drmanhattan16
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User ID: 640
drmanhattan16
6mo ago
I respect that enough to ignore the whole religious ethno-state deal, or even the occasional human rights violation.
Why?
drmanhattan16
7mo ago
Doing whatever the fuck you want with something you own should not be a political act. Alas, here we are.
It's one thing to say that, for example, watching MCU movies because they're "in" at the moment doesn't mean you endorse the idea of capitalism, it's quite another to say that your very deliberate modding choices don't at the very least say something about where your lines are. I explicitly use mods that many others find discomforting or crude because I don't ultimately care. But I wouldn't turn it back around and ask "Why are these people criticizing me????" The criticisms are coherent, I just reject them in the end.
Stardew Valley has had mods that turn the sole canonically black character and his half-black, half-white daughter totally white. I very much doubt this is because people thought he didn't fit in organically, he explicitly has an outsider background (comes from the city to the town). It's entirely valid to ask why someone may want a mod that turns this character white.
I say this as someone who agrees with your position on such mods. I truly don't give a fuck about someone making everyone in a game white or removing LGBT flags from a game, and I think mods that allow you to do those things are ultimately fine, just as mods that do the opposite are equally fine. But I'm not going to pretend the criticisms are invalid - I just don't share the values of those critics.
And all the gaslighting about how it's not a big deal, why are we so annoyed by it immediately becomes a huge fucking shut down the internet deal whenever someone takes it back out.
Probably because there's a lot of people who seem to think this man had a valid point. But what do I know, maybe all the people making a stand against indoctrination are shaking their heads at a man complaining about the expansion of an option that he could have gotten through in seconds.
By all means, I'll march alongside you when you want to complain about "pale, male, stale" is a thing. But I'm going to look at you quizzically if you also want to defend the idea that games shouldn't even try to be inclusive to people who aren't like you.
drmanhattan16
7mo ago
I am not on the left, so can't comment on why they seem to support it so strongly. My suspicion is that 4 years martingaling[1] the claims about Russian interference in our elections have built Russia and Putin into something resembling a Marvel comic villain and/or the nazis.
Most charitable themotte.org explanation ever! It can't be that people on the left genuinely don't agree with the idea of a war to annex territory or conquer another sovereign nation, it must be that they have a childish and wrong view of Russia.
drmanhattan16
5mo ago
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.
drmanhattan16
7mo ago
Right-wing boycotts have taken off since twitter became neutral.
What's the proof of that?
drmanhattan16
7mo ago
Okay, but how do we know that Twitter was the primary problem?
drmanhattan16
4mo ago
What will be left of Ukraine after Russia and the West are done with their proxy war?
Ideally Ukraine will be a part of NATO as its allies fund its reconstruction. Even better if it means the death of current Russian regime. No better message for every other tyrant eyeing the lands near them.
It's hard to get good numbers as both Russia and Ukraine lie about everything. But it feels that Ukraine is exhausted and will soon lose this war. My heuristic for this is reading between the lines of the news.
"Both sides lies" is a meaningless platitude. Perun covered this exact topic 2 weeks ago and argued that Ukrainians are still incredibly supportive of fighting Russia, though they recognize that its going to be hard and grinding. Russians are harder to poll due to fear of state punishment for the "wrong" opinions, but even then, there's less support on the Russian side for fighting the war to its conclusion than there is on the Ukrainian side. He also doesn't ignore all the things "between the lines", talking explicitly about the average Ukrainian soldier's age issue in the linked video.
I have to ask, at this point, why does the West still support Ukraine? Yes, it's very convenient that Ukraine is willing to destroy itself to hurt Russia. But, as a utilitarian, I am very skeptical of the benefits of "grand strategy" type decisions like this. The world is complicated. If we let Putin have the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine will he then demand the Polish-speaking parts of Poland? No. It's not like this war has been a resounding success. Furthermore, he could die tomorrow.
