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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31755 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Previously I've written about how Musk can Make Twitter Great Again with Celebs&Sports.

But now let me discuss how Musk can use twitter to subvert the regime without even trying: just allow people to have a clear and unfiltered look at the world.

As an example of this, consider the most recent viral content on twitter - more popular than an NBA game happening simultaneously - #wafflehousefight.

As the mainstream media might describe it, "some drunken revelers at a Waffle House in Austin, TX engaged in an altercation with Waffle House employees." At least that's what they might write if they covered it, but only yahoo and foxnews have bothered to actually cover it. And of course the reason is clear: the story is a group of morbidly obese angry black women assaulting a pretty-ish blonde (and clearly red tribe working class) waffle house employee after demanding the "white girl" make them waffles while they sat in a closed off area. The blonde white woman is clearly the hero of the engagement. It's a clear glimpse of what the mainstream media + tech companies normally try to hide: a disproportionate amount of crime is just black people getting angry and doing dumb stuff.

Quite a lot of tech and media tries to cover things like this up. Reddit has banned factual subreddits like /r/hatecrimehoaxes, /r/greatapes (black people doing crimes) and similar. The mainstream media similarly downplays stories such as black nationalist terrorists shooting up subways, as well as using tactics like not including the attackers photo.

Numbers, for anyone curious. Newspaper have also stopped publishing mugshot galleries to prevent people from noticing.

When the entire network works together to suppress facts, they generally succeed. But twitter can change that.

Twitter is popular because of celebrities and sports, and the content most people consume there will continue to be 90%+ celebrities and sports. But with stories like #wafflehousefight, Musk has an opportunity to give people a glimpse of what is being hidden from them. People may begin to realize that their eyes aren't lying, it's merely a set of elites who are gaslighting them.

Reddit has banned factual subreddits like

There are facts, and then there are facts.

I think very few people in this space is ignorant of the disproportionate share of American violent crime committed by young, male descendants of American slavery. Probably few readers here are ignorant of the disproportionate share of American violent crime perpetrated against young, male descendants of American slavery. And I would even go so far as to suggest that a large majority of people reading your comment are aware that news media "thumbs the scales," so to speak, in favor of hyping up white-on-black crime while papering over the reverse.

The question is, have you written this post in such a way as to grasp these facts with maximum light and minimum heat?

I think, ultimately, no. You've drawn two reports for consensus building and culture warring, and one for AAQC. This is not actually a quality contribution; while it is "edge space" this is actually a comment that has earned you a warning. Your ostensible thesis--"Twitter can expose how the media tries to manipulate you"--is fine. The argument and evidence you bring, however, looks like you were using Twitter discussion as a pretext for a link-dump on how terrible your outgroup is.

The topic is extremely inflammatory, as I suspect you know. So while I appreciate such effort as you did put in to at least include links and examples, ultimately you fell short of the called-for threshold, in part for want of charity and steel-manning.

What would have been necessary to reach this threshold on the specific topic I chose, according to you?

Assuming the topic you mean is "Twitter can expose how the media tries to manipulate you," you could have simply chosen less inflammatory examples of how the media tries to manipulate you--or even used a wide variety of examples so as to not come off as harping on your bĂȘte noire. In general, writing with great evidence, clarity, and charity is very likely to get you to a much less accusatory (or race-baiting) place.

I think looking at follower counts is misleading, due to inflation from bots/inactive accounts. These brands and celebrities were early adopters of Twitter and thus accumulated a considerable number of bots and inactive followers over the past 12 years. A better metric is engagement: likes, comments, retweets, etc. In this case, politicians (DeSantis, Trump), pundits (like Tim Pool, Jordan Peterson, Cernovich) and entrepreneurs/VCs (Elon Musk, Paul Graham) do really well. Celebs comparably do poorly despite having large followings.

So look at the trending page to see what's actually getting engagement. As of right now, "For you", logged out/incognito/USA VPN, the only non-sports topics are #alphamalestruggles and SpaceDandy. On Trending there's McCarthy (tagged politics) and a bunch of sports.

I agree that the content of sports topics is much less concentrated - a bunch of sports fans sharing Ronaldo memes instead of a single tweet by Ronaldo getting 1000 replies. (And a similar pattern for waffle house wendy.)

I saw this video as a snippet on youtubehaiku. Just the sweet demonstration of chairbending. That part was hilarious without knowing any context. In fact, it’d be hilarious without any racial information, because the only context that matters is late-night Waffle House energy.

Trying to inject racial commentary is purely for political reasons. That goes for you as well as for MSM editorials. Y’all can’t just enjoy this little slice of Americana, no, it’s gotta be meaningful, to further your narrative. So you wax poetic about giving us the look behind the curtain, about unveiling our lying eyes. Truly, you are woke to the forbidden truths.

But in the end, it’s still a Waffle House.

I know it's acceptable to laugh at the antics of the lower class, just like it's okay to hope that people get raped in prison.

To me, your comment activated a feeling of class resentment.

What for you is a little slice of Americana, is for that blue collar worker a terrible job for awful pay. I'm sure that person in the video would love to work in HR or something for 3 times the money. Alas, she has to be assaulted by insane people instead. It's easy for the elite classes to dismiss these concerns because they can just float above the problems. When the media just ignores this stuff because of optics, it's worse.

Which is to say I think a month working at Waffle House might do wonders for the smugness of the average elite class member.

worldstarhiphop didn't exist for the "upper class" to laugh at poor people. everyone enjoys these little "slices of americana" when they blow up on twitter.

Agree. I think something that's also worth highlighting is that the 'Waffle House Wendy' girl, in her YouTube video, makes a short remark about "that's how it gets at night" and "so, I grabbed the sugar shaker." Part of Laptop Class elitism (of which I am a member, full disclosure) is a lack of recognition of the normalcy with which blue collar works face direct threatening confrontation. This is mostly due to time pressures and face-to-face customer or coworker interaction. If I don't want to talk to my boss via a Zoom meeting, I can weasel out of it ("Hey, putting out a fire, can we resched?"). If that one annoying client keeps e-mailing, I can ignore it or send a non-answer to give myself a day (or two, or three).

