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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4619 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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Academia vs. racist memes

A new paper in Evolutionary Human Sciences has been making rounds.
Memeing Scientific Racism: The Digital Reframing of Racialist Ideologies – “examines how racialised memes circulating on X revive scientific racism”.

The most intriguing feature of the paper is the way its subject of study is presented. Though the aim is to dissect bigoted memes online with Science, the author deemed it inappropriate to grant her readers direct access to the offending material. The four case-study memes are “presented exclusively through schematic reconstructions created using standard image-editing tools, including limited AI-assisted transformations”, bringing to mind some SCP Foundation containment protocol for high-caliber memetic hazards.

I’m certain that the author believes she is doing genuine research investigating a pressing problem, so that’s the angle I'll consider it from. As far as its scientific value goes, my feelings are mixed. Though the author clearly did a lot of legwork collecting nearly 70 memes, and namedrops things from the Dark Enlightenment and human biodiversity to effective altruism, and genuinely attempts to figure out what makes memes compelling and facilitates their spread, the analysis of the memes seems incomplete.

One of the case studies, a meme that was circulating since 2018, originally features a crude outline of a man drawn in soyjack tradition saying:

“I'm sorry your daughter was raped by a retarded cannibal, but we need him for the football team”

The rhetorical thrust, as I see it, is to contrast some of the more shallow sounding supposed benefits of mass migration with its most lurid observed effects.

(In February this year a big account, owned by an actual left winger with real-life clout and bearing a striking resemblance to the meme character made this post:

“The migration policies of Reform and Restore Britain would destroy football throughout the UK. Have those planning to vote for them thought about that?”

Which is an interesting case of prophetic hyperstition)

" Ethically modified" version of the meme in the paper turns the man into a simpler, more friendly looking figure changing the text to:

“I'm sorry
[text removed]
but we need him for the football team”

And here's what the author has to say about it:

“The soyjak example in Figure 2 (M60)...addresses a father whose daughter has been “raped by a retarded cannibal,” yet insists that the perpetrator must be protected for the sake of a football team.”
“The soyjak stands in for a caricatured progressive whose commitments conflict with self-preservation”
“…racial typology of the hypersexual, predatory, uncontrollable Black male”

Though this goes in the right direction, nothing reflects comprehension of the joke, of what the meme tries to convey.
Refraining from including the original memes is a serious self-imposed limitation. She could talk about how the slovenly scribbled caricature (edit: come to think of it, the visual style of these kinds of memes might well merit actual artistic investigation) serves to dehumanize open border supporters, and a grotesque crime is juxtaposed to a relatively marginal example of benefits of mass migration (which are, of course, countless) as a tool of propaganda.
Though the image of the author frowning and making notes as she browses racist jokes on Twitter brings me joy, this paper appears methodologically limited, and more research into the threat of racist memes online is likely required.

Re "We need him for the football team", I would like to state at this time that the same phenomenon is not unheard of with white perpetrators.

Yeah but the same person who is 'we need him for the football team' with Mtumbo Mtumbo likely doesn't have the same sentiment for Dale Daleson III who used a no-no word once and wore a red hat. I'm big into the MMA fandom and it's kinda hysterical how often fanbases take issues with 'US citizen fighter is a Republican' whilst getting behind overseas fighters who realistically have social views far to the right of Republicans. I get on fine with Dagestanis I've met and trained with, but like the social views of a Khabib Nurmagomedov are likely going to be miles outside of the current overton window of Western discourse. They're generally polite and good guys in a training room, but I've had conversations with some where they've prettymuch said, without qualms, that homosexuals should be killed and I think very few MAGAs are at that point on the continuum,

I saw an "ethically sourced" version of the "understanding per capita" meme too, as I was scrolling by, but I sadly didn't save it.

To think I've been looking at dangerous memes for years on the internet without appropriate PPE.

I skimmed the article and saw the [redacted] memes, but there were only a few. Is there a separate appendix, or even a list, somewhere that has all 70 memes that were considered?

They are supposedly shared with other priests researches upon personal request.

