to top a guy way above you on the totem pole, i.e. your expectations aren’t totally unrealistic, you can get laid with little to no pushback from your partner. So if you’re competing as a gay man, it’s either because you’ve realized that it can be fun, or it’s because you’re a loser trying to top someone way out of your league. So I can see where Peter Thiel is coming from with that book title, but the underlying logic isn’t the same for straight men.

*Though sometimes I wonder if some Ayn Randian type cynical old women could sus out the top-bottom dynamic as I've laid it out in this post. I'd love to hear more straight people's takes on homosexuality as the echo chamber of gays talking about gays can really leave me feeling insane.

**I believe this is meant to empower people who play the bottom role in homosexual relationships. I personally find this role degrading for long term situations but pointing that out is extremely unpopular politically and risks the entire scheme of homosexuality imploding on itself, if every bottom decided to see their role as degrading, so I guess it's really best if all the tops just shut up and act like it's not degrading to be playing second fiddle to a fellow full grown man, but I digress.

Do you think that painting people as obese walmart shoppers who dislike the things that you like is a good display of empathy and compassion? Can you see how I might interpret your opinions as being rooted in condescension and classism?

Thanks for sharing your experiences, I can relate to a lot of it. Speaking as an overweight but formerly obese person, I don't think that people in general really hate fat people that much. They hate the idea of themselves being fat, and may resent fat people for getting away with being fat when they wouldn't be able to live with themselves for being fat, but I think that generally people are as accepting of fat people as they are of dwarves or the mentally challenged or some exotic ethnic minority or whatever. Fat people probably hate ourselves more than the average person hates us.

You ignore race at the expense of living in and experiencing reality. I would love to have the luxury of ignoring race all the time, but I don't have that luxury. It doesn't really stop at race either, any time you distract yourself from any kind of material reality you are doing yourself and those around you a disservice. You can tell yourself that men and women are exactly the same and redefine the definitions all you want a la Judith Butler but it's as incoherent at the end of the day as telling yourself that Vietnamese men and men from Ghana are the same thing. I've been all around the world and it's simply not true. Black men are more prone to violence and aggression and are more sexually threatening and intimidating than East Asian men, for example. It's so simple that people don't want to look at it. Just go to the fair and look at the chickens. There will be small meek chickens and big aggressive ones. Look at dogs. There simply are differences. Advocating for race blindness on the backdrop of BLM riots is absurd, this just feels out of step with reality at this point.

Racial blindness is a great ideal to work toward, especially in times of peace and little social unrest, but right now it's just so ridiculously out of step with the times that it seems kind of incoherent. It doesn't seem in effect very far removed from the liberal anti-racist position which is also glaringly out of touch.