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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35417 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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I don’t think it has to be very big. That subset gets to be very loud.

It only takes one “KKKILL_ALL_*******” or fedposter to make a lot of people nope out. Not dealing with that, going to hang out somewhere with fewer witches, etc.

Meanwhile, Twitter and Reddit and the like end up cultivating that image of non-witchiness as they attempt to catch the fleeing users. That means alienating the free speech absolutists, but not the garden-variety authoritarians.

Yeah, but those people shouldn't do that. KKKILL_ALL_blahblah doesn't actually do anything, or affect anyone, it really is just text, and one can just laugh or ignore it. It genuinely doesn't matter!

And... it isn't about a generic, reasonable sense of how harmful something is, there's clearly a larger, disproportionate factor - reddit banned /r/waterniggas for the soft n-word, and /r/legoyoda for vaguely racist memes, but still has /r/opiates, /r/cocaine, /r/heroin, /r/meth, etc. And - this isn't even entirely left-coded, /r/ageplaypenpals got taken down despite being entirely fictional because p*do stuff is considered to be terrible while something like /r/rapekink, despite describing things like likely-fictional (although "All stories here must be actual events told by the person with the victim's perspective" is in the sidebar) "rape-bait".

I think the drugs vs rape/pedo stuff makes sense.

People on those drug forums at least teach each other harm reduction techniques and are usually positive and supportive for those who say they want to quit.

If you click on any of the subreddits, I'm not seeing any harm reduction.

Bear in mind - all of these should be unsuspended. But the a very similar argument, and honestly a more convincing one, goes for the roleplay-fetish subreddits ("it gives them an outlet for their fetish that doesn't harm anyone"). (weird fetish subreddits are also supportive of people who say they want to stop doing the fetish, they are extremely big on consent.)

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I think "free speech absolutists" are noticeably different from "right-wing posters," even if they feel some common ground these days.

That’s where the evaporative cooling comes in. Trimming off the few most vocal is liable to shift the norms and to discourage others.

So long as the few most vocal are either principled libertarians or lost channers, moderation is going to have a pseudo-leftwards bias.

Here on Motte we’ve seen similar effects. Certain high-profile commenters get banned for being inflammatory, and then a few others announce dissatisfaction, followed by flouncing or suicide-by-mod. I want to say the reasoning is usually “Mod X is a partisan hack.” @HlynkaCG, I’m struggling to remember names, have you got anything?

Well Zontargs', flounce over the "True, Kind, Neccesary" rule that lead him and many of our other more "abrassive" regulars to leave and form /r/CultureWarRound up is probably the most notable instance. And I suspect that the memory of that event is what leads to a lot of the older libertarian types to characterize the Motte's moderation as left wing.

I'm not sure how far into the "inside baseball" of the mod team it's appropriate for me to delve, but we did have a few High profile flouncers that I was sorry to see and that lead to some heated discussions in mod chat. Yodacrist, IprayIam and McJunker, being the ones that stick in my mind.

We also had a few serial flouncers IE users who'd show up and post for about a month before stirring up a bunch of drama over some percieved slight, post a long winded rant about how they were leaving because the mods were strangling the discourse only to show up a couple weeks later with a new account and repeat the process.

Disagreements with Zorba and Trace over how to handle this later category was perhaps one of the issues that lead to my leaving the mod team.

Certain high-profile commenters get banned for being inflammatory

Where inflammatory is best understood as "in violation of implicitly leftist values".

Implicitly leftist in the same way as tankies regard "having stuff" as an implicitly bourgeois value, maybe.

When you filter against abrasive personalities, you are filtering for leftists, who are on the whole higher in agreeableness.

Where inflammatory is best understood as "in violation of implicitly leftist values".

I doubt that.

Anecdotally, for all the complaints about moderation targeting the right, the sort of "libertarians or lost channers" who make those sorts of complaints seem to have an even rougher time in explicitly conservative/right-wing spaces.

For this community, that’s a bit complicated, given the more classically-liberal principles involved.

