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PaperclipPerfector  16hr ago (text post)   2254 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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Did I miss some flameout that prompted this?

Of those who unironically use low human capital as an insult.

Those people aren't progressives, and they're still around. It's the ones who were nodding along with Hanania right up until he started saying Orange Man Bad. And the econ-pilled ones who were mad about tariffs.

@Amadan is the embodiment of the Platonic philosopher-king, and their judgement is infallible, like the pope speaking ex cathedra. The jannies of the Motte are of a different breed than the soft, nepotistic babies of Reddit. They are veterans of forum warfare. The Navy Seals of the mop force. If you take a look at Amadan's profile and sort by top rated, you will see a long list of people they've dunked.

My pet theory is that @Amadan is Freddie DeBoer. Hear me out.

He's obviously invested in TheMotte, but rarely makes a top-level post (has he ever?) on a new subject - and he can't, because it would inevitably be about basketball or education policy or half-asian babies and destroy his opsec. When he talks about his politics, it's always how he's a true leftist but the progressives put him up on the wall for wrongthink (Freddie saying HBD-adjacent things, being cancelled). He clearly has a job that allows him to piss away hours in the middle of the workday on the sisyphean task of internet jannying. 'Classical-liberal' politics. It all fits. Giants walk among us.

The whole point of the Motte is to talk to weirdos and freaks such as myself with as much politeness and decorum as can be managed.

I'm confident most progs manage to be at least as decorous as this post.

Perhaps your words aren't as convincing to others as you thought it was. Get gud. Skill issue.

The world is too complex for anyone to properly grasp. The purpose of echo chambers is to selectively filter/spin stories that flatter their ingroup, or make the outgroup look bad. I'm fairly confident that if you perfectly swapped someone's social environment to be full of partisans of the opposite valency, and fed them a curated media diet you could change their politics fairly easily over time.

In other words, a lone prog crusader isn't going to convince TheMotte any more than you're going to turn Reddit pro-Trump, regardless of how eloquent either of you are.

Not sure it’s that easy to change someone’s mind. I spent a lot of time on redddit. I never became a leftist. Political beliefs though due seem to align with my background and where you would expect someone of my background to end up.

How many male, rust belt town kids, who kept going to Church weekly well into 20’s vote Democrat? Might be able to shorten that today to - male and has had manual labor jobs for at least a summer.

I would guess with probably a 50% probability that without moderation Reddit would become the Third Reich in 6 months. Leftist places online seem to need to be protected to exists.

At this point non-leftists have so many discussion forums that it's possible there are no longer enough non-leftists lacking a home to cause a non-censored Reddit to be swamped by them.

The world is too complex for anyone to properly grasp. The purpose of echo chambers is to selectively filter/spin stories that flatter their ingroup, or make the outgroup look bad. I'm fairly confident that if you perfectly swapped someone's social environment to be full of partisans of the opposite valency, and fed them a curated media diet you could change their politics fairly easily over time.

I agree with this, but only to an extent. I think that there are personality based limits to this. If I'm being perfectly honest, I went from being a progressive raised in a liberal family to no longer being a progressive once the progressive social millieu I was in started saying too many things that hurt my ego/went against my personal interests. I think a lot of transitions of people politically/socially, in modern terms often people who grow up and live in one political/social group to the opposite one, come from the politics they inherit harming their ego or going against their self interest. There are tons of historical examples where people go against their social subgroup due to a harm their social subgroup dealt to them.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard Amadan talk about schooling, so that can’t be right…

My pet theory is that @Amadan is Freddie DeBoer. Hear me out.

Cute theory, except I'm not a leftist, I'm exactly the kind of liberal centrist Freddie despises.

but rarely makes a top-level post (has he ever?) on a new subject

SF nerdery. Which Freddie also despises.

I'm exactly the kind of liberal centrist Freddie despises.

That's exactly the type of cover Freddie would use for opsec. @Goodguy

Amadan is a self-proclaimed leftist? Are you sure? I kind of feel like I would have picked up on that after years of being here.

My pet theory is that @Amadan is Freddie DeBoer. Hear me out.

I'm sold, and I'm adding this to my list of Motte conspiracy theories that I believe (others include JD Vance lurking here).

Well, if he's around, I'm politely asking him to approve the next visa application I make to visit the States. I'll even stop liking the meme edits on Twitter.

Goddammit, Don, stop blowing our people’s cover!

I find this one more plausible than the Freddie deBoer one.

It's true that I've never seen Amadan act like a raging dick in the same way I've seen FdB do (and over rather small issues).

Yeah I actually like FdB, but I don’t think in a million years he’d have the patience to moderate a forum like this, lol.

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