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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.

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.

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.