This community descends from a cult of personality based around a neurotic progressive who disliked a bit of the left's excesses (as they threatened him personally and he's highly neurotic), but outside of those personal threats was enthusiastically on board with the entire far-left culture.

So much so he deliberately invested the whole of his private and personal life into those far-left environments!

Of course the values this community enshrines are implicitly leftist. They're less left than they could maximally be, but nevertheless still enshrine leftist ideas.

How would this community look and even work if it adopted different values? Are you implying there is a workable and desirable alternative, and one that has no taint of leftism? Or are you merely issuing a complaint with no further implications?

It'd look very similar, of course, much like how The Schism and Culture War Roundup largely look identical despite being polar opposites. There'd be different participants and opinions being discussed, but it'd work fine.

If you want my ideal forum, it's a place where all the banned effortposters from yesteryear are given free reign. All the best writers in The Motte's history got banned and the community has forever been lesser for it.

So the difference would be that making effortposts grants you protection from bans? Is that the Motte minus its leftist values?

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Perhaps you ought to clarify what you mean by "leftist" and "rightist" then.

I'm using standard definitions of left and right here.

The rules here have always been designed to promote the kind of discussions the modteam wants. We should, then, rightly conclude that the rules, the justifications for the rules, and the endurance of the rules serve to support the vision of this community('s leadership).

Why has this community always prioritized tone policing over anything else?

Why has this community had an HBD moratorium?

Why has this community schismed and broke apart multiple times over 'witches', which are only ever right-wingers? The immediate prior incarnation had two entirely separate schisms over it: most of the right-wingers left because the mods were silencing them (or got banned, same thing), and the left-wingers left because a mod was angry they didn't get enough of them -- and then he stayed as a mod! Incredible.

Why does this community have essentially no one we'd acknowledge as bona fide Red Tribe?

The values of this community have always been the values of Scott Alexander last decade. Scott Alexander is unambiguously a leftist. Furthermore, he is even a progressive, in openly progressive-coded relationships, supporting openly progressive groups and organizations, in an openly progressive neighborhood in an openly progressive city in an openly progressive state.

What Scott considers "good, healthy discussion" is discussion not too upsetting to his progressive sensibilities. What this community considers good, healthy discussion is what Scott (before he went full greengrocer) did. It's "sane progressivism", but it's progressivism all the same.

You should understand at least a little. For all your frequent talks on honor cultures, I'd expect you to recognize that a mandate to "be kind" even when kindness is not deserved (for instance, someone is trolling in bad faith, but skirting by a banning) is anathema. It's also a prog staple.

I know you recognize it, because you frequently cop time-outs and naughty no-no's over it.

Why has this community always prioritized tone policing over anything else?

Because "multi-polar internet politics forum" is like one of those exotic nitro-saturated compounds that really, really don't want to exist. It takes considerable effort to keep it from blowing itself apart, or even to slow the fatal reaction down. Tone policing moderates runaway exothermic reactions to a level that is theoretically survivable. It still doesn't quite well enough in practice, but it works well enough that considerable value can be extracted before the probably-inevitable collapse.

Why has this community had an HBD moratorium?

Because specific users were flooding the threads with non-stop arguments about HBD, with a great deal of repetition and very little useful result. I'm not convinced the Moratorium was actually a good way to handle things, but I see little evidence that there was a better way. People do the best they can.

I think the problem you're pointing to is real, and I have an effort-post I've been trying to finish for years on the subject. Again, this forum is aiming to be something that does not want to exist, and that fact has regrettable and unavoidable consequences. Where I don't agree is the claim that there's anything approaching a better way. It's this or nothing, and it's questionable how long even this can be maintained.

Why does this community have essentially no one we'd acknowledge as bona fide Red Tribe?

As regulars? I put forward both myself and HlynkaCG, at absolute minimum. If neither of us satisfies this requirement in your view, I think you need to provide a more detailed definition of Red Tribe.

The values of this community have always been the values of Scott Alexander last decade.

