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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   15136 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 27, 2025

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Two screens, more literally than usual

There was a thread a few weeks back about Hasan Piker supposedly using a shock collar on his dog. I didn't think too much of it at the time, not knowing who Hasan Piker even was (I had heard the name, but couldn't tell you anything else). But a little later I ran across Taylor Lorenz's podcast episode on it "Hasan Piker and the Future No One Is Ready For" (link to YouTube and therefore auto-transcript, since I follow via podcast, I have not seen the video).

In the episode, she describes the shock collar claim as obvious nonsense that anyone watching the video can see for themselves, in addition to her having met Hasan and the dog in person and therefore she is sure the claim is false.

In comparison, in the Culture War thread post I linked above, /u/crushedoranages says

It is obviously a shock collar that is being used. No amount of denial or snarky comments can get anyone to believe that their lying eyes can see any differently. And if you think that's an overstatement - I invite you to see the footage for yourself.

I have not gone down the rabbit hole of analysis of the video, so I'm not going to try to defend Taylor's interpretation. But I was struck by seeing a case where both sides are telling me to watch the exact same video clip since in it is plain to see the events transpired as they claim. The "two screens" concept comes up here a lot, but it's usually about seeing different subsets of a population, often whatever your social media algorithm surfaces, or different interpretations of the same utterance (see: taking Trump literally vs. seriously or, more recently, the Young Republicans group chat). This seems like a whole new level of disagreement about reality.

Taylor's thesis is mainly one of anti-surveillance (a major theme of her work), which is pretty well covered by this quote from the YouTube auto-transcript:

Just last month, billionaire soon to be Tik Tok owner Larry Ellison said that a vast AIfueled video surveillance system would ensure quote citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on. This comment is a perfect encapsulation of the delusional fantasy pushed by so many in Silicon Valley. That the surveillance state will be used for good. The narrative is seductive. If we could just see everything in 4K, disputes over what really happened would collapse, the thinking goes. If everything in life is videotaped and archived, then the real truth of these messy situations would be indisputable. But Hassan Piker's dog collar incident shows that this theory is catastrophically wrong.

I ran across Taylor Lorenz's podcast episode on it "Hasan Piker and the Future No One Is Ready For" (link to YouTube and therefore auto-transcript, since I follow via podcast, I have not seen the video).

It is important context that Talor Lorenz is a Hasan fangirl and general whacky person who has several blocked and reported episodes dedicated to her shenanigans.

No, there is one screen: Hasan's defenders telling us to not trust our lying eyes. There is some merit to the post-truth era but this one is not it. How can you claim it to be two screens if you've never seen it for yourself?

Larry Ellison said that a vast AIfueled video surveillance system would ensure quote citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on. This comment is a perfect encapsulation of the delusional fantasy pushed by so many in Silicon Valley. That the surveillance state will be used for good. The narrative is seductive. If we could just see everything in 4K, disputes over what really happened would collapse, the thinking goes.

This is likely a hostile summary. I think that there is a steelman to be made on how video evidence can help establish a consensus. Think stuff like killings by the police. There will always be scissor cases, but if there is video evidence of a suspect pulling a gun or raising his hands in the air, then both sides of the culture war are somewhat more likely to agree on what really happened compared to when they just have to rely on eyewitness testimony.

Of course, video evidence will not always show the full context of an interaction, but it is generally better than nothing to find out what happened. And with gen-AI, video evidence will probably become less trustworthy. AI-generated videos can already fool members of the public (such as me), in the future they might also fool a forensic expert. At that point, you need to rely on a chain of custody, and in CW contexts, you generally can not trust the other side not to tamper with the evidence. Half the police departments would probably happily edit body cam footage if it lets them avoid a few weeks of BLM riots, and half the SJ people would happily use AI to "improve" their videos to drive home the point of racial injustice.

Or it could be that Ellison was really voicing a pro-panopticon sentiment, where video analysis AI will punish every tiny infraction anyone commits a la Demolition Man. I think such a society will slide into totalitarianism, because dissent begins in private.

So have you noticed how Police Body Camera footage in controversial cases generally gets released within hours when the footage exonerates the cop, and when it looks bad for the cop it take days or weeks to see it?

Universal surveillance doesn't give "the public" access to the truth. It gives the people who control the panopticon access to the truth, and the power to present it to the public however they choose to present it. A group in which Larry Ellison imagines himself, controlling surveillance tech, not the subject of it. Ellison wants to be the man in the control room full of screens, not the man being surveilled.

When infinite evidence exists, the presentation of the evidence becomes the game. And there are always going to be differences in access to that evidence. We're doing the "don't invent the torture matrix" game here, Palantir is directly named for this concept! The Palantir drives Denethor mad, not by showing him falsehoods, but by showing him truths presented by Sauron, edited by the enemy. The Palantir is dangerous not because it doesn't work, but because unless you have tremendous Power, it will overtake your will by presenting things to you in a persuasive way. And that's the position of power that the tech lords want to be in: able to present evidence to us to prove whatever position they please.

Instant replay in sports has been a mixed blessing. For every obviously wrong call, we get truly ridiculous rules and arcane formulas for what constitutes "possession" of the football. True Crime podcasters with vocal fry, and their more respectable cousins in various Innocence Projects, have shown us why Finality is a fundamental value of the justice system, that when you throw infinite effort into researching a case or event you will always find stuff that looks weird. Infinite angles of truth are fundamentally indistinguishable from falsehood without guidance.

When you base truth on Rule of Law you empower lawyers to tell you what the truth is. When you base it on religion you empower priests. If we base truth on surveillance technology, we empower the owners and operators of the surveillance tech. Coincidentally, Larry Ellison has a close relationship with Palantir and similar companies.

This is likely a hostile summary.

No, it's not. He said as much. Not just last month.

It's a hobbyhorse of his, probably smelling gigantic contract opportunities.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sQqQtgRdjZU

There will always be scissor cases, but if there is video evidence of a suspect pulling a gun or raising his hands in the air, then both sides of the culture war are somewhat more likely to agree on what really happened compared to when they just have to rely on eyewitness testimony.

Rittenhouse is the disproof of this claim. "somewhat more likely" offers some wiggle room, but we can see that it just isn't enough in practice.

Not just Rittenhouse, but Ma'Khia Bryant. And Rayshard Brooks.

Taylor Lorenz is personal friends with Hasan - they hang out all the time in LA. (My gf has met both of them at parties multiple times.)

Someone covering for their personal friend is a less interesting hypothesis… but one more likely to be correct.

”If we could just see everything in 4K, disputes over what really happened would collapse, the thinking goes. If everything in life is videotaped and archived, then the real truth of these messy situations would be indisputable. But Hassan Piker's dog collar incident shows that this theory is catastrophically wrong.”

Does Taylor Lorenz think that it is impossible to archive financial transaction data? If we had Hasan’s credit card ledger, and cross-referenced his purchase history with the internal transaction records of every entity on the list that sells dog collars, we would be able to see exactly which model of dog collar he bought for his dog.

