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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.

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.

  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.

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.