Not the case at Waffle House. 2am and a table of 10 obviously hammered people come in? Start flipping bacon and hope they ain't rowdy ... but be prepared if they are (top off that sugar shaker, I want some heft behind that fucker if we go kinetic!).

Blue collar / Laptop class work is usually divided around education and money. I think this is the wrong dimension to analyze. Some of the most common types of "millionaries next door" are plumbing, HVAC, electrical, and trucking owners who largely started in doing those trades themselves. The right dimension, to me, is "speed of life." What's you average turnaround time from meeting a customer to delivering a product or service for them?. A plumber measures it in days or maybe a week, a hair dresses in an hour, and a waffle house cook in 15 minutes. My last SaaS company had an average sales cycle time of 56 days.

Careful to note that I'm not going to fall into the Bruce Springsteen trap of exalting Blue Collar work to a mythical level of important here. As the one and only branch of a family tree that largely never made it out of that life, I can tell you it's largely due to repeated and obvious poor life decisions.

Agreed, and I feel like this is amplified by the background knowledge is that the "gay groyper" here is only signal boosting this incident because they think it will further their agenda. And yes, while we can talk about crap pay. Waffle House really is a little slice of americana and something of a blue-collar institution.

It might sound silly but the more I think about it the more this actually kind of bugs me. Serious question, how many mottizens actually eat at the waffle house on a semi-regular basis? That is more than 5 - 10 time a year. How many mottizens have worked at a Waffle House or know someone who has?

It might sound silly but the more I think about it the more this actually kind of bugs me.

I had a similar experience when I read the ""Let's go Brandon" is code for "I think Olive Garden is a fancy restaurant"" tweet a few months ago. The smugness of people who are culturally elite attacking something that close to home as a middle class midwesterner really irritated me

Serious question, how many mottizens actually eat at the waffle house on a semi-regular basis?

I ate there one time and didn't like the food. I'm not above cheap places if it tastes good but it just didn't taste good. My dad would eat there often and would tell me about his friends he met there and ate with. I used to kind of roll my eyes and think it was trashy but now that he's passed away I feel sort of guilty for feeling this way.

I had a similar experience when I read the ""Let's go Brandon" is code for "I think Olive Garden is a fancy restaurant"" tweet a few months ago.

This reminds me of how Tumblr (a social media service started in New York) had a joke about Olive Garden as an example of Chat posts, with the second person saying "no, but I can give you directions to an actual Italian restaurant."

I completely relate.

If we're being honest, it is pretty trashy. But it's an oddly wholesome sort of trashy, and as far as the food is concerned much depends on who's running the grill.

For my part, I have a lot of fond memories of sitting at the bar with my grandad during summer breaks watching the cooks work. I've got friends for whom their first job as a pimply teenager was mopping floors and doing dishes while wearing one of those yellow paper hats. The "Waffle House Index of Disaster Severity" is also very much a thing. And as such seeing some smug jerk who clearly doesn't have that connection try and use to score cheap political points just gets my hackles up.

I know Waffle House has the reputation for violence, but it's generally comparable to a Denny's or an IHOP, right?

Waffle House is definitely bottom of the barrel in terms of price, quality and perceived brand image. Denny's is somewhat pricy and has better quality food (though still not great.) IHOP is between the two. There are probably people who would collapse the distinction and classify them all as being on the same level but I suspect most working class or middle class people in America would classify them as I have.

I'm not personally aware of violence at Denny's, other than the time one became a mosh pit.

Eaten there recently or frequently? no, I don't own a car and there is not one near me. Worked there or knew people who did? My brother worked in a raising cane's growing up but most of my friend group ended up working in some grocery store or another in our youths, no one at a waffle house. Then again there just weren't a lot of waffle houses around. I kind of reject that it's a quintessential blue-collar institutions, it's always seemed more to me like a place you go late at night when everything else is closed, usually because you are inebriated, or on long drives. Have you gotten blue collar confused with exurban areas with populations too sparse to support more varied eateries? My dad who moved way up into the sticks and has much more money than I do eats at a waffle house much more frequently than I do because there is actually one near him.

Nobody eats at Waffle House, the lines are always too long.

then where do the lines come from?

Is joke, have you not heard the Yogi Bera line "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

thatsthejoke.jpg

I’m going to resist the urge to dissect this joke and explain precisely why it’s funny. Instead, I’ll just observe that humans laugh at offensive, violent, sad situations all the time. I don’t think that’s inherently a bad thing.

Yeah, I’ve got some sympathy for dangerous, underpaid jobs. For all I know, that video doesn’t even represent her worst night on the clock. There’re plenty of reasonable reactions to such evidence, and I won’t judge anyone who finds it depressing rather than funny.

The OP was not constructed out of sympathy for the plight of the working class. It is taking one specific, tired narrative and framing it as forbidden knowledge.

Musk has an opportunity to give people a glimpse of what is being hidden from them. People may begin to realize that their eyes aren't lying, it's merely a set of elites who are gaslighting them.

How controversial, yet brave! But for all the self-aggrandizement, the OP is still commentating a fight at a Waffle House. I find the contrast amusing.

99% of the time when I see someone described as "fierce", I think it's vapid, participation trophy bullshit. But it fits in that brief clip of the Waffle House girl, and it is incredibly appealing. Like some instinct is recognizing that this Valkyrie would defend the children against all comers.

The Waffle House fight was memeable because of the almost magical, eye-bending way the employee deflected the thrown chair.

When the entire network works together to suppress facts, they generally succeed. But twitter can change that.

That entire network has an immune system. Twitter gets derided as a Nazi clubhouse because they’re the only big, famous public square outside of 4chan allowing reporting on ethnic crimes against whites.

The more it happens, the worse it’ll get, until subcontractors like Cloudflare or Visa decide they’ve had enough and cancel Twitter. 44 billion dollars, and Elon has disabled one organ of state news control, entrenched the others, and allowed Twitter to become 4chan-lite in public perception.

Numbers, for anyone curious. Newspaper have also stopped publishing mugshot galleries to prevent people from noticing.