This seems like an odd place to make a “reality is fundamentally unknowable” argument.

I'm quite sure I can find a shock collar on eBay or FB marketplace.

Not that I think people are scheming to conceal these purchases, but the principle is bonkers.

Being FAIR, we don't now how he acquired the collar in question, whether it was purchased by him on a card associated with him directly or not, or whether he was even the guy who made the decision to buy it.

Maybe it was a cash transaction inside a brick-and-mortar store.

Hence I put a little more weight on evidence that he is actively using it like a shock collar, and thus knows exactly what it in fact is. His 'winning' move would have been to pull the collar off the dog, on-camera, RIGHT after the incident, to show that it isn't a shock collar. Beyond that, proving a 'negative' is always fraught.

Its worse than just that, since the "he's clearly an animal abuser" crowd then pored over every single hour of footage involving Hasan and any dogs (there's gotta be thousands) to find other bits of evidence scattered about that sort of support the thesis that he is constantly shocking his dog.

People aren't just watching two different screens, they're able to custom-build their post-hoc interpretation of everything from scratch, if they want.

Straight up confirmation bias, rather than trying to find something that was convincingly exonerating/falsify their hypothesis. We know from the "WE DID IT, REDDIT!" days how well this usually goes.

Of course, the guy has gone about defending himself as sketchily as possible.

Applying some epistemic hygiene, I don't think the original video is strong proof of him actually shocking the dog. That said, the specific set of events that the camera did capture requires a more complex coincidence to explain than the pretty dead simple "the dog left its spot, he reached over to hit a button to correct the dog, the dog reacted to the correction" one.

Given what I know of Hasan, given the fact that the dog did have that particular style of collar on, given the aforementioned set of events, given the fact that the dog does seem trained to stay on that little bed for hours on end, I think it is more likely than not (call it 55%) that he shocked the dog on stream. How much weight you give that conclusion probably hinges on how much you care about streamer drama in general.

And I am willing to believe that Hasan is 'abusive' to the animal in that he cares way more for his own image than said dog's comfort and happiness. And I would judge him pretty harshly for that... but it doesn't budge my opinion much, given how low said opinion already is.

Everything about the situation is pretty well explained by the apparent motives of the people involved. There's nothing 'interesting' here its all just precisely what you'd expect from every single person who has touched it.

The Livestreamer world has been in utter shambles lately, if you ask me. If you are paying too much attention to it you're participating in a circus of self-harm, in my absolute honest opinion. There are some 'decent' people in there that you can give attention to but obviously its the nature of the whole platform to elevate some of the worst, most narcissistic, poorly-adjusted personalities to the fore and inflict their behavior on the viewers. And then rewards them for generating outrage, sometimes to the tune of millions of dollars, so of course they will follow the incentive gradient.

We're a LONG way from the wholesome days of "Twitch Plays Pokemon." The current state of it reads more as "Gen Z Jerry Springer Show." Not that I want to exonerate Millenials.

The 'good' people who make it big either get pulled into the mire of degeneracy or make their bag and escape. Likewise, you can usually tell the 'good' people as the ones who had their lives in order, solid relationships, and a tendency to avoid drama before they came in, and maintained those while they were active.

Hey, remember that time Ninja caught flack for stating his general refusal to co-stream with females other than his wife?

Given what just came to light with Mizkif (and he's far from the first) this just seemed like a smart move.

If you don't recognize any of these names, congratulations, you are winning at life, please avoid contaminating your brain by gaining awareness of their existence.

I think I said it before, probably YEARS ago, but if Twitch had made a serious effort to stick to its core model of "person records and broadcasts themselves as they play a video game on their computer" they'd be having an easier time avoiding scandal. That would also mean nuking gambling, prostitution ads (I'd literally say the policy should be "if you have any presence on an e-prostitution site where you appear to engage in any sex acts we ban you instantly"), political commentary, most 'real life' type streams, or active drama farming. When in doubt, make the rules more strict rather than less.

Of course, that would have risked them losing out to a competitor, such as Kick, with a more 'anything goes' ethos.

Sorry for the tangent. I really just despise that most of these people exist while having any kind of mainstream sway.

It's more that he got caught lying in real time.

And don't take my word for it, look at the chronology... He makes a claim that's obviously false (it's a different vibe collar, the prongs can't be removed, etc). Watch the orbiters repeat the line. And watched people get attacked for exposing the obvious lie (he totally removed the prongs).

Whether or not he shocks the dog is kind of a different issue at this point. You either accept the lie or you're an 'ist. It's kind of interesting to watch.

Yeah, I would agree that at this point the coverup is bigger than the 'crime.'

Its very interesting to me that Hasan immediately clocks that it will hurt his status if people realize he's shocking his dog as a training tool, but for some reason it never occurred to him not to use a dog as a prop in the first place.

He generally just comes across as a control freak (part and parcel with Narcissism) both for wanting his dog to be so strictly trained as to sit quietly in the backdrop of his stream, and for wanting everybody to believe he's NOT a control freak who would strictly train his dog to sit quietly in the backdrop. To the point where he's clearly pressuring/threatening others to bolster his position.

Noticing that this is the Orwellian sort of tactics that most leftist governments implement when they have power well, that's an exercise for the reader.

I daresay Mr. Piker is behaving Stalin-esque. He'd probably be having anyone who disagreed with his lie purged if he could.

The sloppiness of the whole this is what blows my mind. If you're going to lie, at least be smart about it. Or is it one of those things where; they were so used to controlling the narrative that they got lazy?

And to burn so much social capital for something so silly.

He generally just comes across as a control freak (part and parcel with Narcissism)

I think you hit it on the head.

If you don't recognize any of these names, congratulations, you are winning at life, please avoid contaminating your brain by gaining awareness of their existence.

I only know of Hasan due to Sam Hyde's threat to kill him (in the ring?). The rest are all just gibberish names.

Bless you.

Incidentally, I think the only appropriate outcome here is that Sam fights Hasan (in the ring) and winner gets the dog.

It's not just a video. When you livestream your life, it's impossible to hide what you do and who you are. Is the outrage fueled by partisans who hated him to begin with? Yes. But that doesn't diminish the fact that it happened. Lorenz is not speaking truth to power, but is a proxy defending her master in the LA streaming scene after he changed his story too often to be credible.

i'm actually wondering whether if a lot of these drama events are actually real or if they have are wholly faked or pre-planned to generate content. one hot tub streamer Amouranth appears to have generated a fake abuse story with the co-operation of her husband.

Amouranth is an apex predator in this environment, its more likely that most of her drama is planned out in advance, since I've yet to see her make any moves that would be very likely to result in legal consequences if they were faked. I.e. there's no 'cost' to faking this stuff, so they probably do fake it.

