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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25490 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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I've written a few times before here that I don't believe stochastic terrorism is a reasonable concept, so it's nice to see Scott Alexander come out with a similar argument in his recent post. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/against-stochastic-terrorism

And hey, it actually mirrors me quite well!

As I've said before

Of course they're constantly hypocritical over it too, I've never seen a person say "whoops, I accidently committed stochastic terrorism without intending to by speaking negatively about someone to my large audience". Weird how it's only ever applied to others the speaker doesn't like.

Meanwhile he says

The “stochastic terrorism” concept is near-unique in how effectively it can be discredited merely by listing many examples of its use together in the same place. Almost no one supports a blanket prohibition on criticizing of all of these different groups of people. “Stochastic terrorism” mostly gets deployed opportunistically, by people who either are too blinkered to realize that the same argument could be leveraged against their own speech, or who hope you’re too blinkered to realize that.

It's basically the same thing! No one ever uses it for themselves, despite that by the same standards it often could be!

It's hard to add too much to this since I think he covers the general issues I normally would argue pretty well, but I do think he missed something key. Stochastic terrorism breaks a fundamental rule of humanity, we are not a hivemind and people only control themselves.  I can not brainwash someone else to kill for me, and I can not brainwash them to not kill either. No matter how similar that person may be to me. They could be my neighbor, they could be a twin, and I would still lack that ability. We are individuals responsible for ourselves.

I often quote Reagan on this.

We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."

Reagan of course was speaking against the idea that criminals shouldn't be held responsible for their actions because "society" but the logic works the other way around too, society should not be held responsible for the criminal. The lawbreaker is the one who makes the choice to break the law.

Stochastic terrorism is just another part of one sided demand for the "enemy" (those who the speaker disagrees with) to mind control other "enemies" from bad behavior, and to blame them when they fail to do so.

This is something I've also argued before. https://www.themotte.org/post/2899/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/360516?context=8#context

I've been speaking about this type of issue since I was an older teen seeing Gamergate get called a harassment campaign because a few people sent death threats going "Hey that's not very fair, the large majority of people aren't engaged in threat sending just because a few did! In fact it could even be just one insane people sending several".

I said it about the 2023 pension protests in France "Hey, there's a million people marching you can't expect every single one to be completely moral and good. You shouldn't point to a person being bad and use it to blame the others there"

I said it about Jan 6th "Sure a few people were violent and those ones deserve to be locked up, but your average protestor didn't engage in a crime and it's unfair to say that they're a violent group"

I said it about police during BLM (the large majority of cops do not engage in killing innocents) and about BLM protestors (the large majority of protestors did not engage in looting or arson or other crime).

I've said it about Xianjang and the Uyghurs, I've said it about both the population of Gaza and the population of Israel (most of them are rather peaceful on both sides), I've said it about Russia and pushed back against calling their population orcs despite that I support Ukraine in war and think we should aid them way more!

And I'll keep saying it about other groups, like trans people now. People don't deserve blame for things they don't do, and they don't deserve blame for happening to share group/geographical area/etc with someone who commits violence. Especially because of the Chinese robber fallacy, but even without it.

You may not be interested in social maneuvering, but it's interested in you. You will be held accountable for the actions of others like you, you will face the consequences of their choices. You are your brother's keeper, whether you like it or not.

Act accordingly or suffer. That's all.

You are your brother's keeper, whether you like it or not.

That's not what Genesis says. Upon being questioned as to his brother's whereabouts, Cain rhetorically asks God whether he is his brother's keeper, in a manner which indicates he knows the answer is "no". God doesn't answer the question, he calls Cain on his disingenuousness and tells him he knows damn well he killed his brother.

No, I am not my brother's keeper. I am certainly not the keeper of random strangers. I'm certainly not responsible for the actions of other 'like me'; if they do something that I did not do, they are clearly not 'like me' in the relevant sense.

I know people hate it when I reply to multiple of them with a similar point so I'm gonna stick mainly to this comment to address the common points.

1: "Stochastic terrorism is real, what about X situation where someone calls for the death of another for instance"?

2: "Stochastic terrorism is real, here's some historical events where it has happened"

These two are together because they both get addressed by the same general answer.

We already have a term for such things, it's called incitement. The issue however, and the reason why stochastic terrorism was made up to begin with, is that incitement already exists and therefore has pre established standards and a long history of neutral discussion about it. Those historical examples weren't called "stochastic terrorism", they would have been called incitement. Playing partisan and biased blame games is a lot harder with an established term with established generally agreed upon standards. Any parts that are real are already covered!

That's why stochastic terrorism was made up, it's a very modern phrase retreading old ground because the previous word isn't an effective weapon.

3: "Well what about insert example from group I don't like?"

