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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2375 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Just had a random thought. Arguing on TheMotte about politics is kind of like stepping back in time to the 1800s before radio and TV. This is an era of politics that people like Postman like to idealize, and I see why. You come to admire and/or believe in other posters because of their arguments/style rather than good looks. At the same time, it's not like this place is a beacon of rationality (despite being better than most of the rest of the internet) at all times, which I think highlights the rose-tinted glasses nature of this kind of thinking. That said, I've enjoyed getting to know users here by the way they write, rather than how they look.

Interesting. I keep a picture in my head of how everyone looks. Probably wrong but I'll never know.

I don't know if I'm notable enough to have a mental picture, but curious anyway.

Again this isn't me being Kreskin it's just the vibe I get when I read the person's posts.

Early 30s Russian male, keep your hair short, scruff which could be beardy but you don't let it get too far, pale eyes, high forehead. If I had to pick a color it'd be orange. That's probably because of the word sun.

I might as well ask.

Goatee, hair to shoulders, blue eyes that are animated and charming but hide a darkness behind them. Quick to smile but you suppress it. Given to plaids in winter and minimalist tshirts and jeans when you can get away with it, which is usually. You wear boots and have a weave belt.

I look like a half irish half mexican man in his early thirties wearing a gigantic grey leather witch hat drinking from a glass gourd. I assume all the other posters are roughly this level of eccentric.

I was just about to write that description of you.

I'll take his slot, if the game is still running.

I know you're male, and I think you have a family. Beyond that you're one of the several on here for whom no picture emerges.

OpSec: full points.

Maybe. I tend to remember certain things but I don't remember much in this case. I have him as a family man but picturing "family man" isn't a visual image.

“George E Hale describes Mottezians” could be a regular segment.

More interesting than bare links, at least.

That's probably fine though, because the image you build in your head will be built on the implicit stereotypes that you derive from reading their words. Which means that if you subconsciously ascribe certain properties to someone here based on how you imagine they look, those properties will likely be accurate. You're essentially going Words -> Impression -> Imagined Appearance -> Impression rather than going Appearance -> Impression and biasing your perceptions (the way everybody does in real life).

  • I also keep an internal picture of everyone in my head.
  • It's cheating since your picture is on your substack, but my internal vision was fairly accurate
  • If you're not exhausted, I'll echo the clamor for "do me!"

Tall, taller than I am. Cropped hair, clean shaven, I don't think you're Canadian but I imagine you posting from Canada anyway. Enjoyer of spectator sports, smoke an occasional cigar, sometimes drinking beer when posting. This is all probably stupidly innacurate to realty.

You're more right than not! I'm most digitally loquacious after 2 beers.

May I have a turn please

Male, early 30s, knitted brow, dark brown hair that sticks up. Heavy framed glasses. Green on March 17. You are surrounded by a yellow aura which belies your vociferous demeanor.

I'm strawberry blonde with 20/20 vision, otherwise right on the money. I'm impressed that you got my age correct: people who see a photo of me or meet me in person often place me a few years younger than I am, whereas people who only read what I've written without seeing what I look like often assume I'm older. I'm something of a young fogey, it seems.

You're wired differently. I have no idea what anyone here looks like, and any self-descriptions I read I forget. Mottizens are all names and sets of random factoids to me. Here's your character sheet:

  • Presumably middle-aged.
  • American living in Japan.
  • Family man.
  • I wonder about where he lives (and whether it's one of the places I've been to).
  • Normie vibes.
  • I doubt his name really is George Hale.

It's not exhaustive, but blame my bad memory. I barely remember anything about anyone. Which isn't meant to express any kind of low esteem that I hold mottizens in; I like you guys and am glad to have this place. It's just difficult to see you as fully-featured human beings when all I get is text, and no way to square what you read with any real-world impression of you. You might all be fabulists. You might all be figments of some AI's imagination. You probably aren't, I don't treat you as if you were, but it's just not the same as talking to people in the flesh.

I've no idea what anyone looks like either I just get a mental image reading people's posts, which firms up the more of their posts that I read. There are some posters here where I can't see anything at all, for various reasons.

Edit: You wear steelframed high quality eyeglasses in my mind's eye. German-made, of course.

Edit: You wear steelframed high quality eyeglasses in my mind's eye. German-made, of course.

Oakleys, actually, by my optometrist's recommendation. I might have picked German-made ones if I'd had any idea of what my options are, but I'm still new to the whole glasses business.

