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drmanhattan16


				

				

				

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drmanhattan16


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 17:01:12 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I didn't say "niche player", I said "good portion". The claim is that a large number/plurality of anti-GG progressives defended Nyberg, I want to see proof of that.


Secondly, Leigh's tweets, as linked in the top comment, don't even break a 100 likes. The one where she explicitly promoted Nyberg's medium article has 30 likes and 2 quote tweets, with the top response (at least on my end) is someone explicitly referring to Nyberg as a pedophile!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What GamerGate was actually about, to anti-GG, was a bunch of gross ugly people being gross and ugly in public, and worse, trying to exert control over a cultural or media sphere that anti-GG felt they were rightful custodians of. GamerGate was about a bunch of basement-dwelling virgins acting out their resentful misogyny against people who are leading the rise in diverse games. I realise this sounds very similar to what anti-GG said it was about, but I think the distinction is that the public anti-GG line was about behaviour ("they're harassing people") while the real feeling was about identity or even essential attributes ("they're gross").




W/o evidence, this doesn't strike me as charitable as your "What GG was actually about, to pro-GG..." explanation. Pro-GG cares about entryism, but anti-GG is just about denying people who trigger a disgust response?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


but there's still a vast qualitative difference between that scenario and the scenario in which an adult male physically overpowers a small girl, penetrates her with his penis, infects her with an STD and possibly impregnates her.




I concur, but this sounds to me like an attempt to ensure Nyberg isn't allowed to escape the instinctive feelings associated with male pedophiles. Which is a goal you have to actually declare, otherwise I'm going to assume you don't think people's feelings should decide how pedos of either sex are treated.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Using female pronouns for a male paedophile rhetorically downplays the seriousness of the situation.




I don't agree. I think that at least nominally, pro-pronoun people would consider it serious regardless of the pedophile's sex. Obviously, there are the usual caveats (humans can think one thing and feel another, etc.).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not entirely sure that's the reasoning behind the original comment. This site has quite a few people who seem unwilling or outright incapable of speaking about trans people without words or a tone of deep disgust. Note that joyful didn't say "Why do you use the pronoun she for a male?", but rather "why do you use the pronoun she for a male pedophile?" This should increase the likelihood of this being a disgust response in our eyes.


But even we granted that this is just about objective reality, it wouldn't have an impact on pronoun policy. There is no inconsistency between your view and the idea that one should respect the pronouns of others.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Presumably because there's no reason to let one's disgust with a pedophile inform as to whether they are actually trans.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It was to demonstrate just how far a good portion of the prominent figures in that culture war would go to defend and cover up and ignore acts that were frankly indefensible to score points against their outgroup, while at the same time claiming moral superiority.




This is the part I'm not getting. What is this "good portion"? Dan Olson + David Gerard +...some others? I genuinely don't understand how many people are supposedly involved here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


At the moment, Nyberg has 13.3K followers on Twitter, which is a fairly high number considering her last post was in 2018.




People can forget to unfollow creators. There are YouTube channels with millions of subscribers that don't get more than a small fraction of that in terms of views. While some of this could be bots, it's also the case that people can just forget to remove a creator from their lists/feeds/follows. Remember, removing is an action, and unless you engage in periodic clean-up or you find a moral reason to dislike the account, you'd be disinclined to remove anyone.


Nyberg's real audience is probably much smaller than her listed count.




This is rather something that hasn't reached the mainstream because no mainstream news sources will report on it in any honest way, and the ones that do report on it from what I've seen have simply painted Nyberg as the victim, such as this Quartz article that alleges that Gamergate spread "baseless accusations of pedophilia" about Nyberg. The Young Turks were willing to cover her, but not to talk about her pedophilia - to talk about her Twitter bot. It seems that the mainstream certainly doesn't consider her insignificant enough not to report on at all, rather they would rather just not report on her in the "wrong" way.




While Quartz had an obligation to make their statements factual, I don't think TYT have to cover the pedophilia allegations if they don't think it's relevant. A story about a bot that angers alt-righters is engaging enough for the left as it is.




I'm not saying she was as nearly as big a deal as Sarkeesian or Wu, but this situation most certainly wasn't a complete nothingburger, either.