But I also would be willing to believe that she is instinctively willing to convert ANY source of drama, authentic or no, into further attention, and thus the dysfunction of her and those around her is actually adaptive?

Amouranth is an apex predator

Was curious as to why, Googled it, saw her images, and closed out the tab as my question was answered.

She's a lot more than a pretty face. Consider her early photos. People may think looking good can get a girl far, but unless her ambition is being a trophy wife, that's not true at all. Lot of hard work and scheming involved.

I giggled. Yes, that's about the only impression you need.

Okay, maybe this one, too. (Very SFW, but will induce extreme cringe).

I'd bet a lot of the time it's just a matter of individuals following their incentives. Get into some scandal or high profile beef with someone, create a large sink of free attention, and then that sink of attention gets divvied out to the participants, using whatever eldritch rules determine such things.

How consciously faked it is is almost besides the point--it's 100% fake parasocial engagement through and through, and probably the best adapted parasites are the ones that're able to convince even themselves that it's real.

I'd bet a lot of the time it's just a matter of individuals following their incentives.

Safest bet imaginable. Identify the incentives, I'll explain and predict the behavior.

First, nice summary I would sign under it if I could.

If you don't recognize any of these names, congratulations, you are winning at life, please avoid contaminating your brain by gaining awareness of their existence.

The issue is that these worlds collide from time to time. Hasan himself was touted as a response by Democrats to Gen Z male voter issue. Hasan or Destiny were for some Democrats an answer to their quest of finding their very own Joe Rogan or at least Charlie Kirk or some such. So unfortunately people will not be spared in the foreseeable future.

I think I said it before, probably YEARS ago, but if Twitch had made a serious effort to stick to its core model of "person records and broadcasts themselves as they play a video game on their computer" they'd be having an easier time avoiding scandal.

Seems to be a core problem of the internet. Reddit also had an opportunity to become the default discussion forum / comment section for everything on the internet. But they instead wanted to chase instagram and tiktok and came out with a UI that both destroyed their old model and failed to bring anything new to the doomscroll model. They've chased every internet fad and failed every time. Now a gaming chat service (discord) is stuck being one of the default discussion and comment sections for the internet. Which its bad at, but at least it isn't fighting that role like reddit has been since its inception.

The fact that almost every site tends to converge towards the exact same general use modes has soured me on the idea of internet as innovation engine. i.e. "forced" competition with other sites for users would in theory lead to differentiation in features and, one would expect, aiming for different audiences and cultivating that niche.

But no, instead they all try to appeal as broadly as possible, discard the factors that made them unique and appealing, and constantly copy each other when they see anything that looks like it 'works' to draw and retain viewership.

Innovation seems to be driven by some other force somewhat external to the web, and the internet just enables rapid copying of a new, winning formula. Something something Zero to One is way harder than One to One Thousand.

Elon bought Twitter and made some quick, semi-drastic changes to how things work and lo-and-behold virtually every site made very similar changes in short order. They could have done this stuff all along but something made them reluctant to step out in that direction.

Same thing happened with dating apps. Anything that might set one apart and drive people to it disappears, they all converge on the doomswiping model.

Similar trend seems to be arising with LLMs, honestly.

Now a gaming chat service (discord) is stuck being one of the default discussion and comment sections for the internet. Which its bad at, but at least it isn't fighting that role like reddit has been since its inception.

I admit I expected Discord to pass by the wayside for something new by now. I've been around for Ventrilo, teamspeak, Mumble, AIM, Skype, others. Discord is kind of bad at its function insofar as its a bloated piece of poorly-optimized software that has features 90% of users won't need or use. I just want an app that gives me voice and text support, a friends list, and a decently attractive and intuitive UI. Livestreaming/screen-sharing is neat too, I guess.

I wouldn't have called Discord as the one people land on and stay with, but as you say its now the default "forum" software too.

There are of course like 50 different messaging apps that people use.

Wake me up when (Eternal) September ends.

This is true of all free apps and sites, because the only way to monetize them is ad revenue, meaning doom-scrolling is always optimal. Incentives will out.

There are still variety and innovation to be found in paid services, as well as some that are funded by donations or the like. Whether that's subscription-model newsletters/sites that provide unique analysis, paid dating services that provide 'expert' matchmaking, or hell just look at video games - every free game has the same garbage time sink model, meanwhile indies that cost $5 can still be fantastic.

"If you didn't pay for a product, you are the product" applies universally. If something is important to you and provides value, go pay for the real thing. The 'internet' only sucks because it's free.

This is true of all free apps and sites, because the only way to monetize them is ad revenue, meaning doom-scrolling is always optimal. Incentives will out.

Yeah. And despite the fact that this is very clearly not making users happier, and is corrosive to attention spans. Then add in a gambling mechanic and you've got your user in a perfect little skinner box.

For me, it makes the choice easy. The only winning move is not to play. I will not install the gamified narcissism slop app. Any of them.

Anyone looking to be a tech innovator should try and invent a monetization method that provably enriches the users' life, or at least doesn't grind their attention span to dust for no gain.

But oh no, they don't want to solve actual hard problems when the easy solution of building a better Skinner Box to siphon money to yourself is right there. They want the status of being a hard-problem solver, though.

If something is important to you and provides value, go pay for the real thing. The 'internet' only sucks because it's free.

I only push back insofar as there's a common 'predatory' model that starts out making the thing free or reduced cost and very carefully implying that this will remain the case, but retain the right to alter the deal at any time. Then alter the deal once you sense that they've gotten invested enough that it'll be too painful to leave vs. shelling out money.

And even if you pay for the thing, they can and will shove ads into it anyway. Netflix did it.

This feels to me like a distinctly unfair practice, only maintained because its usually not worth complaining that a thing you were getting for free went away, since its not like it cost you much. But it kind of did. It cost all the time I could have put into another outlet, and it relied on one's general good faith belief that the free option would stick around unless the entire site/app went kaput.

Like, I've put a whole hell of a lot of time and thought into my Motte posts. I don't believe that I "own" the words on the site, but I would be pretty cheesed off if they started restricting my access to my own content and then stuck a paywall up if I wanted to access comments from longer than a month ago.

AND THEN said "hey its fine if you don't want to pay, we'll just start injecting ads into your comments and slapping a gambling mechanic on the Friday Fun thread unless you pony up.

I would immediately drop the site and never look back. But I WOULD put up some money to keep the site functional at the current level simply because I actually do value the community here at significantly greater than $0, which is something I can't say about many other forums.

I'm somewhat tempted to blame venture capital.

Many of these web companies grew into what they are while catering to the whims of VC funds. Which usually meant massive and rapid growth to get as many users as possible. Which is not a bad strategy when you have less than millions of users. But at some point in the millions of users you need to convert to monetization of those user's. But that is typically when the firm goes public and loses all guidance from the VC. Or worst of all is stuck with founding leadership that was optimized for the "acquire users at all costs" schtick.

