This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Dispatches from the War on Horny: Has the popular Japanese website Pixiv been colonized by the Western Social-Financial-Complex?
Today (well, yesterday as I write this), Pixiv announced that, in cooperation with Visa and MasterCard's policies (well, okay, they say "Brand Protections of Card Networks," but you probably know what that really means and which card networks they're referring to), they will be forbidding certain content from their Booth, Fanbox, and Request services--of note is "sexual exploitation of a minor." If you aren't already, sit down and get (un)comfortable, this is going to take some explaining.
Now, because of the recent Twitter shenanigans, you may have come across these blog posts by Matthew Skala and Ethan Zuckerman about Pawoo, Pixiv's Mastodon instance, and both its sheer popularity as well as how comfortable its userbase is with lolicon content (and how that makes other Mastodon instances chafe). Well, loli content is once again the source of conflict over at Pixiv, and the East-vs.-West dimension seems like it's also at play here.
The new guidelines seem tailor-made to ban loli and guro (AKA gore) content (which, as a reminder, is fictional art), with the former being, well, just plainly popular for what is likely a whole bunch of cultural reasons I can't get into here. While these guidelines focus on payment-based services that Pixiv provides (Booth is a storefront akin to Gumroad or Storenvy or Etsy, Fanbox is a subscription service akin to Patreon, and I presume Request is Pixiv's equivalent to Skeb, a website for commissioning artists), it's not inconceivable to think that this will sooner or later also apply to the regular art-sharing side of Pixiv, the main site itself.
While I can't really link to them (or at least the Sankaku article collating them), there's already some reactions from Japanese users suggesting that Pixiv will have a Tumblr Porn Ban situation on their hands, as users pre-emptively flee the site before they get kicked off and leave for competitors like Nijie (another art-sharing site) and Fantia (another subscription platform).
One other reaction has been to ask "why not avoid this conflict?", as Pixiv could either just not use Visa/MasterCard (like what competing site DMM did), or, more feasibly, implement workarounds like using points purchased with credit cards (like what DLSite and deviantArt do), or even adopt crypto payments. However, it's also likely that Pixiv is completely fine with this, and here's where things get spicy:
Oddly enough, a few months ago, Pixiv instituted DEI-type policies and sensitivity training, which I presume is quite the rare thing to see from a Japanese company. Now, without going way "beyond the wire" epistemically, it does seem like Pixiv has somehow picked up the Western memes of DEI and incorporated them. This likely made them more open to playing by the rules of Visa and MasterCard, not just on paper, but also spiritually. But, again, I don't want to get too into the weeds of cultural colonialism from the West--it could just be that Pixiv really wants the money that flows through the Visa/MC networks and aren't too willing to rock the boat on this matter. I don't think this is the newest form of imposed American hegemony on the Japanese way of life, like Commodore Perry or the post-WWII occupation and reforms (which arguably built the environment that allowed hentai and lolicon to emerge in the first place), but it kinda does feel like it. (Though see also)
There is certainly no shortage of culture-war red meat when it comes to the modern culture clash between America and Japan WRT general social justice issues, from how Japanese Twitter's trending tab was populated by politics and similar current events until Musk took over, to the aforementioned Mastodon/Pawoo conflict where both sides were of completely different mindsets, and the various controversies over censorship and localization with Crunchyroll's anime distribution and Sony's treatment of Japanese games.
And of course, I don't think I need to re-link articles about Visa vs. PornHub or Patreon restricting adult content or so on. You might already be familiar with how PayPal and the credit card companies basically ban porn and other adult content (citing its high risk of chargebacks), whether outright or through sheer inconvenience (there was a comment I saw recently about how a medium-tier/size payment processor for a porn site had to keep re-routing around damage in the form of network bans, plus also the little things like not being able to use PayPal for some sites and services). Financial deplatforming comes in second or third place to regular social media deplatforming in terms of how often it gets discussed, but it's not very far behind.
Just from the practical/ethical standpoint, PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard are so huge and dominant that they probably should just be common carriers, especially considering the non-NSFW areas where they have influence (namely speech and such; dissident shitposters and Russians are probably well-aware of this reality). PayPal can freeze your account and hold onto your money for no good reason (and you especially better hope they don't catch wind of you doing sex work or selling NSFW art commissions), and your only option is to enter arbitrage, if you can.
But there's also the poltical dimension of this: these three companies are part of the massive American/global financial hegemon, able to kick off actors and users at-will, whether they be lowly prostitutes or even entire countries. Having one large actor dominate much of the world's wealth is very likely bad on its own, but the pay-to-play ESG corporatism being used to draw the lines of social acceptability is extra-worrying. The anti-porn policies of 1st-world payment processing may be rooted in social conservatism, but they play nicely with the liberal-progressive strong-arming many worry about. For any country more worried about losing access to international money because they crossed some cultural or social red-line of the West, there are only three options: embrace crypto (and subject yourself to the non-stop boom-and-bust cycles it suffers from), voluntarily disconnect from the global finance system (with all the hard work that entails), or admit that we all live in America.
EDIT: Since this kicked off a whole sub-thread in response to Hlynka, I would just like to state for the record that while I don't really care for Lolicon at all, I am fully aware that it will likely not stop there, and even an otherwise vanilla-but-still-NSFW image might eventually not be allowed. Slippery slopes, Murder-Ghandis, "the line must be drawn here," "first they came for..." etc.
As probably the only person who will be bold enough to openly identify as an avowed pedophile (and hebephile, blah blah blah etc.; this post is already too long because of my natural penchant for tangents to get into the age-based sexuality ontology soup) in this conversation, I'll ask the fundamental question: Why go after lolicon at all? (I am basing this question on the many replies here along the lines of "Yeah I'm against censorship in general but this in particular is a good thing.")
We're going to masturbate to children, real and fictional.1 You know we are, and you can't stop us. We have been since the start of the Internet. The only ways that could realistically stop us would ruin society and technology for everyone else too (especially any dissidents).2
Wouldn't you rather it be the fictional ones, or at least more the fictional ones (for example, even if a pedo splits his time on 20% fictional/80% real children, wouldn't you rather it be that than 100% real)? It would be one thing if you really had managed to fully crack down on any sexualized content of real children online and fictional content was the only stuff left to police, but you haven't at all (not even the illegal stuff overall, and its legal counterpart far less). Do you really want us on Instagram instead of Pixiv? We can actually message the girls in the photos on there!
1. And, to make it clear up front and maybe forestall some of the pointless replies of a purely mindlessly emotionalized and moralistic character (usually marked ironically enough by the impotent and simplistic anger and disapproval characteristic of a child (not that I don't welcome angry and disapproving replies of an intellectual character more complex than "wtf die pedo", because I certainly do)) that this post will inevitably receive, a lot of you have masturbated to them too, unknowingly (or perhaps half-knowingly, deep down) or not, especially if you define "child" as anyone under the age of 18 (unless you are a major, dedicated, and unwavering MILF fetishist who never spares a single glance for any erotic content labeled "teen" of any variety ever, which realistically we all know most of us aren't).3
(That is, among other implications of the above, I often if not usually get quite a few PMs along the lines of "I'd never be bold enough to admit it publicly like you but I'm always masturbating to lolicon/child "models"/junior "idols"/"jailbait" [or younger]/etc. online too [with stuff like 'and I feel bad about it and you're the first similar person I've come across online discussing it' often appended]." from other users after I make posts like these on forums, just so you all know.)
(So, again, if you're planning on responding to this post with (also again, pointless and impotent (as I guarantee you that, as someone who used old early/mid-2000s 4chan in his tender years, you will not wound me with your words on a screen)) wrath, perhaps you might as well not bother knowing how many other worthy targets there are out there immune via stealth in any case to your "righteous" crusading. You'll only be weakly attacking one visible target, with many more flying under your radar, I assure you.)
(I also point this out to remind all readers that any "consensus" on something so taboo, with so much social coercion, pressure, and shaming applied, is always inherently fake or at least unverifiable (similarly to, and in a similar manner using similar methods, the "consensus" on "just being a decent fucking human being [and 'respecting' people's 'gender identities', acknowledging that 'Black Lives Matter', not 'policing' women's bodies, etc.]!" that woke advocates allege with similar slogans, just even stronger because it's bipartisan).)
2. That is, as pointed out by many others in this subthread, say goodbye to anything that isn't Cathedral-approved because they will gladly use the same censorship techniques on all of it (after promising you that they won't and they're just targeting the "worst of the worst" that you disapprove of too). In fact, though it's not widely known and thus not widely remarked upon, Big Tech to a large degree honed and perfected its early censorship techniques, long before it was seen as censorious by anyone, on pedophilic content (as I personally witnessed/experienced, that gradual realization that the website/computer was explicitly lying to you to hide things, again long before it applied politically).
Back when the "algorithm" was actually fully honest, there were regularly underage girls shaking their assets all over the front page, trending section, etc. of YouTube, for example (because they're a lot more popular than anyone wants to admit). Cleaning that situation up was, I believe, Big Tech's actual first foray into manipulating the narrative. And look where it's led. Why think it can't happen again and more?
3. This is in reference to all of the (100% verified, ages on their Instagrams with proof like dated photos from their 12th, 13th, etc. birthday(s) (though of course those ages are rarely spread alongside their content)) underage girls whose photos and TikToks in skimpy miniskirts, bikinis, etc. are stealthily spread all over porn sites, Reddit, etc., as if it were 18+ content.
(Though I don't think "normies" actually care as much as they pretend to if a girl on their screen really is 18+, as long as she's hot, especially since some of these girls, despite their bodies/presentation, still have obviously pretty neotenous faces.
(There's also probably/certainly some element of deluding themselves involved too though, something perhaps like "I'm sexually attracted to her, someone who is sexually attracted to underage girls is a bad person, and I'm not a bad person, so she can't be underage." For example, I've had people still straight up deny that a girl they find attractive is underage after linking them her 12th birthday celebration Instagram post on her official account clearly dated from 2 years ago.))
This is a very common failure to think on the margin; it most typically shows up when people are discussing drug prohibition. Yes, we all agree that prohibiting drugs/CP/murder is not going to actually eliminate it. Some people are still going to find a way to get drugs/CP or to murder other people. These are known as "high-value users". There are some people who will go to extreme measures to get that next hit, get that next picture, or to kill that one bastard. They may do so even if we make the (potential) costs high. (Note that there are some differences in effect of increasing direct costs vs potential costs, though legal sanctions can affect both.)
You may personally be a high-value CP user. We have high-value drug users in these threads. I don't know that we've had high-value murderers in these threads, but they do exist. We may not be successful in dissuading you from pursuing what you value so highly. We may or may not catch you and actually impose the potential costs. The societal value of making such laws does not hinge on that. This has been known for centuries.
Setting aside the other possible justifications for punishing you, specifically, there is societal value in increasing the costs for others, who might have a somewhat lower-value on the behavior than you do, perhaps to the point that they simply choose not to engage in the behavior. This comes in the form of people thinking, "Yeah, I kinda like kids, but do I really want to go to all the trouble of figuring out these VPNs, cryptocurrencies, etc., and then still run the risk of getting caught? Probably not," or, "Yeah, I kinda like drugs, but do I really want to go to all the trouble to deal with the criminal culture, pay high prices, and still run the risk of getting caught or getting an adulterated product that may kill me? I guess I'll just drink some whisky," or, "Yeah, I super super hate this guy, and if anyone ought to get killed, it's him, but do I really want to go through the trouble of trying to plan out how to do it without getting trivially caught, yet still run the risk of something going wrong and ending up behind bars for the rest of my life? Probably not."
Some people will ask themselves those questions and answer, "Yes, absolutely," instead of, "Probably not." But in the meantime, we'll have a lot less CP, a lot less drug usage, and a lot less murder. For the few of you who go ahead and do it, we can figure out what mix of the other justifications for punishment will be most beneficial to you and society.
Okay but I wasn't asking about CP prohibitions (which I'm mostly against for other reasons, but I recognize your argument). Isn't the availability of fictional sexualized content of children like lolicon one of the methods you speak of to increase costs of CP consumption (as it's less justifiable and thus more costly to pursue it at risk if there's a semi-decent substitute with far less risk attached)?
My point is that if you pursue lolicon as content to be eliminated like you pursue CP, then you completely eliminate that benefit to whatever degree you pursue it (same for legal but sexualized content of actual children, but I understand there are different arguments involved there), which doesn't make much sense given that they're fictional characters with zero genuine need for emotional/physical/etc. protection in any case.
That is, even the diehard anti-CP advocate has little reason to attack it.
Almost all CP is distributed freely so you would almost never have to figure this out unless you want really new/rare/etc. stuff. I just thought I'd make a note of that.
There's no economic argument for how it would increase the cost of CP consumption. It simply lessens the cost of something that some might consider a substitute.
In any event, another thing about drug prohibition is that science/society has basically no clue what actually causes the transition to being an addict (which usually comes with many harms, to oneself and others). Obviously, we know that if you never try a drug, you don't become an addict. Some portion of folks who try don't become addicted, but some portion does (this can happen via an intermediate, legal drug, too, like prescription opioids). Best as we can tell, it's pretty much a Poisson process. That means that it scales with the number of people who start using. Also, once a person transitions to being an addict, it seems that we have basically no clue how to rehabilitate them. (See Scott's old old old post about how abysmal rehab programs are.) There is a very reasonable end conclusion that we should simply reduce the number of initial users. It just seems implausible that we could flood the market with cheap, legal opioids and somehow not cause some folks to get addicted.