The values this community started with were those of Scott Alexander from last decade. The values of Scott and this community have both drifted considerably since then, and pointed criticism of Scott and his arguments has not been rare.

What this community considers good, healthy discussion is what Scott (before he went full greengrocer) did. It's "sane progressivism", but it's progressivism all the same.

What this community aims for is conversations across the tribal divide. That can't happen if one tribe or the other simply leaves. That reality necessarily shapes the way this place works, and not always for the better. Still, the fact remains that conversation is the point, and other approaches work a whole lot worse. I'm posting here and not on CWR because there is pretty much no conversation on CWR. I'm posting here and not on The Schism because I have no confidence I'll be allowed to prosecute a conversation worth having on The Schism, whereas those conversations are still possible here.

You should understand at least a little. For all your frequent talks on honor cultures, I'd expect you to recognize that a mandate to "be kind" even when kindness is not deserved (for instance, someone is trolling in bad faith, but skirting by a banning) is anathema.

It's not ideal, but useful information can still be extracted from it, particularly when the masks come off.

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If you are saying that the reason ResetEra or RPGNet became totally insane is that evaporative cooling drove away everyone not-insane, I agree.

But I do not think you are saying that. I think you are saying "right-wing people really really want to say nigger and then when people get banned for saying that the whole left-wing march starts."

Any place useful, regardless of polarity, needs to keep out

  • fed posters

  • glowies

  • fucking idiots who are genuinely "on our side"

and barrels of ink will be spilled saying, in way more words, "our side has no bad people, they are all plants from the other side, and, man, speaking of the other side, let me tell you about them, did you see their claim that the only people posting hate on their forums are outside wreckers?"

Anyway. All that ink is irrelevant because as far as the place is concerned all three of those groups are identical and the antibodies to keep out one keeps out the others.

What’s a “glowie”?

An FBI plant.

They may or may not exist, but getting rid of people who might-just-as-well-be-glowies is an important skill for any group.

So as far as I can tell, fedposters are plants who plant incriminating "evidence" in fora, while glowies are plants that try to coax the same from the real posters? Is there a strict distinction between the two?

no, they're two different modes of the same basic behavior.

Federal agents have a long history of finding disaffected and dim but otherwise-peaceable people and encouraging them to participate, even minimally, in highly illegal activities of the agents' conception and design, with disastrous results for the individuals and often the rest of their community. Disaffected groups also tend to have a small number of not-terribly-bright people who try to do something, with disastrous results for their community. Whether the person suggesting poorly-concieved, pointless, doomed "direct action" is actually a fed or just fatally stupid is unknowable and largely irrelevant. Either way, treat them like they're radioactive.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/glowie-glowposting

My favourite

I do like that Mokou glowposting reaction picture.

On a completely unrelated note I wonder if anyone feels the same way I do about the Chinese net in that it‘s very heavy on the sarcasm and quite aggressive in tone; it is quite a bit different from older Chinese. (Though I suppose it is the same for any language that makes its way to the internet…)

So I don’t know if those two forums were hit by evaporative cooling or by hostile admin takeover. Couldn’t say. I’ve been thinking about smaller, hobbyist servers. The sort that start out with a “no politics” rule.

There is some subset of users which wants to use slurs. Maybe they’re edgy teenagers, maybe principled free-speech crusaders. They are more likely to lean right.

As long as banning members of that subset disproportionately hits the right, the window gets to slide left, even if the subset is really small. No ideology needed—though it certainly shortcuts the process.

Ok, now do "punch the Nazis" in a social context where it's clear that Republicans are basically Nazis. Or when the discussion is whether "punch the Nazis" is even an adequate response, since killing the vermin is obviously morally superior.

I think this is a product of the fundamental difference in how the trad right and mainstream republicans view political violence in contrast to how democrats and the bulk of the so-called dissident right/intellectual dark web view it. IE Violence as a switch, vs violence as a continuum.