Could the reconstructions have to do with copyright? Internet memes are a legal grey area copyright-wise. A proper academic journal would presumably want to avoid copyright infringement, even if the probability of an actual lawsuit is nil.

It'd be fair use regardless of the status of the original meme, as it's for academic purposes, though, right?

Possibly, but it's unlikely that the journal in question wants to get a definitive answer from the judge dismissing the lawsuit.

Maybe. My familiarity with copyright is mostly from editing Wikipedia, which shies away from fair use except in certain very narrowly defined cases, even though the entirety of Wikipedia could be construed as an educational project. But they might be doing that for ideological reasons (wanting everything to be free content), rather than legal liability.

Edit: For example, they compress images to basically a thumbnail to make them unusable for anything except illustrating an article. That's probably more to do with lawsuit paranoia than free content concerns.

A lot of the originals were pretty sad excuses for comedy. There’s something to be said for slapping a fresh coat of irony on them. Maybe the next step is a Hollywood movie by a 20yo amateur.

On the other hand, I kept reading it as “ethnically modified,” which I suppose might have achieved the authors’ goals.

Also, I’m curious where the effective altruism crept in. You have a link to that one?

The full paper is in open access. Direct link to the PDF
Excerpt towards the end, page 22:

However, this contemporary shift extends the logic of Francis Galton, who conceived intelligence as hereditary capital optimisable through selective intervention (Aubert-Marson, 2009), into a twenty-first-century imaginary. Echoes of this logic reappear in transhumanist visions, optimisation-oriented strands of Effective Altruism, and broader cultural valorisations of cognitive rationality as a measure of social worth.

This absolutely slaps.

Changing consumer habits could be here.

I encountered this on Twitter over the weekend, and, as should have been predictable to almost anyone, it resulted in the "ethically modified schematic reconstructions" themselves birthing new memes. My favorite is probably the article 13 compliant frog, but there are others too that made me laugh. Should be interesting to see how this develops.

On the paper at hand, it's hard to think of a more harsh condemnation of the authors and the journal that published it and possibly the entire field that found this behavior acceptable than this sort of "ethical modification" of memes in a purportedly scientific paper. If it were trade secrets or photos of victims or whatnot, that would be one thing, but this is because a particular grid of pixels was deemed unethical to show other academics for the purpose of scientific research and discussion, due to the idea contents of that grid of pixels. It creates a complete abomination of the idea of scientific inquiry, which requires entertaining ideas and presenting facts as they are. I think the continuing self-discrediting of academia is likely to keep getting worse before it gets better, if ever. AIs performing automated research and producing automated papers gives me hope, but also, I think the same forces that created this abomination are likely to dominate those too. I just hope that automating scientific research and papers will become so cheap and accessible to the layman that it won't be possible to truly censor.

grid of pixels

A bit reductive. Child porn is also just a grid of pixels.

I would contend that that falls under the "trade secrets or photos of victims or whatnot" where I outlined the exceptional cases where it could be reasonable to censor grids of pixels in scientific papers.

I would contend that that falls under the "trade secrets or photos of victims or whatnot"

Which means you lose when "racist caricature" [equal to/implies] "photo of victim", like it's being treated here.

Nah, you win when they transparently make idiots out of themselves.

This is a social context, not a legal one. Rules-lawyering your way into an exception means that you're out of touch, not that you're protected by the rules.

That's just the motte of the previously-discussed bailey, though.

I saw a note on Substack that compared it to a medical journal publishing an article about sexually transmitted diseases but only referring to them as "diseases affecting the naughty bits". It's fundamentally unserious behaviour.

As funny as that comparison is, the reality is certainly far worse than that. Because "ethically modifying" a meme by changing its pixels also fundamentally alters the meme in such a way as not to present the reader with an accurate depiction of the actual thing being purportedly studied, in a way that using nicer-sounding words doesn't. It'd be more like talking about genital herpes while presenting pictures of mosquito bites because pictures of genital herpes is icky, and mosquito bites kinda look similar.

diseases

I mean it's also less accurate and communicates less clearly too. There are plenty of non sexually transmitted diseases that affect the naughty bits too.