Similarly, lots of folks find it pretty implausible that we can flood the market with cheap fake child porn and not cause some number of people, who wouldn't have ever even started wanking down that path, to end up abusing kids.
IF we could just isolate people who were already going to consume CP and, in a targeted fashion, with no spillover effects, provide fake CP as a substitute, then sure, that'd be a plausible thing to try. That would be the like, "Give people methadone at rehab," kind of solution, not the, "Give out prescription opioids like candy to the masses," kind of solution.
I would be interested to know more about how this works. Seems like great risk to share, and so folks would want something in return. The indictments I have read support this, as most sites in those indictments make access contingent on regularly uploading fresh content.
Lessening the cost of a (partial) substitute is essentially the inverse of/same as raising the (relative, which is always relative) cost of its competitor. If competitor A lowers its price from $10 to $5, then competitor B still at $10 costs more (again relatively, but that's how people reason) even though it hasn't changed its price at all.
I don't think this opioid analogy works at all. The widespread distribution of opioids is dangerous because a response to them is universally built into the human brain. They don't become dangerous because they're widespread and your brain doesn't get "propagandized" or incentivized via a mere exposure effect/bias into liking them; they simply are effective because they directly target basic human neurology. You can not know what an opioid is at all and still be affected by it. You can think it looks dumb, smells dumb, whatever, and still be affected by it. It's not like media exposure.
Let me ask you, if there were more widespread distribution of (fake or otherwise) positive/indulgent depictions of the brutal murder of puppies, do you think people would:
A. be horrified or at least strongly disapprove of it, no matter how long this campaign went on.
B. be slowly convinced via exposure that maybe murdering puppies might be fun.
(You could also use (literally) eating shit, being castrated, and any other fully unpleasant phenomenon as an example to plug in to the same formula.)
I think the answer is obviously A. Media becomes/is widespread (in the absence of exogenous manipulation) fundamentally because it appeals to inherent preferences, not because it alters them via being more and more widespread itself in a cyclical effect. (I think it can do this especially in the immediate to some degree, but the effects are indirect and obviously limited based on the example. I wrote some other replies on this that might elaborate more.)
That is, nobody is ever worried that depictions of animal violence are going to suddenly explode in popularity and cause a wave of animal cruelty. Why is this? It seems pretty clear to me that it's because we all know there's not really any widespread desire in the general population to randomly do innocent animals harm that is just waiting to be unlocked. So why would we be worried about sexual depictions of minors if, like those who commit animal cruelty, those who are attracted to them are only a small, sick, and twisted minority...? The implication is obvious: they're not.
And given that, perhaps instead of trying to offload the issue into a matter of exposure (which is obviously an artificial excuse given the above puppy murder example), we should reckon with the clear, strong, and inherent preferences of the general population that are subtly revealed by our own fear of them. That is, we should stop living in fantasy land and address the underlying issue, which is why I think your whole point is really orthogonal to the truth because it is based in a fundamental self-deception.
Mostly how you works is that you sign up to a forum (with a username, password, maybe a fake e-mail address (if the admins are too lazy to find out how to disable this requirement in their forum software)) using standard forum software and there it all is in various categories/threads (uploaded to Javascript-free filehosters that tend to take it down, so it may not all actually be there, but the latest posted stuff usually is). It's pretty simple once you get on Tor and find the URLs (the hardest part, though you only need to find one directory URL that links everything else). You're not getting the absolute newest or rarest stuff this way usually but with a decades-long history of content there's plenty on offer.
It's not much of a risk (legally a bit more sure, but that only applies if you get caught) unless you're the one in it. If you're anonymizing your connection, then uploading is no different than downloading (that is, there's no technically reason to believe that one is more easily detectable).
Some sites do this, or have subsections accessible only for consistent uploaders and/or producers, and my explanation for this being more common in indictments is that those who regularly upload "fresh content" (that is, in many cases content potentially containing identifiable information about themselves) are far more likely to get caught.
No. This is econ 101. In fact, in the most simplistic case of substitutes, the price of B actually goes down. There is literally no sense in which its price goes up. ("Relatively" doesn't count.)
You present this as if it would be an advertising campaign. That probably wouldn't work, but that's not how it would work, anyway. What would work is slowly normalizing it through the marginal people. The ones who are already a little off, a little predisposed to violence and weird, twisted shit. And if you forcibly make the people who want to shut that down desist (while simultaneously running a propaganda campaign in universities about how we should maybe be more sensitive to the reasonable needs of such people), then you're brewing a recipe for disaster.
So yeah, if we flood the market with cheap puppy murder, we're going to get more puppy murder. Some people will obviously be horrified, but so long as your propaganda campaign can at least prevent them from taking political action against the flood of cheap puppy murder, we're gonna get more puppy murder. I don't understand how else you can possibly think this would work.
So if Wendy's halves its prices, then the relative cost of choosing McDonald's instead doesn't go up? If paper towel brand A halves its price, there is no increase in the cost, psychological, opportunity, however you want to frame it, of buying paper towel brand B at the same old price of both instead?
I'm not sure what "econ 101" you took (certainly not the same as mine) but it has zero relevance to how people actually behave in the real world. Or economics for that matter. Economics is all about resource allocation, which is all about behavior, which means relative comparisons always matter. Denying this is about the same as denying that the sky is blue.
I don't believe this, or at least I don't believe it will work equivalently. As I pointed out in another comment:
If both taboos are equally ripe for normalization in the same fashion, then how do you explain the disparity in their "natural" popularity?
"Relative" doesn't count. The cost of McDonald's stays the same or possibly goes down in response.
Did you literally just skip the part of the course on substitute goods?
"Igneous rocks are fucking bullshit." It always surprises me to see that people willingly choose to just deny the mathematics of economics when it conflicts with their political commitments. It probably shouldn't, but it still does.
Who claimed this? I didn't.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Only few hundred years ago, animal cruelty was universally popular pastime. Burning cats alive was public entertainment and clubbing small animals to death was wholesome family fun for royalty and aristocracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat-burning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_tossing
Maybe your idea of human nature needs updating?
You have a good point. It was not my intention to say that animal cruelty is completely outside of the realm of human nature.
And yet my point also holds true. Animal cruelty videos abound online, yet very few people seem to be worried that they're going to erase, alter, or blur the taboo about it or "unlock" something in people that makes them find it appealing again. (And I still stand by the notion that this common wisdom is correct. After all, animal cruelty videos are probably less popular online than sexualized content of minors despite more legal and accessible. If it is really in human nature to find cruel animal deaths family fun, then why aren't people having fun with the greatest compendium of them in existence?) Yet a lot of people seem very worried about that in regards to sexualization of minors. It seems to me like one taboo is "harder" than the other.
My theory to explain this is that the evolution of the taboo against animal cruelty came with the gradual acceptance of the reality that animals are equivalently sentient (but not sapient) to humans, can feel pain, etc. (if you recall, even thinkers as prominent as Descartes used to completely reject that notion not too distantly in the past) and that people pretty much actually fully believe that. I think it's also that people may have found it fun, but weren't particularly tempted to do it on a raw, biological level, making it a lot easier to give it up.
So basically while it was perfectly within the Average Joe's nature to sadistically (not that they thought it was) torture animals because it produced visually amusing reactions in them, it stopped being so once they realized that their reactions of pain were not simply mechanistic reflexes but actually the same kind of pain they themselves might experience (since your average person I don't think is much of an inherent sadist/sociopath). You can see this in how people pretty much still have no problem stomping insects vigorously because most people do not believe on an empirical basis that they are capable of feeling pain like humans and more complex animals.
(This is similarly to how medical professionals used to not provide anesthesia for babies because they thought they didn't feel pain. Do you imagine that parents sanctioning the torture of their own offspring is common in our nature or that they legitimately just believed that?)
With minor sexualization etc. it seems to me like it must be the opposite then. People must not really fully believe that much in the nebulous collection of beliefs that supposedly puts minors beyond sexual availability (even and especially since they themselves regularly ignore this and try to make themselves sexually available, including to adults), and they do have a biological urge for it which makes it harder to just give it up than casual animal cruelty.
So I do think your point in fact overall supports mine, given the divergent ways that the two taboos have developed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Except that the primary question here is the banning or lolicon, drawings of fake children. If the marginal low-value user you're deterring is exclusively looking at drawings while the high-value users look at real CP then you're not actually accomplishing anything by reducing the marginal users. Assuming the goal is to prevent exploitation of real children, rather than preventing perverts from getting off because they're gross.
The argument that actually matters here is whether lolicon acts as as gateway to real CP, converting marginal users into higher-value over time, or as a substitute that reduces real CP use/production. I can think of reasonable arguments in both directions, but am not really sure which is really true.
No, the primary question is whether this is behavior that we as a society want to see normalized. "loli" is just the thin edge of the wedge for those who want to add a 'P' to LGBTQ, and get their stripe on the pride flag.
Something can be legal without being normalised.
E.g. It's not criminal to be into scat but people really don't talk about how much they love shit.
In any case, making it easier for pedos to be addicted to porn seriously lowers the odds of them doing something harmful, just as porn use lowers RL sexual activity.
In addition, empirical data from Denmark and Czech Republic where CP was legal for a time make it look like this is true.
Yes, that would be the current status quo. While many (including myself, and the governing board at Mastercard it seems) find it sketchy as all get out and want nothing to do with it, it remains legal in the eyes of the government.
This the central question underlying this whole discussion is about whether it's fair to treat gore and loli/CP differently from more "vanilla" sorts of porn, ie whether it should be normalized.
Until we can fix the pedo issue at the root ( prevent the developmental disorder causing it), letting pedos watch porn is probably the best idea.
I mean, imagine how horny people would be if the only porn available was something they didn't care for at all.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't see any meaningful distinction between the pedos and anyone else on the LGBTQ flag except the potential exploitation and harm of actual children. They're weird sexual fetishes that make the individual happy if they can fulfill it, but strays from the biological purpose of actual reproduction, and disgusts 90%+ of the population who don't share that fetish.
My stance on non-offending pedos, ones who look at drawings of cartoon children but would never harm a child in real life, is basically the same as for anyone else with a weird fetish: keep it to yourself. Do whatever you want alone in your bedroom, but I don't want to hear about it or have you mainstream it. Stay out of public, don't go on parades about it. But this doesn't require banning them from all art websites, just have a strong tagging/filtering system so normal people don't have to see it unless they opt in.
But I think it very much matters when actual children are involved, because that is evil behavior with massive harm. So the distinction is incredibly important, and I think is the most important aspect of this whole issue. People's fetishes and pride flags matter a little, but they matter less than violent harm done to children. In so far as "normalizing" loli art will lead to a slippery slope to pedos getting accepted to LGBTQ and this later slipping into normalizing actual harm to children, this matters. But the second step in that process is the primary question I'm concerned with: does loli art actually gateway towards real CP or physical acts? Because if not then the question of loli-pedos getting into LGBTQ or not doesn't matter because they won't slip further.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The "I'm actually very confident and inevitable!!" insistence rings a bit hollow when the only thing you end up actually expressing is the same set of stock excuses every guilty man craps out to talk others out of punishing him. "W-wait, they're coming for you next!!" isn't a convincing case when some weakman bluehairs use it to justify freeing convicted rapists to prevent repressive capitalist state apparatus from destroying the global working class, and it's even less convincing from a "guy" who doesn't even have enough balls to directly defend those perversions he loudly pretends to believe aren't a big deal. You're not "bold," you're a basic degenerate e-begging for just enough reluctant validation to avoid the (entirely correct) conclusion that he must soon apply millstone to neck, and that you have to do it by fearmongering the board into adopting a position of political and organizational impotence, before the fear that their enemies might possibly challenge them to control some expression of political power, should make that much plain. I doubt that big spiel about "le moralism" must be a big comfort to someone who spends his life running like a roach to hide under the fridge whenever someone turns the lights on, but I guess I really can't expect much better; after all, being a pathetic manipulator is the evergreen face of noncery.
In your heart, you know it's right.
Yeah unfortunately I'm in agreement with the moderator below (rare for me) that I don't really know much what to make of your rant other than that you are very mad. But I will say this:
It just hasn't come up in this limited scope conversation (that happened to be what I responded to) yet (as I really only made one simple, small inquiry and it is only my penchant for tangents as mentioned previously which naturally opened up other avenues of discussion), but if you want the full scope of my opinion I will tell you: I believe that the feminine should exist somewhere in a state between wardship and sexual (and otherwise) chattel slavery/property in relation to the masculine. This view naturally accommodates little in the way of valuing modern "consent", much less an age of it, same as the government doesn't/can't (rightfully) tell you that your TV has to be X number of years old before you can watch it, hence explaining my expressed views thus far.
(I do separately believe in the righteousness, correctness, mental healthiness, and beauty of the appreciation of the young female form as a natural masculine birthright, that it is superior to its opposite (that is, I am still an avowed pedo/hebephile, etc. as well as previously claimed), but this post is already long and as my opinion that there are no just grounds for prohibiting something tautologically explains a lack of support for its prohibition, I will save the promotion/exaltation of it for another time.)