No, I'm more interested in examples from groups you do like and are a part in. For the general conservative Motte user, we have quite a few to pick from, in part thanks to the president himself. He's celebrated the death of "enemies" such as Mueller, made jokes about attacks against people he doesn't like such as Paul Pelosi, called for the death penalty of "traitors" like with the illegal orders video, and Jan 6 is right there where he didn't just passively take action but actively pardoned people who are on video beating up officers.

There's plenty to pick apart and denounce for a MAGA supporting conservative who genuinely believes in stochastic terrorism.

If you don't like that, Scott actually included other examples you can work with too regardless of your political "side".

Nativists spread fear and mistrust about Muslim immigrants, and then racists go on shooting sprees in mosques.

The #Resistance insists that Donald Trump would destroy democracy, and then various people try to assassinate Donald Trump.

Conservatives spread fear and mistrust about transgender people, and then bigots commit hate crimes against transgender people.

Woke people say the police are racist and brutal, and then other woke people murder police officers.

Socialists call health insurance companies greedy and accuse them of blocking life-saving treatment, and then Luigi Mangione murdered a health insurance CEO.

AI safety activists say that Sam Altman’s AI could destroy humanity, and then a guy threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s house.

Liberals said that Charlie Kirk was a hatemonger who was driving Americans apart, and then an assassin murdered Charlie Kirk.

The pro-life movement describes abortion as murder, and then pro-life activists assassinated abortion doctors and pro-choice politicians.

You don't have to use those either, the sky is your limit!

Pick something somewhere of a group that matches your beliefs, and then explain how you still believe it's stochastic terrorism and how you, or your "close allies", have done this terrorism before and are according to the phrase a form of terrorist and you aren't just using it as a tool against "the enemy" and I'll accept that maybe you're the rare one who actually believes in it as a real concept.

And that will still, only apply to you and not the other tons and tons of people who clearly and blatently engage in one sided usage.

And also by doing so, as Scott points out, you might be ironically engaging in stochastic terrorism.

(in fact, one could argue that accusing someone of stochastic terrorism is itself stochastic terrorism! Here in America, we consider it justified to kill terrorists before they can threaten us further. Reclassifying criticism as terrorism implies it is potentially legitimate to apply the same norm to any especially harsh critics!)

  • -11

Sure, people constantly make up words and abstractions to over-extend their argument. I accept that stochastic terrorism is just a broad form of incitement that can be applied to the most mundane rhetoric, that only a crazy person would interpret as an order to commit violence, because among >8 billion there are crazy people who will interpret mundane rhetoric as violence. And your examples demonstrate this: regardless of anyone's views on immigrants, saying they are dangerous and untrustworthy does not imply they should be brutalized or executed. And that there are only a couple instances of most of these, always by insane people who may have commit violence regardless, demonstrate that a significant effort to police mundane rhetoric isn't worth it.

Labels are intrinsically meaningless. I can invent a term "akjsdha terrorism" and classify anything I want, it doesn't make whatever I classify any more or less moral. And morality only matters for policy: are you deciding whether to commit "stochastic terrorism", how will you act and how will you advocate others to act against it?

Reagan of course was speaking against the idea that criminals shouldn't be held responsible for their actions because "society" but the logic works the other way around too, society should not be held responsible for the criminal.

I don't know what the context of this was but I'm assuming his political message was against the general leftist notion that violent criminals are mostly just misguided, demoralized, oppressed etc. members of the proletariat who first and foremost need to be rehabilitated and reeducated by an army of social workers, therapists, counselors etc., all paid for with large sums of tax money, instead of getting heartlessly imprisoned etc.

Let’s note one thing - Scott doesn’t disagree with the concept of stochastic terrorism. He just thinks it’s a reasonable price to pay for having broadly free speech.

I see no issue with accusing my enemies of stochastic terrorism. YES they are doing it. And YES my enemies who blasted on Twitter that Charlie Kirk was literally Hitler or something contributed to his death. And yes MSNBC blasting Trump is Hitler for 8 years contributed to the derangement of all the people who shot him. And yes I want my enemies to be judged in the public square as contributing to Charlie Kirk’s death.

This isn’t a question of whether stochastic terrorism is a real thing. It is a 100% a real thing.

I was going to reply that I am not a free speech absolutists so sure I’m fine limiting some speech, but honestly Scott confirms stochastic terrorism as being real.

I would also not that there are milder ways to criticize Elon Musks axing USAID (which was good for America to do) like just doing costs-benefit analysis instead that tweet is more emotional. But yes because of stochastic terrorisms Elon Musks would be dead in 3 months if he took his security budget to $0.

But like I said I’m not a free speech absolutists and supported Pinochet killing 20k or so communists when they may have mostly been doing speech at that point because communism is bad.

