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Has anyone been checking out the reddit and hacker news reaction to TW's FAA scandal follow-up?
He's downvoted to -44 on /r/atc, which applauded his essay last year. Highlights from the comments:
The top-voted comment on hackernews is accusing it of being a rehashed non-scandal laundered by authoritarian fascists. But the actual comments are mostly in favor, or pointing out that there's suddenly a lot of brand new accounts defending the FAA & claiming "this wasn't real DEI."
Grendel-khan describes the reaction:
Taking it for granted for a moment that a lot of this stuff is totally astroturfed by blueanon orgs with AI-assisted spamming, it looks like doubling-down and tripling-down on full spectrum information manipulation is still the only strategy on the menu, even as it's increasingly failing and backfiring outside of totally controlled environments like reddit and bluesky.
So, what are the next four years going to look like? Is there going to be any evolution in strategy? Are they correct that just repeating a party line hard enough will bring people back into the fold?
I think that right now it's easy to point at this sort of frantic concern-trolling and laugh, but in a few years the average voter won't remember anything about some FAA hiring scandal except that "Trump used a tragedy for a culture war attack on minorities." Because while they'll only read a hackernews thread about TW's article once, they'll have heard the counter-narrative a million times, and will be sick of mustering the mental resources to reply critically with half-remembered anecdotes in the face of emotional blackmail. Eventually they'll forget they ever questioned the need for DEI programs, because only maga Nazis think that. The majority of people will never even see it once because reddit moderators deleted every mention of the article from the default subs, and banned the people who linked it.
So don't count on the familiar manipulation tactics failing forever just because it doesn't seem to be working right now. There is still an enormous propaganda engine manufacturing public opinion, and if I was in charge I'd make fighting it a high priority. But the current counter-elite supporting Trump dismiss that arm of the cathedral as opportunistic mercenaries, and fail to recognize the threat.
Moldbug and especially Thiel may absolutely despise the press, but they see the manipulation of public opinion as a quirk of "demotic" regimes, and have no time for it themselves. Moldbug in particular dismisses color revolutions with the over-simplistic "why does the dictator not simply shoot the revolutionaries with crypto-controlled weapons?" Thiel is quieter but clearly sees controlling the murder drones and spying rings as more important than propaganda. Musk is the only one of Trump's big backers who thinks control of social media is important, and I'm convinced that's because of his showman's instincts and desire for attention rather than some strategic policy.
People here have been talking as if the left will shift to violence and hard power in response to their usual methods failing last year (more assassinations of Musk & Trump, etc.). I'm a lot more worried about them doing the same thing they always do and getting away with it, because people don't have lasting immunity to propaganda.
Ironic, given that just a few days ago we had people accusing TracingWoodgrains of being too leftist.
As someone whose positions are also sufficiently idiosyncratic that I don't fit in perfectly with either "side", I'm not unsympathetic to him. But this is simply the fate of all "centrists" - that's the reality of it. It would be like someone during WW2 saying "I don't support the British, or the Germans - I'm just neutral!" He wouldn't be looked upon with kindness in either country.
Ultimately if you want to avoid getting crushed by the tidal forces of politics, you have to decide which issues are most important to you, join the side that is most aligned with you on those key issues, and table your disagreements for a later date.
I really wish our resident loyal rightists at least used this opportunity to take a step back and examine their own reactions to him critically. It's human nature to hate tribal enemies, but in his particular case the apparent sense of betrayal that some felt over his attack on LibsOfTikTok seems to sit so deep that they are still having difficulties to even think straight enough to assemble a compelling argument against him, which can't be in their interest either in a forum full of autists whose response to social pressure is defiance. The degree of fuck-logic-and-charity indignation is something I otherwise don't see much here outside of some edge cases of sexual purity politics, such as abortion outrage or that one time when a card-carrying pedophile dropped by and ran a sort of AMA. (I'm still resentful of the mods for not cracking down harder on the hostile reactions at that time, since it was such a rare perspective to get. Probably the clearest sign that their problem is not so much a shared hatred of the left as it is an excess of sympathy for resident posters who lean right.)
Is this how loyal leftists in academia felt after the Boghossian affair, too?
I dont think thats it, I dont even remember that one. There where many incidents, one outlined in other responses to prima, all painting very similar pictures. I think what gets people mad is the self presentation as a "temporarily" embarrassed rightist. If you remember slightlylesshairyape (who I in fact talk with to this day on traces forum), he has very similar object-level politics, and he used to get anrgy responses to particular comments, but not this personal antipathy.
Link?
I thought the the hoax with the furry school assignment was pretty memorable. It affected my opinion of Trace, and the degree of outraged response that he'd stoop that low was a big component in him leaving the motte. I also think that's part of the reason he's sympathetic to hanania, despite him being an atrocious ghoul- he's one of not many conservatives that didn't snap at Trace for that stunt.
Good point about the difference in self-presentation (I'm still professorgerm back on reddit). I think another component is, to borrow Trace's phrase, that he's a "live player." Interacting before he became a media personality, he's just some guy in a forum and we're on level playing ground- like with SLHA. Now, it's different.
Ok, I its vaguely familiar now, but Im still not sure I get it. Reading the blockedandreported post on it, Im not outraged. It seems kind of pointless, and I can see how you might turn it into a bad and outragous argument, but it wasnt done there.
Well, it isnt for me. Anyway, nice to see you here. Though I have to admit I wouldnt have recognised you. I just went through your profile and theres a few typical comments, but propably too few to notice. Now I wonder, am I different here too?
That's good! A healthier way to approach it. I just can't shake it from the back of my head.
Yeah, it's been a while since I've made the longer comments I tend to make back at the schism, and in a pique I deleted a lot of my first comments here when I went away for a while. I still read here some but don't feel like I fit or have as much to say as I used to.
From what I've read, I think you're much the same here as elsewhere.
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Driving away effort posters is bad. Especially when it's via 'grudge mobbing' where the effort posters are saddled with the baggage of previous effort posts and have to face criticism for those posts every time they make a new one. Getting mobbed from multiple directions on multiple topics. Tracing got some of that last time I saw him here and it was not fair.
But effort posters driving away criticism is also bad. If you want to interact with an online space where everyone adores you as the minor e-celeb you are then you might need a different venue than an open forum. Walking on eggshells because the residential online royalty decides his balls need fanning today is in one word pathetic. It's one of the hallmarks of a toxic forum.
Tracing got support here along with the negativity. His ultimate response was to threaten to pack up his toys and leave. What he wanted done by the mods or the users of this site is still not clear to me, though it is very clear this space is poorer for him not being here.
I would however want to ask him and those who lament the lack of him: Why are they here? Is it not the discussion generated, negative and positive, that is a big part of the reason why? Surely the fear of losing the effort posters has to be weighed against the ability of the fringes to comment on them. And that instead of leveraging their own importance as an effort posters to ward off criticism, they might need to take the high road every once in a while and trust that their effort is appreciated despite the grudge mob.
On that note I'm not sure where people like Tracing will go or what they seek there. Last time I saw him he was having his world philosophy rejected by trad caths on X. Where the implicit proclamations of his own importance ring a lot more hollow than they ever did here.
This particular effort poster tried to break the forum in two and carry off half for himself.
So, uh, fuck that guy, I don't want him here.
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He's literally still a user here btw, pedophiles just have tougher skin (to their chagrin, sadly)
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IIRC, we did mod a couple of people who said things like "You should go kill yourself" or made woodchipper references, but we don't mod people for having "hostile reactions" as long as they aren't directly attacking people.
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