The local news in my former locality took this to a preposterous degree. There would be a writeup about a local shooting or robbery with the suspect at large. The article will say the police have released a description of the suspect, asking the public to help catch them. The article will then omit the description when it's a black suspect. Which it was, 95% of the time.

Sometimes you'd see comments on the article pointing this out, and including the police description of the suspect. Those would then get moderated. It's totally fucking nuts.

There's a certain... something in training the public to assume all generic criminals are black, with white or Asians ones being exceptional and worthy of note.

Easy fix: “Leaders in the Black community have asked for help in locating this violent offender, in order to keep folks safe.”

Why on earth would they alienate their constituents by ever admitting any of them do anything wrong, ever? Their MO is to deny a black person did anything wrong, then when that becomes undeniable, deny it was their fault, then when that becomes undeniable, deny that the wrongs they committed counterbalance the wrongs committed to them. And their people love them for it, and they are utterly unaccountable for how much their methods have damaged society.

There's also the question of who are their constituents? IIRC lower class black people were actually for more police intervention.

But who controls the ideological message? Middle class and above educated blacks and whites. The latter are, imo, not just out of touch but eager to fold. The former have much more of an incentive to avoid unfortunate stories that embarrass their tribe, even at the expense of solving crime, since they're insulated from the worst of it.

IIRC lower class black people were actually for more police intervention.

They are. And yet, they consistently vote for leaders who would oppose more police intervention and pressure the police to stay away from areas where these lower class black people live and institute training and policies which ensure the lower class black people can't rely on the police to protect them. And I don't mean like slight preference - I mean like 90%+ block voting for the same people that have been in power for decades and presided over things going downhill.

Reddit has banned factual subreddits like /r/hatecrimehoaxes, /r/greatapes (black people doing crimes) and similar.

If you're going to have a subreddit about black criminals and you call it "great apes", yeah, no surprise you get banned. "But we're all primates, what is the problem here?" wide-eyed fake innocence won't save you. I'm aware of at least one incidence of a bunch of people (liberal LGBT supporters in this case) doing a similar 'joke' about apes and implied reference to black people, and I didn't think that was funny then and it's not funny now.

If there are black people committing crimes and those are not covered by the mainstream media, go ahead and report on them. A 'joke' name for that? Not alone makes you sound racist, it makes me think you are racist.

' your sense of humor is wrong - you are a racist '

Listen I've had a criterion channel subscription since it started but calling out black criminals by comparing them to apes will never not be funny for me, and most other completely normal (relative) people that I know. We think less of you for thinking finding humor in an awful situation is racist ... And so on in a circle we'll go around each other.

There's plenty of times the word neanderthal gets thrown around for white trash crime and I doubt very much it makes you toss around the r-word.

I know the types calling me Neanderthal don't mean it with fond affection and recognition that this is also a species of Homo. I saw impeccable liberals making the "primates - apes - black people" wink wink 'joke' because the Anglican bishops of the Global South were holding out against LGBT activism within the church.

That memory does not make me look fondly on people who like to go "primates - apes - black people" wink wink. There are plenty of trashy white (and all races) people who are low class, stupid, petty criminals. If they included all violent thuggery and not smart enough to tie their own shoelaces criminals, then nothing (too) objectionable there. But if it's solely and only for black criminals? Yeah, that's a problem. Because it's still way too near "all black people are dumb monkeys, not real humans".

Something can be funny and also be racist. You can even believe racism is bad and still laugh at a racist joke, because something can be funny and also be offensive.

I don't think it requires getting up on a woke high horse to admit that calling black people apes is racist. Nor does acknowledging it's racist require you to perform a penance ritual if you laugh at it. But don't be disingenuous and claim it's not racist because you think it's funny.

Black criminals

That you and two others have made no distinction makes it seem you're a bit out in the woods about it.

Calling black criminals monkeys is funny and not racist - same with calling white criminals whateverthefuck equivalent.

That you and two others have made no distinction makes it seem you're a bit out in the woods about it.

It's a pretend distinction. I do not believe you are sincere about calling black criminals apes not being racist because "we're only talking about black criminals."

And when "neanderthal" is a racial slur used to target white people, maybe your argument will hold some water. But for now, you aren't comparing apples to apples. You know damn well why someone would decry it as racist to have a community calling black people "great apes", and not a similar community with neanderthals/white people.

The community wasn't calling black people great apes (that I'm aware of based on this discussion), they were calling black criminals that because black people in the US commit a vastly disproportionate amount of crime and the media doesn't cover it so people are covering it with crude humor.

I'd suggest you stop pretending people are tired of a race rather than a large minority of the race (criminals)

That's true, but even outside the progressive culture nobody I've ever seen considers neanderthal to be a slur. I personally would call something like "cracker" a slur, but not "neanderthal" (because the latter can apply to people of any race).

The only effective anti white slur is Racist. And I suppose variants like Nazi and magatard and y'all Qaeda. It's the only one that gets most white people's goats. Cracker and redneck might have been effective at some point, but have been either so lost or so reclaimed that they have no bite today.

Racist also almost perfectly mirrors the progress of hard r nigger to soft a nigga in terms of edgy lower classes "reclaiming" the term as an in-group term of endearment or comradeship, along with resulting respectable arguments over whether use retains its original slur value and meaning when used in group versus out group.

Is it your belief that reddit would not suppress /r/crimesofblacks or a similar more neutrally named subreddit? If not, it's disingenuous to pretend that it's the presentation as opposed to the content that got the subreddit banned.

In the first place, they probably would indeed ban a more neutrally-named subreddit.

But in the second place, the basic problem is that whatever you call it, such a subreddit would be doing exactly the same objectionable thing that the admins are doing, just with the polarity reversed. A subreddit that selectively spotlights misbehavior by members of one race is going to create an inaccurate perception of how often such people misbehave.

Hatecrimehoaxes was useful because it answered lies someone else was telling. CrimesofBlacks would not be doing that. Hiding the crimes of blacks because they're black is a bad thing to do. Spotlighting crimes of blacks because they're black is wrong for exactly the same reason. One could argue that since such information is actively being suppressed, spotlighting is needed to counteract the suppression. Unfortunately, I don't think human communication actually works like that.

