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There a fun dramatic little scissor statement happening in the rationalist / post rationalist corner of twitter at the moment. Started by @_brentbaum talking about his girlfriend's high agency:
I, and many others, chimed in saying hey wait a second... this is actually kind of concerning! Some of the negative responses:
and my personal favorite:
As I said though, this is apparently a scissor statement because a ton of people also had the OPPOSITE reaction. Some examples:
etc etc.
Now the reason I find this fascinating is that it's one of the clearest breakdowns between consequentialists and virtue ethicists I've yet seen in the wild. Most people defending the girl of 'scarfgate' are basically just saying "what's the harm? nobody ever goes back for those scarfs. besides they're like $20 most of the time anyway."
Unfortunately a lot of folks get drawn into this argument, and start saying things like well, what if somebody comes back for it later and it's gone? Or what if someone's grandma knitted them that scarf?
To me, going down the consequentialist route is doomed to fail. You can justify all sorts of horrible things in the name of consequentialist morality. (Same with deontology, to be fair.) My take is that this is wrong because she directly lied to someone's face, and then proceeded to steal someone else's property. The fact that most people think it's cute and quirky is probably down to a sort of Women are Wonderful effect, imo, and then they use consequentialism to defend their default programming that women can't be bad.
Either way, curious what the Motte thinks? Is scarfgate just salty sour pusses hating on a highly agentic women? Or are there deeper issues here?
I wouldn't trust anything I read from an account on X, especially a high-profile account on X, to be real. Most high-profile X accounts who were not already famous before joining X are engagement bait grifters, and some of these grifters are precisely in the business of crafting scissor statements to get maximum engagement. Even if the genesis of this particular story is a real-life situation, I wouldn't trust a high-profile X account to convey it accurately instead of conveying it in order to mine maximum engagement. The entire nature of the medium, with its short clippy posts (yeah you can pay to write long ones, but this comes off as geeky so is not used as much as one might think) and its monetization, makes it a melting pot of scammers, grifters, and con artists. I have tried many times to start genuine political/cultural discussion on X, and 95% of the time it doesn't work. X rewards cheap engagement bait vastly more than it rewards serious conversation. It is a brutal Darwinian power struggle in which masters of scissor statements, controversy bait, and so on rise to the top.
Which social media do you trust, and for god's sake why?
That's not really an effective disarmament tactic for scissor statements anyway (which is another reason they're so effective), because it doesn't matter whether the story happened or not - nobody really gives a shit about that scarf or the hotel or whoever really owned the scarf, they care that there are other people talking about it who don't share their values and have the audacity to judge them despite being sick, perverted scarf stealers/opposed to manic pixie dream girls/insert-your-own-description,-I-can't-take-this-seriously.
I'll tell you what the real scissor statement part of that story is - I can't possibly have been the only guy to read this guy explain how he told his girlfriend he was cold and immediately think 'cuck' can I? Aww is the widdle man cold? Does he want some mittens for his fingies too? If it was really that cold you would only have to wait a few minutes for hypothermia to kick in, and then you'll feel warm again you bitch! It's a damn sight better than letting a woman see you being weak when you haven't even jizzed. That's the only time you should ever show a woman weakness - only after she's seen you bang can you let her see you whimper.
That's how it always starts, by the way, first they steal a scarf for you, next thing you are walking funny and telling people pegging can increase a couple's intimacy.
If it was me on an imaginary date with Agent Scarf Stealer I'd have autistically insisted on trying to get the exact scarf she left at the hotel, and thought the genius part was her suggestion that one scarf is much the same as another. I'm very used to quirky nonsense though, in my defence.
Edit: iprayiam, I should have guessed you'd tackle the real issue, high five! I swear your post wasn't there when I read this thread earlier though.
I wouldn't take it that far, but do also feel that stealing a scarf because your man is cold seems more snarky than caring. Could be in a fun, flirty way, it would depend on specifics.
If it's actually cold, because it's cold out and he isn't dressed warmly enough, go into the hotel and drink a coffee with him. A scarf won't help all that much. What, the hotel happened to have one of those enormous chunky knit wool scarves on hand that's kind of a long blanket? Really? If he's not particularly cold and is just saying stuff, the way everyone in Phoenix mentions that it's hot every day, then a scarf will also not help, there's nothing to be helped. I have a lot of scarves, and do like wearing them as wraps, but no man would be willing to do anything like that unironically.
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