urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
No bio...
User ID: 226
Imagine if the enemy said "doing the hokey pokey is an endorsement of our cause." Or alternatively "doing the hokey pokey is pledging loyalty our cause." Well I would find it a pretty compelling reason to stop doing the hokey pokey.
At some point, this is just you allowing people you describe as your enemy to literally dictate what you can and can't do, which isn't a position of power, strength, or strategy.
If they get that much on your nerves, it's them who has power over you, not you over them. You're not defeating Newspeak by speaking in the old way -- you're creating a contra-Newspeak that's just as controlling, just as silly, and just as petty as what your opponents are doing. The fact that you're saying this is going on even in your own thoughts actually indicates that the Newspeak is working on you, not that you're resisting it. To put it in conflict terms, like you like, the enemy's in your head, which means you've already lost.
All the genuine hokey pokey lovers in the world aren't enough to outnumber the enemy's loyalists, and unfortunately they're all going to be misjudged as being part of the enemy's group just for doing what they love. They'll probably have to post a sign outside their gym that says "we don't endorse the enemy."
Alternatively, they might just continue to do what they love, and keep grilling dancing. Because, just perhaps, they won't mind if someone misjudges them as "part of the enemy's group," because they'd rather live life to the fullest than let ingroup/outgroup dynamics shape every aspect of their life.
I'm going to say to you what I say to the woke left when they similarly respond with fierce intensity to things the right does: living this way sounds absolutely exhausting, and soul-destroying, not life-giving or powerful.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3hr ago
Now would an Iranian newspaper be able to simply report "The Israeli military unit 'Allah is not real and muhammad was a big dum dum' is committing genocide"? I think not.
I mean, I think they would report that, because it would be a fantastic way to demonstrate that Israelis are infidels and blasphemers.
I also think if you're at the point of comparing yourself to the way Muslims respond to blasphemy, you should be seriously evaluating the emotional intensity you're applying to politics.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3hr ago
I mean, is it so terrible to say these people's names? You can obviously disagree with the way in which the events have been framed and understood, but at some point you're just giving ammunition to your opposition who can make the reasonable claim that you're trying to dehumanize Floyd or Trayvon by not treating them as people worthy of being referenced, even when relevant, and even to criticize them.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3hr ago
The classic example of people saying nice things about Nazi Germany is the autobahn, right? I think historians still feel free to compliment that.
My understanding is that at least some historians are arguing that the autobahn was started as a project before the Nazi takeover and they just completed an existing good idea.
But really, I think the thing that people secretly feel the Nazis did good with was the drip (as the kids call it), and the aesthetics. Triumph of the Will was one of the most cinematographically influential films ever made. Even when I was in school we watched that film in order to understand how compelling Nazi propaganda was, when I took a class on single-party states.
Star Wars took a lot of influence from Nazi aesthetics when depicting the empire (obviously -- stormtroopers!), and it's a meme in the Star Wars fandom that the empire's aesthetics are way better than the rebellion. I think in a lot of way that's people sublimating the psychological appeal of authoritarian aesthetics into a fictional format, where they can engage in memes that reference the appeal without actually calling for authoritarianism, which was obviously horrific to a great many people.
Communism also has great aesthetics, though limited by... the economic problems of socialism in the USSR. I think that's a feature of authoritarianism; control over cultural output means that culture can be oriented towards state goals, and all the psychological tricks of manipulation, persuasion, and appeal become essential to cement the regime's power. No one will ever create an election billboard more chilling than Mussolini. And look at this mosaic of Kim Il Sung: it shows nice composition, and the color is so cheerful and compelling. And the Great Hall of the People in Beijing just looks cool.
I think that kind of intense symbolism only becomes possible in religion, monarchy, and authoritarianism. Systems of power where the appeal is totalizing.