Supporting Ukraine is an affirmation of the post-WW2 status quo in which war for the sake of expansion will not be tolerated. Russia may fear Ukraine slipping from its control, but the reason Eastern Europe did that is precisely because Russia has acted on this notion of spheres of influence. Moreover, every dead Russian, while tragic, and every spent ruble on military equipment is part of the cost that Russia will have to deal with. No better cost-effective solution for depleting the resources of an expansionist and corrupt system.
Moreover, you know why Putin won't demand the Polish parts of Poland? Because Poland is in NATO. That's precisely the threat of Ukraine after the 2014 revolution, it may join America's umbrella and then it can never be touched.
Peace would be nice. But, and I recognize that I have less stake in the issue given that I'm not losing people myself over the issue, I believe it would still be good for the Ukrainians to continue fighting. I support giving them as much as they ask for and more.
drmanhattan16
4mo ago
That thread is by far the most popular ever on that subreddit, and lists evidence that IH is a Nazi. I’d summarize the evidence as “IH has a 4-chany sense of humor, has made some edgy jokes, and **follows mainstream conservatives on Twitter.**”
The issue with the bolded part is that that's not a defense. In particular, the ones they cite are Libs Of Tik Tok, Gavin McInnes, and Ron Desantis. You could maybe excuse Desantis, but you still have to grapple with the question of whether mainstream conservatism itself moved in the direction of Nazism in recent years, which is probably something IH's accusers don't have any issue believing. They might be wrong, but it's not a trivially dismissed point of evidence.
For instance, many of the evidence points are that IH has made jokes in his videos about Nazis and the KKK. In one video, he put 14/88 in the background
You're improperly summarizing the actual point that post made - The game being referenced where he put "14/88" in doesn't allow values for that field if they aren't divisible by 5. He had to choose that number.
These arguments strike me as so divorced from reality that it’s difficult to bridge the gap. These jokes are not actually making light of Hitler, Nazis, and the KKK.
This is a valid defense, but it's impossible to prove just from IH's actions where he actually stands on the topic, and so you can't tell he's saying these things to just mock the left or he's doing it because he's inserting what he actually thinks as jokes. It's not an unheard of strategy - Nick Fuentes has a clip of him saying that humor was a way to promote his brand of politics and that he couldn't obviously be forthcoming about what he actually believed.
I've watch IH's videos, including the ones mentioned in the post you linked. The Bike-lock professor one was straight up "4chan does good thing by catching attacker" and mocks neopronouns at the beginning of the video. Which part of this is mocking the lefties?
Ultimately, IH needs to cease his policy of silence and be forthcoming - both about the plagiarizing and where his actual politics stand. That's inherently the burden you take on when you aren't in the Overton Window. That applies to literally anything a person does.
drmanhattan16
2mo ago
If you want a peaceful transition of power, you need to be able to convince the losers that they lost fairly and that they have more to gain by continuing to work within the system than they have to lose by checking out of it or blowing it up.
Is there a responsibility, in your view, for the losers to examine if their real objection might not be principled, but literally over just losing?
drmanhattan16
7mo ago
Okay, but where are the failed attempts at boycotts quashed by Twitter?
A far more likely explanation is that for nearly a decade now, right-wingers have been continuously pushing a narrative that seeks to cast LGBT people as crazies, pedophiles, and/or some kind of evil. Part of this has very much been focusing on the T in that acronym over the others. Far easier to get boycotts going over that than gay people. I don't think the particularities of the social media platform all these people congregated on is particularly important.
drmanhattan16
6mo ago
No, I mean why do you endorse a position in which technology and civilization have such value that they can balance out moral obligations? Most people would say that morality comes first, always. In a sense, that's precisely what morality is, the rules that hold utmost importance and must be obeyed should there ever be any conflict. You don't even dispute the idea that what Israel is doing is immoral.
You say that technological innovation and civilization creation are aspects in which Israel does so well that its immoral actions can be ignored. Would you say the same if the costs or consequences of those actions fell on you or those you cared about? If the cost for Israel's success was the death of your parents, your wife, your children, or even you, would you still make the same argument?
