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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32826 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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Edit: Arab Islamic -> Arab/Black Islamic, per comment

Will the world ever move toward a new naming scheme for individuals? What might that new scheme look like?

WSJ reports:

An 18-year-old New Jersey man was arrested and charged Thursday in connection to threats he allegedly made to attack a synagogue and Jewish people, an incident that prompted an FBI warning last week.

Omar Alkattoul, of Sayreville, N.J., was charged with one count of transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce. Prosecutors said Mr. Alkattoul allegedly sent a document titled “When Swords Collide” to several people over social media and told one person he wrote the manifesto “in the context of an attack on Jews.”

(Emphasis mine)

Whenever anti-Semitic attacks take place in the US, it seems like there are essentially two possibilities, either the attacker is Arab/Black Islamic or white far-right, and his name often makes it obvious which category it is. The clarifying effect also applies to mass shootings--white sounding names evoke one conclusion, Black or Asian another, and a female name the most shocking of all.

I think the usefulness of names is broadly a benefit for helping readers make sense of the world, but this likely goes against the wishes of the median media class, who would decry any such pattern recognition as racist or perhaps sometimes sexist. The media seems to tilt the scales sometimes by varying the publicity level of photographs--displaying it more prominent when the identity of alleged perpetrator goes with the narrative and vice versa. But there isn't much that can be done with the name, at least not yet. I can see a future where names of perpetrators are suppressed too, perhaps using the pretext of not wanting to glorify mass shooters in that specific scenario, but perhaps sometimes meant to reduce supposed stereotyping.

This led me to wonder if by the year 3000 we'll still be trudging around with [FNAME] [LNAME]. We've been doing that for thousands of years already, but perhaps technology will make it such that a future digital handle becomes more uniquely identifying, and eventually supplant the current format.

For example, imagine a unique identifier formatted as such:

Chad-2980USMWA-Washington

The middle name incorporates the subject's birth year, country of birth, sex, race, and vocational bucket as envisioned by the parents (think nominative determinism--it's never for sure, but has some signifying value).

I imagine much better schemes exist. Surely the prevailing format of today is archaic and suboptimal for a futuristic world!

If we're going to see a change, look at non-European countries to lead the way on that. 45% of Koreans are one of Kim, Park, or Lee. By comparison, the three most common American surnames (Smith, Johnson, Williams) amount to around 2% of the population. On the first name front, we all know how popular Mohammed is thanks to Superbad, there are somewhere north of 150mm Muhammed's in the world. Honestly, there are times where I think that other countries didn't really "get" the whole system of Christian name Surname.

But there's nothing stopping you from calling yourself Chad-2980! We have a shocking degree of freedom to change our names in this country! You can just start calling yourself that, and places like your bank and your credit card company will often just start using it if you ask. Sign up for mail under that name. For ID you'll have to eventually go to the government, but even that doesn't have many restrictions on it. As the SSN has become more powerful (widely decried as the mark of the beast at inception), it's easier to change your daily use name. The SSN is the codebase running underneath the GUI of the name.

As an aside, one of my roommates back in law school convinced a girl he met online dating that we all referred to each other by our class rank. Like we'd greet each other as "74" or "139" or "6"; and every semester you had to relearn everyone's name because it changed.

two possibilities

The 3rd possibility is that it's a hoax carried out by a member of the Jewish community.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/us/jcc-bomb-threats.html

I've never heard of a hate crime hoax that was meant to implicate a minority. I've also never heard of a hate crime hoax meant to implicate a specific person at all, because that's legally dangerous.

(And to avoid some obvious replies, I mean central examples in a modern American context, no fair saying that there was a 1950's lynching that falsely accused a black person of hating whites, or Jews versus Arabs in Israel, etc..)

I've also never heard of a hate crime hoax meant to implicate a specific person at all, because that's legally dangerous.

If we're including threats sent by people attempting to be anonymous, back in 2014 one of the two threats that got Anita Sarkeesian to cancel her USU speech unless they agreed to forbid guns on-campus while she was there (which they legally couldn't do) was false-flagging as MrRepzion, a youtuber who had recently made a pro-gamergate video. The email itself came out in the FOIA release, page 16 and 78 with slightly different redactions, his name is redacted but the release provides enough information to confirm that he was the one mentioned:

My name is [MrRepzion] I am the [Redacted] of the hacking group known as 4chan and the official leader of Gamergate.

It is my understanding that a loverly young women named [Redacted].

At this moment, we have over 9000 bombs that we will use to blow up the TSC auditorium when [Redacted]. You dun goofed by inviting that stupid feminazi to give a lecture. You're fucking dead, kiddos.

We of Gamergate, or GamerGators, as we prefer to call ourselves, are sick and tired of you stupid feminists ruining everything by saying it's sexist. You all need a hug, some tea, and maybe a gentle back massage, and what better way to pacify you than by burning your faces off with high-ordinance explosives?

You can try calling the FBI to come areest me, but I'm behind 7 proxies and you'll never be able to backtrace this IP. Can't lulzback the [Redacted]

Oh, and I'm also fapping to all of your pictures right now. You're hot. It's a shame you're about to get blown up.

Sincerely,

[MrRepzion]

Glorious Winged Faggot Extraordinaire"

Sarkeesian mentioned the threat and that it claimed to be from gamergate, but not that it also claimed to be from MrRepzion:

Multiple specific threats made stating intent to kill me & feminists at USU. For the record one threat did claim affiliation with #gamergate

At this point supporting #gamergate is implicitly supporting the harassment of women in the gaming industry.