I'm now wondering if it's a software investment problem in general. AAA games seem to follow a similar dumb logic. Endless cloning and copying of the hatest hit, barely any differentiation among the top products.

Someone want to give the expected IRR hurdle for high usage low conversion platform aggregators? The optimistic discount rates given to investors at pitch rarely map onto actual as use statistics or patterns, and oftentimes the VCs are number crunchers looking at TAM conversions instead of understanding how ginned up stats are disguising other more usable metrics. Oftentimes platforms have to find a defensible USP to slather on top of the blitzscaling machine they've built and hope the narrative of the USP holds when the blitzscaling is creaking under fake incentives, and that just becomes a bagholder escape exercise.

Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, Discord are famous examples of high use platforms unable to convert their userbases into monetizable assets without significant curation and often full on self destruction once the USP got exposed to scrutiny. A more quantifiable example of platform aggregation failure is the facebook pivot-to-video where autoplay vids got counted as full engagement and caused many platforms to both invest in video architecture as well as creation, when in reality no one was actually watching that much video (that came later on with tiktok and COVID doomscrolling cemented that operational modus). Facebooks shift to video specifically meant plenty of VCs were investing in esports specifically, which had to be written off in later years and which clearly showed changes in term sheets post 2020 after the charade was exposed.

Its also true that we are likely still in the overhang of ZIRP, with an irrational exuberance in market strength due to Trump and rapid capital shifting during this economic chaos. We still are in the window for a lagged interest rate stressor, and mortgages are peaking above 07 rates though that means nothing in this differentiated environment. In any case this ZIRP overhang still sees capital sloshing around looking for someplace, ANYPLACE to put money into to get alpha, and the demand for a story outweighs the demand for a technically sound assessment. No ones going to listen to the sysadmin saying the usage stats for AI wrapper chatbots don't make sense and will collapse when regex parsers are shown to be as useless as BPO outsourcing consultancies, VC Principals listen to the confident guy that promises he will change how humans work thanks to their Scarlett Johanssen sexvoice AI assistant reminding grandma to take her meds.

I kinda wish we had a tipping function on this site (no, that's not actually a feature request) because this encapsulated the rant I would have made about VC much more concisely and with even sharper barbs than I would have used.

I'd just add on the "the demand for a story outweighs the demand for a technically sound assessment" point.

I hate how most modern Founders take the position that they're solving some pressing and very difficult problem facing the world. But if you point out that their proposed solution has some bad second order effects and might make things even worse you get a justification that boils down to "Well a real solution is to too hard to produce all at once so we expect to iterate towards that over time, meanwhile if we don't do this thing someone else will."

And I'm thinking "that sounds like the actual problem that needs solving, how to coordinate enough to mitigate second order effects while working towards a long term solution. Why aren't you working on THAT?"

Specifically thinking of Cluely right now. "We'll let you cheat your way through ANYTHING!"

"Okay, neat GPT wrapper. Can you see how this might cause some serious trust problems for both your customers and the people they interact with if you're encouraging them to be dishonest and hide their use of your product?"

"Not our issue."

"...Okay. I will immediately invest in any company which persuasively promises to render your company nonviable. That's the problem I want solved."

Like, the story is "VCs and Founders work together to coordinate capital towards creating a better world."

It really seems in practice "VCs throw money at any Founders who seem smart enough to turn that money into a viable product and capture a 10-100X ROI even if it makes the world worse in some less-tangible way." Any benefits to the consumer/society are a byproduct of this process. (Which may be enough of a justification, mind).

Oh man I could do a rant on the current state of VC too, although it'd be from a position of ignorance as to the on-the-ground-realities.

I remember Juicero.

I think that your point rings true, though. Founders these days apparently want to exit as big as possible as quickly as possible. Your initial product, your initial audience is really just there to springboard you to mainstream attention, where you grab as many new users as you can, crow about your growth metrics to you can bring in more investors, at which point you're either going to make it to an IPO or blow up b/c the stats were straight up faked or simply not maintainable.

Or get bought by one of the big players who sees you as potential competition, which still gives you a major payday.

Its weird that I've grown some grudging respect for Mark Zuckerberg. Despite hating what FB has become compared to what it was... he sticks around and owns his decisions, remains the face of the company, and makes BIG plays like paying a BILLION FACKING DOLLARS to poach top AI researchers. Also he seems to really love his wife and has stuck with her, no whiff of scandal, for over a decade now.

Indie games seem to be a counterargument to my point, the internet allows them to find and cultivate audiences and while some of them elevate to smash hits, they all thrive on being unique and playing to their specific strengths, and while you still see tons of copycatting, most of the time the ones that 'win' are truly imaginative.

The reddit front page seemed quite certain that it was a shock collar, so the "sides" here are at least not the typical ones. As per the comments below... are you sure this isnt just Lorenz in paticular making shit up?

I've noticed this as well. There was another of those quite recently - the ICE-shooting-pastor (David Black, if you want to check it out) video. To the left, the priest is not doing anything dangerous, so shooting him is obviously overkill. To the right, the priest is blatantly ignoring orders and blocking the entrance, so what did he expect? Both sides have imo increasingly trapped priors, to use bayesian parlance, so in short videos it's easy to fill in the details with what you already are predisposed to believe.

... but how do you know the video is real and not an AI deepfake? Isn't it possible now, for instance, to gin up a video of Charlie Kirk robbing a liquor store?

Nobody is even bothering to claim it is AFAIK.

I don’t care if Hasan used a shock collar on his dog- this beast is likely still doing better than the alternative, which is security for a scrap metal dealer. But Taylor Lorenz saying something blatantly at odds with reality isn’t evidence of two screens. She’s a weird delusional lizard person on blue sky. This is just evidence that one mentally ill person is delusional.

She’s a weird delusional lizard person on blue sky.

A lizard person who goes to incredible lengths to hide her age (she's 40 as of earlier this month).

Am I the only one who thinks its facially insane that she purports to be so driven by pursuit of truth and LARPs a brave, crusading ace reporter meanwhile actively hiding/dodging basic information about herself that has no relevance aside from her own denial of reality?

After the whole story of how she got fired from The Washington Post, I could only conclude that she is deeply unwell.

Every little bit I've learned about her has led me to conclude that she could tell me it was raining in Seattle and I'd feel the need to check myself.

I don’t care if Hasan used a shock collar on his dog- this beast is likely still doing better than the alternative, which is security for a scrap metal dealer.

Dog needs to go get a drink of water after hours in that bed? Dog needs to relieve itself and not make a mess on the bed (which probably would mean punishment)? Dog needs to stretch because no, it is not normal to be in one position for hours on end? Still gets shocked because its owner is an idiot?

By the same logic, if I (hypothetically, in Minecraft) put a bag over your head and chained you to a bed, you would still be doing better than, say, a migrant labourer in the UAE who is worked to death in the blazing sun. That may be true, but we are talking "lesser of two evils" and not "this is fine, this is okay, what is everyone making a fuss about?"