How do you suggest that I express my opinion if I do believe that so-and-so is literally Hitler but I also genuinely don't want that person assassinated? If I keep adding a "…but we still shouldn't murder the guy, because murder is morally wrong and socially corrosive even when we're talking about the literal scum of the Earth" disclaimer at the end, I'll look like I'm just doing the Julius Caesar speech. If I don't then I'm open to ordinary stochastic-terrorism accusations. It seems like a bit of a catch-22. Yet if you seriously believe that a public figure is literally Hitler, clearly you have a duty to communicate that in some way.

Don’t lose.

A successful traitor is a Patriot.

If you literally believe someone is Hitler then you should want him assassinated. And when you aim at the king the important thing is you don’t miss.

A stochastic terrorist who wins is the Administrations favorite pundit they leak things to on MSNBC.

If you literally believe someone is Hitler then you should want him assassinated

Not necessarily, for the reasons I discuss here. And anyway, even if we disagree on the literally-Hitler case, there are surely levels of badness that a public figure can be where I don't think it justifies extrajudicial murder, but I do think it justifies public outcry, and some idiot could potentially think it justified murder. Wherever you draw the line of how bad someone has to be before you should want them assassinated, it is almost certainly case that there will be people who draw it closer to home.

I still think is “don’t lose”. You don’t kill 1930’s Hitler because he was Hitler without power. It’s the same reason I don’t go around killing internet communists living in their mother’s basement. They have no power.

But I do support Pinochet killing a bunch of communists because the communists threat was real and other countries had become communists.

Kirk is stochastic terrorism because he did in fact have political power. Something is terrorism because it’s using terror to attempt political change. So inciting people to kill Kirk is terrorism. There are real political motivations.

Perhaps you say this is just word salad. But I do think in the case of Kirk there is a difference between his ideas are bad and here’s x,y,z why they are bad and using incitement language. And yes of course all partisans do incite in the current environment. I am not saying one side is innocent of stochastic terrorism.

Perhaps you could clarify that you're a hardcore pacifist, and that it would have been wrong to murder Hitler as well?

Not sure that would work. "Here is how bad this guy is; honestly, he's so bad I'd kill him if I did not hold murder to be absolutely taboo in literally all cases… and surely none of you would ever countenance committing murder either, no matter how evil the target… would you?" is still very easy for my enemies to spin as stochastic terrorism.

Also, I don't think you need to be a "hardcore pacifist" to believe that it would have been wrong to murder Hitler in 1930. Whether it can be ethical to assassinate a totalitarian dictator is a different question from whether it is ever appropriate to assassinate someone who doesn't hold absolute power because they could commit horrible crimes if they ever acquired absolute power. I interpret the "John Smith is literally Hitler" meme as more like "John Smith is literally 1930!Hitler" than it is like "John Smith is literally 1943!Hitler" - the implied claim is that if John Smith had free rein he would be as bad as Hitler, not "John Smith, at this very moment, represents as immediate a threat to the free world as Hitler did at the height of his power".

I think that is a potentially legitimate opinion to have about a modern politician, and one which it would be urgent to convey without understatement if it's true; but that it still wouldn't justify an assassination. Absent supernatural foreknowledge, this would have applied to Hitler prior to his rise to power - we can say with the benefit of hindsight that it would have been a good thing for some nut to put a bullet in his brain in 1930 but there was no way for our 1930 gunman to know that for certain, before or after the crime.

(Important disclaimer: I don't think Charlie Kirk was literally Hitler even in the 1930-Hitler sense. I don't even think Trump is; I suspect he would make himself dictator-for-life if he were ten years younger and had the means to do so, but I don't think he would use that position to declare bloody wars of conquest or organize genocides. I'm very much speaking about general principles here.)

I agree with @Opt-out that stochastic terrorism is real, but what do we (society) do about it?

A problem specifically with stochastic terrorism (and what Scott explains in his article) is that it can consist of innocuous expressions that are OK on their own. For example, consider the game Wolfenstein 3D, which has you killing Nazis. Is this video game immoral? Now, let's say there's a politician who's very curt, dresses very sharply, and has very conservative policies; he's not a Nazi, and his policies aren't that cruel, but he resembles one. Is it wrong to say "this guy really looks like a Nazi"? Or, back to Charlie Kirk, it's factually true that some of his policies were shared by Nazis (the Nazis had some moderate and good policies even to liberals, like establishing some national youth program, not the part where it taught Nazi ideology). Is it OK to point that out?

