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naraburns  nihil supernum  12d ago (text post)   3879 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for June 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

@FtttG:

@RenOS:

@100ProofTollBooth:

Contributions for the week of June 1, 2026

@Brainwavez:

@Shakes:

@seething_spendcel:

@quiet_NaN:

@Corvos:

Contributions for the week of June 8, 2026

@Shakes:

@teleoplexy:

@FiveHourMarathon:

Contributions for the week of June 15, 2026

@dr_analog:

@felis-parenthesis:

@IdiocyInAction:

@magicalkittycat:

Contributions for the week of June 22, 2026

@sodiummuffin:

@faceh:

@hanikrummihundursvin:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@FCfromSSC:

@Markass:

@ThisIsSin:

@HereAndGone2:

Contributions for the week of June 29, 2026

@Gillitrut:

@ControlsFreak:

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Thanks for the AAQC! Sometimes I write posts and I think it will be AAQC'd, but worry that it's in a subthread from 3 days ago and no one will read it. So this is still a pleasant surprise.

Thank you for the Austen one, I have no idea how I managed an AAQC but all donations gratefully received!

It’s interesting, insightful, from an angle the Motte rarely sees, and kind of whitepilling. Fully deserved.

It was well deserved.

I will remember these kind comments the next time Amadan has to get out the Big Stick to give me a whacking 😊

Amusing to me that magicalkittycat got mass downvoted without substantial rebuttal to his post for expressing what I thought were very reasonable points, but also got an AAQC on the very same post. Not sure what so many people found so objectionable with the original post.

I think the first part of the comment was good, but the second part and the quoted statement wasn't as good of an argument.

Could have been given AAQC for first part and down votes for weaker arguments in the second section on a divisive topic.

Any pro immigration stance around here tends to gather more down votes than upvotes.

I generally don't downvote and don't like the downvote brigade, but it's not a very good post, and one of a pretty long series of not-very-good post of a similar type magicalkittycat makes. The "victimization crisis" is just unfounded Bulverism, the "presumably there should be mass desire for movement somewhere if we're fucking something up in a significant way and we just don't see it" is one in a long series of actively refusing to see the evidence in front of his own face, and it doesn't actually interact with the claims of the post it's reacting to so much as just pretend that they didn't real to start with.

Which is why he didn't get responses: there's not much point in trying to debate with someone who's just going to deny the potential relevance of any evidence (this is, afaict, the last time I did downvote him) or going to duck out the second his point is demonstrated as vacant.

Curious objection. Bulverist arguments against the left/libs are basically their own subgenre of mottepost. In fact, specifically, excoriating the woke left for its victimhood obsession, or "oppression Olympics", is so common here we can all write that effort post in our heads. Yet I have never seen a conservative criticise another conservative's argument on these grounds.

No, I suspect the reason why magicalkittycats post was not highly upvoted (relative to the average aaqc), has nothing to do with the form of the argument. The answer is just that the motte is mainly populated by people who upvote (downvote) based on superficial criteria like "this post criticizes (praises) my outgroup or praises (criticizes) my in-group."

The "victimization crisis" is just unfounded Bulverism

Is it, though?

Peggy McIntosh's 1989 essay "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" is one of the most culturally influential reframings of victimhood in history. That same, year, Kimberle Crenshaw coined the use of "intersectionality" in a law review article (PDF warning) to make claims like

As a result, Black women--the class of employees which, because of its intersectionality, is best able to challenge all forms of discrimination--are essentially isolated and often required to fend for themselves.

By 1993, the phrase "oppression Olympics" was in sufficiently wide use that it was referenced by feminists in terms of something to be avoided in favor of coalition building:

There are various forms of working together. A coalition is one, a network is another, an alliance is yet another. ... But the general idea is no competition of hierarchies should prevail. No Oppression Olympics!

And that same year (1993), black Jewish philosopher Laurence Mordekhai Thomas published Vessels of Evil: American Slavery and the Holocaust, in which he (from the publisher's description) "denounces efforts to place the suffering of one group above the other." So it seems like people have definitely been noticing this approach to "victimization" for a while now.

I have written often and extensively on leftist identitarianism, and one of the things I've written on most frequently in this space is the emergence of right-wing identitarianism as a mistake made by ostensibly conservative people trying to use the weapons of the enemy and thus becoming the very thing they swore to destroy.