I suggest someone put a shock collar on Hasan and zap him every time he gets up from his chair to go get a drink or use the bathroom. After all, that's still way better than the alternative, right?

In principle - I have no good answer to the whole animal rights conundrum, namely:

A: They are living beings, even if they are not as smart as humans. It is not okay to kill them - would you be okay with a human cattle ranch of mentally retarded people?

B: This is indeed an ugly thing: I don't want to live in a world where the weak and stupid have no right even to their life if their death would cause some positive utility to one of their biological superiors (especially when "weak" and "stupid" are relative terms...)

B: But sadly, there is no good resolution to this. If we really wish to avoid this ugly notion of biological inferiority/superiority, "a great chain of being", etc - then we are forced to extend our compassion forever downwards, below the cattle and dogs, below the rats, below even the ants, bees and wasps - down to the level of unicellular organisms: on just your fingertip lies millions of bacteria, each time you wash your hands is a genocide. The only way to avoid actively harming innocent beings is the death of the entire human race, each breathe we take to prolong our murderous lives is an atrocity.

B: So, if we wish to continue living, and wish to retain some coherent notion of morality - we must accept the drawing of a line somewhere. So we must be able to say X is so low on the "chain" it is acceptable to take its life. And yes, this unfortunately puts the question of whether I deserve my own life onto the table.

This is a self-consistent rebuttal (and is the argument I personally believe in), but it's also exactly what an evil person trying to justify their evil would say in order to continue being evil ("Look, maybe being a cartel hitman is actually not a nice thing to do. But also, it's the only life I know, and I'd probably be killed myself if I stopped, and also coincidentally I have this neat philosophy that actually makes it kosher!"), so I often have doubts about this.

I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on this (I have seen similar things written elsewhere, but never exactly this)

But - to go back to the original point: wider (meat-eating) society accepts the fact that animal lives are lesser than a human's. In particular, we kill and eat animals (okay, more realistically - we sponsor their killing by buying their meat in a supermarket), and not even for survival reasons. It seems that if we value a "life" so little, making said life have to stay still for a while and get shocked whilst being housed and fed and not slaughtered is pretty marginal in comparison ("it was one thing to kill and eat all those people, but when you trespassed into that lady's house to hide in her shower, you crossed the line")

I don't think it makes sense to oppose mild animal abuse unless you are a vegetarian (and even then there are other issues, but being vegetarian seems the bare minimum for holding this sort of position)

By the same logic, if I (hypothetically, in Minecraft) put a bag over your head and chained you to a bed, you would still be doing better than, say, a migrant labourer in the UAE who is worked to death in the blazing sun. That may be true, but we are talking "lesser of two evils" and not "this is fine, this is okay, what is everyone making a fuss about?"

If I (hypothetically, in Minecraft) kidnapped you from your home (and also a bunch of other humans), put you on a farm, eugenically bred you with other humans with the goal of making succulent offspring, and eventually slaughtered you, butchered you, and sold your flesh for a profit... you'd actually be worse off than even the migrant labourer. Actually this is the plot for an especially disturbing horror movie - so if we're comparing animals to humans this way, you (and I, and everyone else who eats meat) are at an off-the-charts level of bad.

Well, my view is that animals and humans are not equal moral agents.

However, animals are beings of their own. They have their own needs. Forcing an animal to act outside its nature is cruel, just as (say) beating a toddler for crying when they are hungry would be cruel. A dog is not meant to sit in one position or lie on a bed for hours. I don't know why the dog got up - hungry? needed to relieve itself? stiff from sitting? bored? - but shocking it for that is cruel.

And we don't have to introduce farmed humans, we just have to treat animals as creatures that, if we assume the authority over them of ownership, should be responsible ownership. I hate the modern notion of treating pets like quasi-humans, or living plushies, whose existence is to provide the owner with unconditional love on the owner's demand, and if this means locking a dog up for hours every day in an apartment while the owner goes to work, then so be it. Keeping cats indoors and never letting them out? So be it. The function of the animal is not to be a being in its own right, but an extension of the owner's needs. I hate that because, even if I don't think animals are the equivalent of a human as moral agents, a dog is a dog, not a living toy.

Piker's shocking his dog was obviously cruel and neglectful, but spoiling your pet is another, if less obvious, way of being cruel. C. S. Lewis from "The Four Loves":

This terrible need to be needed often finds its outlet in pampering an animal. To learn that someone is "fond of animals" tells us very little until we know in what way. For there are two ways. On the one hand the higher and domesticated animal is, so to speak, a "bridge" between us and the rest of nature. We all at times feel somewhat painfully our human isolation from the sub-human world--the atrophy of instinct which our intelligence entails, our excessive self-consciousness, the innumerable complexities of our situation, our inability to live in the present. If only we could shuffle it all off! We must not--and incidentally we can't--become beasts. But we can be with a beast. It is personal enough to give the word with a real meaning; yet it remains very largely an unconscious little bundle of biological impulses. It has three legs in nature's world and one in ours. It is a link, an ambassador. Who would not wish, as Bosanquet put it, "to have a representative at the court of Pan"? Man with dog closes a gap in the universe. But of course animals are often used in a worse fashion. If you need to be needed and if your family, very properly, decline to need you, a pet is the obvious substitute. You can keep it all its life in need of you. You can keep it permanently infantile, reduce it to permanent invalidism, cut it off from all genuine animal well-being, and compensate for this by creating needs for countless little indulgences which only you can grant. The unfortunate creature thus becomes very useful to the rest of the household; it acts as a sump or drain--you are too busy spoiling a dog's life to spoil theirs. Dogs are better for this purpose than cats: a monkey, I am told, is best of all. Also it is more like the real thing. To be sure, it's all very bad luck for the animal. But probably it cannot fully realise the wrong you have done it. Better still, you would never know if it did. The most down-trodden human, driven too far, may one day turn and blurt out a terrible truth. Animals can't speak.

Those who say "The more I see of men the better I like dogs"--those who find in animals a relief from the demands of human companionship--will be well advised to examine their real reasons.

There are animals that we let trained people butcher for meat and do not think much of it, or otherwise subject to harsh conditions for our utility, and there are animals that we cherish and pamper, or at least respect. Some societies do not have that clear demarcation between cattle and pets, but the society Hasan purports to be a part of does (which is why he doesn't go "even if I did shock her, big deal, she's my property and she's better off than etc etc.").

As mentioned elsewhere here, a person who knows the acceptable way to treat pets (enough to cover the mistreatment up) but doesn't is morally suspect.

There are animals that we let trained people butcher for meat and do not think much of it, or otherwise subject to harsh conditions for our utility, and there are animals that we cherish and pamper, or at least respect.

I find the whole ranking of animal species business pretty suspect morally.

