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He did, and went to consider it justified, since the fake furry school worksheets included reference to My Little Pony, which, according to TW, LoTT should have spotted and should have tipped her off they are fake. To me a weak argument, since MLP isn't something people outside the very online niche are familiar with, and even if it is referenced it doesn't mean the worksheet is fake, since a teacher referencing some media for children, to make it more relatable, isn't outside the realm of possibility.
But since he has established a pattern of pointing of dishonesty, even by people who politically 90% agree with him, I see him as force for Truth.
Maybe. Maybe not. You either wage information war to humiliate, alienate and discredit your political opponents, or you don't. TracingWoodgrains may be of a different quantity than David Gerard, but he's proven he isn't of a different type.
From the very bottom of my heart, go screw yourself.
Yes, yes, civility violations and all that. Mods, warn me as you will and ban me if you must; I believe this will mark my first violation of this sort. But I stand by it, and sometimes, things like this need to be said.
To you, to everyone like you who thinks that about me here: go screw yourself.
I have always been perfectly upfront about who I am, what I do, and why. I have aimed to remain earnest, consistent, open, and push constantly against falsehood and towards painting clear pictures of the truth, including in controversial and sensitive situations. I stake my reputation and my name on my work. The Libs of TikTok saga was poorly executed on my part but was motivated by precisely the same thing as my FAA reporting and this: a deep-running frustration at people's willingness to spread and cheer convenient falsehoods to advance their causes.
Have I made missteps? I don't know anyone in the arena who has not. But I am immensely proud of my work as a whole, and every time I return here and find miserable scolds like you grousing about bitterness you've never let go, it disgusts me.
Screw you, screw everyone like you here, and if I didn't know perfectly well that plenty of people here do not think like you, I would delete my posts here and never spend another moment on this site, because you and yours have dragged it into the gutter and I don't need to spend my time around people determined to see nothing but the worst in me. Imagine writing something like this after I spend a month exhaustively documenting the malicious history of one who has been spreading propaganda against communities like this before either you or I had anything to do with it. Imagine having nothing better to do than dig this rubbish up, than look to start a stupid fight over nonsense. You should be ashamed of yourself, but of course you won't.
You can insult me when you've put your money where your mouth is a fraction of the amount I have. Until then, go screw yourself. You and Gerard deserve each other.
:(
You are correct; let this be your first warning.
That's fine. Participating someplace where a significant minority of the community care about nothing but digging through old grievances every time I post gets old very, very fast, and there's not really a point to beating around the bush on that. Once, this forum meant a great deal to me, and many of the individuals on it still mean a lot to me, but the space as a whole lost the mandate of heaven long ago despite your own good work and the good work of the other mods.
In the past couple of months, I've met more than a dozen motte users I read avidly, respect, and have fond memories of in real life, at several events tied to this broader community. Almost none of them post here anymore. The Motte had a good run and contains a lot of good memories, but for all practical purposes, I think its run is over. Here’s to a glorious diaspora.
I encourage those of you who enjoy what I have to say to join me on Twitter or elsewhere. At this point, the conversations there are richer, the community there healthier, and participation there is more meaningful than it is here, and I have very little to gain from kicking around someplace where some 1/4 of the userbase want it to be crystal clear that they loathe me every time I post. There was a time this was the best discussion space online, but that time has passed and it's time for relics like me to move on.
All the best.
You just spent weeks digging through old grievances dating back a decade, and then made it a top-level post about it. On multiple websites, even.
Yes, I realize that you feel yours are important and valid and other peoples are beneath acknowledgement, but this is part of why you are getting pushback from people with longer memories of your past conduct.
How can it be a glorious diaspora if you keep coming back after denouncing it?
This isn't your first flounce. You came back after establishing the Schism, you came back after Liberals of TikTok, you came back after the site switch, and probably several more breaks I'm not recalling offhand. Between the recruitment attempts and the self-promotion efforts but also just to discuss emerging and contemporary news, you never stay away for terribly long. In much the same one that one is not stuck in traffic, but a part of the traffic, you are (still) a Mottizan.
You may leave for awhile, and all the longer for it being called out on it, but you'll return as you have multiple times before.
Until you come back again, and not just for the last words tonight or tomorrow.
I think it's misleading to call it "old grievances dating back a decade" when it's ongoing behavior that began a decade ago.
Just as it's misleading to dismiss criticisms Tracing's conduct during and since the LibOfTikTok affair as old grudge, given that a part of the bad behavior was the non-repentance, which is itself ongoing behavior.
This is a critique of argument structure, specifically why the defense of Tracing has to retreat from a motte-offense of categories of unacceptable behavior (the categories of bad behavior which is the subject of condemnation in the slam-pieces) to a bailey-defense of degrees and relativism (ongoing behavior is not a big deal because the other party is so much worse). The counter to a relativism-motte retreat is to reject the redefinition of standards and re-emphasize the original standards being used in the bailey-argument, which was itself categorical.
'My opponent is a [category = bad]' is not enough of an argument when one is also part of [category], and retreating later to 'My opponent is a [category=me=bad, but them > me]' after making the first argument is just a retreat to special pleading as to why the initial categorical argument isn't important after all. Similarly, defenses on a category level aren't really defenses if the category is also shared.
This is relevant to not only rhetorical arguments intended to convince people to feel something (such as that the target of a piece deserves opposition/resistance), but also to contemporary culture war politics. It's a significant factor as to why years of attempts to condemn Donald Trump on categorical accusations fall flats- Donald Trump is a serial liar/exaggerator, but so are his presidential opponents, and retreats to relativism and re-definition after the fact undercut the credibility of the opening. We've seen this in things like MeToo, when the movement was broadly signal-boosted by the Democratic Party when it was starting, but then not-so-slowly dropped when it became clear the standards were goring Democratic icons as much or more than the Republicans. And for the Republicans, this was a common failure state of those Republican politicians who would categorically condemn same-sex relationships, before they were found to be having a same-sex side-piece. It didn't matter whether they were having less gay sex than their political opponents- it mattered that, having made a categorical moral condemnation, they were doing it at all.
There are absolutely ways to condemn vices one also shares, but from a structural argument perspective, part of that requires not adopting overly-broad categorical moral condemnations (or defenses). You can do more tailored categories that build-in exonerating contexts (killing is bad, unless in self-defense), or start from a position of relativity (I'm bad, but this is worse), or even as position of human failure versus intent (I struggle and fail, but they don't even try). You can even strip the moral condemnation from the argument, so that more neutral framings let an audience come to a conclusion on their own rather than lead them to it by the nose via early and often use of pejoratives.
Okay, I'm not 100% sure what you're saying here, but none of it seems to have anything to do with what I said on the object level.
So...? That's not a counterargument. Misleading comments or misleading articles don't justify misleading responses here. An ongoing problem is not an old grievance.
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