There are insane people, and if we try to make laws against insane people, we create a nanny state where normal people can't do things that wouldn't cause problems among normal people. I can use fancy labels too: I call that "stochastic regulation". Of course sometimes it's justified, like banning the average joe from building a nuclear bomb, but I think only when the potential negative consequences are much worse than the positive ones (what good reason would the average joe build a nuke? On the other hand...) Nobody sane would look at Wolfenstein 3D and a sharply-dressed politician and think "I need to kill that guy". But moreso, nobody sane would break into a random person's house claiming to be Harry Dresden from The Dresden Files, yet here we are. Certainly movies like The Dresden Files that depict heroes saving people from kidnapping shouldn't be condemned, and probably Wolfenstein, the Nazi appearance allegory, and pointing out facts shouldn't either. Where do we draw the line?

Also, general arguments against speech laws: the infrastructure can be used against innocent speech, and they create a general vibe-killing effect that affects uncontroversial expression.

To be clear, I do think some of the rhetoric against Charlie Kirk, specifically "Charlie Kirk is a Nazi" was not innocous and should be discouraged. The point is that other "stochastic terrorism" can arise from completely innocuous expression, like violent fictional media and pointing out obvious allegories and facts, which should barely if at all even be discouraged.

Yes I do not see the issue here. The US is not discussing banning, imprisoning, torturing etc people who do the very real thing of stochastic terrorism.

People making accusations of stochastic terrorism seem to be doing it to recruit people to their side for things like let’s all vote together. It’s basically saying “the other side is evil and their rhetoric leads to a destruction of the political commons and death of opposing politicians”.

How is this any different than what the ADL did for decades by keeping lists of people who did bad speech and labeled them all “White Supremacists”. And the ADL is correct that my “Nazi” speech against mass migration HURTS all the people who want to migrate to America by in this case causing politicians to vote against mass migration. So yes the left has published lists of stochastic terrorists for decades.

This would be a different topic if Trump was going thru social media posts and sending 2k people who posted mean things about Charlie Kirk to the Gulag. But we aren’t doing that and it’s just normal century old political games of labeling your enemy tribe as bad people.

The point of accusations of stochastic terrorism is to establish certain speech as a taboo that the other sides politicians can’t say because the bulk of the electorate view it as wrong think and basically push certain rhetoric outside of the Overton Window.

To be fair to Scott, he’s opposed to things like thé SPLC list too Im pretty sure.

Perhaps. Being a realists we live in a world where this rhetorical device exists. Maybe it would be better if everyone chilled things out. But I am not going to agree to not use a useful weapon when my enemy has not disarmed.

But I also do think the left pushes the line on rhetoric that does increase violence. Using this device though is political mostly used to convince neutrals the left is a problem and tar all leftists with the actions of their crazies. This is likely why magical kitty doesn’t like it because it is in fact an effective rhetorical tool.

To Magical Kitty I take his view as translating “It’s not fair you use this kind of rhetoric because it works and wins you votes….i don’t want you to do it anymore”

For example, consider the game Wolfenstein 3D, which has you killing Nazis. Is this video game immoral?

Forget Wolfenstein 3D, you have to play Alex Jones: NWO Wars.

It wasn't a bad game, but it was really short for what it was. You're better off playing something like Contra.

Now, let's say there's a politician who's very curt, dresses very sharply, and has very conservative policies; he's not a Nazi, and his policies aren't that cruel, but he resembles one. Is it wrong to say "this guy really looks like a Nazi"?

Normies don't make random statements. You don't see someone getting up in the middle of a speech and saying "there are infinitely many prime number pairs which differ by 2". Anyone who actually says that the guy looks like a Nazi, and is not a weird autist, is saying that because he wants you to hate the guy as much as you should Nazis. If the point of comparison is one where the guy isn't very cruel, it is being used to make an unjustified implication that the guy is very cruel.

(separate from this, I think it’s a useful discussion norm to avoid being too vitriolic or hyperbolic in your language, except perhaps once in a blue moon to make the point that you care about this issue so much that it’s your one exception to your non-vitriol policy. But if someone fails to follow this discussion norm, their penalty is being self-sorted to spaces that have bad discussion norms, not being held responsible for any resulting acts of violence.)

I mostly agree with this, but also notice that most of the largest discussion forums fall into two categories: no moderation (which is rare and often temporary). Or partisan moderation. Where the other side is held to the strict standard but not the side the moderators like. This is the case with reddit, where you can find plenty of posts happily celebrating Luigi and defending ICE is probably grounds for a ban in most subreddits.

Where I disagree with this is that you are allowed to have an occasional exception where you start spitting vitriol. The rule should be no vitriol ever, and eat the consequences of a ban if you think it is worth it that one time.

My hope is that no one on this forum could even be accused of stochastic terrorism (regardless of whether its 'real' or not).