I would actually argue that there are some interesting features of normative ethical reasoning that explain "victim mentality," namely that we often do have genuinely good reason to prioritize those who are "worst off" (see Rawls or, you know, any medical triage process) and this incentivizes people to either disingenuously cast themselves as the "worst off," or to genuinely come to see themselves as the "worst off" even when that's not really a reasonable position to hold. So I don't think it's a new attitude, but I do think that in the last three or four decades we have granted a shocking degree of deference and, through it, political power to irrational individual claims concerning just how badly-off people actually are.

I think you can draw a direct causal line from there to, for example, here: "Universities from Harvard to Hampshire have admitted significantly more students with disabilities over the last decade, as diagnoses for A.D.H.D. and anxiety increase." "I did poorly because I didn't get the right accommodations, not becuase I never do the reading" has become the bane of many a college professor's pedagogical efforts, and it is just one small example of an observable trend.

And that same year (1993), black Jewish philosopher Laurence Mordekhai Thomas published Vessels of Evil: American Slavery and the Holocaust, in which he (from the publisher's description) "denounces efforts to place the suffering of one group above the other."

Did he mean this as criticism of the Holocaust industry?

Did he mean this as criticism of the Holocaust industry?

I don't think so. It's rarely publicly acknowledged for various culture war reasons, but there is a lot of anti-Semitism baked into black culture in America, not least because we know that individual Jews were often the people profiting handsomely from the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Thomas seems to have wanted to defuse that animosity, and as a black Jewish philosopher he was a plausible figure for the attempt. The thesis of the book, if I may be forgiven some significant oversimplification of his argument, is that tragedies are incommensurable and we're better off acknowledging them on their own terms than trying to rank them (or each other).

The victimization crisis and surrounding issues is something that's been talked about for a while.

https://putanumonit.com/2020/09/12/against-victimhood/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_Victimhood_Culture

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/17/caution-on-bias-arguments/

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/f3zeukxj3Kf5byzHi/underdog-bias-rules-everything-around-me

Including as you can see, in other rationalist communities! It's literally one of the main motivators people will bring up for woke culture, an obsession with who is the greatest victim.

The victimhood obsession is what losers and failures use to cope when they don't succeed. "It's not my fault I don't got a smoking hot babe, it's cause society just hates men", "it's not my fault I didn't get that job, they're racist against black people", etc etc. Online discussion has been consumed by whiners, in part cause the whiners don't shut up while us doers spend most of our time doing.

the "presumably there should be mass desire for movement somewhere if we're fucking something up in a significant way and we just don't see it" is one in a long series of actively refusing to see the evidence in front of his own face, and it doesn't actually interact with the claims of the post it's reacting to so much as just pretend that they didn't real to start with.

Because in the modern day in first world nations, most victim complaints are not real. I literally went over in several ways how us men are far better off now than almost any other point in history. Even most of the losers are better off in many areas, the poorest and laziest NEET won't die of starvation anymore. I had an aunt go crazy and live on the streets for like a whole decade and she still had food, clean water, access to healthcare, a cellphone, etc.

While there definitely is some substance to what you're saying, the maximalist form of your argument can be used as an excuse to stamp a boot down forever until the skull cracks and you can paint the dance steps with gore.

I never see this argument used against, say, trans people, or any of the other marginalized groups it's currently profitable to promote.

I've seen tons of arguments about how marginalized groups are playing the victim too much. In fact, the second one I linked is literally about that with "microaggressions".

Something that's funny is that, when you spend a long time in a place like this, you start to get a pretty decent understanding of the psychology of various poaster types. For a lot of people, the arguments are just little props they use to get to the emotion they want to express. Someone wants to find reasons to say "this means civil war!" because he wants to be incandescently angry. Someone wants to write a 2000-word explanation of the Female Mind so that he can feel he understands the species. The anti-victimhood/Elite Human Capital people really wear it on their sleeves, though. "You're a loser, I'm a doer" (as far as I can tell, MKC lives a completely normal and unremarkable life in a completely normal and unremarkable place - not that I'm sneering at raising a family, that's a noble thing, but wildly out of step with some Manichean division of the world into "builders" and "whiners"). That's it, that's the whole post, everything else is a spandrel.

