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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25345 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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mostly because it would fuel another 4 years of incessant leftist whining all around me

There were definitely better ways to phrase this. This was antagonistic.

At the risk of being tedious, how would you phrase it if the goal is to convey the directionality and annoying tone of interlocutors? I can see why this would be inappropriate to direct at another user and can be off-putting more broadly, but really, sometimes people really do whine about something a lot and some people will experience more or less of it based on what communities they're part of. As a fan of the Buffalo Bills, I am sick of incessant Bills Mafia whining about Lamar Jackson winning the MVP. I even like the people that are whining just fine! It just gets old. I think describing my irritation with their endless complaints about the same old shit more or less requires being a little tonally mean.

I see examples as the key to complying with the rule to "Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion." The highlighted phrase is part of a 136 word paragraph that is emphatic without being explicit.

For example, "It'll start causing fights between me and my wife again.". I feel as though I have learned something about Americans and their politics. But have I? I imagine telling a friend "America politics is so toxic that if Trump wins, it will start fights between men and their wives." And my friend will be skeptical, pushing back with "Really? How does that work?" and I won't know. I've just got the vibe, but if I'm pushed as to what specifically is meant by "incessant leftist whining", I have to fall back on what I already know.

Perhaps what I already know is wrong. The emphatic nature of the paragraph encourages me to believe more strongly in what I already know. The lack of explicitness deprives me of the opportunity to believe less strongly in what I already know because it clashes with the examples given.

Ah, yeah, I guess. Sorry! I wasn't really thinking about it on that level, just expressing my thoughts/frustrations.

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