As far as I know, the reason multiple leftist subreddits either got banned or decided to go private themselves was that the grossly partial mods absolutely refused to moderate commenters calling for mass murder, political assassinations, gulaging, doxxing, violence, wishing for the suicide of political enemies etc even after multiple warnings from above, and the central leadership of Reddit (whatever the heck they are called) eventually decided to act even though they are mostly leftists themselves because it was clear to anyone what a big liability the entire situation is.

A very appropriate topic for this forum because stochastic terrorism is also very often employed with a mote-n-bailey style. The way a college professor or editorial writer might employ the idea is certainly overly broad and highly partisan. But there is also a fairly defensible core truth that thought leaders and politicians do generate incentives, carrots and sticks if you will, for their followers. If you encourage and celebrate behavior you are going to get more of it, if you punish it less.

Some people take this concept too fair, IMO, and apply it to people like the Gabby Giffords shooter or the Charlie Kirk assassination. But it is real. We are seeing it today with the ICE interference. All the people who have been killed by ICE think they are heroes and are going to be socially and even financially rewarded for doing something that is incredibly stupid like following around law enforcement officials performing official duties while honking at them, blowing whistles, and using your car/body to impede their movement. This has inevitably led to several of these goaded on "heroes" intentionally, or unintentionally, placing the lives of officers in grave danger, with very unfortunate outcomes. We, of course, also saw this with BLM where politicians were literally paying bail for people who were burglars, arsonists, thieves, etc. On the right this sort of outcome has largely not led to politicians giving permission for (mostly) low level crime, but instead manifests as internet nastiness, but if the right gained more media power (particularly outside the 60+ age group) and NGO/Government Bureaucrat influence it could plausibly escalate into the BLM levels. Or not, prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future, moreso about a future that probably wont exist in any of our lifetimes.

I also would add that a thing about stochastic terrorism as a concept, is it does also appear to have a specific flavor of the modern day sort of discourse where everyone wants to portray themselves as, basically, the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars and portray the enemy as The Empire, or failing that, a faceless unflappable Borg threat. Your goal, even as an objectively powerful person like a tenured professor, NYT Op-Ed writer, or Congressman(woman more likely), to pretend you have little power and the forces you struggle against are unflappable and vast (meanwhile, they are 4chan posters and what were formerly known as twitter eggs). Its a sort of thinking not even worthy of being called a conspiracy theory, its one level stupider than almost even the stupidest conspiracy theories wherein you, again a professor at some place like Harvard, get into a twitter spat with some writer at a mid tier internet publication. And following you losing the debate and turning tail, one of the other guy's followers start DMing you butthole pictures you think its a good argument that he should be fired and banned from Twitter, because of the butthole pics from a rando.

I feel like I rambled a bit here, but these are my thoughts.

There was also rank dishonesty re Kirk. There were people who called him a Nazi who at the same time said the murder was tragic. Which one was it?

Both can be true can't they? You can think even Nazis don't deserve to be murdered. Indeed I'd wager thats the median view. After WW2 we didn't execute every member of the Nazi party. We even employed some of them!

Somewhere in here is an uncomfortable question about whether Von Stauffenberg is an example of a stochastic terrorist.

One mans stochastic terrorist is another man's stochastic freedom fighter?

Why can't it be both? If I oppose the death penalty, I'm sure as hell gonna oppose vigilante killings. Murder can be tragic no matter how evil the person is.

I actually think Tyler Robinson is likely a fair example of stochastic terrorism. I have not followed the early trial leaks, but there were a lot of signs pointing to him being radicalized by "trans genocide" rhetoric on Discord.

I'm open to being convinced, but I have not seen evidence connecting his actions to actual people of clout. Instead I've seen lots of evidence of a niche community of abnormals that radicalized him.

I'm not sure who would even qualify as a person of clout in this context. But if that's a requirement for the term, then sure, cross him off the list. I was thinking that a widespread meme with lots of violent rhetoric that occasionally fissions off lone wolves would count.

Im sure many people of clout like congressmen and news media entities called Charlie all sorts of names and that didnt have a nonzero effect on his killer. But the evidence that I have seen is that his radicalization what mainly conducted in small forums, discord servers, etc.

I'm not sure how meaningful that difference in. Imagine there's a conspiracy theory that Monsanto is doing eugenics by selectively adding sterilizing agents to food that goes to certain groups. The theory has a niche group of fervent supporters who push their belief in every way, but it also gets some more sanewashed radical support from very establishment figures. If someone who's social group is mostly Monsanto Files theorists goes and kills a VP of Monsanto, does it matter that he wasn't directly inspired by a specific person who could be blamed?

I just don't see why a general memetic environment couldn't also be responsible for stochastic attacks. It's not like we hold anyone responsible for violent rhetoric in other contexts beyond maybe some social censure.