If you decry samizdat, what then do you think is a proper response to information suppression? Start your own mainstream media?

I don't decry samizdat. A subreddit that collects examples of articles excluding mugshots and matching them to the mugshots so excluded would be a good thing. Even better if they can highlight cases where the same paper includes or excludes mugshots based on the race of the perp. What is not useful is posting examples of [insert race] crime because of their race, even if you know for a fact that others are coordinating suppression of such examples. Such suppression is best defeated by spreading the "despite" meme, which is the obvious, bare-bones truth. Attempting counter-propaganda from a position of weakness just one's arguments easier to dismiss, in addition to all the other arguments against employing dishonesty for political gain.

I guess I'm having trouble seeing the distinction you are drawing. If suppression of [insert race] crime information is taking place, then highlighting examples of that suppression must necessarily entail posting example of [insert race] crime.

highlighting examples of suppression is just fine. that is not what /r/greatapes was doing. If someone suppresses facts about a specific incident and you point out what they're doing, that's good. If you highlight all examples of bad behavior based on whether it's done by a particular group, that is bad, even if someone else is suppressing all evidence of that same group behaving badly. Common knowledge about bad behavior is not enhanced by the direct propagation of irrational biases.

then highlighting examples of that suppression must necessarily entail posting example of [insert race] crime.

Then highlighting examples of that suppression must necessarily entail posting that specific crime associated with that specific suppression. A subreddit that generically highlights examples of [insert race] crime doesn't actually highlight examples of suppression of [insert race] crime taking place.

I feel like I’m getting old. Isn’t it customary to be yelling out worldstar when shit like this goes down?

Excuse my gen-z-ness or being new to American internet but what’s worldstar? Why do people shout that in such videos?

People below me have given genuine answers, so allow me to provide a facetious answer in the form of my favourite tweet of all time.

what’s worldstar?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldStarHipHop

Why do people shout that in such videos?

"In some videos of violent fights, people chant "World Star" in recognition that the video may be posted on the website."

It's basically a black version of Youtube. 99% of videos on it are either ghetto fights or wannabe rap/hip-hop stars uploading their garbage music. It used to be (still is?) common in videos of fights to hear the cameraman or other bystanders shouting "Worldstar!" or "This is going to be on Worldstar!"

I think it’s the bizarro-verse counterpart to “hello, YouTube!”

AKA predicting that whatever shit you just witnessed is going to end up plastered on a site, WorldStar, known for hosting trashy fight footage.

World Star Hip Hop is a video posting site that was open to crazy videos of real life violence. It became a meme, and many videos would feature people recording a fight or whatever while shouting "World Star!", because obviously that's where the footage would end up.

I don't know if this is at all a good example of what you're getting at, or even if it's a good example of anything other than what it looks like--which is just another dumb fight in a pocket of lower-class America that will, at most, end up on like WorldStar or whatever. Insofar as the Shadowy Cabals would actively suppress this, it would probably be for the sake of whitewashing (er...) the popular image of America.

Which, granted, maybe that is all that the pre-Musk Twitter regime was good for! For all the criticisms of America today, can you really say that "Idiocracy-esque public freakouts in chain restaurants" is the image people think of when the words "The West has fallen, billions must die" or "This is America" are uttered?

There is no reason to think the wafflehouse fight would not have gone viral on Twitter if Musk hadn't bought it. And it's not being reported because it's not really that interesting. The most to come out of it were memes about how the employee should be in the next Smash DLC or something.

Suppressing news about black people being in the wrong and white people being in the right is wrong, but this is not a great example of that. For another examlpe, consider Tariq Nasheed documenting a white hotel employee having a mental breakdown and trying to assert it being a white vs. black thing. He was roundly criticized, and that was long before Musk's acquisition.

But both examples you gave were scissor statements - it was possible for two people of completely different backgrounds to give two completely different interpretations from the same evidence. You're not seeing that in the case of the waffle house fight at all, just about no one is defending any kind of interpretation that black people have the right to throw chairs at fast food chain employees. They are instead focusing on how "cool" the employee was for defending herself so smoothly.

There is - at least pre-Musk, twitter put a thumb on the scale of which hashtags were allowed to go viral or not. (This may or may not happen now, that's unclear.)

A very plausible alternative timeline is twitter jannie notices a contra-narrative story going viral, presses the de-amplify (or whatever euphamism they used for shadowbanning a trend) button on it and then it fizzles.

I don't find that plausible at all. This is simply too much like the Eric Garner case - no one is defending the customers who trashed the place, just like Bill O'Reilly said it was a clearly wrong thing for the cop to kill Garner. Even now, searches for "Waffle House Wendy" returns mostly positive tweets and pieces, with the focus on her impressive deflection of the chair over anything else.

It's not inconceivable that left-wing mainstream outlets decided, even prior to the girl going on Tucker Carlson's show, that it wasn't a good story because a black person was the aggressor and a white person in the right, but the newsworthiness of the story is inherently low. Makes for a good ice breaker at a party, not a headline on CNN.

There are better example to choose if you want to highlight the left-wing media's bias against anything perceived as anti-black, NBC cutting the Zimmerman police call to make him sound racist being a good example.

I'm pretty sure you're correct about Twitter putting their thumb on the scale before. I'm pretty sure incidents of groups of black people behaving in a shameful fashion went viral on twitter anyway. Why are you so confident that this one wouldn't have?

I am not sure about this specific one. I don't think that we disagree on much - we certainly seem to agree that we'll see more of these with twitter not putting their thumb on the scale.

I don't think reddit or any social media should be censoring anyone, but if reddit banned a subreddit about black people committing crimes that called itself "great apes," I rather suspect that reddit was motivated by something other than the desire to hide the truth, and that those who created the subreddit were motivated by something other than pure truth telling.

No argument on that specific subreddit, but /r/hatecrimehoaxes provided a necessary and timely service.

And was not limited to black people doing hoaxes (although a LOT of them were racism hoaxes). One such hoax was a white cop faking a vandalism incident by painting "Black Lives Matter" on his own garage, for instance.