Just food for thought.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
5hr ago
When prima made that post about radical feminism and self-authorship, I worked on a post about different frames of view determining how people see their own lives and the lives of others. I really should finish that up and post it. Basically my point was just along your lines: feminists believe that the freedoms of men and women are different, and so they have a ready-made reason why things might exist that affect women more than men, and that becomes the default assumption. The null hypothesis is sexism if you have that frame of mind, and you need exceptionally strong evidence to counteract it.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
5hr ago
Bridgerton came into my thoughts. I would put that with Hamilton where they made a historical situation multiracial because that was a vision for the story, and no one’s under the impression that they’re depicting a realistic vision of the past.
retractors need to ask more questions like "Is it detrimental to a film's artistic worth for a white WWII pilot to be portrayed by a black actor?"
I think the point is precisely this. Yes, it is.
If the film is creating a dramatic version of a historical event, I believe it's fundamentally important to try and nail a depiction of the time and place -- including important demographic features like race. Hoffmeister's point is that putting black actors in the shoes of white historical figures robs the white people who actually did those things of credit, and gives it to people from another background, which distorts people's understanding of what history was like, in a way that would never be tolerated if it happened in the other direction.
I don't think people should be getting their opinions of the racial dynamics of the past from Hollywood, but nevertheless they do, and it's important that people not distort history unless they have an explicit artistic reason to do so, and "we would like to hire more black actors" is not an artistic reason, it's an HR reason, and a political reason.
I'm as angry at dramatizations that mislead in terms of plot and storytelling as I am about racial features, I just think the race-swapping is a uniquely silly element that's not about Hollywood being sensational -- which is something you can make an artistic argument for, however weak -- but about it being political. I agree with you that people should be able to make race-swapped movies about historical figures if they want, particularly if they have an artistic vision for it, but that's not what's happening and it's not applied fairly.
That's my view on the RAF situation -- and the critical point about this is that your comparison to Kermit is totally inapt, because Kermit the Frog isn't real, and the RAF pilots who save Britain from German bombers, and the British victims of the Blitz, were very, very real. We're talking about historical events that caused suffering and generated heroism among real people, in the real world. Titanic, for instance, is an interesting one -- and it's telling that this major film depicted the Titanic's passengers as very white and aimed for a realistic depiction of the dress and style of the period, even as it showed a love story that never happened.
Again, people shouldn't get their history from Hollywood dramas. But they do.
You wrote this:
Have people forgotten how the artifice of fiction works? The idea that what we see on-screen has to represent the literal truth of the fictional universe, hidden-cameras style, in every detail, is a very modern idea and a pretty dumb one.
It's certainly a modern idea, but so is the motion picture! "What we see on-screen" as a concept is very new, and so of course the ideas that exist surrounding it are new!
What people are responding to is the artistic concepts that have developed in response to a novel media; the motion picture has tropes, values, and consistent patterns as an artform, and violating those patterns involves a certain amount of intention. If people violate them to explore artistically, that's cool. They're not doing that, and it's detrimental to the artistic value of a film that they aren't.
What are those patterns?
Hollywood goes out of its way to depict the world -- real or imagined -- as convincingly as possible. They invest in massive CGI scenes to give people the impression that spaceships can travel faster than light. They burn render farms at full utilization to convince viewers that a beat-up old camero you see on the street could actually be a giant humanoid robot from the planet Cybertron. They have invented all manner of prosthetics to make Klingons from the planet Qo'noS seem plausible, and to convince people that Alex Murphy died and became a cyborg.
Your point that "what we see on-screen has to represent the literal truth of the fictional universe" is simply how Hollywood operates. That's what directors love about film! It's what actors are challenged by! It's why special effects are such a fascinating industry! And it's the unique blessing of the camera and the editor; the ability to carefully curate the experience to put the audience in the world as convincingly as possible. It's why people are enchanted by movies!
Pixar used to make fake bloopers for their movies -- yes, their animated movies -- because they knew that this enhanced the audience's feelings that what was happening on-screen was real, that the characters were, in a sense, "actors" in a live-action movie. That's how devoted Hollywood is to convincing people of the absolute reality of what's on screen!
What you're talking about, with "black actors can play white Hobbits", well, I simply do not agree in any way that this is the actual belief system of race-swapping casting. The point is that the Hobbits are themselves black, and always were. What you're arguing is not a steelman of the real views, it's just your own views that you're attributing to them. Which is fine! I like your views a lot better than theirs! But it's just not their views, and you're doing your own understanding, and your argument's strength, a real disservice to say that they are.
