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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3225 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 17, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'll admit right away that I'm late to the party - the Motte, SSC and the subculture around all of it seems to have pretty much died down and I'm not sure where to find everyone other than Twitter, which I refuse to use. But I think I want to catch up with all of the stuff that happened and was important to you all at the time. I'm aware of multiple SSC best-of compilations, but what about the others? Don't we have some legacy other than Scott?

So, to the survivors, I have two questions:

  • What do you think are the best articles/arguments/comments/posts of the past decade?
  • What's the book/article/comment that attracted you to the community in the first place?

Substack is alive and well, and there are a whole number of good posters in adjacent topics, some of which used to be prolific posters on themotte (hwfo,kulak) but most, as expected, are from other places. The problem is that themotte is starting to outlive its usefulness - twitter is better for low effort posts and a pretty open platform nowadays, substack is similarly open but better suited for quality content, and the overton window has shifted so much that Scott is now effectively writing about the things he more-or-less banned us for. Though I'm still a bit salty he isn't apologizing or at least referencing to themotte about it in retrospect, overall I'm much more happy about it.

Themotte, in contrast, has always been more a medium-effort discussion platform that discussed high-effort content as opposed to generate it. Which is just a bit of awkward spot to be in.

Also, since nobody has mentioned it, you should definitely take a look at thelastpsychiatrist/Alone/Edward Teach. He was a significant influence on Scott, and roughly stopped posting (2014) at the time when Scott blew up (incidentally, this was also shortly after I became familiar with Scott). He's definitely more on the esoteric side than the rationalist side, though.

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