I rather suspect that reddit was motivated by something other than the desire to hide the truth,

It's not clear what "reddit was motivated" means. Are you suggesting that many of the reddit jannies/"anti evil operations"/etc who suppressed true facts are not motivated by preventing people from learning these true facts and taking on "wrong" beliefs?

I don't know about reddit, but journalists have openly admitted their motivation in this is preventing people from forming true beliefs they don't like: https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2012/ap-stylebook-updates-entry-on-racial-ids-in-news-stories/ https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2020/more-newspapers-are-cutting-mugshots-galleries/

"Reinforcing stereotypes" is the term they use, of course.

...those who created the subreddit were motivated by something other than pure truth telling.

Why do you believe this is relevant?

I don't know why you say, "It's not clear what "reddit was motivated" means", given that your entire post is a claim that reddit, and the media in general, is motivated by a desire to suppress the truth.

I don't know why you say, "It's not clear what "reddit was motivated" means"

No, I'm making the claim that individuals in media are motivated to hide facts that hinder the narrative.

I avoid the claim "reddit was motivated" because reddit is an organization with multiple individuals (e.g. jannies, AEO, advertising directors, data scientists), and a common leftist dissembling tactic is gloss over the specific individuals doing a thing and instead demand proof that the organization as a whole does a thing. But of course, you only really need the jannies and AEO in most cases.

Look dude, I'm very much on the side of free speech and I'd prefer we still had the reddit that an odious subreddit like that could exist. But we don't have that reddit. We have the one that bans legal consensual porn subreddits for giving them a bad look. It is not fear of the truth that caused them to ban a subreddit that in the very name compares black people to apes. Pretending otherwise is not helpful for our side.

The blonde white woman is clearly the hero of the engagement. It's

It looks like she's the first person to attack, throwing a coffee carafe at the black lady.

The coffee carafe wasn't the first attack, though it looks like a serious escalation (the target has climbed down from the counter, has an arm up defensively, isn't making any sudden or offensive moves, and doesn't even seem to be shouting anymore) and a foolish escalation (broken glass can be dangerous, not just to the target but to everybody left in the crowded diner who's going to have to walk over it now).

The longest video I can find has a cut in the middle (from a shouting match jumping to someone already up on a counter), so we can't see the first interpersonal violence, but the employee admitted throwing a sugar shaker and I can't find anything earlier with a human target. But there was probably earlier violent property destruction, if we believe her claim that this was aimed at "one girl wearing leopard patterned clothing throwing silverware, kicking plates, and kicking food", after she and her friends had refused to say out of a closed-off area, started shouting about being refused service, and refused to leave when instructed to.

If there are any "heroes of the engagement" here, they're among the handful of patrons and employees trying to break up fights rather than escalate them.

Do you mean after the black woman stops trying to climb over the counter to get her?

  1. I'm basing this on reactions to the video, not legalities.

  2. Grey shirt black girl and white shirt black girl were already behind the counter attacking people prior to this. Another angle.

Grey shirt black girl and white shirt black girl were already behind the counter attacking people prior to this. Another angle.

That video is from after the carafe was thrown.

Why would, or, rather, should the memes matter more than the actual facts of what happened? The videos you've linked don't make it obvious as to the exact chain of events, and it does kinda look like the employees triggered the rowdy patrons to go on the assault.

Why would, or, rather, should the memes matter more than the actual facts of what happened?

I do not think the memes should matter. Here's what would happen in my ideal world.

  1. NYTimes publishes stuff about George Floyd.

  2. Fox News publishes actual statistics on unarmed black men killed by cops (~20/year).

  3. Other media realizes the NY Times is trying to play to their emotions, publishes a few statistics explainers.

  4. Everyone realizes that George Floyd is a fluke and this is a truly minor problem we can ignore.

But that is not the real world. In the real world memes matter, narratives matter, and Musk has the ability to let memes spread (as well as statistics supporting them) when the rest of the media is suppressing them.

employees triggered the rowdy patrons to go on the assault.

Great. Now how many cases can you find of drunk Indian or Chinese ladies being "triggered...to go on the assault"?

Just an anecdote, but the last time I saw an Indian lady being "triggered" by staff, she very aggressively narrated the bad reviews she was typing into her phone while ordering her boyfriend to film the encounter.

Ehh people clearly already crossed the counter. But they did seem to be leaving. So it appears customers started it but perhaps Wendy continued it.

What exactly do you think is being hidden, and from whom?

Let me explain it by way of analogy.

One of my favorite board games is Commands & Colors: Ancients. I've played it well over 100 times. It's hook is that it takes your typical hex and counter conflict simulator, and encodes the combat results table into custom dice. Then it has some extra rules for things like support, evasion, leaders, and then a fuck ton of cruft around how elephants work on the battlefield.

There is tons of light cavalry in this game. My understanding is that light cavalry in the ancient world were attackers of opportunity. Ride down the weak and injured. Flank the enemy. Stuff like that. These are literally just unarmored dudes on horses. These are not the heavily armored medieval knights that Hollywood has cemented in our consciousness as synonymous with cavalry.

I played probably 30 games in a row with a guy who simply could not dismiss the Hollywood version of cavalry from his consciousness when playing this game. Every, single time he plowed his light cavalry directly into my heavy infantry. Every time. No matter how many times I showed him the statistics behind these light cavalry, Hollywood had just brainwashed him into thinking they were heavily armored knights. No matter how many times they got cut to ribbons in scenario after scenario after scenario, he was just incapable of noticing.

The statistics, the personal experience, all of it glided off his smooth brain because he had no narrative to help contextualize it.

One of my favorite board games is Commands & Colors: Ancients.

Stop trying to make me like you.

Sorry, still don't get what this has to do with my question. What do you think is being hidden and from whom?

I think the point of the anecdote was that "people will believe all sorts of misconceptions because they saw it on TV or in a movie; black criminality is no different, as the way the media handles it has implanted the context of 'black people are never at fault for anything' in most people's heads." Whether or not that's true, it's hard to say.