(as far as I can tell, MKC lives a completely normal and unremarkable life in a completely normal and unremarkable place - not that I'm sneering at raising a family, that's a noble thing, but wildly out of step with some Manichean division of the world into "builders" and "whiners"). That's it, that's the whole post, everything else is a spandrel.

Yes, fairly normal people like me are a form of doer. Some doers are also whiners (Trump is a pretty massive example of being extreme in both compartments at once), and some losers aren't whiners (I've known a few people who I would see as genuine victims but they keep a positive personality and keep working for success) but the whiners are typically skewed towards people who are sucking at life somewhere. Both because being a loser gives you a reason to blame your failures on others, and because an extreme lack of self actualization can lead to failing. People with an internal locus of control tend to do better.

I have sympathy for them. After all like I said, I have an aunt who is literally one herself and lives off of disability after finally stabilizing from full blown craziness. I have another mentally disabled relative on my father's side as well who needs constant monitoring. They're both extreme examples of losers in society, but I don't hate them. I'm glad they get the support they get.

One of the things I dislike about that sort of behavior here is that most discussion about things relating to status/victimhood tends to be completely suppressed in generic discussion settings by use of shaming and other status games. Being concerned about low status people who aren't part of the list that's been pre-approved by high-status people is, in itself, low status, and so the lowest status people who can't get on that list get no honest open discussion about their suffering. I'd prefer that The Motte (and also everywhere, but I place that wish in the same category of wishes I have for curing world hunger through feeding everyone unicorn farts) be one place where there could be some honest open discussion about that. But it inevitably attracts people who ostentatiously dismiss it only as concerns of those LOSERS, and YOU aren't a LOSER, ARE YOU? No, if you were a WINNER like ME, you'd just call the LOSERS LOSERS and move on, so why are you discussing it?

It really depends, irl. I think Scott’s right, it’s all barber pole. If you are at a status level where, by sympathizing with the losers, you could be mistaken for a loser, people will use that to shut you down. Whereas if everyone knows you have a tinder harem, you can sympathize with shut-in incels; if everyone knows you’re fuck-you rich you can sympathize with the rednecks and rust belters; if everybody knows you’re a rarefied academic you can sympathize with ghetto criminals. The thing about status games is that there’s always a bigger fish. On the Internet, there’s no obvious social status granted to a an anon poster (though people can make a play for it, and succeed or fail, as you can see in the contrasting examples of Cim and Count). This means that the moves used to shut down the kinds of discussion you’re talking about are actually more effective on the internet than irl, because online someone can always just accuse you of being a loser, and trying to disprove that puts you on the defensive and thus automatically lowers your status.

Because in the modern day in first world nations, most victim complaints are not real.

Real or not, they are used because they work. You will never convince people to stop whining about being victims as long as rewards - material, social, or political - flow to those who claim victimhood status.

I'm standing by the stairs. What now? Will I get my victimhood rewards?

You will be protected from the Terrible Secret of Space

That's it? A very vague reward. Don't you have something more tangible?

Usually I take the other side in this debate, but I think there really is such a thing as a victimisation crisis. It's true that it's both predictable and depressing that the left is only capable of seeing it through this lens now that men are both complaining the way other groups do and now that there is more-or-less incontrovertible evidence that they're getting shafted.

But it's really, genuinely bad for a society when everyone sees everything in a oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, and even worse when we have some many different axis of oppression that just about anyone can claim victimhood and be sorta kinda right.

A society is imo working best if it is primarily centered around rewarding production or else giving a basic safety net and claims of victimhood are frowned upon and need a high burden of proof. A victimhood culture invariably creates competition around being victimized, which has awful incentives.

I mean, it has a net -4 rating, which is hardly mass downvoting. And the core chunk of the comment was pretty transparently a massive strawman about loser men and their supposed unreasonably high standards based on nothing really concrete. I think the lack of substantial rebuttal has mostly to do with magicalkittycat's history of showing the same style of arguing as GuessWho (darwin2500 from Reddit), which makes almost any meaningful argument with him impossible. I've long since accepted that there's little-to-none value to be gained from any conversation with him and learned to just downvote comments from him that I find problematic and just move on.

I mean, it has a net -4 rating, which is hardly mass downvoting.

Relative to other AAQC, anything below 5 is surprising.

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