If you're the sort of person who views violence as a switch, "punching the Nazis" is eminently stupid and frankly cowardly. We don't don't "punch" Nazis where I'm from, we shoot 'em. We murder the bastards and then use their still-warm guts to grease the treads of our tanks the way the lord and George S Patton intended.

If you're the sort of person who views violence as a continuum the above is absurd, and sectarian violence just part of a balanced and complete breakfast.

The switch is welded in the off position, or if not, it's close enough. Which means the people who view violence as a continuum uses threats, intimidation, and lesser violence to simply win while the other side is waiting for a red line to be crossed to throw the switch. It never will be, until the "violence as a switch" side has been whittled down to five guys in a broken pickup truck with a single-shot BB gun.

You can't tell me you haven't realized "punch a Nazi" is not literally about punching Nazis. That's just the catchy slogan. The essence of the message is "kill disliked right-wingers".

The continuum theory of violence is cute, but false. The lack of overt calls to murder are merely for plausible deniability. Everyone who unironically posts punch a Nazi is also cool with the Nazi getting righteous comeuppance from a brick to the skull.

Most people are perfectly comfortable with the thought of their political enemies being murdered. What people are not comfortable with is being seen for what they are.

I think this is a product of the fundamental difference in how the trad right and mainstream republicans view political violence in contrast to how democrats and the bulk of the so-called dissident right/intellectual dark web view it. IE Violence as a switch, vs violence as a continuum.

I can understand some of your beef with contrarians / the dissident right / the IDW, but... I beg your pardon, what now? Did I miss some Jordan Peterson video where he encourages people to get into fistfights with the woke? Is there some hidden Evergreen College footage, where Brett Weinstein is slapping students around? What on Earth are you talking about?

In the specific conversation I was witnessing (left to far left), the "punch vs. kill Nazis" wasn't so much dial vs. switch as it was taking the "punch a Nazi" meme and upgrading it 50-Stalins style.

I think one of the other aspects of dial-style is that it claims to tolerate sliding through multiple dimensions "better." I'm sure you're familiar with the hot vs. crazy graph? Imagine the same concept, but where one aspect is "level of violence" and the other is "badness of target." You can afford to be looser in your application of "Nazi" if all you're doing is, you know, just a punch.

It's the whole "your speech is violence, but my violence is speech" thing. Who, whom all the way down. I honestly don't know how you even have a conversation when the idea of neutral standards, applied regardless of actor, is one of the things under contention.

I honestly don't know how you even have a conversation when the idea of neutral standards, applied regardless of actor, is one of the things under contention.

You realize all talks are for recreational purposes, not means of resolving conflicts or furthering peace between tribes, and otherwise embrace conflict theory.

It only takes one “KKKILL_ALL_*******” or fedposter to make a lot of people nope out. Not dealing with that, going to hang out somewhere with fewer witches, etc.

Am I the only one who remembers when it was trending on Twitter, to seemingly no problem what so ever, to cheer all the old white men dying after the last census? To signal, crassly, how truly enthusiastic you were, and how much better you thought the world was, with more dead white people?

Left leaning spaces, if you take for granted that Twitter and Reddit are left leaning, absolutely support "KILL ALL ******" posts, so long as you are talking about Republicans, or suspected Republicans. If you don't nope out of that just as hard as when you see someone "just asking questions" about the "Jewish Question", it's because you take it totally for granted.

I think that you make a good point and that it is under appreciated by the average Mottizen.

In my experience the sort of reflexive contrarian that complains about "left wing censorship" getting them banned from reddit for using [insert racial slur] is just as likely to get banded from ARfcom or the old Limbaugh Forums for the exact same reason.

Just look at HermanCainAwards. Leftist space celebrating the deaths of conservatives and it hasn't even been quarantined as far as I can tell. Or all the death wishes and threats of violence on Politics, a default sub.

Yeah, that’s fucked up.

I suppose I can’t prove it, but I don’t use Twitter, and my reddit account just posts on /r/rational these days.

#KillAllMen started nearly a decade ago and had quite some staying power too, didn't it? I still see it once in a (long) while.

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