Okay, I should not have said "People don't really care about Holocaust denial," because you're right, obviously they do, it's an emotive topic.
But what I meant (and I think you know I meant this), is that even convincing people that the Holocaust was "less bad/exaggerated/not an intentional planned industrial-scale genocide" is not going to get anyone where you are actually trying to get them, which is joining you in your animosity towards Jews and following you down the ZOG rabbit hole.
So when I say I (and we) are bored and don't care about your umpteenth iteration on the subject, it's because (a) we do not find your arguments convincing and repeating another wall of text about it looks like you're taking the obsessive "This time, I'll get through to them!" route, and (b) we know what your actual agenda is (it's not clarifying historical inaccuracies). It's like JB and his never-ending theses which always generated a lot of replies. The fact that he could always provoke lots of replies with very emotive topics does not mean he was not tiresome and boring going on about topics people were sick of. I get that you're going to keep doing it because you are on a crusade and you're hoping to pick up a few converts, but "Haha, obviously you care a lot because you keep arguing with me!" is not the own you think it is.
Bernd
Fighting algorithmic racism like John Henry
Amadan 2mo ago·Edited 2mo ago
I mean, he's convinced me that the holocaust will only be relevant to Americans until the second some group feels empowered to start the "White Tears About The Holocaust And Other Myths That Perpetuate White Supremacy" game, at which point none of the tactics you've used against SS will work any more.
Which is a fucking shame, because allowing it to become yet another forgotten genocide in the long string of them that make up most of human history means nobody learned anything, and we're probably in for an even worse one someday.
I mean, he's convinced me that the holocaust will only be relevant to Americans until the second some group feels empowered to start the "White Tears About The Holocaust And Other Myths That Perpetuate White Supremacy" game,
You believed that already.
at which point none of the tactics you've used against SS will work any more.
I'm not using any "tactics" against him, aside from honest and straightforward disagreement and disdain for his views and his agenda.
I find it ironic that even though you will stan anyone and anything, no matter how inflammatory, so long as it might trigger a liberal somewhere, even you had to add an obligatory disclaimer that you actually believe the Holocaust was a bad thing.
This “ugh, just soooo boring” thing is clearly an act and an attempt to shut down discussion. People try the same tactic with HBD. Just collapse the comment tree if it bothers you, otherwise you aren’t convincing anyone with this “so tiresome” tactic.
The truth is, the Holocaust is clearly highly relevant to American CW issues. Clearly many people on the Motte get very upset about revisionism, the way many SSC posters get viscerally angry at HBD. SecureSignals is not spamming about it, just responding when it is brought up and he generally brings more evidence to bear than his opponents (yea, I understand the Epistemic Learned Helplessness issue, doesn’t change it)
This “ugh, just soooo boring” thing is clearly an act and an attempt to shut down discussion.
No, it's eye-rolling boredom. I can't speak for everyone else - some people are really upset at revisionism. I find it noxious, but I also find it tedious in the same way JB was tedious. To the degree it bothers me, it's more "Not this again" than "How dare you?"
To the degree it bothers me, it's more "Not this again" than "How dare you?"
It reminds me a lot of that "could God microwave a burrito so hot even he couldn't eat it?" meme I remember being popular a long time ago. There's just enough substance in that statement to grab people who never heard it before (and it's not like it isn't funny, either), but it subtly breaks the community down over time as the bar for "meaningful and insightful contribution" sinks lower every time someone posts it.
It's still low-effort even if it's done serially; sure, write a long post through a book if you must, but you only get to burn that bit of social capital once. Blame the tech if you must- the unwritten community rule that you need to have iterated upon your past thoughts can't reward effort if that effort is higher than just being limited to the conversation at hand is not helped by the fact this is a significant limitation of the Reddit-style discussion forum- but these are the only tools we have so this'll have to do.
It doesn't hurt that (like the above meme) HBD and Dajooz get bonus points for being argument-terminating in and of themselves- they're prescriptive arguments, not descriptive ones. Which is the meta-level justification for the "no enforcing consensus" rule anyway- sure, at the end of the day, all arguments are prescriptive (or else we wouldn't be making them), but you aren't allowed to make them directly because the entire point of this place is, well, seeing how a prescriptive argument might arise.
Put another way, there's no game of chess if you resign in the first move because you're playing black, and it's pointless if your community exists to study gameplay strategies- even if black loses every time, it's still a case study in how to play white. Ignoring it "because black loses" is not just boring; skipping to the end misses the point entirely.
FCfromSSC
solid wino credentials
Amadan 2mo ago·Edited 2mo ago
No, it's eye-rolling boredom.
Concur. The topic is a looping kaleidoscope of fractal tedium, where the factual questions are so thoroughly swamped by the social dynamics as to smother the slightest spark of interest. With the exception of trolls and zealots, one does not participate in such a discussion because it is actually interesting, but because one feels compelled by the social dynamics involved, whether to defend the free expression of the nakedly repugnant, or to argue against assertions not because the facts are in question, but because failing to answer looks weak or complicit, or for a hundred other unpleasantly compulsive reasons.