For my money, I'd say that the Internet is pretty good at exposing and debunking things that only happen in movies (WRT guns, physics, security...basically anything that would have serious ramifications for one's continued existence in the real world), one Tumblr post or YouTube video at a time.

Hexes, not freeform positions measured with rulers? Special dice instead of booklets of results tables? Sounds like some sort of children's card game.

Hollywood brainwashing is painfully powerful, I've had instances where I know the factual details of a historical event, read several first-hand accounts then watch a movie about it and have to constantly, conscientiously consciously correct away from made-up details that the lizard brain "remembers" having seen and emotionally knows to be true. "It's like writing history with lightning."

In D&D a long time ago, I mentioned that you could estimate the time by using the width of your fingers to measure the distance between the sun and the horizon. My friends pooh-poohed this and mentioned it for years as an example of me being stupid and believing in dumb shit.

Until Johnny Depp did it in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Then they accepted that it was real. No amount of me googling it, finding good sources or even literally doing it so they could see it was real would help. They had to see Johnny Depp do it.

Welp, that's enough blackpills for me today, gdi

That game sounds great. How heavy would you say it is? Estimated time to play a simple scenario?

It takes more than an hour, but less than 90 minutes usually. It has 24 pages of wargame rules. But it's a lot of half page illustrations and reference material. Still, if all you've played is Catan, it's gonna be a doozy. I think it's a good entry level consim, if that's your cup of tea. But many people think it might be, go and try to read the rules for their first consim, and nope out after the first 3 pages spend defining all the terms the manual uses. All that said, I think the rulebook for Commands & Colors: Ancients is excellently written, and the first few scenarios have almost no terrain, and no units with wonky special rules.

My favorite games are Twilight Imperium and, recently, Hansa Teutonica. Before I tried the latter Brass: Birmingham had that spot. I don’t mind a dense rule book, but it’s a harder sell to get my friends excited about it!

I’ll check it out.

Maybe try luring them in with Rex for a slightly simplified version of Dune with the Twilight Imperium IP on top. Then you can entice them into a TI3:Shards of the Throne game using the Fall of the Empire scenario.

TI4 seems superior based on few games I played

Is

TI3:Shards of the Throne game using the Fall of the Empire scenario

having something to recommend it? Is it redoable in TI4?

TI4 is generally better as a game but doesn't have quite the same road map. I'm more familiar with TI3 and have the full set of expansions. The Fall of the Empire scenario specifically is a variant with a playable Lazax faction starting with control of Mecatol Rex with a surplus of military power, reduced political power and the objective card win conditions shape the play pretty close to the lore. You can jump from Rex to TI4 but it is slightly less clean of a lore integration. The scenario cannot be replicated in TI4 without significant homebrew because of how dependent it is on the combination of treaty mechanics, the Lazax faction tuning and the objective cards.

The scenario itself is a very natural follow-up to Rex which is the Dune board game rules with various factions fighting on the ground to control Mecatol Rex while instead of the storm from Dune it has a fleet moving around bombarding locations. The mechanics, lore, diplomatic backstabbing and approachability of Rex (compared to Dune or TI proper but definitely still a barrier) seem like an easier sell the TI itself. I haven't played the Galeforce 9 Dune version and while the Avalon Hill one is well loved it has known issues and takes a long time. Rex from my perspective was a better game for the time, matches the TI lore theming pretty well for a barely modified reskin that mostly streamlines some mechanics (made the physical board actually being usable, still not a fan even of the GF9 version but then again Rex's board while usable is very bland) and can be played with fewer players and makes it shorter by an hour or so.

In both Rex and TI3: Fall of the Empire the Lazax naturally fall into a position where you can have an experienced player handling their more complex, initially overpowered position (offset by actual win conditions) acting as a sort of DM playing the BBEG on the board.

Yeah, you'll probably be fine. Wargame rulebooks are just... different though. They read more like laws, with sections, subsections, sub-subsection, everything enumerated. Rules will often refer to other rules or sections with simple notation like [Section 2] or [Rule 3.2.1]. Once you get over the learning curve behind how different consim rulebooks are written, they aren't so bad. I find a 24 page rulebook is about the limit of the complexity I can handle. Especially since most of them break down into maybe 12 pages of actual rules, and 12 of illustrations and reference. And among those 12 pages of rules, there are probably 8 you'll encounter regularly and 4 that are just cruft bolted on to try to force some historical flavor.

I've played probably 250 games of Axis & Allies over the years and 249 of them were with my buddy Jimmy. And the one that wasn't just him actually involved him as it was a Christmas present from someone's mom. Dude killed himself last year and I haven't played a game since and I'm really itching to play.

I don't think I even like board games, I think I just enjoy Axis & Allies. However, maybe I don't even like AA, maybe I just enjoyed hanging out with him?

In Victoria 2, populations have the stats 'consciousness' (politically awareness and pursuit of political self-interest) and 'militancy' (how prepared they are to join rebel groups or perform civil unrest). The consciousness and militancy of black populations in Western countries is very high, supported by the media. The consciousness and militancy of white populations is very low, again due to the media.

For example, I'm confident few outside the US have heard of the Zebra murders, where four black men killed somewhere between 15 and 70 whites, wounding several more. They were motivated by some racial-religious angle, there were some connections to the Nation of Islam. There may have been many more involved in the killings who were never uncovered. Fascinatingly, about half the wikipedia page is about various civil rights groups trying to stop what they saw as racial profiling when the police tried to racially profile the all-black suspects.

Yet practically everyone in the entire Anglosphere has heard of Emmett Till, who was lynched. I'm not even American and yet they brought it up in class when I was at high school - we were studying 'To Kill a Mockingbird' as a compulsory text. There are Emmett Till poems and songs and films - Biden signed an Emmett Till anti-lynching act back in 2022. And in marked contrast to the forgotten Zebra Killings, Robert Raben has been lambasting the criminal justice system for not harassing the accuser enough:

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/emmett-accuser-carolyn-bryant-donham-last-chance-justice-rcna42415

On a purely objective basis where we ignore the race involved, you'd think the former would be much more widely known. Killing many random whites is surely worse than killing one black, who was thought to have sexually harassed someone. That's merely on the level of honor killings - which clearly isn't good. At least there's some kind of reasoning behind the killing other than racial hatred.