(And as a separate disclaimer given some obvious but incorrect implications that might be derived from the above, of course I am not (from my perspective) a monster and just as I don't believe anyone should arbitrarily destroy/damage their TV or especially, for example, their dogs (for no reason anyway) who I do recognize as sentient beings with feelings, I grant the same consideration to sentient feminine entities (so long as they are in a state of behavioral correctness, just as you can put your dog down or at least whack them for uncontrollably biting people), but that still doesn't change the nature of them as fundamentally justly subservient and thus rightfully subject to a broad latitude of control by their owning/possessing entity. (And yes for the record I think women and girls would be on balance much happier in this hypothetical society.))
That is, I am certainly no "NOMAP" or "virtuous pedophile" or any such nonsense (though I have tactically abstained from most that is illegal in this area throughout my life, recognizing sadly that this is unfortunately not a time period conducive to the true, proper, and full expression of masculinity with the little consequence it deserves) and certainly had no intention of representing myself as such.
To enforce the above (among other common desires on the far right wishlist, like certain racial hygiene initiatives, eugenics, etc.), I believe that a strong, fascist-esque (that is, probably a bit more organized, a bit more bureaucratic and technocratic under the hood, lots of marching and paeans to vigor and masculinity still, great aesthetics you know, but better planning to ensure it all lasts, a bit of Disneyland magic at times except for higher purposes (just to address preemptively the most sensible/common criticism of fascism as a whole that it inevitably burns itself out in its ardent fervor)) society should be constituted. I like to call this "pedofascism" as it is a catchy, provocative name that gets people talking, though I haven't posted online much about it yet as I post online a lot less than I used to in general.
From my perspective, none of this is the shady, seedy underbelly of society that can only be excused through feeble pleas to left-wing "tolerance" (as you seem to be implying I believe) or "Yeah but they'll come for you next!" (though these are true arguments to a degree and thus permissible for use in many circumstances) but rather the natural and inevitable state of a truly fully masculine society at full power (which is not to say that such a society is inevitable). Its opponents, in my view, are those who are the degenerates and enemies of masculinity, as well meaning as many of them are in regards to thinking themselves the opposite.
To me, the creepy, unnerving connotations of "noncery" intuitively far more apply to those who would deny themselves a vigorous expression of their natural sexual desire for the young, fresh, and unblemished (as almost every proper man should inevitably prefer or at least strongly desire to some degree per basic evolutionary logic) because of what is essentially a campaign of feminist subversion. (Age of consent law campaigning was basically the first act of modern feminism, even before the "earning" the vote or prohibition.) That is, to me you are the ones scurrying "under the fridge" like "roach[es]" (in even more pitiable/contemptible fear of your own inner "light").
So no, I am not a "guilty man" in regards to my preferences/bluntness in embracing them in this area. I am ashamed, but primarily only of the weakness of my fellow men in regards to not joining me as is their birthright, would they have the will to enforce it. (My appeal against "moralism" is only an appeal against what is to me only false, hysterical, and feminine moralism. To appeal to a genuinely higher justice is no crime.)
(To be clear, the endorsement of the enjoyment of feminine varieties of any age as a natural masculine right would in fact actually be only a small (though essential, as you can't and obviously don't have a fully, properly patriarchal society in its absence (even discounting how it already acted as a canary in the coalmine on the subject the first(?) time as previously mentioned), same as you don't really have TV freedom if you can only watch older TVs) part of the character of my ideal society. Any seeming emphasis on it now is only because it is nevertheless a heavy controversy now, same as heliocentrism was once a heavily controversial position that required hard-won acceptance, even though, as unthinkably to its opponents then as it is now to people like you that the acceptance of age freedom for masculine sexuality wouldn't be that big of a deal, it's not that big of a deal for us, something we fully endorse based on clear logic and observation but not something that we worship/emphasize unduly.
That is, we are not really a heliocentrist society despite accepting heliocentrism fully and without reservation and mine would not necessarily be a pedophilic/etc. society per se (depending on how enduring the "pedofascist" label is) despite accepting it similarly (or rather dismantling the flawed (mostly feminist, progressive, etc., even if they disguise or deny that nature) ideological lenses that I believe could only ever be used as the grounds to mandate its prohibition, thus leaving no justification), just in case you try the usual gambit of insisting that my apparent "obsession" with the subject must nevertheless reveal some inherent and disqualifying flaw in my psychology. It is only because this is a society of (knowingly or not) feminism-influenced "geocentrists" that I must debate or think about the issue at all; in an ideal society the proper nature of things would already be in place and there would be little more reason to consider it than the tides: purely for the impractical joy of thought if at all.)
So, with that all established, you must understand that, assuming you're somewhat more on the right since you called me a "basic degenerate", from my perspective the "basic [and clearly media/Cathedral-brainwashed on this subject, at least in my view] degenerate" here is you, that you are aligned with the bluehairs (at least about this subject) that you are so worried about (or so you believe, carrying their water here as you are), etc. (In case you maybe thought you would somehow intimidate me with your austere hard line on degeneracy, millstones around necks, tough guy South Park suicide clip stuff? I want the same; your agecuckoldry (used as non-derisively as possible) is just to me included in that realm of "degeneracy", on the same level and part of the same phenomenon as the general intolerable feminization of men and society.)
Or, more succinctly, this tweet pair gets at similar ideas: https://twitter.com/Burgerpunk2077/status/1556021799011307520
For further elaboration of a similar viewpoint (as it is a somewhat novel one and thus I will assume that more examples for familiarization are uniquely helpful for the reader's understanding of it), see this /pol/ classic from ~2017 or so: https://img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/1508/05/1508054159980.png (Obviously this little manifesto was not written to conform to the etiquette this board so click at your own risk; it is provided merely as an illustrative artifact of digital anthropology.)
Is this enough "balls" for you then in regards to being very clear about what I endorse? I can elaborate more. It just requires some groundwork since (again, reading this into your post, could be wrong), you seem to be assuming that I'm somewhere to the left of you, when, from my perspective, I am in fact far to the right of you. You are, at least in many ways, my globalist, modernist, progressive bogeyman (especially as your kind is so often completely convinced that you have fully aligned yourself against them, you are in a way more unacceptable to me).
This all of course strays far from the original subject of this subthread, but you accused me of the impropriety/dishonor of being indirect/subversive about my beliefs (which must be considered permissible as a tactical necessity at the least among enemies or other risks to one's freedom, but I won't classify a mostly open intellectual venue as such at the moment), so an infodump
"no, u mad" followed by 1.6 thousand words are quite good evidence I hit my mark and a nerve.
Millstone.
I realize it may be pointless to reply while you're banned, but I have to ask what the heck "millstone" is supposed to refer to, because you've used it here the same way 4Channers say "dilate" to transwomen.
Matthew 18:6 or Mark 9:42 or Luke 17:2, which each say about the same thing. Paraphrasing, "better to tie a millstone around your neck, and be cast into the deepest sea, than to lead a child into sin." In context, it's not specific to pedophilia, more of a general injunction against corrupting innocence in children, but pedophilia is generally considered the extreme case of a violation against this stricture.
Huh. I'd picked up that it was a "kill yourself", but I didn't notice the Bible reference. Thanks.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You accused me of being indirect about my beliefs, I explained them in great detail (certainly not because you "struck a nerve" as in fact I've had this all on the tip of my digital tongue for a while and you gave me a good excuse to let it all out, though you obviously aren't worthy of its debut), and your response is nothing more than mindless, simplistic Reddit-style snark. Unless you wish to reform your behavior in a less (cattily and frivolously, not even embodying their occasional virtues) feminine direction, this is the part where I dismiss you as a man and move on. You may have permission to address me again as a fellow man (assuming you identify as one) when you have developed a proper intellectual backbone.
Edit:
His original post was:
His latest edit is obviously a response to a suggestion of the opposite. In any case:
I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine whose nerve has thus been struck. Hopefully if anybody sees it some will enjoy my response to him regardless, as its length is a reflection of my desire to communicate the material, not to address such a generically discontented individual (who I've naturally encountered some close variation of probably hundreds of times prior).
As I ironically enough mentioned in my initial response to him:
Cattiness, passive aggressiveness, and an incapability of enduring direct challenge without ragequitting (and of course inevitably doing a modern faux-indifferent/casual "But I'm not mad! I'm not owned! You are!" routine along the way) are all of course included in this. I think I hit the nail on the head.
Edit 2:
And shall we add irresoluteness and indecision? As they say: "lmao."
More options
Context Copy link
Do not be deliberately antagonistic, this was right after another mod warning. 5 day ban.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
For whatever reason despite being under the character limit my post appears to be cut off to me. In any case the last line is:
(If I had known this would happen despite heavy editing to bring it under the character limit I would have made the above a two-parter anyway so please do excuse any space-saving measures such as the overuse of conjunction via forward slash and the generally less varied diction.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is pure namecalling.
I gave the OP some slack for taking an unpopular (to put it mildly) position, and I'll give his critics some slack because it's obviously an extremely emotive topic, but you still don't have a license to ignore the rules and be as antagonistic as you want just because you really hate what someone is expressing.
No, it's not pure namecalling, I pointed to a specific substantive and conduct problem with OP while namecalling him: It's one thing if some honest ignorant person really doesn't get that pedophilia is wrong, it's another if the main thrust of a person's post (history, based on some comments on another thread) amounts to flaunting his pedophilia and making vague allusions to auxiliary issues for plausible deniability. I don't plan to revisit this issue outside of complaints to staff, but it's extremely hard to understand why you think namecalling is the problem next to that.
Well, next time leave the namecalling out.
Because we don't allow namecalling. You are allowed to criticize people's behavior and beliefs. You are not allowed to personally insult them. Yes, that even applies to pedophiles, Nazis, tankies, wokes, Bills fans, and whoever else you hate the most with a pure and righteous hate. If you cannot engage without personal attacks, do not engage.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Lots of interesting comments are pointing out that CP, including potentially lollicon, can sway the "marginal" pedophile. Do we have any evidence true marginal pedophiles exist? I'm not talking about those who have urges but don't act because of incentives, but sleeper-agent types who would develop urges if they sufficiently engaged with the idea or pornographic content.
My impression had always been that true paedophilia was some kind of mental illness that was much more binary and that "marginal pedophiles" were rare. People who are attracted to teenagers (Ephebophiles?) would fall into a different camp, which would be a lot less binary and have many marginal members.
I'm not basing this model on any real knowledge, but if seems to me the anecdotes of people being molested are usually about younger children, not teenagers. If marginal pedophiles were a major concern, I'd expect higher frequencies of molestation in older children/teenagers.
The answer to this is complex. My short answer is something like "Basically almost everyone is a 'marginal' pedophile [though this ideally would receive a lot of elaboration], but it's not worth worrying about media 'swaying' them because possessing any sexual attraction bandwidth that is seriously dedicated to children is usually only a small part of their motivation if any."
I wouldn't expect that myself necessarily. People who are attracted to "older children/teenagers" are not "marginal pedophiles"; they are simply ephebophiles/hebephiles. They're different brands of sexuality, perhaps interrelated to some degree especially at the age margins where they overlap, but one is not a "marginal" version of the other. The guy who is not attracted to a 14 year old (and by "guy" in this case, the case of being attracted to an objectively sexually attractive 14 year old, I mean essentially every guy alive) is not expressing a "marginal" version of an attraction to an 8 year old (which has less universal of an uptake as it is of a wholly different character).
Putting aside people who are bona-fide pedophile and are attracted to actual children, it sounds like in your model, (e?)phebophillia is a more of a fetish or a preference. I do think porn can exacerbate, and even create fetishes/preferences, at least temporarily. So it seems the marginal aspect is a valid concern.
On the other hand, I doubt people with porn-induced/enhanced phebophilia are that much more likely to engage in morally problematic behaviour with minors.
Lollicon probably appeals to an even wider audience who like anime and hentai. Because the visuals are so unrealistic I doubt it's harmful. I don't think anyone is developing a significant bestiality fetish from the wacky stuff often portrayed in hentai (cat-people, tentacles, etc.) and I don't see why lollicon would be any different with respect to pedophilia.
I'm kind of confused by your response. Let me clarify:
A. I don't know what "phebophilia" is. It's just "ephebophilia". (Hebephilia, if that confused you, is a different thing, the next youngest age bracket.)
B. My model is definitely not that ephebophilia is a mere fetish. Ephebophilia, for a refresher, is the sexual attraction to older teens, around 15-17 (the arbitrary cut off for it only because of the common legal age of consent, even though I'd say that being sexually attracted to a 17 year old is far more similar to being sexually attracted to a 20 year old than a 12 year old or even a 14 year old).
My model is that this is essentially universal (at least and especially among men) if not the default ideal and strongest preference (in the absence of social pressure, mostly from women), because there is zero reason that we would evolve to not be sexually attracted to perfectly (and freshly, more unblemished ones, thus arguably superior) fertile humans right next to us (and history proves that's not the case) just because future people millions of years later would decide that the age of 18 is the correct arbitrary cutoff for sexual autonomy. Porn cannot probably "exacerbate" ephebophilia any more than fast food commercials can "exacerbate" your need to eat food to live or your inherent desire to do so with greasy high-fat/high-carb junk food (which is maybe some via exposure effects (though this is likely to more just affect particular brand preference as opposed to preference for the entire underlying category), availability heuristics, etc., but it's still not in any way rewiring your fundamental preferences as opposed to just appealing to them).