I'm the same. I can't really form proper models of people over the internet through just their self-descriptions and their usernames, and it's especially tough considering I have a hard time imagining faces in the first place. Here's you:

  • Middle-aged.
  • Half-Jewish German.
  • Father to a daughter (who he is rather fond of).
  • Married to a very dysfunctional woman with whom he has a working partner/SAHM dynamic.
  • Does not think Peter Watts is a good writer.

I think it's particularly difficult to form proper conceptions of people in TheMotte in spite of how regular most users are, since this forum isn't all that personally-oriented - it tends to be arranged around debating abstract ideas and less about discussing one's own situation. Also everyone here is very concerned with OpSec because of all the wrongthink bandied around on a daily basis, and many members here have jobs and families they would like to shield from any consequences of their online speech.

I can’t resist the temptation. Do me do me do me!

Forties, white, I imagine you in an Oxford button down, white or blue. I keep seeing everyone in short sleeves but maybe just because it's hot AF. Not bald, hair probably dark. American. Famous in some way that you keep from the rest of us.

Well… you’re right about white, American, and not bald! Sadly you struck out on the rest. Although I’m intrigued by that last part. Hopefully at some point in my life I’ll make you right about that!

Well I'm not Kreskin, I just tend to picture people in my head.

As for the no I'm not famous part, that's what you would say if you're keeping it from the rest of us.

I think I've described myself quite a few times, but I'll bite.

I did this to myself, didn't I. Yeah you're Indian, a dude, anyone who saw you would think yeah, probably one day will have love handles but otherwise normal shape.Black hair, slightly wavy, conservatively cut. Thin fingers. Mild overbite. You could be a sympathetic minor character in a Spielberg movie set in New Delhi, but you get revealed as evil in the end. Prone to light colors, and blues. Still not a fan of those spikes off the field.

C'mon George, 90% of Indian men end up with a pot-belly eventually, no points for that guess haha. Of course, Ozempic must have its say.

conservatively cut

Hair sounds right, but I have faded sides and back. No overbite, I have excellent teeth! At least 2 people have asked me, unsolicited, if I had them done in Turkey, though they were very drunk.

I, apparently, have surgeon's hands. A surgeon said so! Ignore the fact that said surgeon is my dad. But women do like 'em.

Hmm.. On the colors. I think you're on to something there.

Still not a fan of those spikes off the field.

Genius is never appreciated in its time. Alas.

You could be a sympathetic minor character in a Spielberg movie set in New Delhi, but you get revealed as evil in the end.

I do not know what this implies, but I suppose getting eaten by a dinosaur isn't the weirdest thing that could happen in Delhi.

How do I look?

Note: Answer will determine whether I ever comment on another post of yours again.

Southeast Asian, Singaporean maybe, or Malaysian, or something, thus dark hair, and in your case longish. Dude, 20s probably, or maybe early 30s. No glasses. Perpetual smirk. You have a lot of black shirts.

I feel a little bad about the deluge of requests you're gonna get. Though you really should have expected this, hah.

You're half correct. Malaysian Chinese, (semi-)short black hair which stands on end as if I've been electrocuted, buzzed on the sides. Dude, 24, wears glasses (is hopelessly shortsighted), perpetual smirk, wears almost exclusively white shirts. Imagining a more well put-together version of L from Death Note probably gets you 95% of the way there.

Am I pretty?

Why not.

To at least one woman you are. Your username suggests not a spring chicken so I imagine 30 or 40 something white guy. Mildly overweight. Gamer. Beard, longish hair. A good voice. I'm just making this up, I could be completely wrong.

No.

(You're gorgeous)

Go ahead and start listing them off.

Ha, well it's my mind's eye, so probably not a reflection of actual appearances. You're 40ish, heavyset but stout, not fat, big hands, short cropped hair for the hardhat, or possibly balding. You burn instead of tan. Clear blue eyes. Beard and moustache, a goatee type setup. Polo shirts, favoring blues or the occasional yellow someone else bought for you. White guy. Any dress shirt is a button down and probably short sleeved.

@thejdizzler is late 20s, about 185 cm tall, about 75kg, fit by any reasonable standard but not in his own mind, wears glasses, fools around with facial hair sometimes but not currently. Short wavy hair brownish. Also a white dude.

Well you did get my complexion right.

Suggestion:

Phrase your replies as prompts for Grok or any of the image generators.

For example, @FiveHourMarathon would obviously be:

an anthropomorphized wawa sandwich that lifts a lot of heavy barbells, Graffiti art style.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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