Now, you could argue that your human responses are irrational. Feelings are stupid and gay, after all, there's no reason your chemical reaction to seeing your family killed by a drone should dictate the actual morality you hold to. But talk is cheap. I've debated people who struck me as incapable of separating the reality we all inhabit from any hypothetical world I proposed. It's easy to bite bullets about what you would accept when the only one biting actual bullets are your adversaries.
drmanhattan16
8mo ago
What's wrong with arguing whether a man who owned slaves and helped found America was a good person without having to use one of the most mind-killing words in all of discourse?
"What's wrong" is that it would be very difficult and awkward in an interview to describe Jefferson in a way that didn't just make people reading go "oh, you're trying to say he's a racist." By any reasonable definition we have, we could consign Jefferson to the category. But Robinson may just genuinely not get that Rufo would never admit it because "Rufo admits CRT was right" is the kind of headline people would unironically parrot forever when discussing him.
Why Robinson decided to interview Rufo is beyond me, it should have been obvious that as "new" as the arguments might be, the incentives for a persona are entirely different from that of a person.
drmanhattan16
2mo ago
Meanwhile they get a potential embarrassment and have to expose their identity.
Huh? You're talking about having to expose their voices? I don't think that really constitutes "expose their identity".
Sure, we can certainly discuss what it says and how we would go about proving it and so on and so forth. What I reject is that idea that it doesn't say anything about you.
Edit: to more directly address your point, I do not believe that people's modding preferences are so obviously segregated from the rest of their views. In the context of Stardew Valley, I'll afford any person who wants it charity when they say they downloaded a mod that only made the only black person white because they didn't like his art or whatever, but I'll conclude that this person is more likely to be a racist than not.
Anecdotal evidence: there are several mods for Darkest Dungeon that are lewd. I don't believe that people who use them, including me, are misogynists, but I do think people using them aren't opposed to all objectification of people.
drmanhattan16
7mo ago
Someone on the right is undoubtedly reporting on it. Where are the reports of the quashed boycotts?
drmanhattan16
7mo ago
In the literal sense, nobody takes the other side of this, though. Trivially, if I make deliberate modding choices, then that tells the world that I made those deliberate modding choices.
The OP is clearly saying you cannot infer anything about their beliefs or worldview on the basis of the mods they play. That is what I don't agree with. Those are not trivial things.
if someone modded Stardew Valley to transform some brown pixels to beige ones, it's entirely possible that such a decision was motivated by the modder's deeply held philosophical/political/personal/etc. views which are bigoted, hateful, or whatever, but that can only be supported by additional external information.
Not every possible explanation is equally possible. I don't think people are missing the fact that the mod they were downloading, in the SV example, was explicitly about making a black character white. That context matters. Is it by itself enough to say a person is racist? Maybe not. But it does make it more likely.
drmanhattan16
10mo ago
Will this hamper the power of jannies to continue to turn Reddit into a woke echochamber?
The fact that this is where the conversation always goes is telling.
This is a blanket change that affects a great many people of all political ideologies. You might as well ask if a planet colliding with the Earth is harmful to Globohomo.
drmanhattan16
5mo ago
I thought we were shape rotators?
I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust.
If Marx Marxism is responsible for those deaths, do leftists have a point when they say that X millions were killed by capitalism?
Edit: Marxism, not Marx
drmanhattan16
7mo ago
No, actually, I don't know if any or all of your statements are true.
Getting the checkmark is a heavily influenced by how "notable" you are in media, along with whether there's a person with a Twitter contact working with/for you. There are people with massive YouTube followings without it and journalists who have it despite no presence to speak of. Insofar as Twitter's verified population is left-wing, it's heavily correlated with having a Twitter contact and having news articles written about you. All of this was how the pre-Musk Twitter ran.
But even if I granted all your "must admit" statements, that doesn't get you "quashed by Twitter". You need to declare that Twitter was taking political ideology into account. "Quashed by Twitter" implies active action by Twitter, and I'll even be charitable enough to say that "verified with political consideration" counts as evidence.