(A simple proof of this is the massive popularity of "barely legal" pornography, girls who "just turned" 18, and the overwhelming popularity otherwise of young girls, particularly (legal) teens, in porn, relative to their percentage of the overall female population. That is, men already park their erotic preferences pretty much as absolutely close to the legal line as they can, suggesting that they'd have no issue going lower if it were more legal/frictionless (and actively want to). If I'm pressed up against the doors of a store, that's evidence that I want to get in when it opens, not that I want to stay pressed up against the doors. It's just that this one door isn't budging.)
To elaborate on my prior analogy: McDonald's does not make people desire unhealthy food; our brains are wired to crave unhealthy food and McDonald's simply provides it. Maybe a McDonald's commercial shifts things psychologically on the margins somewhat, erodes your willpower to have a healthy salad instead by reminding you that the dark side exists, but if McDonald's didn't advertise at all, they'd maybe lose 2-10% of their business max (which still makes it more than worth their while to pay for them), not 100% or even likely 80%. The desire, which necessarily precedes the object that grants its fulfillment (otherwise nobody would have any reason to produce the object), would still exist.
The same is true of any erotic stimuli and ephebophilia. Maybe it can make you more likely to actively think "Hey, I'd like to fuck [a/that] 15 year old." in any given moment, but it can't put the desires/neurology/psychology producing that thought in your head (as proven by the fact that equivalently seductively produced content of a toilet or a banana isn't likely to make anybody who didn't have those thoughts before suddenly think they want to fuck a toilet or banana). Nature did that. (And if you see in real life a sexually attractive 15 year old, your probability of thinking "I want to fuck her." isn't likely going to be affected by prior/recent exposure to sexualized content of 15 year olds any more than your probability of accepting a free greasy burger in real life that's suddenly offered to you is going to be by whether you've seen a fast food burger commercial recently (which is again probably maybe some, but again not in any that alters the underlying inherent calculus much).)
Calling it a fetish is like saying people have a "food fetish" for McDonald's. That's obviously not the case.
Thanks for explaining, that does makes sense and is pretty convincing. People who consume the barely legal type porn are definitely marginal ephebophiles, if not full-blown ones.
There's definitely variation among people's taste, though. In my view, someone could have a "youthful" fetish the same way they have a mature/milf or an asian fetish. I suppose whether these are "fetishes" or not is a terminological debate, but I certainly did not have your view pinned down until you explained it.
There is, but it seems transparently obvious to me based on all of the data about the subject that in the statistical distribution of age-based attraction those who prefer the young/"barely legal" teens/etc. vastly outnumber those who prefer the old/MILFS/etc. (again at least among men).
Can somebody have a "youthfulness" fetish? I think they can have a fetish for the perceived social paraphernalia of youthfulness (which to me explains the distinction between ageplaying, which is genuinely a fetish as you describe I believe, and youth-oriented chronophilias), but to say that they have a fetish for youthfulness itself seems as nonsensical to me as saying someone has a "fetish" for symmetry or pertness or fair skin (all traits commonly enhanced by youthfulness).
The extreme ends of youth-oriented chronophilia could perhaps be explained/characterized as a "fetish" for neoteny (and I believe they are explained by simply having a higher-than-average genetic preference for neoteny), but this is so fundamental that "orientation" describes to me more accurately the character of it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Empirical findings from places and times where CP was legal suggest it depresses sex offences.
I think it's fairly obvious why this is true. Porn use lowers male interest in pursuing women by satiating the sex drive.
We could even test this shit by conscripting a large enough sample of students, assigned some of them to jacking off more off and then noted who was more active in dating.
More options
Context Copy link
This to me is the crux of the issue. I see as much reason to believe that easy access to lolicon would lead to some marginal pedophile to sexually abuse a child as to believe that Dave Chappelle's stand up bit would lead to some marginal transphobe to physically/verbally abuse a trans person. As such, I support as little restriction on one as I do the other. Supporting one but not the other seems to me to reflect more of a difference in one's own disgust reactions - and the justifications that follow those - than the underlying reality.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You're certainly not the only person, but it's not a particularly common perspective around here.
Then I guess I'll have to claim the mantle of only pedofascist unless you want to sign up as a comrade. Cute stories about being pedopilled though.
You're more than welcome to that claim. I'm also glad you found the stories "cute", even if you don't seem to appreciate cuteness.
Who says?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's the same person, see the nested paren use.
See my second link. Even if OP is FPHthrowawayB under a different name, there is at least one other person who has openly identified as a pedophile here (ie, me).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I thought my parenthesis use was bad.
yep, plus there's still tons of mostly-clothed 13-16yos dancingon tiktok, and it even happened on local tv sometimes ("wholesome yoga/gymnastics competitions for 14yos")
I can't see at all how suppressing drawn loli is a useful use of effort, compared to anything else, tbh
Yeah I missed an ender there. Other than that textual organization via nested parentheses is the habit of the bold Aryan champion.
Dang I guess I need to watch more local TV.
I never watch tv, but just saw it randomly once, so I doubt it's that common. Also relevant, child beauty pageants (and i don't think the moms bringing their daughters there are even pedo-adjacent)
Contrary to common perceptions, pedos don't really like child beauty pageants at all (or at least they get very little attention on venues where people pay close attention to whatever sexy children are out there).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
ooh, this is a pretty exotic thing to see in the wild. From a first-person point-of-view, do you think that child porn increases or decreases your desire for real children and the probability of actually molesting a child? To me most of the morality of the situation condenses to that one question.
This is true for sophisticated pedophiles who already know where to find this stuff, but making it really hard to get child porn still reduces the viewership on the margins, as dumb people or only mildly-pedophilic people won't have the knowledge and/or motivation to go seek it out.
I cannot comment on CP use. However, I've always heard that watching regular porn decreases your drive to go find regular sex. It does make sense to me.
More options
Context Copy link
I think it's pretty much irrelevant. It's just the classic Grand Theft Auto debate of whether it makes you more likely to engage in violence or not. The general scientific consensus seemed to end up overwhelmingly as "Well, it makes certain indicators of conflict and aggression-oriented cognition more prominent temporarily in the brain, but other than that it's probably neither going to significantly or even really at all affect the probability of you turning into a mass murderer nor being prevented from being one." No amount of GTA was probably going to stop Salvador Ramos from doing what he did (some future Holodeck-like perfectly realistic simulation, maybe, but that's a different story for a time we're not yet in), and no GTA addict is probably going to turn into Salvador Ramos because of it.
Does watching "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" make you more or less likely to want to be a millionaire? Of course the question is nonsensical, because all we know that people are only interested in the premise of the show because they already have an inherent desire, independent of and predating the show, to be a millionaire. (That's implicitly understood by nearly everyone in this case, but applying it to other situations tends to reveal the foolishness behind less commonly agreed upon media controversies.)
The same is true of Grand Theft Auto. People play it and enjoy it because (among other reasons of course) other people kind of suck and it's sometimes fun to imagine just getting to mow a bunch of them down without consequences. Does that mean you're likely to actually do it? Yes if you're predisposed to and no if you're not (same as game shows are unlikely to convince people with a genuinely low natural acquisitiveness that they are suddenly desperate to be rich).
And the same is also true of pedophiles and child porn. The desire predates and drives the search for the content. Same as with GTA, it's going to influence your cognition temporarily, make sexy lolis dancing around in your mind (that is, whatever neurological indicators there are of active pedophilic attraction) more prominent (though, as the characteristic quirk of male sexuality, (for most men anyway) you'll suddenly be totally uninterested in it for at least a bit once you cooooom, a threshold that isn't as hard/visible in regards to violent stimuli). Whether you'll go further than the screen is almost entirely dependent on other factors. And the desire in general is wholly unaffected.
I actually wasn't talking about child porn (which I don't look at anymore, as it's often, in my view, generally inferior in technical quality and erotic character to the more legal stuff which is in great abundance and thus not worth whatever hassles/legal risks are involved in acquiring it, even though those are still relatively minor (at least in likelihood, not in expected downside) with even a small bit of education). I was talking about the abundance of legal but sexualized content of minors all over the Internet. You are correct about child porn though in that even though it's actually fairly easy to find and consume it safely, doing so is still often definitely is too much for many dumb people (particularly young zoomers who often can't do anything technologically if it's not in convenient app form).
Edit: Though I should be clear that I interpreted your question (based on the phrase "desire for real children") as being in regards to one's behavioral inclination to have actual sexual contact with children assuming that circumstances making the opportunity available were already present (that is, if someone would do it or not in the "moment of truth"). Overall, I do think child porn availability likely reduces instances of sexual contact with children via the same mechanism by which porn reduces instances of sexual contact with/between adults (including rape, but also consensual ones): it saps your time/willpower and occupies energy/moments you could otherwise spend pursuing IRL mating activities. It's as true of pedophiles as it is of anyone else.
Going based on my prior analogy, it's like how any amount of time spent watching "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", will, if anything, most likely reduce your chance of actually becoming one, if not just because watching it is not an activity that actually actively productively contributes to the process of becoming a millionaire (in most cases, unless you're training to get on the show and win yourself, but that's a long shot, kind of like claiming that (child or adult) porn is going to train you in how to seduce females and sexually satisfy them, which may occasionally be true for some but only very rarely).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I do appreciate getting a comment from such a rare...perspective. I guess I'd like to say that I'm not even all that concerned with legit pedos, in that I don't think they're even all that common enough to justify the ban.
You reference YouTube videos of kids being used as..."material," and I would like to point out that people did Notice that, eventually.
They definitely did and (ironically enough) implemented reforms that made things even easier for the hardcore collectors (though YouTube has been naturally superseded anyway for this kind of material by TikTok/Instagram due to the low attention span of your average modern young female, inevitably driving them there).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Your division of "you" and "we" in this comment obscures your misunderstanding, I think. Many, maybe all of the people you seem to think you're addressing presumably agree that fictional abuse is preferable to real abuse. But that doesn't mean they're comfortable accidentally seeing it, and it definitely doesn't mean that profit-seeking companies are comfortable having it floating around in their social media ecosystems, where it might lead to bad press or a userbase exodus. The same is true of many categories of pornography that don't raise any age-of-consent issues at all. Torture porn, scatological porn, even non-pornographic materials depicting violence, may all be totally fictitious and yet they will often be censored.
The goal is not to stop you, personally, from doing something objectionable, though in some cases censorship might contribute to that end. The goal is to create welcoming, profitable semi-public spaces that will not attract pitchfork-wielding mobs.
Well perhaps I am confused, but it seems to me like most people communicating "This is a good thing actually." mean it in regards to fundamental moral concerns, not concerns of expediency, convenience, or compliance. But I do acknowledge that many (even pedos in some cases) may hold apparently censorious views for those reasons. After all, if even I ever started up a social media platform that somehow attained any sort of popularity, even I would have to sadly pretend sufficiently enough to vigorously oppose the pedophilic content on it.
That's the goal of their owners. I'm not sure why their users should care.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
[insert sufficient grumblings about pedophilia is bad] I do agree that drawn material is a better and less harmful alternative given my understanding of the likely consequences and find banning it ridiculous. That said, the non-drawn stuff is actively horrible both because consumption can fuel production, which is the source of an incredible amount of human suffering, and because of the harm done to people attempting to live after abuse by knowing a memorial of their abuse is circulating for all time among pedophiles. Keep the nonhuman stuff, even ai generated stuff but real stuff is an abomination.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I know this is probably going to come across as uncharitable I find it difficult to get mad about about pedos and gore fetishists getting forced underground, if anything this strikes me as one of the DEI/LGBTQ/BBQ movements few redeeming qualities.
ロリコン is not the same as 児童ポルノ, they're treated extremely differently in Japan and one is unmistakable for the other. Which, in fact, is the original reason that that stuff ended up on Mastodon, because the ideologically Californian people that ran twitter at the time couldn't fathom Japanese culture being okay with Californian taboos.
But yeah sure, support people who hate you and everything that you are because they might do some harm to people who are loosely affiliated in your mind with other people you hate. See where that gets you.
I kind of find this comment ironic since in any other context, most of the people spewing at @HlynkaCG would probably be on Team Burn the Pedos, but if they're pissing off SJWs, then they are defended without reservation.
(And I find the attempts to scrupulously differentiate "loli" from "actual" pedophilia unconvincing. Like, sure, I get that a lot of these guys just like really cute... really... young girls and may not literally be pedophiles in the clinical sense. But again, that's not a distinction the anti-woke crowd would accept in any kind of role-reversal. If we found out some prominent leftist was really into ロリコン, LibsOfTikTok would be all over it.)
The response here to the revelation that several scientists who write the WPATH recommendations regarding the treatment of transsexuality in children, were regulars on a castration fetish forum, wasn't that such a forum shouldn't be allowed to exist.
Not here, no, the norms here would push against such a statement. But I'd be willing to bet if I went looking in right-wing forums it wouldn't be hard to find such sentiments. I'd also be willing to bet that quite a few of the rightists here, if actually given the power, would ban castration fetishist forums (and a lot of other things). More than one has admitted as much.
Are you really going to argue against imaginary rightwingers so you don't have to address the arguments of people here?
If we actually look at the actual arguments of people who are actually here, it's weird to see the shift away from "woah there: you can't prove they're castration fetishists just because they administer a castration fetish website and write castration fetish porn, and who's to say if there's anything wrong with them basing medical treatment for children off of content from said fetish website."
At least they weren't drawing lewd cartoons, I guess. Apparently that's much worse and doesn't require any of the same charity.