Actually, what you're talking about sounds like a play, which is a medium that grew up in a time of thespian scarcity and often acting troupes that had to make the best with the members they had. Obviously female roles were often played by men in certain time periods!
Plays require audiences to submit to what you call "the artifice of fiction" more intensely. That's the unique artistic opportunity of the play. But note that race-shifting historical figures in plays today is often an explicit artistic choice, not a "we chose the best actor for the role": Hamilton is exhibit A of this. Crucially, in Hamilton, there was an artistic purpose (however good or bad) for the race-swapping, and no one was under the impression that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton weren't white. With many historical films, that just isn't the case, and understanding of the historical figures' backgrounds are less ubiquitous.
But the artifice of fiction, as you describe it, was a time- and medium- based limitation of the theatre that audiences understood. In the world of Hollywood as it exists, to avoid making "what we see on-screen" different from "the literal truth of the fictional universe" is to violate the expectations, schemas, and assumptions the audience brings to the medium. That can be a fertile ground for artistic exploration! But you're not arguing that race-swapping is occurring for artistic reasons. You're arguing it's occurring for political and economic reasons -- and that the actual artistic vision is irrelevant to who people see on screen! That's not Hollywood's way.
But, I'll make you a deal: when Hollywood makes a Transformers movie where some guy just goes off-screen and goes, "bur-cha-church-cha-cha-ba-ba-ding-ding-church" and the frame cuts from a semi-truck to a guy in a haloween costume of Optimus Prime, we can talk about race-blind casting of historical figures and characters from tightly-constructed fictional universes.
An aside, but I still don’t understand this phenomenon either, how he came to be seen by so many people as the image of the “evil right” (as opposed to the “dumb or incompetent right”).
Well, it's in the paranthetical!
He seems like an actual smart guy and he's virile and articulate. That means that he's perceived as having the ability to implement right-wing policy without the dysfunction that follows Trump. Trump is considered a "gross old pig baby with cheeto spray-tan" -- that's how he's described in caricatures -- but Vance is a handsome guy with an Indian wife. He could win moderates, even some women, in a way that Trump struggles with.
But he also comes from the VC world, and there's a lot on the left that's incredibly skeptical of capital, seeing it as a spooky, hidden power base that influences the world without many checks or balances. So not only is he smart, but he's a capitalist, "striking from a hidden base" to influence the world. I'm guessing he prompts the same kind of "this guy is spooky" vibes that Republicans often feel about people like Soros, and Democrats have long felt about the Kochs.
Incidentally, my idiosyncratic-but-liberal fiancée actually likes Vance quite a bit, she sees him as flawed but sincerely wanting to help the country.
I have a friend who doesn't like Trump, I think she sees him as a pig who's not focused enough to solve problems without making a mess of things. Her guy in 2024 was DeSantis.
I do wonder if we'll see an increased vote total for the GOP among women after Trump's off the ballot, and particularly once he's passed off this mortal coil and doesn't wield influence over the GOP.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
11hr ago
I'm getting a certificate error from that link, looks like their cert isn't tied to the right domain. It's a Let's Encrypt cert too -- sounds like the cert renewal got tied to the server hostname rather than the website domains. Oopsie!
Yeah, but gay rights activists are angry that MSM can’t donate blood, because they feel it stigmatizes being gay.
But I agree with you, people valuing defeating stigma more than protecting people from serious diseases is a really bad thing. I think the gay community has long been in denial about how seriously HIV/AIDS created rather than reflected stigma against gay men, and my understanding is it became something of a rite of passage back in the day — “I’m pozzed, so I no longer need to worry about it.”
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
Every new administration tries to give the VP a prominent role after the election, and then like 2 months in they do something embarrassing, and the President's office just goes, "yeah, that will be a one-way trip to Siberia." Are there signs of life from J.D. Vance?
The framers almost immediately knew the VP was a dead office, I wonder why they didn't just significantly alter it when they passed the Twelfth.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
In a sworn statement, Barry O’Kelly said while conducting research for the programme he came across an advert on Facebook in Portuguese advertising rental accommodation at 79 Old Kilmainham Road.