The original note was worded more clearly. I specifically mean a journal article which refused to use anatomical terms like "penis" and "vulva" and instead substituted childish euphemisms therefor.

I just hope that automating scientific research and papers will become so cheap and accessible to the layman that it won't be possible to truly censor.

That's why they're getting ahead of it, and censoring AI itself.

Though the image of the author frowning and making notes as she browses racist jokes on Twitter brings me joy

"They keep asking me how I would feel if I hadn't eaten breakfast this morning...".

Thank you for bringing me back to this

💎

The progressive would never admit to being a scientific racists. But this is scientific racism: “ “The migration policies of Reform and Restore Britain would destroy football throughout the UK”

I don’t think it’s a big leap to go from “some population groups run faster” to “some population groups do management/science better”.

Twitter went off yesterday about how all the African countries suck at football despite having far more genetic stock of football talent. France is the lead country in producing World Cup players (around 100 players). African teams have a lot of African players born in Europe. But they can’t develop players in their own country. A lot like the resource curse which only applies to certain countries.

I don’t think it’s a big leap to go from “some population groups run faster” to “some population groups do management/science better”.

That's why the term "neck-up creationism" was coined.

Some people accept that physical traits (including important ones like health and athleticism) are affected by genetics but reject the idea that cognitive traits are. That phrase points out the inconsistency.

I don’t think it’s a big leap to go from “some population groups run faster” to “some population groups do management/science better”.

It's also not a big leap from "men are significantly stronger than women" to "and this is almost certainly paired with related psychological differences" and yet it's resisted valiantly. Even while feminists also say - correctly - that men are the dominant major suppliers of violence.

You don't have to have a coherent position. You just have to have a position that isn't on the side of racists. You can't deny that men are stronger (well, mostly not; the trans stuff has been sidling up to that position and suffering predictable consequences) or some people are better at sprinting. You have to deny that some races are smarter. Just always pick the pro-migration position.

You have to deny that some races are smarter. Just always pick the pro-migration position.

Or more generally:

You have to deny reality. Just always pick the conservative position.

Now consider the Overton window, where (starting at the liberal end and moving to the most conservative [traditionalist-progressive]) in a universal suffrage democracy you have:

[The people who are more productive deserve to keep more of their better outcomes] (population x proportion on the high side of the bell curve) -> [some genders are more productive than others] (population x 0.5) -> [some races are more productive than others] (population x 0.1) -> [some sexualities are more productive than others] (from population x 0.01-0.001)

And since 'some sexualities are more productive than others' has had serious issues lately it makes sense that progressives are going to focus on the more defensible position.

(It's also why the LGB-T speedran the civil rights playbook; it worked for the two previous causes, why wouldn't it work for the third?)

The trads/progs, as different flavors of conservative, simply take as axiomatic what that answer is going to be (men/women, white/other, straight/other) because they are not comfortable with what being on the low side of that equation actually means, or less charitably are actively mining the market shortfall that [society as organization being axiomatically wrong about something] provides them and would have to do something harder if that resource collapsed, and that looks different as you travel up the window.

some sexualities are more productive than others' has had serious issues lately

I feel like I've missed something here.

The trads/progs, as different flavors of conservative, ...

I am pretty consistently baffled by your insinuations on this point. Could you clarify what you mean? I'm familiar with the meme of conservatives as progressives going the speed limit, and I'm familiar with the idea that conservatives keep progressives' mistakes from being corrected, and so on. But you seem to be using these words in a very idiosyncratic way.

It’s resisted valiantly because it represents a vicious motte and bailey, where “related psychological differences” covers whatever one can get away with. Difference in preferences becomes difference in ability, which becomes difference in moral value, which becomes difference in rights. I am not exaggerating. The innate differences of men and women have been used to excuse systematic denial of women’s rights. Same for white vs. black.

you just have to have a position that isn’t on the side of racists.

This, but unironically. The merest suggestion of group differences attracts a cloud of more or less the worst (Internet) partisans you can imagine. Just ask Scott.