What if I, an influential Muslim theologian, proclaim a fatwa that says magicalkittycat is so evil that his or her killer is almost certainly to be forgiven by Allah and offered a spot in Heaven?

Let's suppose the year is 1880, and someone who is not a member goes to a KKK meeting and tells them all about how their black neighbor is a rapist. They have no proof or evidence, they just make up a story about it and get everyone riled up. They do not literally advocate for violence, but they went there on purpose and told this story on purpose in this location to these people.

Some of the members, but not the storyteller, go and lynch the accused man.

Is the storyteller merely guilty of slander, equal to anyone else who makes any false rape accusation? Are going to the KKK and telling them in particular this story neutral acts which do not change the moral culpability of the action? Because that seems decidedly non-consequentialist. I agree with Scott that we can't really outlaw stochastic terrorism because it's too easily confused with regular criticism to avoid false positives.

But nobody is ever going to apologize for accidentally committing stochastic terrorism because it is almost by definition not an accident. It's primarily a crime of intent. If someone literally wants to someone to die but wants to skirt around legal prohibitions against inciting violence then all they have to do is carefully moderate their words to just fall short of the boundary and phrase them in a way that wink wink, nudge nudge everyone they're talking to knows mean "please commit violence". Adding "in minecraft" after wishing death on someone does not fool anyone that you literally mean you hope their character dies while playing minecraft but the person lives. Celebrating after someone gets assassinated is not consistent with an ordinary person who didn't realize their words might inspire a psychopath. If the death of the person is an intended outcome of the speech, a feature not a bug, then the people who encouraged it are morally guilty of stochastic terrorism, even if the law can't pin them down.

I'd argue the defining line is that you know exactly who the KKK are and how they are likely to react. You aren't casting mistrust into the void and maybe eventually it leads to something via butterfly effect. I agree with magicalkittycat that incitement exists and has a high bar. People already misuse "bad faith," "just asking questions", and/or "dogwhistle" to mind-read (read as "fantasize") what their opposites really believe. I think a relatively good and objective bar is the line between simply publicly wishing bad things on your enemies and specifically trying to convince someone to commit criminal acts.

I'd argue the defining line is that you know exactly who the KKK are and how they are likely to react.

They don't know every single individual member of the KKK, they're still casting mistrust into the void, it's just a smaller void. If they speak in the public streets of a town with 10% KKK membership is that suddenly acceptable? Is it 1%? I'd argue the KKK meeting is a more egregious example in degree, but not in kind. We live in a society where you know mentally ill schooler shooter wannabes are a non-negligible fraction of the population and how they are likely to react. They want the fame and martyrdom that the media implicitly promises them, and if it didn't give them that attention then most of them wouldn't bother. Nobody was surprised that there have been multiple assassination attempts at Trump. This was expected behavior. I argue that, for a subset of the media, bloggers etc, this was literally intended behavior. That they deliberately incited anger and hatred in the public with the hope that it would inspire literal violence against Trump. And that most of these people did not meet the legal requirements for "incitement to violence" and got in no legal trouble and kept their jobs.

I think a relatively good and objective bar is the line between simply publicly wishing bad things on your enemies and specifically trying to convince someone to commit criminal acts.

For legal purposes that is the best we can do. For moral purposes the bar is much much further into ambiguous territory.

I want you to imagine, for a moment, an ideal stochastic terrorist. A person (or AI agent) who has two main goals:

  1. Maximize the probability that violence occurs against target X
  2. Do not meet the legal definition of incitement to violence.

That is, stochastic terrorism is literally their goal and intended behavior, not an accidental side effect. What sorts of behaviors would you expect this person to engage in? What sorts of words would they use? How does this compare to prominent left-wing media and blog posters in the real world? And more importantly, is this behavior morally good? Are you actually unironically arguing that this hypothetical ideal stochastic terrorist has done nothing wrong because they avoided breaking the law? Or are you arguing that they don't exist and every single person inspiring violence in the real world is doing it accidentally (and that this makes it perfectly acceptable)? I disagree with both of those, but I'm not sure how to focus my arguments because I'm not really sure where you're coming from.

They don't know every single individual member of the KKK, they're still casting mistrust into the void, it's just a smaller void.

I'd argue the defining point isn't just the makeup of the crowd, it's the nature of the accusation combined with the target. You gave the example of accusing a black man of being a rapist to the KKK. That's identifying a specific target, creating a reason to specifically respond with violence, and identifying someone likely to carry it out.

For contrast, if I tried to rile up people by saying illegal immigrants are gang members, people can reasonably infer that I have no specific knowledge, and that there are perfectly legal means to try and combat illegal immigration.