But fine, that is a self-consistent framework that justfies meat eating but not pet abuse (assuming you would be okay with someone abusing a pet from a "meat" species)

(assuming you would be okay with someone abusing a pet from a "meat" species)

It's not about the species for me but about the adoption of the pet. So torturing your pet piglet is not ok. And vice versa, I don't care if people shoot stray dogs or, as is the rumored custom in some countries, farm them for food.

It seems that if we value a "life" so little, making said life have to stay still for a while and get shocked whilst being housed and fed and not slaughtered is pretty marginal in comparison

I think moral intuitions on this point differ pretty widely. A lot of people would say that they find suffering to be more terrible than death, and thus, torture to be more wicked than murder. The idea that even if you intend to kill an animal, you should at least put it out of its misery quickly rather than let it suffer, is old and widespread; we typically recognize that a kid pulling the wings off flies is doing something wrong and perhaps concerning, whereas we would think nothing of that kid swatting the fly altogether. And this applies to humans, too. At an instinctive level I would be much more creeped out to learn that a guy I was about to shake hands with had once been a torturer, than to learn he'd shot someone dead. A good man might kill for a variety of contextual reasons, but outside of specific thought experiments about hidden bombs, torture's just wrong, and someone who practices it probably has something wrong with them.

So I don't think it's incoherent or even surprising for someone to object to the mistreatment of dogs while still eating meat. (Now, if they're morally consistent, such a person should also care about battery farming and other 'inhumane' practices. But I think a lot of people do insofar as they can bear to think about those things; if they don't act on this belief, it's out of moral cowardice, not a lack of theoretical opposition.) And actually, I think the "a torturer probably has something wrong with them" bit is important too, particularly here. Even if we think of animals as flesh automatons who don't suffer in a morally relevant sense - even then, it would lower my opinion of someone to learn they'd torture a dog, for much the same reason that it would lower my opinion of someone to learn that they have a hobby of ripping teddy bears apart with their teeth. It makes me instinctively suspect that something about their capacity to experience empathy is broken, in a way that makes them untrustworthy in terms of how they'll treat actual sentient humans.

A lot of people would say that they find suffering to be more terrible than death, and thus, torture to be more wicked than murder

In general, I am also unequivocally opposed to "torturing" animals.

But "suffering" is a spectrum, ranging from getting wet in the rain to the kind of stuff drug cartels do.

My actual practical resolution for this is to say torture is any situation where you make the victim want to die and then do not allow them to die. With an exception if you sincerely love and care for them (to avoid classifying extremely painful things that eventually lead to something good for the "victim" as torture)

And this situation does not seem to be torture. If it were really on the level of torture, I think the dog would just wig out and attack Hasan. A dog that sits still in discomfort for a long time is just suffering a "reasonable" amount. I think it still prefers living, and does not wish to die to escape the shock collar.

And actually, I think the "a torturer probably has something wrong with them" bit is important too, particularly here

As I said, I don't think this particular thing amounts to torture. But I agree that it is causing suffering to the dog, and it should make us worried about a person if they wantonly cause suffering to living things because of what it says about their ability to empathise, but:

  • This doesn't mean the person is actually doing anything morally wrong. It's just that they are actively doing something that makes the people around them (who cannot access their true state of mind) update their priors to think they will later do a separate thing, that is morally wrong.
  • In this case, I don't even think we should be worried* He wasn't shocking the dog for fun, he was trying to make his property stay in the right place for his livestream. In your teddy analogy: your guy is not ripping teddy bears apart with his teeth, but decided to use one of the button eye as a spare for his jacket. No need to worry about a missing empathy response - he probably did feel a little uncomfortable but understood the discomfort was irrational.

[*] Well, at least not worried he's a Ted Bundy. It is antisocial behaviour for him to break a rule and then hide his rule-breaking behaviour (even if the rule itself is bogus)

My actual practical resolution for this is to say torture is any situation where you make the victim want to die and then do not allow them to die. (…) I think it still prefers living, and does not wish to die to escape the shock collar.

I don't think that's a very good definition, especially if we're trying to apply it to non-sapient creatures. In the first place, I'm not convinced it is actually cognitively possible for non-sapient animals to conceive of suicide, certainly not in the rational, goal-oriented way of a suffering human opting for assisted dying. Is it possible for human babies, even? I don't think "torturing an infant" is an oxymoron, but it would seem to fail your criterion.

And in the second place, it would mean that the exact same mistreatment could be torture or not-torture depending on the victim's will to live. Without tipping all the way over into suicidal, this is clearly something that varies from individual to individual. Some might have a very strong will to live; others might put one foot in front of the other mostly as the path of least resistance and wouldn't fight very hard if their life was in jeopardy. If people from those two groups are put through the exact same torments, and experience the exact same amount of pain, but the first remains steadfast in wanting to get through this while the other starts shouting "oh for God's sake just kill me now", is it reasonable to say that only the second guy is being tortured? Seems weird and contrived to me.

This isn't to say I necessarily want to die on the hill that Piker's treatment of his dog qualifies as torture. But "would the dog rather be dead than experience this treatment" seems far too high a bar assuming it's even applicable to a canine mind. (I will clarify that to the extent I think it might be in the realm of torture, I am very much talking about the compounding effect of "being forced to sit still for hours on end under threat of painful shocks", where the constant stress and enrichment-starvation are part of it as much as the shocks themselves. I certainly wouldn't argue that shocking a dog to house-train it would qualify as torture.)

In this case, I don't even think we should be worried* He wasn't shocking the dog for fun, he was trying to make his property stay in the right place for his livestream

Well, that's rather the problem. It suggests that he views the dog as property, as a living prop for his livestream, rather than a living being he loves and enjoys the company of. I don't think there's much of a leap from that to suspecting that he also thinks of the humans in his life as tools to be used for personal advancement, rather than people with inherent value and dignity.

(It is of course possible to straight-up believe that animals lack qualia and/or moral standing without being a psychopath in one's relationship to other humans - hence the teddy bear - but I don't think a Piker who was simply a principled Cartesian of that kind would have any reason to own a pet dog in the first place. Having a pet dog visible in his livestreams at all is a signal of "I'm the kind of person who enjoys the company of our four-legged furry friends", and if that's not actually how he thinks of dogs then the signal is deceitful and his whole moral character becomes suspect, never mind that he tried to cover up the shocking.)

I'm not convinced it is actually cognitively possible for non-sapient animals to conceive of suicide, certainly not in the rational, goal-oriented way of a suffering human opting for assisted dying. Is it possible for human babies, even? I don't think "torturing an infant" is an oxymoron, but it would seem to fail your criterion.

So I did consider animals when I wrote the definition, which I why I carefully worded the condition as: "want[ing] to die" instead of the more sophisticated "wishing to commit suicide", etc. For animals, I am working on the assumption that they will express a death wish as going crazy and just thrashing about / attacking people / etc.

It's not a perfect solution, but unfortunately once an entity is unable to communicate verbally, it's hard to definitively rule out that it is not in some kind of terrible agony (see also: "The anesthesia only partially worked. The patient is unable to control their body, but feels everything"), so I think this is the best we can do.