I am addressing the arguments of people here. I believe some (not all) of the people here are not committed in any principled way to free speech, especially not that of people whom they would normally call pedos regardless of the strict accuracy of the term. I believe they are reacting firstly to "the enemy of my enemy" and secondly to "someone I don't like said something."
(If this is not you, then it is not you.)
I don't know who you are referring to here. Certainly not me or @HlynkaCG, so who is the defender of castration fetishists who's now criticizing lolicon?
Again, who are you referring to? I don't recall seeing anyone saying that lewd cartoons are worse.
I did not note in my original post (because I try to avoid unnecessary throat-clearing disclaimers) that I don't actually agree with Hlynka entirely. My own personal view is that castration fetishists and lolicon fans are deeply weird and creepy, but they should be left alone so long as they aren't actually touching children. I would not censor either one legally. But I agree with him a little - I think the weird, creepy fetishists should keep that shit to themselves and not encourage its normalization.
The thing I posted in this thread which seems to have you so upset was not a lack of charity for lolicon. It was an observation that it's ironic to see people say "That's weird and gross" or "That's free expression that only humorless puritans would object to" depending entirely on whose fetish is being indulged.
Who's the attacker of castration fetishists who's now defending lolicon? I'm prepared to believe that people hold such a position, but is anyone actually doing it?
...I think you and the person you're responding to are both going off a vibe that is both real and not terribly quantifiable. One gets the general sense that the other side isn't objecting enough on a specific topic, no? There's a sense that, while the literal meaning of the statements might be roughly equivalent, they're masking some deeper disagreement, perhaps intentionally. That about the size of it?
More options
Context Copy link
You'll notice people did not just say "that's weird and gross" about the castration fetishists. We actually had interesting neutral discussions about it. People would indeed be humorless puritans if they, for example, carried out a DDOSing and reporting campaign against a castration fetish site.
The thing people were getting upset about? Fetishists being given license to shove their fetishes into medical doctrine for treating children. And I can promise you that everyone here who's upset about payment processor censorship would be equally upset if Ken Akamatsu dropped his "artistic freedom" platform in favor of legalizing tentacle rape in schools, or whatever the hentai artist equivalent to leftists writing castration fetish fanfiction into pediatric medical policy is.
So the hypocrisy you're trying to pin on people doesn't even exist here. And that's all you had to say about both issues?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I wouldn't wager against some overlap in actual people, but this assessment seems less like it's trying to avoid outgroup homogenity bias, and more like it's trying to exploit it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Do you find it hard to differentiate cartoon violence (assault with deadly weapon, attempted murder etc...) and the IRL thing?
https://i.imgur.com/87UDzEV.jpg
No. But if you're whacking off to Jerry hitting Tom over the head with a mallet, I might suspect you have an unhealthy fixation on violence, cartoon or otherwise.
Is your main concern that lolicon is used to jack off and you believe that that is a gateway to actual pedophilia?
No. I'm not concerned at all about what people jack off to. That's their business, and I'd merely thank them to keep it that way.
Then, what is your concern?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Personally I am more into top catting - that's when you get off on imagining yourself as a cat who stole a fist sized diamond by pretending to be a maharaja with a turban and fake moustache.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't care. I am and remain a principled libertarian.
I don't like lolicons but they have rights and Americans being incorrigible puritans doesn't change that.
This is my take as well. If someone is jerking off to lolicon, or gore porn, I think that's disgusting and they are almost certainly a very bad person. I also think that despite that, the person still has a right to exist in society, do legal business freely, etc. I don't support this nonsense of "they're creepy and not very popular, so we're going to gang up on them to punish them".
So to push back on the point @Amadan made, no I'm not supporting them because they upset the SJWs. I'm supporting them because it's the right thing to do. Hell, if it was the SJWs being suppressed I'd support them because it still would be the right thing to do (much as I personally dislike them).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Or you know I could just not. I could just sit back and let them fight.
I would like to introduce you to a poem somewhat famous but that is very close to your situation:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Don't make me tap the sign.
Scoundrels should be oppressed. The fact that honest people can be falsely portrayed as scoundrels, and the necessary mechanisms of justice turned unjustly against them, does not change this reality. Auto-immune disorders can't be resolved by simply switching off the immune system.
"Scoundrels should be oppressed" is fine in a vacuum. History has indicated that when governments begin oppressing scoundrels, they rarely stop there - they keep pushing at the boundaries of what constitutes a scoundrel until non-scoundrels are included.
I'm not claiming that Visa/Mastercard are "like the Nazis" but the principle is the same.
My understanding of history argues otherwise. Do you have some examples in mind? When you say that the boundary of "scoundrel" expands to include non-scoundrels... well, pretty clearly if they're accusing people of being scoundrels, they think they are scoundrels, no? How do you distinguish between the definition of scoundrel being too narrow, and expanding to match reality, versus the definition being perfect, and growing too broad?
Further, if it does expand too far... what then? What's to stop people from simply assessing that it's gone too far, correcting, and dialing it back to the appropriate level?
And if they don't dial it back to what you consider an appropriate level, what happens if their society simply operates in that fashion indefinitely? Is your claim that, if the borders expand too large, something catastrophic happens? If nothing catastrophic happens, is your theory disproven?
The USA PATRIOT Act was passed and implemented with the ostensible goal of combatting a group most of us would consider "scoundrels" by any reasonable definition: terrorists, especially Islamist extremists. Almost immediately, it was used as a tool for oppressing any group the federal government didn't like the look of, such as people operating Stargate SG-1 fan websites, people suspected of having committed non-terrorist crimes (without being formally indicted or being served a search warrant), legal permanent residents who the Attorney General suspects may cause a terrorist act and so on.
There are people that most reasonable people would consider scoundrels (murderers, rapists, drug dealers). The government is afforded various powers to combat these scoundrels. But there will always be a natural temptation for the government to abuse this privilege by using it against people the government doesn't like, but that no reasonable person would consider scoundrels (anti-war activists, environmentalists, homosexuals, directors of low-budget horror films and so on).
An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Better that ten guilty men escape than one innocent man hang.
Not necessarily. To use my earlier example of the USA PATRIOT Act, I don't think anything "catastrophic" has happened as a result of that piece of legislation - it hasn't led to a genocide, or destabilised the US, or anything of that magnitude. But I think it's fair to say that numerous people have had their civil liberties unfairly infringed upon - or indeed, their lives ruined - as a result of this legislation and how it was (ab)used, and I think that's bad.
More options
Context Copy link
Kohlberg stage III/IV morality, which says "that which gets you in trouble is bad", makes it hard to abolish rules against things; "it's illegal, so it's immoral, so it should stay illegal". This is a ratchet effect, which does justify caution.
To give a simple (if petty) example, webforum rules lists almost always get longer over time.
The ratchet can be pushed back, but it's not easy. Usually (but not always) involves some sort of Year Zero, whether that be a revolution, a counterculture, or more pettily and virtually a breakaway webforum redrawing its rules from scratch.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Scoundrels should have justice coming to them, for the bad things they actually do, no more, no less. Doing more than that, because they're bad people who deserve being treated badly, is not justice, and it's not what the justice system is supposed do to, and it can get out of control quickly. That's not autoimmune disorder, that's leukemia.
As long as you're keeping to justice, punishing scoundrels for scoundreling, not for existing, honest people have little to fear. Once you cut down the law to get at scoundrels who "hide behind it" by abiding it, it doesn't protect honest people anymore either.
Another issue is that scoundrel can mean bad people, but it also can mean icky people. Lolicons are the latter.
You appear to be approaching the question from a context of laws and other highly legible systems of formal rules. If I'm understanding you correctly, the idea would be that there's a clear separation between the legal rules and the justice system, and the various sorts of informal social consequences for lesser transgressions, with the idea being that the latter are perhaps less important and can more or less be ignored. If someone's not breaking the law, they should be left alone to do as they please, and we should in fact maintain a broad commons of unpoliced social space where people, generally, mind their own business and live and let live.
The problem, as I see it, is that people can do harmful and selfish things that make life a lot worse for everyone around them, and it's not possible to actually codify law against all those things. There's always going to be leaks, cracks, failures of encoding or enforcement. Also, there's a lot of social interactions that the law is simply too slow and regimented to meaningfully police. I observe that social consequences, even very serious social consequences that ruin or even end lives, have more or less always been part of our social structure. My guess is they always will be.
Society needs cohesion to function. broad commons of unpoliced social space where people, generally, mind their own business and live and let live was tried. It collapsed very quickly, and it is not obvious that it can or should be rebuilt. Live-and-let-live failed because it allowed a variety of social harms to spread unchecked, until people found the situation intollerable and began throwing their weight behind various forms of crackdown. And this is the pattern: your laws and social systems have to actually keep things running smoothly, or people will simply tear them out and replace them wholesale.
It is not obvious to me that this is actually true. I know that libertarians and Enlightenment idealists of the first water think it's true, and even desperately want it to be true, but many of the arguments they present seem to me to cash out in various forms of just-world fallacy. Censoring people doesn't seem to lead to you getting censored in any sort of causal fashion. Riding roughshod over the law to secure necessary results doesn't actually force woeful outcomes. Sticking it to the outgroup doesn't by any means result in someone else getting to stick it to you, thus restoring the balance. The Soviets broke every rule, and simply won, killed everyone who got in their way, ruled half the world for the better part of a century, and then more or less quietly died off. There was not and will not be any triumphant counter-revolution that does to them or their posterity what they did to others. Lincoln cut down a variety of laws, because the situation seemed to demand it... and his side won, and imposed their will on the losers, and there was no consequence of any significance that resulted.
It's very comforting to imagine that those who exercise power receive strict karma for the way they use it... but this does not appear to be the case. If you use power benevolently but ineffectually, others can take power away from you, and how they use it has nothing to do with how you used it.
What protects honest people is a cohesive society of other honest people who share their values and their understanding of who is and is not a scoundrel, and are willing and able to punish defectors appropriately. Lacking that, all the laws in the world will not save them.
The distinction does not seem sustainable at our present social scale.
I don't think you understood me correctly, I made no such distinction.
My point applies equally to informal social punishment: You should punish bad actions, not "bad people". At its basis, that's an ethical principle. No one deserves punishment for existing.
There seems to be another misunderstanding here. By "honest people" I'm not referring to the people who want to oppress scoundrels, in fact I believe these people are very often not honest. I'm thinking people who are minding their own business, innocent people.
My point is not that oppression is shortsighted due to risk of backfiring, but ethically fraught due to risk of hurting innocent people (as well as on its own merits in a vacuum). And it does seem obviously, trivially true that if you cut down the law (or non-law principle), it can't protect people anymore.
That said, the risk of backfiring is higher than you believe. Purity spirals, the revolution eating its own children. You talk about the soviets, but "the soviets" includes many people who did not in fact win in the end. Trotsky lost the power struggle with Stalin, and suddenly Trotskyists were considered scoundrel. Yezhov led the great purge and fell to it himself. Not everyone gets to be Stalin, so even the person who doesn't care about hurting innocents might consider self-interest.
You can't sustain an understanding of who is scoundrel. As you say yourself:
The issue is that if you go after bad people and aren't fair to them, it becomes hard for supposed scoundrel to defend themselves.
This also means dishonest people gain power, because they can falsely accuse honest people of being scoundrel. The solution is to go after bad actions, and fairly, so the accused gets a chance to correct potential mistakes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And thus, we get back to the age-old question: who determines the scoundrels? What if the Determinator-Of-Scoundrels is himself secretly a scoundrel seeking to shift the definition of "scoundrel" and oppress his enemies?
We do, collectively. If "we" has broken down, that itself is a problem that cannot be sidestepped, papered over, or worked around through clever systems design, and all these other problems emerge as a consequence.
There is no substitute for a foundational level of values coherence. Society inevitably breaks down in its absence. If you have such values coherence, defining and suppressing "scoundrels" is a solvable propblem. If you do not, it is not, and your society self-destructs.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The only true right-wing republican's gradual return to the loving breast continues apace.
(Nevertheless, upvoted, for comedic value and because pedos are, indeed, very bad publicity for the cause of freedom).
Return?
Unlike @IGI-111 I was never a libertarian (principled or otherwise) and as I told you before I see a stark difference between "silence" and "being silenced".
Frankly the OP's complaint really only makes sense to me if one starts with the conception of porn as some sort of "positive right" IE that we are owed validation/satisfaction and that declining to participate is on the same level as a personal attack. It's the same basic impulse as that behind those transsexuals who sued the cake shop, it is not enough for a vendor to offer
cakeporn, vendor must participate in and affirm their specific flavor of sexual deviancy, and should the vendor balk the fault lies not with those making the demand but with the vendor for denying them their "rights".The right is not to the porn, it's to the ability to make consensual legal transactions freely. Which has historically been true because there was rarely a required middleman to make consensual legal transactions until recently. So it's a relatively unprecedented situations worthy of being considered without crude analogies.
doesn't really matter but it was a gay couple, not transsexuals.
Unsurprisingly there was a second case to harass the same baker.
He'll be fighting lawsuits and prosecutions from the Colorado government until he dies, and nobody will even think of counter-attacking to ruin his harassers.
Sometimes you really do just need to admire the pure spite these people operate on. But I imagine the lawyers are running the show now and the owner is probably well compensated with conservative lawyer money.
Where does such things come from?
People who want to set judicial precedents, same place but opposite side that wants to create the opposite precedent.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think this is a stronger argument were we talking about randos charging down SFW (or just not-their-kink) artists and demanding commission slots. Which does happen, but it's pretty quick route to mockery-town.