The innate differences of men and women have been used to excuse systematic denial of women’s rights. Same for white vs. black.

The systematic denial of differences hasn't exactly been a godsend for equality, rights, or anti-racism/anti-sexism as defined by sane people instead of sign-flipped racists/sexists. Quite the opposite!

Difference in preferences becomes difference in ability, which becomes difference in moral value, which becomes difference in rights. I am not exaggerating. The innate differences of men and women have been used to excuse systematic denial of women’s rights. Same for white vs. black.

This has been the standard excuse that I've kept encountered from those on the left who deny HBD or anything similar to it on ethical grounds, but I've found it to be rather lacking. As you write, it has been used to excuse denial of rights based on genetic categorization - which had been going on for literally centuries and likely millennia before anyone ever knew anything about genetic causes of average differences in behavior. And starting from a world where basically all of human history had unequal rights for women vs men and blacks vs whites (vs yellows vs reds vs etc), equal rights were achieved not through scientific arguments about genetics. Whether or not genetic reasoning would be successfully used to justify the implementation of such a denial of rights in an environment where such equal rights are already taken for granted is a very different question, and pointing to how some people in the past wrote essays reaching for genetics to justify the pre-existing millennia-old status quo of unequal rights as evidence that it would just doesn't look like anything other than paranoia to me. Anecdotally, but I've yet to see anyone who's sexist/racist enough to call for denial of rights to women/blacks who seem like they would have been egalitarian equal-rights-supporters but for their knowledge of HBD or similar scientific concepts. I'm sure some exist, but the evidence that such people are so numerous as to meaningfully affect political outcomes in terms of equal rights is something I'm rather skeptical of, and something I'd absolutely love to see actual good, rigorous scientific research done on, in order to better inform all of us with respect to the value of denying this science on ethical grounds.

On the one hand, it's true that people who enshrined differential treatment in law based on sex and ethnicity did not understand the genetic basis for the differences between groups, as legislation of this kind predated our modern understanding of genetics. On the other hand, they obviously had some kind of intuitive understanding of the psychological differences between men and women, or white people and black people, even if they didn't understand the mechanisms underpinning said differences. This results in a situation like that described by Joseph Henrich, where a proposed explanation for a phenomenon is factually wrong but nonetheless produces accurate and useful predictions. "Women tend to take a close interest in children for reasons of genetics and evolutionary psychology" is factually true; "women tend to take a close interest in children because God created them as a helpmeet for men" is factually false, and yet the latter explanation still produces useful predictions. If you were to ask a gender studies professor and an uneducated Catholic living in the sixteenth century which kinds of careers women would tend to pursue if there were no obstacles in their way, I'd hazard a guess that the latter would give you more accurate answers. Consider the "paradox" that more liberal and economically free nations tend to have more stratified sex ratios in STEM, childcare etc.: it's only a "paradox" if you accept the false premise that men and women are psychologically the same and want the same things, on average.

I don't buy the stock woke narrative that white males historically conspired to oppress women and people of colour out of sheer bloody-mindedness. People in the past didn't need Gregor Mendel to tell them that men and women tend to have innately different interests, temperaments and priorities: up untill about ten minutes ago, this was seen as so obvious as to hardly even be worth mentioning. (That's why I think woke efforts to bury journal articles which produce politically incorrect findings are both infuriating and futile: so many of these articles are just telling us what we already know. "Newsflash: across cultures, female children like playing with dolls while male children like playing with fire trucks, suggesting that sex differences are innate." Get out of town. Next you'll be telling me water is wet.) I don't think denying women the franchise was a morally good idea, but it was obviously a decision made on the back of lawmakers' intuitive understanding of the psychological differences between men and women, even if they didn't understand the mechanism that caused these differences. They didn't just do it out of spite.

This actually gets to why conservatism is often a good system without very good reasons to do something different. Evolutionary pressures would tend to select a tribe to grow if their beliefs produce positive results.

Tribe A: Men stay home with kids. Women get weapons and fight tribe B for the best agricultural land.

Tribe B: women take care of kids. Men fight rival tribe.