I argue that, for a subset of the media, bloggers etc, this was literally intended behavior. That they deliberately incited anger and hatred in the public with the hope that it would inspire literal violence against Trump.

Possible, but I guess I'd ask if you'd give equal credence to your enemy's accusations, for instance that the right is trying to incite violence against trans people.

I want you to imagine, for a moment, an ideal stochastic terrorist.

As above, I would expect this person to be taking actions more focused and likely to get the expected results than throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Are you actually unironically arguing that this hypothetical ideal stochastic terrorist has done nothing wrong because they avoided breaking the law? Or are you arguing that they don't exist and every single person inspiring violence in the real world is doing it accidentally (and that this makes it perfectly acceptable)?

I'm arguing that, could you reliably identify this person without falsely flagging people who sincerely disagree with you?

You gave the example of accusing a black man of being a rapist to the KKK. That's identifying a specific target, creating a reason to specifically respond with violence, and identifying someone likely to carry it out.

Trump and Charlie Kirk are specific people, and reasons have been given to specifically respond with violence. The only difference that you might argue about is the "identifying someone likely to carry it out" and that's subject to the objection MW just gave--if you go to a town with 10% KKK members, should that count like going to the KKK? What if you go to a larger town with 1% KKK members, but which still has the same total number of KKK members who will hear what you say?

Trump and Charlie Kirk are specific people, and reasons have been given to specifically respond with violence.

And yet, 99.99999% of the people who have responded to these supposed calls to violence have responded by protesting. I'm saying that if your dogwhistle is so subtle that it's functionally indistinguishable to a neutral observer from normal disagreement, then I consider it the same as not a dogwhistle. It's the same as how I don't really care about arguing how morally good a hypothetical person is who wants to carry out a crime but is so risk-averse that they spend forever waiting for an impossibly perfect opportunity and never actually do anything. When you leave hypothetical-land and enter reality, it's nearly impossible to identify such a person in an unbiased way outside of such a person admitting it themselves.

I don't trust a single person to fairly distinguish an actual dogwhistle from "anything I disagree with is a dogwhistle." I set the burden of proof closer to where multiple people from different ideological backgrounds can look at the behavior and agree that it's extremely suspicious.

I'm saying that if your dogwhistle is so subtle that it's functionally indistinguishable to a neutral observer from normal disagreement,

It's not indistinguishable. People have noticed that the attacks on Trump have been unprecedented violations of norms pretty much since they began.

The left didn't listen to them, because they didn't want to, but plenty of people noticed.

Trump himself has violated lots of norms, and arguably gotten away with crimes. I can't even say I'm that surprised that people have attempted to take his life, without any stochastic terrorism needed.

Saying "the left" did this is uselessly vague. Lacking examples and constraints, as said it's no different than saying that plenty of the left noticed that the right wants immigrants to die. This can be alternatively explained that a bunch of lefties in an echo chamber interpreted the right in the worst possible light.

I'd have given you a "good" on the volunteer page, except that there are edge cases you're ignoring (you still got a "neutral"). Most notably, this is false:

I can not brainwash someone else to kill for me, and I can not brainwash them to not kill either.

This is literally denying that cult brainwashing works. I think it is extremely clear from the available evidence that cults are capable of brainwashing people to kill - usually people who've joined the cult voluntarily, but frequently not people who'd have killed absent those techniques. This isn't really what we're discussing, but you're hyperbolising here.

I'd also like to point out that sure, to a large extent "stochastic terrorism" is just a dysphemism for slander/libel... which are still bad, including for the exact reason "stochastic terrorism" is noting (i.e. most people think Craster deserves to be murdered, so if people are misidentified as Craster they have a chance of being murdered - which is bad since they're not Craster - so it is bad to falsely declare someone to be Craster), and which there ought to be a norm against. Extending it out beyond there (and beyond outright incitement) gets ridiculous fast, sure.

All good so far as individuals are concerned. Individuals are unpredictable. Populations are predictable. I think the concept is fine so long as it's combined with other evidence and at the population level. Just because people are imprecise and "scholars" are political hacks doesn't hurt the concept itself. If you tell enough young men that some thing is bad and they will be rewarded for hurting it, some percentage will take you up on the implicit offer to the degree it is legitimized by their social context.

Like others said, it is a real concept. I think even you would put the line somewhere - maybe directly beseeching your audience for somebody to do the killing, with a promise of fame and eternal gratitude? If not that, setting up a monetary account similar to what actual terrorist groups do for suicide bombers? There has to be a line. Stochastic terrorism is just the level bellow that. "Please can somebody kill that motherfucker already? In Minecraft of course". Just thinly veiled plausible deniability.