I don't think it's a nothingburger either. But I don't think Nyberg is or should be anything other than a third or fourth point at best when talking about how Gamergate was villified by the mainstream. She's just too niche for it to be that strong unless you're a terminally online person with an interest in what is now part of the Internet's ancient history.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Rarely a good defense of a movement.




Who was defending the movement? My point was that when you wonder why something gets swept under the rug, you should ask how large the thing itself was. It's unclear to me that Nyberg was another Sarkeesian or Wu.


Even granting the idea that she was, it would be wrong to say that the entire story was suppressed. As I said, even a naive search for just her name returns the articles talking about her being a pedophile. RationalWiki has no control over that, they can only dictate the content of their own pages.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Further down, articles about the whole debacle do show up, and I will concede that the information about Nyberg being a pedophile is on the internet and can be found - but only as long as you know about Sarah Nyberg in the first place, and almost always from non-mainstream sources.




I mean, yeah? Is that surprising? Why would a mainstream org even care? Progressive hypocrisy isn't that hard to find and it's over some nobody? Even if I ran the most anti-woke paper in existence, I probably wouldn't dive into the specifics of one pedophile and her progressive defenders from the Gamergate era.


But that's just me.




It's not impossible to find sources that are congenial to Gamergate, but they're a definite minority, and represent the parts of the internet that are frequented almost exclusively by the terminally online.




That's fair, but I don't think this is the best example of how Gamergate was poorly treated. The nicheness of the story itself overshadows the "progressive hypocrisy/culture-warring" aspects, imo.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Nyberg appears to be some small-time individual who got 15 minutes of fame and has moved on to doing whatever she does now. Her twitter feed is mostly about plugging her own stream/Patreon, quote-tweeting some lesbian novel bot, and talking about trans politics from a clearly pro-trans perspective (and I mean in the normie online progressive way). Of this, most tweets don't even seem to break a hundred likes.


In fact, this whole damn thing seems fairly confined to people whose only power is on the niche pieces of the internet they occupy. The most egregious is arguably RationalWiki, but that site isn't some powerhouse or progressive mainstay. David Gerard's power on that site might be vast, but it's fundamentally limited.


"This story is small-time" wouldn't be a problem necessarily, even a murder in a small town matters. But it's worth considering that when you search up Nyberg on Google, you get her twitter, a LinkedIn profile, and then a Medium piece which clearly comes down on the side that Sarah is an actual pedophile. DuckDuckGo straight up links to the "Why you shouldn't stand with Sarah Nyberg" piece at number 1.


So I don't really think it's obvious that Nyberg and the anti-GamerGaters got what they want. The anti-Nyberg pieces are still up and coming up in top results.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


That level of analysis assumes there’s never going to be a genuine threat to your own civilians. This was true for the mainland USA. It wasn’t for any of the countries in Europe or asia.




It's worth noting that a great deal of effort to minimize the damage of war to civilians came about in Europe. Despite the threats each nations armies posed to each other, they were willing to accept the idea that it was best to avoid going after non-combatants even if they were in a position to strike. Indeed, there was significant debate over this precise issue when Germany and Britain were exchanging air strikes in WW2.




Additionally, the distinction between a civilian working at a military manufacturing plant vs a soldier working in the logistical side of things is blurry, especially in a country with mass conscription and a totally mobilised war economy.




True. I don't have any hard-line stance on what is or isn't an acceptable target. But this is precisely what the lawyers and scholars do for a living, so I'm fine leaving it to them to decide on a case-by-case basis.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Am I grossly misremembering something or wasn't harry potter chosen by prophecy? I wasn't that into Harry potter.




There were actually 2 children that would have met the requirements of the prophecy: Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom. It wasn't totally clear which was the one who would kill Voldemort.


Admittedly, being one of two chosen out of the hundreds/thousands of magical British children is fairly close to being chosen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Hang on, aren't you the guy who wrote those great blogposts about Midway?




No, that was MrManhattan16. I have a Ph.D, you can tell b/c I have Dr in my name.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
C'mon, you think anyone would just wanna kill Jews? WW2 writers need to come up with a better villains.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm shocked that the most obvious explanation for why this fiction is so popular was missed - it's literally not something most people have experience with! Of course people are interested in stories about that which they know nothing about, because reality is mundane and you have to actively seek out the interesting things in what you are familiar with. Rare is the story that is interesting even while historically accurate, and even then, it's typically because the audience isn't familiar with such things. Shows like White Collar, movies like Avengers, books like Twilight or Hunger Games, etc. are pieces of fiction that the reader has no experience. Why wouldn't they be fascinated at how these could be imagined?