Yet Emmett Till is big news even today, Zebra murders are forgotten.

If a white police officer chokes a black criminal in Minneapolis, or is seen to choke him (I don't really want to go into the George Floyd drugs/breathing thing) there's a giant global media frenzy - there's massive rioting and corporations falling over eachother to support BLM. If a black police officer turns and inexplicably shoots a random white woman who was totally unconnected to his work in Minneapolis... It's so unmemorable I have to check it up online to find it at all.

PS. I really hate that people come here with extremely cringe names like gaygroyper100 or that pedofascist fellow we had earlier. Don't be egregiously obnoxious should apply to that. If someone did that on 4chan with a tripcode they'd be bullied and rightly so.

Your comparison of the Zebra murders with Emmitt Till doesn't work. The Emmitt Till case is well-known because it was historically important. It was an important factor in the success of the Civil Rights Movement, because it engendered white, middle class support therefor. The Civil Rights Movement in turn was nothing less than a social revolution. Moreover, the Emmitt Till case was representative of a much broader phenomenon, ie, Jim Crow. So, of course it is well known. Hell, it was even indirectly responsible for the development of The Twilight Zone.

In contrast, the Zebra killings and shootings had little effect on history or society, though I suppose it is possible that Art Agnos would never have become mayor had he not been a victim. Nor were they representative of a larger social issue. Had they given rise to a race war, or perhaps in the alternative some sort of police state, they would be better known.

And, btw, you answered your own question re the shooting by the Minneapolis police officer (a case that was the subject of about 20 articles in the NY Times, btw): You called it "inexplicable." That implies that it has no greater implication, does it not? Unlike, say, George Floyd, which was, at least arguably, an example ,albeit an extreme one, of the larger phenomenon of excessive force by police. And, btw, it doesn’t help you to misstate the facts of your ostensible examples; the victim in Minneapolis was not "totally unconnected" to the cop's work, because she is the one who called the cops in the first place.

The Emmitt Till case is well-known because it was historically important. It was an important factor in the success of the Civil Rights Movement, because it engendered white, middle class support therefore. The Civil Rights Movement in turn was nothing less than a social revolution.

But why? Because that case was widely promulgated in the media. The Civil Rights movement got extremely favorable media coverage: incidents that supported them were played up. Incidents that damaged them were swept under the carpet. Nobody hears about the teacher in a

In contrast, the Zebra killings and shootings had little effect on history or society,

Because the media didn't run with them and say 'let's have a massive scare campaign about blacks randomly killing whites that we use to raise the militancy of the white population and make them demand more anti-black policies/refuse to support pro-black policies'. They could have chosen to do that, it's within their power. What do you think they would've done if there was a band of 4-8 white supremacists wandering around murdering dozens of blacks on the street?

That implies that it has no greater implication, does it not?

What, so when George Floyd gets choked and dies that's extreme force but when a woman gets shot dead, it's not? The 'implication' that the media rammed down everyone's throats was that white police officers hate and kill black criminals unjustly. They create that narrative, picking out whatever supports their case regardless of its statistical relevance and then ignoring opposing examples. Police anti-black racism is not a thing, it's been shown statistically: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-systemic-police-racism-11591119883

the victim in Minneapolis was not "totally unconnected" to the cop's work,

Sure but this doesn't alter my point at all. She wasn't supposed to be a target in any way, shape or form. If it had been some other woman there, he would've shot her too.

Looking over Mohamed Noor's spotty biography, he may have benefited from Affirmative Action by MPD (see: Psychiatric concerns). The Somali community is significant in Minneapolis and they are underrepresented in policing. "Noor had been lauded in the past by Minneapolis mayor Betsy Hodges and the local Somali community as one of the first Somali-American police officers in the area".

Perhaps a story about an incompetent jumpy cop shooting a woman who posed no threat could have been deemed Newsworthy and sparked a debate about Affirmative Action.

There was another bit in his wikipedia page about how he supposedly put a gun to someone's head during a routine traffic stop. All around not a good guy! I left that out for brevity though.

Isn't the Minneapolis case also an example of excessive force?

The Minneapolis case is so bizarre that it is sui generis. It was a rookie cop panicking when someone approached the window of his car, and shooting that person -- and, in doing so, shooting across the body of his partner, who was sitting in the seat next to the window. It was not a cop using excessive force to arrest someone, or to punish someone for giving him lip, or for any of the usual reasons.

Emmett Till didn't set out to become a martyr, nor did his killers set out to make him one and light a fire in the Civil Rights Movement. Their intentions didn't matter, but the intentions of those using their story did.

I don't understand why that matters. The point is not what they intended (unlike the Zebra killers, who might well have intended to create a race war, IIRC). The point is that one turned out to influence a major, major historical development, and the other did not. That is why everyone has heard of the former, and not the latter.

The radical left of the 70s might not have gotten everything they wanted, but I find it hard to swallow saying that they haven't had much more success than they deserved, or that the Zebras weren't representative of a larger social issue (the same social issue as Till and Floyd, really).

? Why does it matter whether they had more or less success than they deserved? My point is not about deserts, but about the extent of change that happened subsequently. As I mentioned, the Civil Rights Movement was quite literally a successful social revolution. Whatever success the radical left of the 1970s achieved, it was quite marginal compared to the Civil Rights Movement, which was one of the two or three most momentous developments in US history. Of course we are going to be familiar with people associated therewith.

Well, of course a story can't have impact unless people hear about. But the story of the Zebra killings also was widely told at the time. The reason that one is well known today is because it was part of a massively, massively, massively important historical development. You might as well ask why everyone in the world has heard of Hitler, but not Father Coughlin. After all, they were both anti-Semitic demogogues!

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The story of 70+ people being murdered is of course going to circulate at the time it's happening and not be completely buried. The question is why is it considered literal bar trivia? As mentioned, many of us hadn't heard of the killings at all and have heard of many Dahmer-type serial killers. The obvious reason is the racial angle. Five Klan members killing 70+ black people in the 1970s would still be widely discussed today, but I'm not sure what could convince you of that.