((Although the comparison still wouldn't be quite accurate: among her other sins, Mrs. Scardina is very clearly more interested in finding something Masterpiece Cake Shop is unwilling to do, specifically.))
At a deeper level: there's a meaningful distinction between going to a random baker until you find one unwilling to bake your cake, and finding out that every baker on the planet is unwilling to bake any cake for you unless you change unrelated behaviors. And that, in turn, is different from when every baker in the country acting under extremely strict regulatory requirements which have historically been used against some of those unrelated behaviors, and while possession of too much flour or icing is considered evidence of a crime in itself.
Maybe, in some alternate universe where this wasn't a thing, then we'd have far more credit card companies and banks around, and still no payment providers willing to touch it. Might even be more likely than not. But it's really convenient to assume. I'm libertarian enough that the difference from "silence" and "being silenced" matters; I'm also libertarian enough to notice that the difference is not quite so clear-cut when the government has hollowed out many 'private actors' and started wearing them like sock puppets.
((I'd actually bet in favor of banning this particular content, but it's very clear that it doesn't stop or even start here.))
Luckily the ban also includes bestiality, so as per your previous example they're already telling furries to, uh, stop sticking their animal dildos where the sun doesn't shine.
Since this is an impossible challenge, we'll hopefully get some resistance from them, despite the sudden but inevitable betrayal that will follow as soon as their Puff The Knotted Dragon toys are safe.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No, this is the baker and customer both happy but the storefront the baker is operating in saying that flavor of cake can't be served because they don't like it. The artists already drew it happily, now they just want to distribute their work.
It's analogous to facebook deciding that a perfectly legal gun store cannot have a facebook page. The various layers of services in between a producer of some thing and a consumer of that thing are getting more and more deeply enmeshed in all our lives, and along the way being given more control over what can be produced/consumed.
Many more things should be common carriers. Payment providers included.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't see how this is caused by "DEI/LGBTQ/BBQ movements". Payment processors already had rules about not wanting to be associated with online sex/porn websites. If anything, this should be seen as an extension of existing prudishness along with a refusal to look in any way like they're associated with things that aren't "family friendly".
To expand on that- the DEI crowd keeps around a lot of Allies that push back on the ‘no porn’ taboo regularly and strongly, make their living drawing fetish porn, and has a generally pro-porn stance. The not wanting to service porn sites is not a DEI initiative.
(Note: I'm conflating "DIE" with progressivism-as-faction in general here.)
I'm not convinced they're allies. The Venn diagram of "porn LibsOfTikTok complains about in school libraries" and "porn these people draw" might depict the same things on the surface level, but the trick about the Junior Anti-Sex League's attempts at pornography is that they're not designed to be attractive or appealing in any way to the viewers, and their "porn education" efforts are quite literally just "ensure that the only porn that exists is academic, sterile, unappealing, and unappetizing as the ideal woman should be in bed".
It is by the dominant part of DIE, and aligns with the people DIE is meant to serve and fuck with (good for the Inner Party, worst for the Outer Party). Perhaps it's a saving grace that the people banning porn pisses off are also the group of people technically capable of implementing the workarounds, then.
I don't get your point. Are you arguing that the people who are banning this stuff don't want porn that entices a person?
This I would like proof of. Nowhere in DEI literature am I aware of arguments that loli and guro hentai is bad, and if they do exist, I don't see proof that they are common or widespread views.
From the few screengrabs of the material I've seen, though I haven't done the full research to figure out whether or not that's a good representation, none of what they showed demonstrates what makes sex and sexuality enticing in any way.
They don't bother to make their drawings actually stimulating or attractive, much less abuse superstimulus- if they were actually trying, you'd expect their characters to look like the top-scoring entries on any drawn porn site (or be scripted any less unnaturally), but this isn't the case, so while they're definitely going for shock value, it's more smoke than fire.
(Also, I find it very interesting that women are vanishingly rare in those screengrabs; it's virtually all male-male pairings, exactly what you'd expect from a woman-privileging movement. "Sex is great, as long as I don't have to have it.")
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
When Mastercard bans you from buying a gun or ammo and reports you to the FBI for it, maybe you'll understand the consequences.
Mastercard doesn't need to report me to the FBI I do that to myself when I fill out the 4473, and if you think I (or anyone else) would be buying an off-list firearm with a credit card you're an idiot.
You don't (yet) fill out a 4473 to buy what credit card companies will call "mass shooter quantities of ammunition" for a day at the range, which is exactly what the antigun guys are bragging about being able to do now.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This seems quite adjacent to the "man, I too hate $government, but nobody else can lead the fight against $external_enemy quite like them" sentiment that autocrats everywhere seek to foster. See also Western ex-dissidents siding with the American deep state vs. the Russians, or Democrats with the same vs. Trump, or patrician Republicans with Trump vs. the Democrats, or every military dictatorship in history.
More options
Context Copy link
My favourite part of "woke" movement is delegitimizing America's moral authority, by, for example, claiming it was conceived in slavery as Project 1618 does, or emphasizing how long aspects of racism, like redlining, linger.
By this, orthodox pro-American historiography ceases to be considered valid, as Slavinated and Asianated voices join the previously all-Anglo choir.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
At this point do people need me to even dress up the point? Crypto is the only option that can resist this. These are only the cutting edge of central control throwing off the pretense of impartiality, more will follow.
Will people who don't want to pay for this type of porn sacrifice the upsides of centralized currency just to protect the freedom of people they consider deviants?
Do you genuinely think this stops at the stupid porn? This is a weapons test against a target intentionally chosen because few would defend them. It's the weapon of tyrants, it's forging should fill you with trepidation.
I agree, but I think that what @Evinceo was getting at is that people will perceive it as just being about the porn. People are really, really bad at understanding "this will eventually bite you in the ass too", and instead treat this sort of thing as being about the object level point.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The issue for visa and banks is that they are becoming activist against countries. Apparently a war is enough to deplattform Russia and Russian companies. There are many armed conflicts around the world and the US wasn't deplattformed for invadring Iraq. The number of sanctions the US is placing on countries has grown significantly and the sanction system is becoming less based on laws and rules and more simply tools for geopolitics. If the US doesn't like your government then all contracts are nullified over night with no real due process or formal rules regulating it.
Any businessman in Latinamerica, the middle east or Africa should have realized at this point that contracts with the US aren't binding agreements but can be cancled over night if the twitter mob decides it doesn't like your government.
We are probably going to see a major shift away from American banking and financial infrastructure to a system that is less feasible to deplattform from and it won't be Japanese porn or political dissidents leading the way. It is going to be countries moving away when they realize that their financial infrastructure is being built on a legal framework that is increasingly functioning like the youtube terms and services.
I suspect we will see increasing pushes towards technical sovereignty, open source and open standards, countries being hooked up to dual systems such as an Ericsson telecom system + a Huawei telecom system
Yes, I do kinda hope that we get the "nicer" version of "multipolarity" in the form of competing standards like you allude to.
The whole specter-of-Communism thing probably doesn't help either; LatAm countries have been ambivalent-to-hostile to the US for a variety of historical reasons, and pissing off African countries is maybe not the best thing to do when China is already throwing money at them. The Middle East is probably never going to have a very great relationship with us, but on the other hand, it's probably surprisingly good considering the Israel thing.
More options
Context Copy link
The issue being that these other countries aren't going to be particularly concerned about the sacred inviolability of contracts, but will want to retain their own ability to deplatform/end contracts on their own terms, thus reducing their ability to function as a meaningful alternative.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You say this like you're describing two different sets of people; social conservatives are best modeled as temporarily-disgraced (or is it temporally-disgraced?) progressives. The term "progressive-conservative" exists for a reason; and rather humorously, each tries desperately to lay claim to the liberals, who switch from one "side" to the other as the multi-dimensional pendulum of power swings back and forth.
I suspect (and nodding to the other post downthread) there's probably a gender angle to this; under the lens of rational self-interest it makes more sense for women to be progressive-conservative (PC for short), because reinforcing power structures is their evolutionary specialization (being the supply-side gender, they want their prices as high as possible), and more sense for men to be liberal, since they prosper when power structures flatten (more available and accessible ways to pay said price). Which is probably why that's what we see borne out in opinion polls, voting splits, and chosen professions.
This isn't going to be fixed with crypto, for that matter; while it is possible to "launder" cash from the enemy's point of view, it's not immune to the "fine, we'll just stop buying your [dollars] entirely until you submit to our cultural standards" Russian-style sanctions. Sure, that might be guaranteed to cause some riots, but since when has the US been shy of starting actual wars to further geopolitical interests "because fuck you"?
This is an intriguing framing and something I'd like to learn more about. Do you have any references to recommended reading?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This hits the nail on the head for me. People attack crypto for being volatile, prone to hacks, scams and so on.
But at the end of the day, digital currency is not going away. Cash is going away - it's inconvenient. We are not switching back to gold. There is a binary choice between a central bank digital 'currency' and a decentralized digital currency, almost certainly a cryptocurrency.
The former is controlled by bankers and governments, it literally just becomes good boy points that can be doled out or withdrawn at will. Freedom of transaction is the fundamental basis for every other kind of freedom. Good luck with your free speech if you can't even pay for food, let alone a marker and cardboard. First it's CP and loli or whatever, then it's anything they don't like. Disfavoured groups are already systematically disadvantaged in uni admissions, job applications and certain grant initiatives. Why not raise taxes on them or raise prices of certain goods for certain people? What about a climate lockdown? This power is seductive and self-reinforcing. It is very effective at suppressing people. AI-assisted control of centralized digital currency is the totalitarian dream. They can print money and ration goods with perfect efficiency. They can assess taxes at will, arbitrarily. Paypal decided to sneak back in its $2500 arbitrary fine after pretending to scrap it - there is nothing and nobody that can stop them if they're acting at the will of the state.
The latter is controlled by stakers, miners and eccentric nerds. Maybe they make mistakes from time to time. But they don't have armies and fleets, they don't have vast bureaucracies to inflict their will on the rest of us. The rules are fairer - all transactions are public (or in the case of Monero all are private). There is no panopticon for thee and privacy for me. Reputable coins don't have a single node that can print unlimited amounts of currency for free - looking at you central banks.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It seems like Trump is getting his twitter back. The weird thing is I think red tribe doesn’t want him to get twitter back. I don’t. Blue tribe will put up a big fight over it but actually be very happy if he got twitter back. Then they get his tweets to rally against. For now Musks says he’s thinking about it. From a free speech absolutist view he does have to approve it. But I still want him to say no.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593673844996288512?s=46&t=o4yJPOOQnQoAxYXvJuPdlQ
Man, I have such mixed feelings about this.
I really want Trump to get out of the fucking way. He had his shot at being the hero of the populist right, he failed comprehensively. Somehow his enemies were stronger than ever after his tenure, with an even tighter grip on the culture, the levers of power, and the minds of our youth than ever before. His entire presidency was the perfect examples of one step forward, two steps back. He simply was not the guy.
Is Desantis the guy? 70% chance he's not in my estimation. But I'm willing to give him a shot.
I'd heard some talk that after so many Trump backed candidates ate dirt in the midterms, and Desantis fucking cleaned house, that meant America was "over" Trump. But that doesn't necessarily mean he'd lose a Republican Primary. Especially not with a crowded field, and a 30% cut of the base that's ride or die for him. Republicans will have to pull the same shit the DNC pulled on Bernie, and keep some Trump adjacent candidate in the race to try to split his base, while every other nominee falls in line and endorses someone else chosen behind closed doors.
With my luck, Desantis will be the Trump adjacent candidate they use to split the base, and fucking Jeb Bush will be the anointed insider candidate.
Anyways, Trump getting back on twitter is step 1 to growing his reach again. Right now he's so marginalized only that ride or die portion really gets his messages anymore. He doesn't go viral. Barely anybody even knows what he's saying anymore, beyond second hand accounts of his "melt downs" on Truth Social. My only hope is that he has too much pride to come slinking back to Twitter without Elon issuing a personal apology for the terrible way Twitter treated him, and begging him on his hands and knees to please grace Twitter with his genius and insight again. I guess I have to further hope Elon doesn't then go and do just that.
As much as I'm a free speech guy, and thought his banning was patently ridiculous, now that he's gone, I wish he'd just stay gone. But it's looking like he's going to take the RNC down with him every bit as much as Clinton took the DNC down with her in 2016.
He appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term and others. I would not call that a failure. Did other stuff too. Did he make the left worse? Possible, but correlation not causation. Of course, this was not contingent on Trump per say.
He seems even more of an 'establishment guy' than Trump.
Why would he ask or expect an apology when both he and Elon know it was the old management who banned him.
That's congress's doing, not Trump's. All he did was sit in the chair. Any old stooge could have done that, and for less!
What do you mean? The president does nominate the person.
Nobody is saying that the Senate wasn't involved. They obviously are. @pusher_robot was pointing out that it's untrue to say that Trump wasn't involved, and that it was all Congress' doing.
We're evaluating Trump as a potential "leader of the populist right", and Supreme Court nominations are entirely unrelated to one's competency in that role, as Evinceo notes.
Except to the degree that you can get yourself elected as President, in which case just say that, instead of how he "appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term and others".
I disagree.