I didn't really consider babies. I don't think it is an oxymoron either. But I think my definition still works, because we can try and reasonably infer if it is in agony, primarily by asking if the thing we are doing to it is painful (and, as I mentioned, there is the caveat of if you love the entity and are trying to help it, so medical procedures on newborns is not torture) - this is even less cut-and-dry than the animal case, but again I think it's just a hard problem to evaluate suffering on a living thing that cannot communicate its thoughts (and in fact probably doesn't even have "thoughts" in the way normal humans do)

If people from those two groups are put through the exact same torments, and experience the exact same amount of pain, but the first remains steadfast in wanting to get through this while the other starts shouting "oh for God's sake just kill me now", is it reasonable to say that only the second guy is being tortured? Seems weird and contrived to me

Actually this is an intended aspect of my definition. The primary goal of my definition is that I find it disturbing that intelligent beings are able to inflict extreme "unnatural" levels of pain on living things, and sometimes it is in their benefit to do so.

In general, it feels "unnatural" to ban a state from inflicting any kind of suffering on someone, because a "baseline" level of suffering just exists without states (people/animals starve to death, creatures get eaten by stronger ones, etc), so why just disallow inflicting suffering in just this particular kind of circumstance.

But for torture, this is a thing that only happens if you have civilisation (lions don't torture gazelles or other lions, they can't because they are too stupid) - so I think it should be considered always immoral to torture.

As you yourself have mentioned, sometimes there are good and necessary reasons to kill someone (a criminal just starts attacking people and refuses to surrender), so we can't go so far as to ban killing for any reason (plus what about killing animals, etc)

So my definition comes out as the best coherent imperative that can actually be adhered to in any circumstance, but also rules out a particularly egregious class of suffering: i.e. a fate worse than death (if whatever is happening to someone is truly a fate worse than death, under this rule, they have the right to choose death instead)

In your particular comparison - the strong willed person is personally experiencing whatever is happening to them as a fate not as bad as death. As long as they are always given the option of choosing death (consent can always be taken away at any point, etc, etc) - I don't think I can do any better without my axiom becoming non-universal.

Well, that's rather the problem. It suggests that he views the dog as property, as a living prop for his livestream, rather than a living being he loves and enjoys the company of.

I think you're right, I went too far with my previous statement. What I do believe is that this is less worrying than wanton suffering, but still, being able to actually act on the philosophy I propose for animals with a real animal, even for a useful purpose, is still worrying because he was able to ignore its suffering / lacked the empathy to realise its suffering.

but I don't think a Piker who was simply a principled Cartesian of that kind would have any reason to own a pet dog in the first place. Having a pet dog visible in his livestreams at all is a signal of "I'm the kind of person who enjoys the company of our four-legged furry friends", and if that's not actually how he thinks of dogs then the signal is deceitful and his whole moral character becomes suspect, never mind that he tried to cover up the shocking

I agree, it is quite slimy he lied that way. I already mentioned it was bad he covered up his rule breaking, but you're right he also went out of his way to mislead people into thinking he was pro animal rights by having a pet.

Though I think misleading people into thinking you hold a particular ideological stance is less egregious than actually breaking a rule (thought crimes vs physical crimes)... but I guess I'm biased, since (like many others on this forum, I imagine) I personally mislead the people around me to believe I am on-board with progressive ideology (but in my defence, I will say I have tried to keep this deception implicit, I don't go around with dyed hair and pronoun pins)

I know about this controversy much more than I should have, mostly by following Asmongold on this. At the end of it I think Hasan really used shock collar on his dog. I do not have "evidence" at this point as I really did not assemble all the clips, but I will throw it here:

  • There is much more than just one video here. In true 4Chan manner, a host of clips surfaced where Hasan moved the remote around, where his dog reacted strangely when she left the designed place while the stream was muted etc.

  • The dog really serves as a prop on his streams standing for hours in the same place.

  • Hasan changed his story many times to the point of it being completely incomprehensive. It produced memes on its own

  • He apparently had some bull breed in the past that he did not treat kindly. He used some sort of barbed collar and generally was not nice to it, e.g. pulling it by the tail etc.

At this point I do think that he used the shock collar and in general is probably not the most responsible dog owner. On its own it seems like a simple story, one I would not even comment on. But it has life of its own now, and is a stand-in for general information environment. Even with controversial Taylor Lorenz now being part of it. Of course it generated great number of memes and other content, including AI generated song and more.

I agree with this.

After seeing just the initial video, I was probably around 51-60% sure that he used a shock collar.

After his attempt at explaining away the collar the next day, it shot up to 95-99%. Without taking into account the fact that all analysis of the video shows that the collar he showed is consistent with a shock collar with its removable prongs removed and then taped over and is not known to be consistent with any vibrating-but-not-shocking collar as he claimed, the simple fact that he presented the collar the way he did, briefly showing in his hand, with huge chunks of it covered by his fingers, barely holding it still for more than 0.3 seconds before taking it away from camera view, was enough. Someone who's been on camera as much as Piker knows how things look on screen, and if he were genuinely motivated to reveal the honest truth that he truly was not using a shock collar, he would have shown the collar in a different manner, by holding it by part of the strap and slowly rotating it around in front of the camera after verifying its focus, while making sure there was minimal movement besides the rotation, so that every part of the collar could be seen clearly. And he would have done this during the stream in which he was accused, not on the next stream (the fact that a multimillionaire like him didn't find a decoy non-shock collar in that time that looked similar to the shock collar when worn by a dog in that time is curious - either hubris or just the limits of physical reality).

And, of course, this was also after he and/or his followers claimed that the yelp was caused by the dog clipping its nail on the bed - something quite possible, but also something quite non-evident in the video. This claim was memory-holed basically within a day, replaced with the "it's a vibration collar, not shock collar" claim.

This sort of behavior is consistent with someone who believes he was caught shocking his dog and highly inconsistent with someone who believes he was falsely accused of shocking his dog. If Piker believes that he was caught shocking his dog, then I believe it too.

I'll also add that, given how easy it is to look up and see the primary sources for oneself, anyone who's defaulting to ignorance and just listening to what people on various "sides" are telling them to think is someone I believe is motivated to remain ignorant for fear of finding out the truth (or just someone who's not interested in it).

There is much more than just one video here.

Are all those videos from the same stream? It's easy to cherry-pick suspicious-looking things from thousands of videos.

Yes, I did not investigate it thoroughly. I just googled another instance where Piker moved remote from the shock collar on some other occasion. It is not the same stream, but his dog is in the background all the time for hours on end. She is almost like another decoration and permanent fixture. Also he changed his story. First, he said that when he reaches outside of camera it is for his Zyn. Then he changed the story that yes, there is a remote for collar but it is only for vibration function etc.