Unlike the other email none of the text was released or quoted by media outlets except for the word "gamergate". (Even after the FOIA release in 2016 I remember seeing articles mention the USU threats but none mention the MrRepzion part or otherwise take information from the release.)

Washington Post: ‘Gamergate’: Feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian cancels Utah lecture after threat

The FBI did end up knocking on MrRepzion's door and asking him about it 10 months later, he tweeted and made a video about it. This then matches up with the date that the FOIA release mentions:

03/18/2015

Seattle interviewed [Redacted] Seattle considers this lead closed.

And the details of the interview mentioned on page 33:

informed Agents that he would be posting a video on YouTube about the Agents' visit to his house as soon as the Agents left.

The actual sender was never found, sending emails anonymously is trivial. Sending phone-calls anonymously is less trivial but I think it's still possible, so apparently the Jewish bomb threat guy messed it up somehow. Anyway I mostly just bring this up because I think it's an interesting part of culture-war history that people should know about, but to bring it back to your post I think once someone is trying to send illegal threats anonymously he's relying on not getting caught rather than avoiding additional illegality.

Bring back the cognomen as nickname I say.

Optimisation of the sort you appear to advocate for is not in my opinion appropriate for humans.

If you can't earn your name by inherited birthright or by action in your life then you don't deserve it. Whether that is an optimised string as middle name, or your choice via whatever name change mechanism exists in your country is irrelevant.

If you can't earn your name by inherited birthright or by action in your life then you don't deserve it

Interesting proposition, however cognomens were given to common people if they had any quirks as a nickname ("the Redhair" "The left handed" "The lame").

Furthermore, are you a battletech fan perchance?

The quirks you describe are still obtained by birthright or action ;-)

I am aware of battletech.

I've seen jokes floating arounds social media that people have been doing that informally in their phone contact lists. Rather than using proper names people will end up as <Firstname> <Job/Company/Association> in other folks contact lists (ex: "Joel Plumber", "John Google", "Jane ThePub"). Now those contact list entries are not typically shared around but I could see a near future social reputation network where unique IDs include some sort of coalesced version of that information people use to shorthand people they know.

Motte Bad Bandit?

Wanted to post this too. And some of them are shared as well. Ask your friend to recommend you a tradesperson, and they'll share their "Joel Plumber" or "Gabi Nails" contact in TG or WA with you.

The Boardgames family is thriving on my contact list.

The better solution is to a unique ID with tags. Trying to stuff it into a string is pointless, you'll see like a qr code and your bionic eyes will pull whatever cross-reference info you find useful.

This idea reminds me of a sci-fi series where names are much more descriptive which makes sense when the individuals live in a galaxy spanning society comprised of trillions of citizens.

Names; Culture names act as an address if the person concerned stays where they were brought up. Let's take an example; Balveda, from Consider Phlebas. Her full name is Juboal-Rabaroansa Perosteck Alseyn Balveda dam T'seif. The first part tells you she was born/brought up on Rabaroan Plate, in the Juboal stellar system (where there is only one Orbital in a system, the first part of a name will often be the name of the Orbital rather than the star); Perosteck is her given name (almost invariably the choice of one's mother), Alseyn is her chosen name (people usually choose their names in their teens, and sometimes have a succession through their lives; an alseyn is a graceful but fierce avian raptor common to many Orbitals in the region which includes the Juboal system); Balveda is her family name (usually one's mother's family name) and T'seif is the house/estate she was raised within. The 'sa' affix on the first part of her name would translate into 'er' in English (we might all start our names with 'Sun-Earther', in English, if we were to adopt the same nomenclature), and the 'dam' part is similar to the German 'von'. Of course, not everyone follows this naming-system, but most do, and the Culture tries to ensure that star and Orbital names are unique, to avoid confusion.

The author signs off with their name translated into this naming scheme in the blog post he wrote this in for added laughs.

Iain M Banks (Sun-Earther Iain El-Bonko Banks of North Queensferry)

Whenever anti-Semitic attacks take place in the US, it seems like there are essentially two possibilities, either the attacker is Arab Islamic or white far-right, and his name often makes it obvious which category it is.

What? There has been a ton of antisemitic black crime recently as well.

He thinks those were Arabs because they all adopted Arabic/Islamic names?

Or he's grouping black Muslims with Arabs.

Aren't most black Muslims in USA more or less just Hoteps with a different foreign culture fetish, and not actual Muslims?

There are many bona-fide black muslims in the United States originating from eastern and northern Africa. Also, Hoteps don't present as muslim and are distinct from NOI folks.

Nation of Islam is a Hotep ethno-narcissist thing (you can call it a gang or cult or political movement or Männerbund for all I care), there are a lot genuine black real Sunnis, there are also a lot of prison converts whose adherence once they get on parole is questionable.

NOI was what I was thinking of, thanks.

I have no idea what the population statistics are like for Blacks who identify as Muslims, but the (secondhand anecdotal) rap on Black Muslims among my immigrant Muslim friends was that they were deadly serious about Islam, to the point that a lot of Persian/Syrian/Paki Muslims were like "whoa settle down dude." No Easter-Christmas Muslims there, they all kept Halal and prayed 5 times a day; where a lot of second generation immigrant Muslims are more culturally tied to Islam but eat Bacon and drink beer.

This is often the case with converts, they need to check all the boxes to have their identity taken seriously, where a brown kid just is Muslim no need for proof.

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