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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

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Mostly trolls whose names I've forgotten. That guy who keeps making alt accounts here to post WN articles and then delete them is kinda like that.

Apparently darwin was kinda like that, although I never interacted with darwin personally.

People just hated Darwin since he was unabashedly left-wing.

The guy who deletes his posts was weird but I don't really think he fits this mold either. His posts were mostly short -- I don't recall him really gesturing at anything particularly bad, but maybe I'm misremembering.

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People just hated Darwin since he was unabashedly left-wing.

Hard disagree. Darwin had a particular style of bad faith in the way he argued his left-wing positions that made left-wing arguments appear dishonest and manipulative, and that's why I personally was glad he didn't come to this site and stopped interacting with GuessWho once GuessWho revealed that he was Darwin2500 from Reddit.

Darwin had a particular style of bad faith

appear dishonest and manipulative

Do you have a clear example of this? Because every time I saw people get into heated arguments with him and accused him of "bad faith" or being "manipulative", it was mostly just the two sides not understanding each others' positions. I didn't follow him super closely so maybe there are some clear counterexamples, but I have a somewhat strong bias towards the null hypothesis that people just didn't like him because they disagreed with him, so they claimed he was "bad faith". Every time someone has accused me of being bad faith on this site, it's been exactly that: a stronger, somewhat more intellectual way of saying "I disagree with you".

Do you have a clear example of this?

"When I said 'people like JK Rowling' I didn't mean JK Rowling"? The Jussie Smollet thing?

What? Can you link this so I can see it in context? I just don't understand what I'm supposed to see here.

Sure, here's the JK Rowling debate (starts second post from the top). Surely you're familiar with the Smollet thing? If not then I don't know if you followed the conversation this guy spawned much at all.

OK, thanks for an actual link.

I... don't really see what's so bad about this particular post. I disagree with Darwin since I don't think his points are particularly correct, but I really don't see how he's being "dishonest" or "manipulative" or "bad faith". The worst part he does is claim "JK Rowling wants to ... eradicate trans people", which seems like it was originally a throwaway line that Amadan obviously latched onto because it was both inflammatory and untrue. But then Darwin clarifies what he really meant, and it just came down to butting heads over whether that was reasonable or not. Nothing else Darwin said seems particularly egregious in terms of "this is a political debate". If anything, Amadan was a total jerk in responding with statements like these:

Sometimes I think you just read posts, decide who's expressing the "conservative" (bad) position, and reflexively argue the opposite.

you are and always have been a bad faith borderline troll

you are either being astoundingly clueless or just flat out disingenuous.

You have actually spouted a ton of bullshit

Like, yeah, I think Darwin is wrong too, but I certainly wouldn't want to interact with a person who responded like that.

But then Darwin clarifies what he really meant, and it just came down to butting heads over whether that was reasonable or not

If I start saying things about "people like Ben Garrison", you call it a personal attack, and I'll clarify I didn't mean you, I just meant people like you, will you accept the logic of that statement?

It wasn't a clairifiaction, it was an obvious attempt to avoid accountability for what he said. This is obvious because even as he backed away from the "eradicate trans people" thing, he doubled down on the claims of generic transphobia, which were directly shown to be just as dishonest. Even that wouldn't be so bad, at the end of it all he managed to get something like "shit, I fucked up, you were right" out his throat, but it's something he never does.

If you think otherwise, I urge you to consider that you're irrationally biased in favor of anyone going against the grain of this forum.

Like, yeah, I think Darwin is wrong too, but I certainly wouldn't want to interact with a person who responded like that.

Are you assuming Darwin is an otherwise good faith poster, and deserves to be treated as such despite his long history of posting here. I think it's your turn to give some links proving your point.

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