Which Gods tribe A and B pray to does not matter. Tribe B will kills the babysitting male tribe and turn their women into sex slaves.

Tribe B beliefs are now the beliefs of the now larger tribe B combined with tribe A.

Yes, cultural evolution in a nutshell.

Even while feminists also say that men are - correctly - the dominant major suppliers of violence.

Ah, but that's easy enough to blame on society and culture.

You can't deny that men are stronger (well, mostly not; the trans stuff has been sidling up to that position and suffering predictable consequences) or some people are better at sprinting

I've seen it claimed -- in complete seriousness -- that men are only stronger/better at sports due to training and nutrition from an early age.

But that only pushes the question back to why did that culture emerge?

I've seen it claimed -- in complete seriousness -- that men are only stronger/better at sports due to training and nutrition from an early age.

I dated a girl who believed this.

Did she really believe it truly or did she claim it?

Did she have an eating disorder and did she ever do sports?

The only way I think in the US a woman might think that boys systematically get better nutrition than girls is if they have an eating disorder which they justify to themselves as "everyone does it."

People believe all sorts of dumb things, and Americans in general believe a lot of dumb things about nutrition in particular. ‘Boys get better nutrition than girls’ is mostly false, but when the two sexes start to choose their eating patterns there is a difference, and a few female specific nutrient deficiencies(mostly iron) do hang on in the modern US(although no one is stopping women from eating steak).

She was Indian. To the best of my knowledge she never had an eating disorder, nor was particularly sporty.

Oh that makes more sense. If she was raised in certain parts of India I could see that being a real thing.

Yeah most of the women I know with such takes were the ones socialized to have essentially zero exposure to sports and doubly zero to co-ed sports.

The only way I think in the US a woman might think that boys systematically get better nutrition than girls is if they have an eating disorder which they justify to themselves as "everyone does it."

I think you're underestimating the extent to which US education (all education?) involves telling students, "Who are you going to believe, the trusted experts or your lying eyes?"

This belief, objectively far more deluded and delusionary than literal flat earthism, is not so uncommon, and not only among not very bright and curious people who learn about the world they live in only by random watching of TV and tiktok.

See this giga self own of aspiring rationalist from last year.

"Children Believe Every Lie" and "How To Believe False Things" should be required reading for any rationalist.

I think the progressive would claim that immigrants overperform in football because they are oppressed and excluded from higher education and white collar employment opportunities. Still a dumb argument, as it implies that getting rid of oppression would also "destroy football throughout the UK," but not an endorsement of HBD.

The progressive would never admit to being a scientific racists.

Like everything else, cognitive science is subject to The Movement and its ends: to the extent that it serves the purpose at hand, IQ is as rock-solid science as universal gravitation; to the extent that it doesn't, it's lies that must be quelled and suppressed.

As Nick Land put it:

The notion that retardation is a mitigating rather than aggravating factor in regards to criminal culpability is sufficient on its own to condemn an entire legal philosophy.

... "Congenitally incapable of avoiding criminality even if he wanted to, so innocent I guess."

-- This is the kind of argument the technical term 'shitlib' was coined for.

Yeah, at least for violent aggression, I think it's a ridiculous case to make. Many Down's syndrome people are severely retarded, to the point that they indeed cannot be held fully accountable for things like theft. Even if they sorta understand money, it's more in the 4-year-old sense of "handing over some random green papers and coins is a ritual you do before you walk out of the store with stuff", rather than any understanding of monetary value and transaction. The level of understanding common in Congress, basically. Yet even among downies and Congresspeople, it is well-understood that you can't just maul random people on the street and walk off with their stuff. Even most animals that grow up around humans don't have trouble with this.

I have to wonder what percentage of people with Down's Syndrome would be worried that putting too much stuff on an island would tip it over?

Edit: rephrased.

It's an argument by a lawyer. They're not expected to be intellectually honest, or consistent across cases.

I tend to be a Cofnasian about wokeness (remove the "equality thesis" and it collapses) but stuff like this does make me wonder.

I suppose you can say that saying IQs are low is fine. Saying groups have lower IQ is very much not fine.

