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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25844 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

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I am opposed to this permaban.

Like it or not, class resentment drives a lot of what goes on in our world. It's very worth discussing.

Sadly Turok's discussion of class was less than worthless, and seemed to mostly be about his own unexamined class insecurities. As I said elsewhere, "It's a funny barber-pole-of-status-signaling thing. I have never encountered someone on the internet who is actually upper-class for whom "lower-classness" is an object of vitriol rather than of disinterested study." But bringing that directly into discussion would also violate the norms of this space, such that any discussion from his posts was already drawing from a poisoned well.

Is it worth discussing in the way he's discussing it? And even if it was, 90% of the time the dude runs away when you give him a thoughtful response.

It's certainly worth discussing. But is the community really served by having someone "start the discussion" (which I think he wasn't even doing, it strains charity too far to claim that) with sneering at other members of the community and pointing out how bad he thinks they are? It seems to me the answer is no.

I haven't regularly checked this site in months but my impression as a lurker was that every Turok toppost was some variant of "I found this comment somewhere on the internet: the person who made it is a moron and if you would argue otherwise in the replies you prove that you are less smart than me." Apparently when he was told that unsourced twitter posts from anonymous users were not the kind of thing you make a top level post about, he took the wrong lesson and started doing it with comments from this forum.

My guy, you asked me to go easy on Turok last time. Look how he repaid your charity.

If there's anything useful to be said on class resentment, you won't find Turok saying it.

I also asked for charity last time. Even though this post is directly attacking me, I'm honestly tempted to ask for charity again. But the fact that he is blatantly going:

I know I might get banned for this post.

Makes it obvious to me he doesn't care about the rules or respect the mods at all. Alas. I think he drove interesting discussion.

I wouldn't discount the possibility that even now he has somewhere an alt that will pick up his ball and keep running for the goal. I do not write this based on some knowledge of his character, just that this is a time-worn strategy of many who get banned.

We all come to miss at least some of the fallen for livening things up around here.

Kind of hilarious how much drama is generated here over banning people for being dramatic.

Turok was not here to discuss it; he was here to sneer.

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