The only winning move is not to play, but even that is spun to social arguments by the trolls and zealots. And it never ends, over and over across the years and even decades.
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Notes -
Okay, I should not have said "People don't really care about Holocaust denial," because you're right, obviously they do, it's an emotive topic.
But what I meant (and I think you know I meant this), is that even convincing people that the Holocaust was "less bad/exaggerated/not an intentional planned industrial-scale genocide" is not going to get anyone where you are actually trying to get them, which is joining you in your animosity towards Jews and following you down the ZOG rabbit hole.
So when I say I (and we) are bored and don't care about your umpteenth iteration on the subject, it's because (a) we do not find your arguments convincing and repeating another wall of text about it looks like you're taking the obsessive "This time, I'll get through to them!" route, and (b) we know what your actual agenda is (it's not clarifying historical inaccuracies). It's like JB and his never-ending theses which always generated a lot of replies. The fact that he could always provoke lots of replies with very emotive topics does not mean he was not tiresome and boring going on about topics people were sick of. I get that you're going to keep doing it because you are on a crusade and you're hoping to pick up a few converts, but "Haha, obviously you care a lot because you keep arguing with me!" is not the own you think it is.
I mean, he's convinced me that the holocaust will only be relevant to Americans until the second some group feels empowered to start the "White Tears About The Holocaust And Other Myths That Perpetuate White Supremacy" game, at which point none of the tactics you've used against SS will work any more.
Which is a fucking shame, because allowing it to become yet another forgotten genocide in the long string of them that make up most of human history means nobody learned anything, and we're probably in for an even worse one someday.
You believed that already.
I'm not using any "tactics" against him, aside from honest and straightforward disagreement and disdain for his views and his agenda.
I find it ironic that even though you will stan anyone and anything, no matter how inflammatory, so long as it might trigger a liberal somewhere, even you had to add an obligatory disclaimer that you actually believe the Holocaust was a bad thing.
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This “ugh, just soooo boring” thing is clearly an act and an attempt to shut down discussion. People try the same tactic with HBD. Just collapse the comment tree if it bothers you, otherwise you aren’t convincing anyone with this “so tiresome” tactic.
The truth is, the Holocaust is clearly highly relevant to American CW issues. Clearly many people on the Motte get very upset about revisionism, the way many SSC posters get viscerally angry at HBD. SecureSignals is not spamming about it, just responding when it is brought up and he generally brings more evidence to bear than his opponents (yea, I understand the Epistemic Learned Helplessness issue, doesn’t change it)
No, it's eye-rolling boredom. I can't speak for everyone else - some people are really upset at revisionism. I find it noxious, but I also find it tedious in the same way JB was tedious. To the degree it bothers me, it's more "Not this again" than "How dare you?"
It reminds me a lot of that "could God microwave a burrito so hot even he couldn't eat it?" meme I remember being popular a long time ago. There's just enough substance in that statement to grab people who never heard it before (and it's not like it isn't funny, either), but it subtly breaks the community down over time as the bar for "meaningful and insightful contribution" sinks lower every time someone posts it.
It's still low-effort even if it's done serially; sure, write a long post through a book if you must, but you only get to burn that bit of social capital once. Blame the tech if you must- the unwritten community rule that you need to have iterated upon your past thoughts can't reward effort if that effort is higher than just being limited to the conversation at hand is not helped by the fact this is a significant limitation of the Reddit-style discussion forum- but these are the only tools we have so this'll have to do.
It doesn't hurt that (like the above meme) HBD and Dajooz get bonus points for being argument-terminating in and of themselves- they're prescriptive arguments, not descriptive ones. Which is the meta-level justification for the "no enforcing consensus" rule anyway- sure, at the end of the day, all arguments are prescriptive (or else we wouldn't be making them), but you aren't allowed to make them directly because the entire point of this place is, well, seeing how a prescriptive argument might arise.
Put another way, there's no game of chess if you resign in the first move because you're playing black, and it's pointless if your community exists to study gameplay strategies- even if black loses every time, it's still a case study in how to play white. Ignoring it "because black loses" is not just boring; skipping to the end misses the point entirely.
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Concur. The topic is a looping kaleidoscope of fractal tedium, where the factual questions are so thoroughly swamped by the social dynamics as to smother the slightest spark of interest. With the exception of trolls and zealots, one does not participate in such a discussion because it is actually interesting, but because one feels compelled by the social dynamics involved, whether to defend the free expression of the nakedly repugnant, or to argue against assertions not because the facts are in question, but because failing to answer looks weak or complicit, or for a hundred other unpleasantly compulsive reasons.
The only winning move is not to play, but even that is spun to social arguments by the trolls and zealots. And it never ends, over and over across the years and even decades.
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I'll reiterate that I haven't posted a single top-level thread on Holocaust denial, and my inbox is flooded with people who want to talk about it, so:
People seem interested, including you, so that's another sneer at the topic that doesn't ring true.
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