The alternate explanation is that Trump (and more broadly the Tea Party) accurately identified one of the most significant in terms of attack surfaces in terms of actual damage dealt and flipped it, which is why so0 many blue/grey tribers are now desperate to paint it as a nothing-burger.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Trump was given a curated list to pull names from.
Mitch held a seat and Trump did what he was told. The one, huge, unequivocally great thing he did wasn't him, because you have to be delusional at this point to think Trump is good at doing anything but trolling the hell out of the libs.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And yet Trump managed to not fuck it up where other establishment Republicans have, by wanting to nominate friends of friends or reward political favors.
More options
Context Copy link
Right but any conservative president would have done the same. It's congress that made sure he got to nominate three instead of two.
any other "conservative president" would have lost in 2016 making this whole point moot anyway
"if only Trump didn't have X, Y, Z, and was A, B,C, he would be great" or "he just did stuff another GOP person would have done" counterfactuals as reasons to discount things he did or put space between things you like and things you don't like aren't strong arguments because other "conservative" president or GOP nominee would have lost in 2016 and the US would have been in the 2nd term
you would prefer a nicer, polished Trump? you think another guy in his place woulda done something he did you like anyway? okay, well that guy would have lost and it would be the 2nd term of Hillary Clinton right now
I disagree. If Trump hadn't run, we could have ended up with a boring normal republican who would have almost certainly won against doomed candidate Hillary Clinton. Of course no candidate in 2016's primary was equipped to deal with his shenanigans or frankly live in the meme economy at all.
There are things I wish he'd done differently, even adjusting for our obvious political differences. I wish he'd kept turnover lower and cultivated effective leaders he could delegate to. I wish he'd handled Covid differently rather than deferring to states and letting the CDC go off on adventures. I wish he'd had a more pragmatic plan to deal with China. I wish he'd thought more carefully about his responsibility as a leader to set the stage for future leaders who aren't him.
A boring normal Republican would have been railroaded and lost because he wouldn't fight, just like Mitt Romney did in 2012 and John McCain did in 2008. And just like Mitt Romney was so mediocre the GOP couldn't take the Senate despite maybe the best metrics and seats to do so in decades, a normal Republican would not have won healthy majorities in Congress either.
If you look at the other likely Candidates in the absence of Trump, they would have lost the midwest. If they lost the midwest, they lose the election. Which one do you think would have turned unlikely voters who voted Obama in 2008 and 2012 into GOP voters? Certainly not Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush.
Trump was being impeached at the start of covid. He was regularly being threatened by his own party with removal if he changed the leadership at the CDC. Because of that, what he did was create a parallel group which oversaw stats reporting to stop the CDC from lying about it.
You may wish he did X, Y, or Z, and I certainly do, but we must remember what really happened during the COVID hysteria.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Trump's polling and performance in the midwest, something which was necessary for the GOP candidate to win, and something with which every other candidate in the heavily contested primary did far worse in
Trump captured just enough Obama voters in the midwest to win. Which of the other likely candidates was going to do that? Not Cruz, not Rubio, not Jeb, not Kasich outside of Ohio. And that's assuming they would have performed as good as Trump did in other states outside of their "native" regions. Trump, alone, was the person pushing polices which most Americans cared about but which the other candidates were doing their best to ignore (immigration and trade being the main ones).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Disagree, other establishment conservative presidents have made worse (especially in retrospect) selections. Remember Harriet Miers?
Isn't that shift a result of the work of the Federalist Society, which basically picked every conservative SC justice after Miers?
Partly, but no they do not pick them. Trump picked them from their recommendations. So far he is the only Republican president to commit to doing so and follow through. It's just too tempting to play patron with them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
hence I wrote, "Of course, this was not contingent on Trump per say."
More options
Context Copy link
No it is not, The president nominates the Senate approves or disapproves, and whatever else, Trump's efforts on behalf of the cause go a bit deeper than just 3 SCOTUS Justices.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That was McConnell's victory, not Trump's. Trump wanted people who would be "loyal" to him (he was obsessed about "loyalty" for more than he was concerned with any coherent political philosophy), but his advisors pushed him to trust McConnell. Any Republican president with a heartbeat could have done the same thing.
I wouldn't call Trump "establishment" in any sense, so I agree that Desantis is definitely more establishment than Trump. That said, Trump is a proven failure while Desantis at least has potential.
DeSantis wasn’t very establishment but going against covid. He wasn’t establishment going after LGBT stuff in school. He wasn’t establishment going after Disney.
There exists a Republican Party establishment that still firmly controls about a third of the states in the union. That is what Desantis represents. Everything he does aligns with their agenda.
That is just claiming X without proving X. DeSantis went way out on a limb re covid. He held the line for freedom when many Republicans didn’t. How is that establishment?
except Desantis did lockdown, did enforce mask mandates, did close schools, and a bunch of other covid hysteria
Noem, Abbot, Kemp, and others have similar performance
was Desantis better than your average GOP derp? yeah, but that's not saying much
in order for Desantis to "go way out on a limb re covid" compared to the establishment GOP, the establishment GOP would have to have a stark covid response position
what was that establishment position during the covid hysteria?
Okay Charlie Crist. Florida was the first state of significant population to buck the covid lockdowns. They also did a lot to prevent local municipalities from backdooring the lunacy. If you compare Abbot with DeSantis Florida was faster and more complete in return to normal.
Part of the reason the GOP became more freedom aligned re Covid was because of DeSantis.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Can you be more specific? What are the policies where you see yourself and Trump in opposition to the GOP establishment and DeSantis?
Are you talking about Paul Ryan style fiscal conservatism, where he'll try to cut social security and medicare so he can cut taxes?
Or do you think he's faking it with his anti-illegal-immigration stance?
desantis is a neocon, his china/trade policy, his removal of confederate statues and history, having more charisma than a wet blanket, being able to win a national election to name a few
desantis doesn't have strong "stances," he makes political plays
which is why desantis was a nameless neocon dork during his 6 years in Congress (which is why the GOP essentially handed him a R+9 district), he saw how popular trump was with Republicans, and then has been going with the diet trump act since
if someone was going to attempt to supplant populist trumpism, you would go with a softer, diet trumpism while still maintaining much of the status quo nonsense
this was true when the GOP infiltrated and destroyed the tea party and it is true now
I will take Diet Trumpism with the chance of actually accomplishing anything over current Trumpism that did nothing but tweet for 4 years any day. How hard you might desire to hit doesn't mean anything if you never throw a punch.
Trump needs to go away. He had his chance. As impotent, disorganized, and completely non-insurrection-like in character as it was, he even had a kind of semi-coup (or at least semi-coup energy) available for him to work with in J6 (even if it had failed and he had simply died for it, that would have been a far more noble use of his life than anything he's ever done before or since).
(He also planned the whole thing and knew the date so he could have easily made some better coup preparations.) He chose to be lazy and incompetent, having no real plan other than tweeting as usual, and a coward, telling his followers to go home instead of rocking the system, instead (also as usual).
That's all he's ever been, a lazy coward with a big mouth, and there's no proof he's changed. At least DeSantis, despite his regrettable philosemitism, does things sometimes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Trump was willing to appoint conservative culture warriors and give them free reign so long as they were sufficiently loyal to him, personally.
Now sometimes those were clowns, corrupt do-nothings, or both. And a lot of the time he fired competent people for not being loyal enough. But "Mad Dog" Mattis defeated IS, Bill Barr brought back the federal death penalty, Scott Pruitt actually cut environmental regulations, and I doubt any of them would have been allowed to do so by Jeb!, even if they'd been appointed in the first place.
I do agree that had Mitt been elected in 2012, the supreme court would've overturned Roe just the same.
You're giving an awful lot of credit re ISIL to one guy, esp since the timeline is wrong: Wikipedia tells me, "Since 2015, ISIL lost territory in Iraq and Syria, including Tikrit in March and April 2015,[109] Baiji in October,[110] Sinjar in November 2015,[111][112] Ramadi in December 2015,[113] Fallujah in June 2016[114] and Palmyra in March 2017." So, they were on the way to defeat long before Mattis came along.
That's probably true.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I remember being quite concerned that after 8 years of the administrative state Turbulent Priest-ing Obama's enemies, that another 4 years of Hillary actively cultivating that behavior might spell the end of the republic. Of course, any Republican would probably have been enough to ward off that.
no other republican would have won
Almost any other Republican would have won. Most other Republicans would also have won the popular vote, instead of squeaking through by the skin of their teeth.
just like mitt romney
Mitt Romney didn't run in 2016, so...
and neither did any other Republican
lol
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is why I can’t take the phrase “most important election of our lifetimes” seriously anymore. 2016 was the most important election of our lifetimes, and it’s not even close.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
4D chess move would be for the RNC to put up some wacko like Marjorie Taylor Greene to siphon off Trump votes. If they played it right, they could even get Democrats to donate to her campaign.
why is marjorie taylor green a wacko?
More options
Context Copy link
Kari Lake, maybe? Nothing better to do, rants about election integrity, not obviously crazy, able to sit to Trump's right?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Even if Trump loses the primary, I don’t think his ego will allow him to not run as an independent. It’s looking like he either wins the primary or nukes the winner’s chances of taking the general by splitting the vote.
So… four more years of a Democrat in charge of the White House or four years of him playing the perfect boogeyman to the left while failing to get anything meaningful done*.
I can accept that in a lot of ways, he was genuinely sabotaged by lawfare and trumped up criminal charges that made it difficult to keep competent staffers. But if there’s someone who can fight back against that, it’s not him.
Trump opened a lot of doors, but I wish he were capable of stepping aside and letter more competent people build on that, rather than forcing it to live (and die) with him. But that’s his whole thing, isn’t it? He does not back down on stuff like this. It’s his biggest strength, but also the biggest weakness of a political movement that is tied to him.
*To be fair, if you were motivated by Roe v Wade, he really did deliver on this.
If he loses in the primary, would he really want to run a general election he knows he will lose?
More options
Context Copy link
Trump is almost certain to have better/more competent appointments this time around, I have to say. The Abbott admin's continuing legal victories are mostly staffed by people who plan on being appointed by Trump(and considering Abbott is likely Trump's favorite governor, I'd say they have a pretty good shot of getting those appointments), to name one example.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I agree that Trump made himself an exceedingly easy target for criticism, but at the same time I'm under the impression that any sufficiently Republican candidate in power is going to be used as a tool by the mainstream in order to further their cultural agenda.
Even if that candidate is 100% clean and somehow never does or says anything wrong, they're going to use whatever they can construe as even slightly objectionable to rub shit in the Republican party's face. The policies and legislative changes that politician enacts which goes against the mainstream are going to be painted in an unduly negative light, and any dirt they'll find will persist in the news cycle for as long as they need - regardless of if there's any basis to the claim or not. As far as I know they're still doubling down on the claim that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election, despite that having been thoroughly discredited multiple times.
All of this is to say that I don't think The Guy exists, not as long as the flow of information is so heavily controlled by certain interest groups. The information they'll hear from the very outset is going to be almost entirely negative, and first impressions stick. Eventually, that dislike becomes crystallised, and it's very hard to subsequently change people's minds.
I remember the media trying to make Romney’s dog-transportation and making less use of tax loopholes than average into major scandals, so I can’t say you’re totally wrong, but let’s remember that trump legitimately does have a lot more scandals to his name than Desantis or Pompeo.
Oh I don't disagree with that and never stated otherwise. I was just piggybacking off WhiningCoil's comment to state that I'm extremely doubtful that there is a Republican candidate out there which the mainstream media wouldn't make into a political weapon.
Perhaps this is too pessimistic, but I'm of the opinion that no real sweeping changes are possible as long as one political group continues to have such a stranglehold on media (and academia too) - the threat of "Deviate from accepted behaviour and we'll character assassinate you" is a very powerful sanction to impose on a public figure. It's for this reason that I'm far more interested in changing the informational environment than I am in playing party politics.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It seems conceivable that letting him back on after the midterms might work to Republicans' ultimate advantage. It feels like the electorate has turned against insane clown shows, so Trump putting on his insane clown show might actually move the primary toward DeSantis, and render hollow further attempts by the Democrats to pin Trump to the modern GOP.
But if I had my druthers, he'd stay off -- or better yet, die peacefully in his sleep from natural causes.
why is Desantis winning a primary to the Republicans' "ultimate advantage"?
it would be the destruction of the GOP
Because DeSantis is a better politician: more capable of winning, and more capable through competence and effectiveness in office at growing his political strength and the strength of his party. He has demonstrated this during his time in Florida. Trump has demonstrated the opposite.
Desantis is not funny or cool. The 2016 primary debates were hilarious and will never be topped. Trump is way more entertaining. Who wants some boring unfunny guy
The electorate this midterm cycle. All of Trump's handpicked made-for-TV clown-car candidates lost to their boring professional opponents, while the GOP's own boring professional politicians did much better.
what was the success rate on a trump endorsements?
did JD Vance lose? that's weird, my bet paid out big on that one, but maybe they mistakenly transferred the money
TBH Trump endorsements were overwhelmingly for uncompetitive races. He was probably the reason the GOP decided to run carpetbaggers, one of whom was a rino and the other of whom had obvious brain damage, in two must-win races, and deserves blame for that.
Absent Trump the GOP almost certainly would've run McCormick in Pennsylvania and probably would have run Jody Hice in Georgia, and probably would have 51 senate seats right now.
that's an interesting take, what do you base that on?