Secondly, look at Tanner's examples of older heroes explicitly seeking out power.




This was not some new ideal in Shakespeare’s day. For the sake of name Athena spurs Telemachus away from home; for the sake of rule she spurs Odysseus homeward bound. Yudhishthira gladly leads his brothers on the path of dharma, but it is a dharma of kingdom and acclaim. Aeneas, Sigurd, Gawain, Gilgamesh, Rama, Song Jiang—search the old epics and annals for the modern distrust of heroics, and you find it in none of them.




Notice how frequently divinity appears. Yudhishthira and Aeneas are the progeny of gods, Rama is a god, etc. Indeed, this should not be surprising - when the hero is given a form of divine mandate, that mandate is often moral itself. To obtain power to carry out this mandate cannot be immoral. These gods are not The Corporation from the Waifu Catalogue or some evil ROB.


In contrast, Katniss Everdeen, Harry Potter, Divergent, etc. are not given such a mandate (I haven't read the last one, but from what I've heard, I don't recall any mention of gods in the Greek or Abrahamic sense). They are products of minds raised in a far more secular society.


This is not a rebuttal to Tanner, to be clear. I have not grappled totally with how one would rank the reasons he and I have listed, or any other reasons people come up with. But I would encourage at least some skepticism towards Tanner's case that this is so obviously an example of how Westerners have been rendered impotent and conforming.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Inevitably this will result in the deaths of French civilians, who are not only innocent of Nazi crimes but victims of them, and our allies in this fight. So the crucial question I pose to you is: how many French civilian deaths are tolerable to ensure the success of Operation Overlord?"




There is no upper limit on how many civilians could die with the actions being entirely acceptable. The key point is how necessary any particular action is. Militaries are mandated to take on a certain risk by virtue of being non-civilian, and that risk can be asymmetrical if you're the invader. For example, it may not be acceptable to bomb a factory making fighter jets that kills 10 people if those jets can be shot down in the air by SAMs even though the latter is more dangerous to the armed troops.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Social taboos don't develop as some representation of a society's shared ethical considerations, they develop as a mechanism to control the behavior of members of society.




That's contradictory. If there are shared ethical considerations, by definition they are controlling people, because people place serious weight on following one's moral values.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And for me the essay wasn't even fun to read, it has a lot of Curtis Yarvin-esque beating around the bush.




I'm not sure how much beating around the bush you can get when you say things like "You still have 42 million feral blacks milling around."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Regarding 1, it's about the power of being the default. They can't literally force you to not call the long-tailed duck by its older name, but they're generating an incentive for everyone to not understand what you mean anymore. If they can change everyone and everything around you, then you either get branded a crank (and see the following social status drop) or have to spend your time clarifying what you're referring to.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A bit rambly, but I wanted to take it beyond race swapping to bring up what I feel is the elephant in the room, copyright.




To extend this further, even in the absence of copyright, you'd have contentions over what symbols and stories should mean because you can only have one cultural consensus on anything - that's the meaning of the word consensus. Demanding that people not care about what others say is pointless, especially when some consensuses are rooted in what is moral or not.


Who are the Ghost Busters? A group of men who fight ghosts in the 1980s? That's not the answer some people want.


Who is Ariel? Is she a black mermaid? That's not the answer some people want.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The problem with race swapping is that people (rightfully) associate it with lazy cash grabs.




To clarify, are you arguing that people only get upset that they're not being pandered to?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is nothing incoherent about saying the okayness of a sex act, or sex in general, is contingent upon the context. The idea that you have to pick "big deal" or "not a big deal" for all circumstances is silly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 29, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


How do I find non-fiction books free of excessive progressive influence?




Find reviewers you trust to focus on the actual content and listen to them. That's what reviewers are literally for, you shop around based on your tastes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


However society still see's a rapist as someone morally worse than someone who commits grevious bodily harm on someone before spitting in their mouth




Probably because consent is the thing that people are assuming in the case of sex being "not a big deal". It's not a blanket statement about all sex, just like pro-lifers not being blanket pro-life in every situation.