I wonder if the renters were Portuguese or Brasileiros.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
And the Tim Walz thing backfired -- a lot of the right started talking about his history and views and he turned off a lot of the moderate white men they were trying to get. And then he got creamed in the debate with Vance, which counteracted Trump's embarrassing performance against Harris ("they're eating the cats of the people who live there").
I personally noticed Trump getting a big boost from moderates in the months leading up to the election; I know people who hated his guts who were angry at the Democratic party after the Biden debate, and people who were horrified when Trump was shot and considered voting for him for the first time.
Trump won because Biden died live on stage, and because Trump didn't. The election was televised.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
two or more unrelated persons living together who pool their income to make joint expenditure decisions.
New term for cohabiting just dropped: "two or more unrelated persons living together."
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
Another important point was trans issues — Reddit was really starting to crack down on that.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
I think they're being normalized as we speak.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
It's more of a mixed bag for the people possessing it, as you mentioned.
It also encourages people to pursue harmony, intimacy, and compassion, which are real positives. I don’t endorse the “I get whatever I want thing,” but I simply can’t bond with a disagreeable person because I care deeply about fairness and I prefer to resolve conflicts in a way where everyone is heard and cared for. I believe in stating preferences openly, and finding compromise; I’m certainly not interested in docility, but in every kind of human relationship I strongly prefer cooperation and compassion, because we all need it.
I usually think of myself as rather disagreeable, but that does sound like a description an agreeable person would give of themselves. Huh.
Anyway, I would frame the attractiveness of agreeableness as being more about similarity and bonds of affection. I simply don’t like disagreeable people, not because I can’t exploit them (I don’t like exploiting anyone!) but because I feel like I’m constantly being exploited by them, if they even see me as a source of any value, which they usually don’t. I don’t like living like that. I’d rather lay cards on the table and cooperate rather than engage in games of status and one-upmanship.
It’s true that agreeable-agreeable pairings can have their own downsides, but I’ll stack them up against other personality combinations any day, particularly for intimate relationships. Especially if you couple your agreeableness with honesty and forthrightness. Maybe that’s what HEXACO honesty-humility+agreeableness looks like? I don’t know.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
The hypergamy crunch is just around the corner. We're already at a point socially where there are three women to two men among new college graduates. This clearly cannot last.
Why can’t it last? Sure, over timescales some groups will have more children than others, but liberalism is a powerful identity package that has a lot of ability to convert people from conservative backgrounds.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
I place about a 20% probability on a default and/or civil war in the next 20 years, but Christ is King so who cares?
My mother and I were driving on the highway last night and talking about how the world seems to be going crazy, and half of young people aren’t even vaguely interested in family formation, and no one seems connected to any one any more.
And then the rain cleared and we saw a double rainbow, and she quoted from Genesis: “I have set my bow in the sky.” She continued, “We were just talking about how the world feels crazy, but God’s in control.”
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
I think domestic life will be bad, in the sense that people will grow more atomized, disconnected, and lonely, while housing and health costs will continue to absorb more and more of people’s wealth, and the division between the haves and the have-nots grows even more intense.
I think both the left and the right realize this is our destiny, it just depends on how you frame it which side starts cheering and which side starts going, “well, actually…”
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3d ago
This is why people don't want to make top-level comments.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3d ago
bustr
Excuse me, what-str?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3d ago
You said you're single. Have you thought about putting your interest in larger women to work?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3d ago
The two most interesting motte posts that shaped my views on the dating world were one by a poster who I don't think posts here any more, who made an argument that the sexual revolution can't be inherently responsible for the male-female happiness gap because such a large gap is present only in the United States and not in Europe, where the revolution happened even more strongly; and @Terracotta linking a chart that showed the massive climb in obesity in the US, suggesting that if you're looking for a woman who does not qualify as obese or overweight, you're limited to the top 25% of women -- who, of course, are interested in similarly-top men.
Both of these convinced me something funky is going on in the US in particular, and that the obesity crisis, as well as general physical fitness (young men don't have muscle like they used to), are responsible for the unique unhappiness of American dating.
The comment you replied to is filtered.
More options
Context Copy link