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naraburns  nihil supernum  1d ago (text post)   Edited 1d ago   1224 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for February 2026

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@helmut_hofmeister:

@naraburns:

@George_E_Hale:

@Rov_Scam:

Contributions for the week of February 2, 2026

@pbmonster:

@100ProofTollBooth:

@RandomRanger:

@FtttG:

@Dean:

Contributions for the week of February 9, 2026

@100ProofTollBooth:

@P-Necromancer:

@clo:

@JeSuisCharlie:

@gattsuru:

@urquan:

@oats_son:

Natalism & Co.

@LazyLongposter:

@gog:

@self_made_human:

@RenOS:

@OracleOutlook:

Contributions for the week of February 16, 2026

@RandomRanger:

@quiet_NaN:

@Closedshop:

@urquan:

@OliveTapenade:

Contributions for the week of February 23, 2026

@TitaniumButterfly:

@MonkeyWithAMachinegun:

@birb_cromble:

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I was enthusiastically nodding along with @100ProofTollBooth's post about bullying-as-Chesterton's-fence, until I came to this line:

Of late, being an autistic weirdo male can even get you fired from your job (See: James Damore).

I understand the point you're making. Damore should have "read the room" and understood that the opinions he expressed would get him in trouble. He should have understood that when Google created an internal forum specifically to express potentially controversial opinions, they only expected or wanted people to use it to express "controversial" opinions of the "fifty Stalins" variety. I get that.

But all the same, I dislike the framing that Damore got fired for being an autistic weirdo who expressed a weird opinion that creeped everyone out. It wasn't as if his manifesto was a spirited defense of lowering the age of consent, or normalising bestiality or incest. Rather, his manifesto boiled down to an opinion that would strike 99% of people throughout time and space as utterly unremarkable: "for reasons unrelated to socialisation, men and women tend to have radically different interests, which has obvious implications for the kinds of careers they tend to pursue".

Yes, a more socially adept person would have intuitively understood that, while this opinion would be considered obvious outside of Google, it is not an opinion that is likely to be received warmly within Google. But your framing seems to imply that Damore expressed a crazy shocking opinion, and the normies responded by firing him. I think it's a bit more nuanced than that: Damore expressed a normie opinion in a crazy space (a space in which lunatic ideas like "male and female brains are exactly the same" have significant purchase), failing to appreciate that this opinion was unlikely to be as warmly received in Google as it would be elsewhere.

I was tempted to close this by saying that Damore probably would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those meddling kids if he'd been more handsome and confident, but you were way ahead of me on that front anyway.

Every time the mob comes for someone, there's a tendency to point and laugh at the guy, even from his ideological allies. Mostly to reassure themselves that it couldn't happen to them, partly to avoid splash from their low-status ally.

But what does it mean to be nothing like damore? To be so perfectly socialized that one never dare go against 'the room'. To be so risk averse that one gladly sacrifices personal integrity, employer's welfare, and tolerates daily injustices, just to keep one's job. Are we to bully nerds so they can become this worm of a man?

Are we to bully nerds so they can become this worm of a man?

So, no matter how many times I explicitly say "I don't support extreme bullying" people are going to write versions of "BUT WHAT ABOUT EXTREME BULLYING."

Can't win 'em all.

So, no matter how many times I explicitly say "I don't support extreme bullying" people are going to write versions of "BUT WHAT ABOUT EXTREME BULLYING."

Can't win 'em all.

So given that my reply above could be reas as me restating your point but acting as if you missed something, let me explain the psychology behind the scenes. When I wrote that comment, my state of mind was not "I need to correct 100ProofTollBooth", it was "I want to rant about bullying being wrong when my enemies do it, and this as good an excuse as any".

So perhaps your question should not be "Is this guy lacking in reading comprehension?" but rather "What is that guy's hobbyhorse?". Does that mean a reply is warranted? Well, it would effectively result in two people who mostly agree with each other hashing out minutiae. Which may or may not be valuable.

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