In a sense he fed the whole controversy by himself as he just dug deeper and deeper hole for himself. Adding Taylor Lorenz into this whole mess only expands it further. It is actually quite funny - as I said, a simple story now has life of its own way beyond the original thing as it spawned other substories like "why Hasan changed his explanation" etc.

The weight of evidence for 'child abusers' is the single instance of them hitting a child, with repeated proof furthering the original case. Followup apology vids of 'its just context bro' while the child actually has bruises visible don't help. When the case looks bad enough it requires the aggrieved party to outright state that there was no harm performed, and that is why children and pets - not animals as a whole specifically pets present within an asymmetric power dynamic - are given a level of public sympathy not available to other interaction scenarios.

It is necessary to highlight that this is a giant TOUCH GRASS RETARDS HOLY SHIT moment, but for the fact that Hasan occupies a hilariously stupid intersection of IRL to Internet thoughtspace: a terminally online retard agitating for real life changes. Asmongold wants his vidya to keep having big titty white girls and awesome dudes doing awesome stuff, and any IRL activism such as it exists is expeditionary raiding to push back invaders. Hasan wants to stream while talking about the necessity of the revolution, and never actually do anything in dirty meatspace where people can actually disagree with him. The digital world Hasan cocooned himself in is emblematic of leftist echo chamber circlejerking, but, unlike political podcasters that clone their IRL bubbles into online islands, Hasan operates in a visible manner that allows a surprising amount of bleedthrough not just from IRL falsifiability but also from adjacent digital cocoons like le epic redditor pupper protection brigades. He evades from all sides when he can, calling himself an online streamer irrelevant to real life influence but also a socialist whose voice must be raised as a totem for the youth to follow. Turns out animal abuse is something his slicked broccolihair can't deflect though.

Wasn't it Lorenz who secretly surveiled a Clubhouse gathering only to falsely accuse Marc Andreesen of being retarded?

She's also zero-covid.

Unlike the rest of us who are "raw dogging the air" in her words.

Of saying "retard" but yeah.

That the surveillance state will be used for good. The narrative is seductive. If we could just see everything in 4K, disputes over what really happened would collapse, the thinking goes. If everything in life is videotaped and archived, then the real truth of these messy situations would be indisputable. But Hassan Piker's dog collar incident shows that this theory is catastrophically wrong.

Weird take.

Seeing everything in 4k isn't bad because it makes us realize that our delusions of truth and stability fade into so much airy nothingness when exposed to the might of the simulacrum panopticon. Seeing everything in 4k is bad because it truthfully shows people the actual truth of what you did (e.g. shouting racial slurs while you were having a really bad trip at that frat party that one time), which then causes them to actually harm you, in a truthy way.

There is no post-truth, there is no collapse of values and morality, there's none of that. It's clear that the discourse on "post-truth" is a product of wishful thinking. It sure would be nice if the truth would stop smashing its boots into our faces for just a little while. But that's not the reality we live in unfortunately. For people whose physical survival depends on the truth, it's actually shockingly rare for the truth to come into serious question (regarding issues that actually matter, anyway).

You know how when you were a kid on the playground, people could make up anything about the new Pokemon game and you would believe them, or at least you would hold open the possibility that the rumors could be true, because you were a dumb kid and you didn't know anything, and the internet was in its infancy so you didn't just have a source of infinite authoritative knowledge that you could verify everything against? All of reality used to be like that. "Lightning is just what Zeus does when he gets mad", "Well zamn, I don't know whether that's really plausible or not, but I'm illiterate and I only know about the existence of one or two city-states besides my own and the rest of the world is shrouded in mystery, so for all I know, it certainly could be true". That was post-truth. Or pre-truth, rather. Now we're living in the age of truth, and it sucks. (It would suck too if we actually did enter the post-truth reign-of-nihilism age, but for different reasons.)

There's nothing "seductive" about truth; the truth is real, it's dangerous, and most of the time I would very much like it to stay over there, away from me. Alternative perspectives on the matter are typically coming from, as the kids like to say, a place of "privilege".

Forgive me if I misunderstood, but I don't think that's what people are referring to when they refer to a post-truth world. My understanding is that 'post-truth' means:

  1. Continued belief in something that has been proven false due to not wanting to engage with the source material (I believe the "Hands up don't shoot" or "Very Fine People" fall under this category).
  2. Using the fact it has been disproven in order to claim it is believable ("I believed my outgroup was eating babies, and even though this particular person was not, it should say something that I believed it plausible")
  3. Official sources deciding to claim that "we've always been at war with Eurasia" and people deciding to update their programming respectively (Masks don't work, until they're mandatory. The Trump vaccine is poison, until it's required. If you take the vaccine, you won't get COVID.)

(Apologies that my examples are all left-wing; I am certain right-wing examples exist, but I am loosely right-wing, so they do not stick out in my mind in the same way left-wing ones do).

The problem isn't the Truth smashing its boot into our faces; the problem is that tribal warfare has become more important than truth, to the degree that we can't do anything anymore (like, we can't say "more immigration may boost our GDP numbers, but it is causing the quality of life for the lower and middle classes to plummet, so we need to reduce it significantly." Instead, we have to claim its all bad, while the other side needs to claim its all good, and nothing gets done about it ever).

I figured 2. was referring to the Haitian dog thing.

None of these are really new phenomena. There was no shortage of tribalism in the last two centuries. What makes it “post-truth” is how deep you can go. In 1898, your ability to fact-check basically bottomed out at the newspapers. Today, you can research your way into whatever corner you want. There’ll already be a newly created Substack arguing your exact theory with links to compelling video evidence. You can do this for wildly contradictory positions and still see what looks like high-quality evidence. Hence: post-truth.

As usual, surplus breeds specialization. When building credibility is easier, contrarianism naturally gets more popular. We’ve reached a point where a fundamentally contrarian movement dominates one of the main political parties. I don’t think that happens without cheap and easy access to alternative facts.

It's not complicated. Taylor Lorenz is just a shameless liar who knows that her followers never actually check source material. How many of them still think Rittenhouse opened fire on a peaceful crowd and killed three harmless black people? Piker is probably the biggest leftist streamer with serious support from Twitch, which refuses to ban him no matter what he does. Getting him canceled (or arrested, using a shock collar to force an animal to perform is apparently a crime in California) would be a blow to the cause of champagne socialism. Just so, Lorenz would tell you the sky was water if it helped her political faction.

They’re personal friends too…

Just so, Lorenz would tell you the sky was water if it helped her political faction.

The Lorenz transformation, if you will

I have not gone down the rabbit hole of analysis of the video, so I'm going to try to defend Taylor's interpretation.

Is there a "not" missing there, or are you literally saying you'll defend something you want to plead ignorance about later?

Anyway, I think the concept of "two screens" has to stop short of covering scenarios where someone is outright lying, or it will lose any meaning and usefulness.

Is there a "not" missing there

Yes. Thank you, edited to fix typo.

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