I'm not suggesting a sensational Top Men coverup of the story. It's more mundane than that. People in media will highlight and dwell on stories that conform to their world view and forget or downplay those that counter their worldview.

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Emmitt Till is historically important because it was well known, not the other way around. If it got as much coverage as the Zebra murders it wouldn't be any more important today.

The OP actually made no claim about the amount of coverage that each event had at the time. (And in fact the Zebra killers got enormous coverage at the time). OP's claim was about why one event is known broadly today. Even if Till got more coverage, the difference is not so great that it is a plausible explanation of why it is so much better known today.

Again, the Till story affected history, specifically, it affected one of the most significant developments in US history. Hence, it is included in history books, and hence is still remembered today. The Zodiac case did not affect history, hence it is not remembered.

In contrast, the Zebra killings and shootings had little effect on history or society, though I suppose it is possible that Art Agnos would never have become mayor had he not been a victim. Nor were they representative of a larger social issue. Had they given rise to a race war, or perhaps in the alternative some sort of police state, they would be better known.

I think you are completely missing the posters point.

He's arguing that the Zebra killings could have been every bit as significant as Emmitt Till if the people writing history chose for them to be. They could have been politically impactful if the crafters of narratives and politicians at the time chose for them to be. You are both working with opposite models of cause and effect. He's arguing that powers chose the cultural and historical narrative, and fit the events that advantaged that narrative into our national mythos. You are arguing that events have whatever impact they have, and earn their place in our national mythos by merit.

I'm not sure how it used to work, back when these events were, or weren't, cemented in history. But seeing how it works now, and the raw, naked, narrative crafting that just gets adopted as institutionally protected truth, now and for all time, immutable no matter how much the common people know how wrong it is, I'm more inclined to adopt the OP's framing than yours.

I don't believe that is OP's argument at all. He is complaining about why Till got into history books, and the Zebra killings did not. OP is not complaining about how they were treated at the time -- and in fact the Zebra killings were a big deal at the time, and were seen as a harbinger of things to come (of a piece with various violent radical movements, such at the Weathermen, and the SLA, and the Red Army Faction, etc, etc). And, had they turned out to be a harbinger of things to come, they would be better known. But, that didn't happen; radical left terrorism died out, it was a blip, not the leading edge of a new reality.

Basically, both were seen as a big deal at the time, but only one of them turned out to be at the leading edge of historical change. Hence, it is hardly surprising that only one of them is widely known.

I have never heard of the Zebra killings before now. I would have expected to hear of 70+ racially motivated serial murders in a "non-historical" manner the same way as I have heard about Dahmer, Ted Bundy, the Unabomber, etc. None of those serial killers had a historical impact that you could point to, yet they all have Netflix specials.

There are ways to shape this into a historical narrative (or counter-narrative):

Why did the public have a growing taste for Tough On Crime policies in the 1970-90s? Why did large swaths of the public support racial profiling or de-facto racial profiling (stop and frisk, etc.) where Civil Rights organizations did not (as documented in the Zebra wiki)? People trash Biden today for Crime Reform in the 90's (strict sentencing, "Superpredators", etc.), but crime was a top issue in politics in this era.

If the NYT (especially with their writers who are very skilled at crafting narratives) repeatedly reminded the public of the Zebra killings, it would be on everybody's mind every time the topic of racial profiling or Criminal Justice Reform came up. Instead it's just deemed "not relevant".

The Zebra killers also spawned books and TV specials back in the day. And I am unclear what your discussion of crime rates has to do with anything.

Yes, if the NYT repeatedly reminded people of X, more people would know about X. What does that have to do with Emmitt Till?

Earlier you had suggested that the Zebra Killings are not discussed in media because they lack "historical" relevance rather than the story being memory-holed for uncomfortable political reasons. Modern political issues can be given "historical" salience if there is motivation to do so. Bizarro Right Wing-NYT: "Activists say black on white crime is rare, the grandchildren of Zebra Killings victims beg to differ" could be used to promote racial profiling. In this scenario, activists would have statistics on their side, but enough repetition leads to a distorted view of the world.

Emmitt Till is relevant because the story of his murder gets reinvigorated every time progressives want to push for Criminal Justice Reform or to tie it in with some tragic police shooting, giving the story narrative throughline. Between him and George Floyd, people mentally have an anchor when it comes to lynching and police brutality. Vivid stories of "black on white" violence exist but don't receive the same level of obsessive coverage because it would lead the general public to have more right wing views of policing/crime. I don't think obsessive coverage of "black on white" violence is good because it would enflame racial tensions and because they account for a relatively small number of crimes. However, you can't get mad a people noticing the double standards in coverage.

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Yes, even a movie The Zebra Killer (1974). In which a Black detective, after his Black girlfriend is raped, finds that the murders are commited by a white man in Blackface.

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I listed specific examples above.

I also recognize that you can quibble about whether they are truly "hidden" as opposed to downplayed, obfuscated or whatever. Regardless of exactly which word one wishes to use, they are certainly not discoverable for someone not actively seeking them (in contrast to stories/narratives the left wishes to hype). Twitter can change that.

This feels like a dodge, "discoverable" by whom then? Spit it out.

The 6 words after the word "discoverable" in the comment above clarify this point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discoverability

Again, discoverable by whom?

To quote the comment you keep refusing to read: "someone not actively seeking them"

If you want a concrete persona for such a user, consider Joe Sportsguy who has logged on to twitter to engage with memes and discussions about any of the current topics of twitter's "Trending" tab. At the moment in the USA, 17 of the top 20 topics are sports, 1 is pro wrestling, and the remaining 2 are sports mislabeled as "business and finance". He occasionally sees other topics in his feed - #wafflehousefights or #blacklivesmatter - and they enter his consciousness. His view of the non-sports world is not based on actual statistics of the world, merely on an average of the things that enter his consciousness via various feeds and media.

Incidentally, this is also why the pressure campaign against Joe Rogan happened. Most of Rogan's podcast is bodybuilding, long distance running and stand up comedians. But in between that mainstream parasocial content there's a bit of stuff the establishment wants to suppress.

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