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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   20973 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

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I have a cynical answer that I expect to get me in trouble with the moderators, because I am about to take a stand in defense of Bulverism.

Not for this, but for unmasking yourself. Someone else finally pointed out the obvious, and I am kicking myself for not seeing it.

Hlynka, I have told you this before, but I am hugely disappointed that rather than taking your ban like a man, or asking us to reinstate you, you keep creating alts. Good job that you managed to run this one for months and being actually rather flamingly obvious about it in retrospect and not getting tagged, but you're done now. We don't exert much effort to catch alts and some people think they are clever, clever little people bragging about how easy it is to recycle an alt every time you get banned, but it just shows you have no integrity and place no value on your word or reputation. You're there to troll, to shit up the place, to giggle and get your digs in before the mods swat you and you reboot. Hoorah, a winner is you. Yes, it's easy to do this. Eventually, however, everyone regresses to their mean.

Both @Belisarius and I speculated four months ago that @TequilaMockingbird may be the return of Hlynka, but my confidence was fairly low then and remains a bit shaky even now. The “Steve Sailer is actually a liberal” thing is so inexplicable a delusion that it’s tough to believe two people could arrive at it independently, but I guess it’s plausible, given a certain set of intellectual priors (and generalized mistrust of urban Californians) which Hlynka and TequilaMockingbird might just happen to share.

I support the ban because anyone who peppers their post full of “dude I’m totally gonna get banned for this one, the mods are gonna be soooo pissed” ban-baiting deserves to get what they’re asking for. This can be true even if he’s not truly a ban evader.

Was this when we were all nostalgic for Hlynka and he was joking that Hlynka might be JD Vance? Because I thought he basically came right out and said it lol. I thought everyone else had already figured it out and known for ages.

To be clear, I have never been nostalgic for Hlynka and have been glad he’s gone since the second he caught his ban.

K. I meant the royal we, there was a thread a while ago where everyone many people were reminiscing about Hlynka, in which I thought Tequila basically came right out and said 'yeah gang, it's me!' in different words. And everyone many people reacted so nonchalantly that I thought it was already well known and I was just oblivious.

Got a link handy? I must have missed all the drama, this ban came as a total surprise to me. Even in hindsight, the main commonality I recognize is atrociously bad takes on AI.

I found it - it's not so obvious now that I reread it, but after reading @Hoffmeister25's post about his suspicion, this post struck me as such classic hlynka in style and tone and proud sense of humour, plus the overt familiarity with the motte's inner workings, that it felt obvious.

Hah. I remember thinking at the time he was very sus, but for some reason he just didn't trigger my radar. Well played, I guess.

I am usually the last one to figure it out, like with Darwin or Impassionata or Julius, so I assumed that's what was happening there too, otherwise I would have said something.

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