Nah, if someone put out a study showing J6'ers had below-average IQ, it would be enshrined in liturgical canon immediately.

The media was all over J6'ers about being broke idiots. Literally.

Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories.

The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.

So, a population of 125 comes up as perhaps one standard deviation above expected random sampling.

This is selection bias at a cartoonish level. But it's dressed up with enough circumstantial relevance and high-minded sounding statistical framing that the self-assured PMC'er reading it can go, "Oh, of course, those crazy MAGA folks are aggrieved because they haven't the sense to manage their money properly. Harumph. I, on the other hand, am always wise in my investments. Why, just look at what we did for young Junior - $300,000 for a degree from Am'erst (not Am-herst ... the "h" is for the peasants)."

Hat tip as ever to Scott's idea that the media doesn't lie in a factual sense, but just frames and reports selectively to, nonetheless, alter the perception.

Yes but that's not a group based on an immutable characteristic. That's the red rag.

Whenever a study is pushed that attempts to tie conservatism with low IQ it'll generally get thousands of updoots on the science subreddits

That's where the left often find themselves in trouble intellectually. They'll spend plenty of time examining, reposting, and commenting on the IQ differences of Republican voters vs. Democrat voters. Once you examine group IQ differences along racial lines the conversations end and the silencing begins.

On the other hand, if you look at the literal best in the world players- overwhelmingly, the superstars are white or mostly white, Mbappe is the only counterexample I can think of. You just tend to see poor people overrepresented in athletics because for the borderline pro level talent, they have less opportunity cost in gambling on the lottery ticket. Same reason thé NFL is heavily black in the US- but the star players are not.

Same reason thé NFL is heavily black in the US- but the star players are not.

I mean this just isn’t remotely accurate. Excluding quarterbacks (of whom, several “star players” like Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, and Jalen Hurts are black) and tight ends, the NFL’s high-level talent is extremely black/non-white. (Justin Jefferson, Myles Garrett, Micah Parsons, Ja’Marr Chase, Jaxson Smith-Njigba, Jahmyr Gibbs, Bijan Robinson, Amon-Ra St. Brown, etc.)

Mahomes is 50-50 probably even a little over 50% white. Super white mom with black dad. Hurts is probably 25-75 looking at skin tones. Njigba and Brown are both white moms too.

Once you drop the 1 drop rule the nfl becomes probably a little more white than black. With some positions being darker black.

I suppose it depends on your definition of "superstar" and "white".

https://www.transfermarkt.com/g-statistik/wertvollstespieler/marktwertetop

Just eyeballing the current top 20 most valuable players I'd say approximately half are African descent. NFL has gotten more black in recent years as quarterbacks have had a surge of African representation as well. Meanwhile the NBA has gotten more European but that's likely due to club preparation being superior to the USA model.

If you go back in time too, you'd probably be awash in Brazilians, who are a mess to figure out.

Eyeballing the Paperbag test through to like 50 makes it look still roughly 50-50. Though probably more chance of underestimating Latino/Arab-passing halfies than overestimating the African representation.

I thought NBA getting whiter was mostly a result of countries with very high average height began playing more basketball two decades ago. Basically the Balkans entering basketball.

At least in the former Yugoslavia, where some of the tallest people in Europe are, basketball was already very popular during the Cold War. The History section of the Wikipedia article on the European Basketball Championship has an entire subsection titled "Rise of Yugoslavia" about the 1970s. See also the team statistics – a number of wins in the 70s and 80s.

My perception is that Croatian basketball, at least, is, if anything, well past its prime. But I don't care for basketball at all and I've never watched a game, so take that with a grain of salt.

It might be that people from the region only started playing in the NBA more recently. I understand Dražen Petrović was (one of?) the first. But even that was nearly 40 years ago.

I think it's a combination of both. Balkans definitely a factor but also the European club systems are producing a lot of African talent as well. There seems to be some benefits to ostensibly being able to identify talent at a young age and keep the same structures around it for 8 years instead of the kinda-disjointed American system of school -> elite school -> University etcetera

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