Propose all the mechanisms you want. They're still only theoretical until you prove them.
drmanhattan16
8mo ago
The problem is that even in an entirely good-faith argument, I don't know how you could come away thinking Jefferson isn't a racist by our standards. Such an argument might also give consider what describes a person when one thinks of them generally - should you think Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father or Thomas Jefferson, racist Founding Father? Or if we have to acknowledge this bigotry in every instance.
This is why I was saying the personas mattered. Rufo's status hinges on him rejecting the philosophy of the social progressives and other radical leftists he identifies, he has every incentive to not give them an optics win. Approach Rufo in a bar with no other people and make the same argument, he'd be far more amenable to it, I suspect.
drmanhattan16
10mo ago
See, I have to wonder about this kind of thing. What other flag could they possibly have in mind that they wanted banned? The Nazi flag? Unlikely to be flown there. The Gadsen flag? Probably not very salient politically to Muslims.
I won't deny the possibility that this really is some "Pride is not for the government to approve or disapprove via flags" principle, but I think this ban has a good chance of having been crafted specifically with the intention to ban the Pride flag from being flown. I legitimately cannot think of another flag which many Americans know the meaning of on sight.
drmanhattan16
10mo ago
(Side note: since we live in the clown world, I feel compelled to add a disclaimer that the word "barbarian" is used in purely descriptive, not pejorative, meaning - as "somebody who is not part of the imperial culture" - and, in fact, for the purposes of this definition, I am a barbarian myself and many of my friends are Barbarian-Americans)
It has nothing to do with "clown world", you are straight up analogizing the US to older empires that were far more explicitly formulated on a racial or ethnic basis, likewise analogizing illegal immigrants as less-civilized. You are free, of course, to idiosyncratically define "barbarian" as those who don't belong to the culture of the US (insofar as such a thing exists). But let's not pretend that this is some "clown world" shit, and that everyone in a "saner" world would understand that you weren't trying to insult those who are the "barbarians" here. It was an insult long before the advent of the "clown world".
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
Hlynka and all the people supporting his QC confuse me.
It's confusing because it seems like there's a great deal of people who think the fact of the matter is that the 2020 election was unfairly stolen by Trump. They argue the facts and think their side is correct in a verifiable manner. I understand this perspective, even if I disagree on the facts.
Hlynka's post and subsequent comments aren't about this. It's about how election deniers have to be persuaded by the non-deniers that there was no ultimate theft. He interweaves this with references to attempts to suppress investigations into election fraud, but his subsequent comments in that thread make it clear that he assigns the election deniers no obligation to evaluate their own motivations.
If I talked with a person who disagrees on the facts, I know they would be willing to publicly state that the facts are the only thing that should determine the conclusion. Whether there was fraud or not, a stolen election or not, the facts are the sole method of determining this. But Hlynka isn't arguing the facts because his revealed preference is debates over policy. And no, elections are not the same thing as debates over policy.
I will ask anyone here who supports his view the same question I asked him - do you actually care about the facts of the 2020 election, or are you just interested in negotiating over policy? Because if it's the latter, just be honest and we can avoid debating a topic which doesn't actually touch upon your real concern.
You know, this brings to mind Romeo + Juliet, a film that uses the exact same dialogue as Shakespeare's play, but changes the characters and setting to one that is familiar to Americans.
Would it be unreasonable for a British person to complain about this for the same reason? It's not inconceivable, the movie is partly a cultural and national swap in the same way Aragorn was race swapped - the original most certainly did not conceive of the character(s) this way. I say "partly" because they kept the same dialogue, and language is an important part of placing a culture.
And yet, I suspect most Americans don't mind this, perhaps because it was a swap in their favor, but probably because Shakespeare just isn't as big a culture war topic. Are the British upset about it? I doubt that as well, but maybe I'm wrong. I don't follow their media critics.
@problem_redditor says precisely what I suspect is the real belief of many here - that there is nothing illegitimate about X-swapping, only with the intentions behind it.
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