5 points is a big loss to overcome in the totally legitimate and well-run elections of Pennsylvania. Why do you think McCormick would have overcome that? Other GOP candidates who weren't run by Trump didn't.
edit: It can't be that McCormick was more moderate than Oz. It has to entirely rest on Oz being a carpetbagger. Frankly, I highly doubt an electorate who is willing to send an obviously brain damaged person who struggles to form basic sentences by 5 points would have magically swung for a neocon establishment Bushite like McCormick. Oz did very well with the demo McCormick does well with (college educated whites). Oz did poorly with the working class. Do you think McCormick appeals to the working class? The primary results do not support that.
Because of that, I think if anything McCormick would have done even worse. But to be honest, I don't think candidate quality is the reason why the GOP so underperformed historic trends in specific parts of the country with specific election laws who run elections in similar ways. From what I can tell, the difference between nat'l vote and % of representatives is the worst in a midterm very long time (I stopped looking past a few decades).
whose endorsements did better?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
DeSantis seems like rebranded Bush/Reagan- Status quo conservatism.
He's been giving every signal that he's serious about illegal immigration, no?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
::raises hand:: I do
I think we've all seen that while Trump is indeed entertaining, being an entertaining public speaker is not particularly correlated with being an effective administrator in a system largely run by your opponents. I can listen to a podcast to be entertained, I'd rather the Chief Executive be somebody who can effectively break the machine to his will.
Trump claims he now realizes just how much the system is against him and will do better if he gets re-elected. But why didn't he see that 6 months after he took office instead of going through 4 years and losing an election? Why should we believe that he now knows how to do it right? He had his chance and he failed, I'd rather give the job to somebody who has at least some proven experience in running the system the way he wants.
You sure hit the nail on the head. I'm not sure what Trumpists don't seem to get about the fact that throwing a wrench in the system only goes so far, especially now that they've removed the wrench from the works and have it firmly locked up in a cabinet.
Trump's primarily utility, given the uncertainty from the start surrounding his actual administrative skills, has always been as bait to lure more effective politicians into adopting his beneficial positions. The fish (DeSantis) took the bait, but now some people want to throw him back in the water. What gives?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Judging by Florida, 60% of the electorate.
There's a whole world out there outside Twitter. They don't care about DeSantis' establishment vibe. They don't think that Trump is funny or cool. They think he's a sad, pathetic, petty, stupid fat old man. Now, I like Trump myself. I think he's a hoot. 'We're going to get tired of all the winning' was funny... in 2016. Now it's funny for the wrong reasons.
the only statewide candidate who got 60% of the vote in Florida was not Ron Desantis
why not nominate her instead?
what do you base this on? this is the opposite of my experience with the florida gop voters
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
2015-2016 Trump was funny and cool. 2020-2021 Trump was just bitter and angry. The magic is gone. It was a good bit, but it’s played out.
More options
Context Copy link
The American voters as a whole, in 2020?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Even if this was possible (it's not absent some sort of disqualification move), Desantis winning the primary against Trump would not only end his political career, but destroy the GOP because Trump could easily run as an independent. How would this be an "ultimate advantage" to the Republican Party?
And if we're going to go into candidate quality which I think is less important than the totally legitimate ballot harvesting schemes put in place across the country, Desantis is still lackluster.
Is there a single state outside of Florida (and even there it's arguable) where Trump doesn't lead Desantis by large margins in favorability? Is Desantis the one "growing his political strength and the strength of his party" in Florida given others in statewide office did even better or is it the tight voting controls and 300,000+ rightwing lockdown refugees moving to the state?
Did you know Desantis was a congressmen for 6 years? You remember what a great politician he was then? What part of his political genius is why he was given an R+9 to R+20 district? What part of his political genius required Donald Trump to drag him to a win by only 30,000 votes in 2018?
The current push by neverTrumpers, establishment GOP derps, and con inc., to fluff up Desantis as a tool against Trump is going to harm Desantis, he will not beat Trump, and even if he did he would lose the national election in hilarious fashion.
Agree to disagree!
neocon desantis who became popular as diet trump being pushed to the forefront by all the worst people in the most manufactured popularity campaign since lex fridman
it will harm desantis, harm trump, and destroy the GOP which is probably good tbh but claiming it would be an "ultimate advantage" is just detached from reality
it's unsurprising you are unwilling to engage in anything resembling a fleshed out argumentWhy is it unsurprising? What are you implying here?
Avoid inserting this kind of sneer into the discussion.
it's unsurprising because the user has written a half-dozen similar low-effort comments making assertions and then refusing to explain them let alone offer support in this thread
you're right, I shouldn't have written that and will avoid it from now on
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
How so?
gop gets very few seats without maga support
without maga, the GOP is running campaigns from the 1990s for a voter base which doesn't exist anymore
https://www.themotte.org/post/181/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/32883?context=8#context
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I used to think he'd die of a Wendys induced heart attack while in office. For narrative reasons, the media would have no idea what to do with it.
Now I think he's going to die doing something genuinely heroic. Like, a Nazi or otherwise right wing terrorist will take an event he's at hostage and he'll get everyone else out saying "it's me you want, The Donald, not the waiters and these bozos" before getting shot. Because they would produce maximum confusion.
Boy you sure have a different mental model of Trump's psyche than I do. I can't think of any public figure more demonstrably willing to throw his loyalists to the wolves for momentary personal advantage. Why do you imagine, under your framework, he didn't pardon the January 6 crowd before Biden was sworn in?
to not be impeached, removed, and barred from running again which was the explicit threat made by turtle Mitch?
could he have pardoned individuals not yet indicted? Jan 6th people were being arrested long after he left office.
Yes.
More options
Context Copy link
He could have, yes. If he did, Turtle Mitch was threatening him with a "removal" vote which may bar him from running again. Would that "removal vote" be Constitutional? In my opinion, it would not be but the SCOTUS had already failed spectacularly to defend the constitutional order throughout the entire election.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This isn't a model of how trump thinks or acts, I'm just riffing on how the universe seems to always produce max chaos around him. He's the Jungian incarnation of Loki the trickster God.
I want Maxx confusion. I want trump to die pulling trans kids out of a burning building, leave a will with money towards a giant gold pyramid on the mall, and no one will know what to do.
Consider the 1/6 stuff. If he had clearly said he supported the shaman dude in overthrowing the us government, he'd either be president for life or dead. If he'd clearly repudiated them and their election theories we'd be done with it. He did neither.
More options
Context Copy link
I believe Trump would throw himself on a bomb under the right circumstances. Of course, he would be thinking of how heroic and awesome and beloved he was, and how this would prove the Haters and Losers wrong, and of the yuge monument that would be built to honor his courage (bravest President ever? many are saying so), and probably not thinking about saving people. But Trump is capable of very self-destructive behavior, so long as it's in service of his own ego.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
His dad lived to his 90s only succumbing to Alzheimer's, not something like heart disease or stroke. Trump has good genes for life expectancy, so he may stick around despite being overweight, ,not exercising much, and other risk factors.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Musk twitter poll on reinstating Trump. 60% Yes at 1.8M votes.
Bold considering some significant fraction of online Trump people have moved to other platforms, Gab, Gettr, .win, Truth, others.
I can't believe he actually made a twitter poll and said "Vox populi, vox dei". He has to follow through with whatever the crowd says right? He wouldn't have any credibility left if he backed out after this.
I think he has to let Trump on even if poll goes negative. Trump has a fairly high probability of being the next Potus. Facebook will let him back on too. A guy like that can’t be banned.
Why not?
No, seriously, what's so important about Twitter/FB that the POTUS needs to be on it? It exists to make people feel more "in the loop." For normies that's mostly an illusion. For the most powerful man on Earth, it's definitely an illusion, plus some level of ego trip. Doesn't strike me as worth pursuing.
A court has ruled that POTUS cannot block journalists from his private account, so if access to POTUS' tweets is some sort of fundamental right, I don't see why that right should not apply to all private citizens.
No, the court ruled that because Trump used his Twitter account to conduct government business, and because it was open to general discourse by the public, it was a designated public forum. The court said:
Since Trump is no longer a govt official, his account is no longer a designated public forum, even if he uses it for his campaign. Campbell v. Reisch, 986 F. 3d 822 (8th Cir. 2021).
If you're going to say "no" you probably should say something that contradicts me. When Trump was banned he was still POTUS, and we are discussing a scenario when he's POTUS again.
We are talking about whether he should be restored now, are we not?
And, btw, your premise ("if access to POTUS' tweets is some sort of fundamental right") is completely wrong; the constitutional question is not about access to tweets; it is whether a govt social media account can engage in viewpoint discrimination. The case was about the right to speak, not about the right to access information.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It’s the town square. You can’t have major political figures being banned from walking down Main Street and talking to voters.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Does he have credibility left to lose after weeks of own-goals?
The platform still works, and if he is to be believed daily active users are up, so I would say yes.
More options
Context Copy link
What own goals? Firing / getting people to quit when he needs to cut staff by about 80-90%?
How many of those people were providing value in excess of cost?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If the result doesn't come out how he wants, he'll rig it or change it and cry "bots".
Does Musk have a pattern of behavior of this sort of thing?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Crucially, he never said when, so who knows. He obviously left that key detail out. I think he will get to it eventually. It's worth noting that other individuals pitched money to buy Twitter, not just Musk, who may not want him unbanned and may have some leverage over Musk.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
he never said when
More options
Context Copy link
Seems to have evened out a bit more since then, now 52% yes 48 no.
More options
Context Copy link
I would do this as a trap to catch bot activity. Alternatively, it would be funny if people came back who claimed they were done with twitter specifically to vote in this poll.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
another update from musk https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1594131768298315777
Going to happen, but no mention of when. This is a win for the right, but it will mean an escalation of the culture wars overall. I would possibly prefer an outcome where the culture wars are attenuated even if neither side wins, than a phyric victory in which the wars intensify. When you look at the mental health, interpersonal relationships, or social stability angle, such increased partisanship cannot be good. Still2 more years until the the election, if things seem bad enough already. The election is think is guanteed to be close, like 2016 and 2020.
De-escalation happened in the 90s, and all it got people was a few years of a false sense of security. Any amount of escalation is better than a false peace that ends in another walkover because one side forgot the war was happening.
(what could even be next? Abolishing the family? Mass property confiscation? Mandatory "therapy" to root out dissidents? All pretty plausibly on the "list of stuff from the New Republic opinion section that you're crazy for taking seriously until it inevitably happens" at this point.)
It's what's desired. Whether or not people are striving for it is debatable.
Hope is not a plan and neither is nostalgically speaking about the times when people didn't hate each other.
Yeah, a lot of us are pretty blackpilled at this point. However bad we expect things to get, it will probably be worse in some way we haven't thought of yet.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I never thought I'd see the day
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
social media tends to reward behavior that plays to the crowds
However, Jordan Peterson video edits with C&C gameplay are worth a chuckle.
For example: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Nvckip7qxk
More options
Context Copy link
Is his comparative advantage lower engagement?
If it was up to the woke he would still be banned from Twitter, they couldn't beat him with rhetoric so they silenced him entirely. Why should he care what they want? Where is the benefit in writing careful, nuanced pieces about the culture war when one side has taken every single thing you have ever said and interpreted it in the least charitable manner possible?
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, but what crowds? Ones hostile to him?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The tweet before trump mention:
Not clear what that means, other than not being in the spirit of free speech.
it means ghosted , shadowbanned
Probably, but to elaborate - the relationship between musk's one-off tweets and implemented twitter changes has been pretty random, and esp with the blue rollback and his general odd decisions idk what'll happen really.
More options
Context Copy link
It's just that one specific tweet, not your entire account.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I take it to mean users can set their filters to any level and stuff that would be removed today will remain but be hidden if it's below a users filter level.
Essentially like if you set a filter here to minimize comments that were below some score threshold, perhaps also with subject tags (so one could hide even high scoring tweets with a gore or spam tags, while allowing tweets tagged with profanity to a lower threshold or with no threshold at all).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think Trump will come back. He's said as much, and I believe him.
I'm not sure Trump saying something is very good evidence it's true.
More options
Context Copy link
I wonder how much he is being paid to stay on Truth Social.
More options
Context Copy link
That would certainly be the best outcome. He no longer has the status of being banned, but still doesn't have the reach of Twitter.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Equally important is the financial angle. Does Twitter make more money with Trump back?
My guess is yes.
Now, Trump may not return right away given Truth Social, but if he's serious about 2024, he'll be back for the far larger platform.
They will get more engagement if Trump is there. Whether they'll make more money depends on whether advertisers rebel.
Unlike you, I'm not particularly optimistic.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My understanding is Trump has a multiyear exclusive deal with Truth Social so whether he gets his account back or not won't matter much for the near future.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, according to my ideals he should be let back on, but I am not looking forward to the daily hysteria over whatever crap comes out of his brain.
However, you should probably be more specific about which part of red tribe doesn't want him back on. I believe politicians don't, but the average red triber is going to be thrilled to have him back on there owning the libs. I know there are blue tribers like Matt Yglesias who think his being back on will hurt his (and other Republicans') political chances, but I'm quite skeptical of this. Attention gives him life and energy, and it gives his supporters energy.
More options
Context Copy link
It's gonna be crazy if he does return. Imagine the intensity of twitter but multiplied by 5 or something. The increased engagement will almost certainly be good for elon's investment though. More ad $ even if some advertisers quit.
More options
Context Copy link
I want Trump to have his twitter back because I like jokes, and Trump is a very funny man.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link