Maybe somebody has a problem with the word itself - stochastic terrorism may look like some manipulation, using the scary word terrorism to astroturf a concept creep. But it is nothing new, this is just an annoying modern trend of noticing age old issue and inventing new word for it, there are hundreds of those such as "quiet quitting" being a hot new trend of age old "punching the clock", the same for other things such as ghosting, gatekeeping, gaslighting and many more.

Going back to stochastic terrorism, there are similar old parallels. Just to name one - the wave of anarchist assassinations across the globe toward the end of 19th century. The response by governments across the democratic west was swift and decisive: banning of anarchist newspapers, persecution of anarchist instigators, forming new counterterrorist forces by governments infiltrating anarchist cells and more. It actually happened in USA after McKinley assassination, you had Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 targeting immigrants with anarchist background, you had Criminal Anarchy act of 1902. You had famous cases such as Emma Goldman who was arrested many times until she was stripped of citizenship and deported to Russia in 1919 together with almost 250 other radicals. Anarchism and especially its propaganda of the deed died, the freedom of speech survived.

"quiet quitting" being a hot new trend of age old "punching the clock"

This is strictly an improvement, as all you get if you punch the clock in my office is bruised knuckles.

Maybe. And maybe aggressively punching the clock served as therapeutic way to express your hatred towards your employer, scars from bruised knuckles were badge of honor proudly displayed in front of your colleagues in factory canteen. Kids these days do not even know how to properly hate their job anymore, they just quit quietly like rats they are.

Damn. As a young man I’ve missed out on so much.

But it is nothing new, this is just an annoying modern trend of noticing age old issue and inventing new word for it, there are hundreds of those such as "quiet quitting" being a hot new trend of age old "punching the clock", the same for other things such as ghosting, gatekeeping, gaslighting and many more.

In fairness, the term "gaslight" dates back to the 1930s, although people only started using it as a verb two decades later. I am sort of curious what people called "ghosting" before that term came into vogue.

Oh you're going to love this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Send_to_Coventry

"She sent me to Coventry on WhatsApp and Snapchat" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?

People still use bedlam as idiom for craziness even in USA, it actually comes from the name of mental asylum outside of London. Sending to Coventry to me seems much more horrific than simple ghosting.

Unsurprisingly, given that Scott is the Rightful Caliph, I agree that accusations of stochastic terrorism are usually bunk. Moreover, he properly identifies the true fault line:

This liberal solution isn’t trivial. It requires the separate liberal norm of always being against extra-state violence - a norm which is currently less than entirely secure. 39% of young people have a favorable opinion of Luigi Mangione, and during the George Floyd protests several mainstream newspapers flirted with condoning violence in the name of racial justice. If your worldview says that it’s acceptable to lynch sufficiently bad people, then yes, accusing people of being bad is equivalent to calling for their murder, and you have no alternative but to make sure nobody is allowed to criticize anyone you like. This puts you in the position that Winston Churchill called “riding a tiger from which you dare not dismount”; you had better invest all your energy into making extremely sure that you and your friends are the ones calling the shots about who can and can’t be criticized. It sounds exhausting, which is why the liberal solution - bilateral controlled tiger-dismounting - is the choice of most functional societies.

I guess the major question is whether we just need a separate keyword to describe "not sufficiently against extra-state violence in a coherent and consistent way". Follow-on questions that I care less about would be whether people who satisfy this separate keyword are necessarily open to the charge of stochastic terrorism on the terms of their own position on that matter.

The problem with the liberal solution is that in its absence, some concept of stochastic terrorism becomes necessary, even if it’s philosophically incoherent. You can’t have political violence and addressing proximal causes is better than addressing neither proximal nor root causes.

What Scott and you leave out is that much of this is just holding left-wing organizations to their own rules, after they spent years trying to smear the right with claims of stochastic terrorism.

Many left-wing people and organizations have said at length that spreading fear and mistrust about a person or group is an attempt at murder or genocide.

When the same group spreads fear and mistrust about Trump or Kirk, what else could they be doing if not trying to get them murdered?

I imagine that in the eyes of many in those organisations, this is just some form of "only the first violation is bad" ethics. (Absent a functioning state to prosecute for murder) it is okay to murder a murderer, and likewise (absent state punishment of stochastic murderers) it is okay to stochastically murder a stochastic murderer.

Doki Doki Literature Club Redesign Controversy as a «mise en abyme» of Certain Culture War Issues

I saw a small-scale controversy on Tik-tok (ugggggh, I know right?) recently. First let me give the background. Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC) is a knock-off visual novel, in the same way that California Champagne is a knock off of Champagne. Visual novels are the video game version of anime and manga and as a consequence, they can only be produced in the Japan region of Asia. They are not really video games, but more like something in between a manga and an anime delivered in .exe format on a computer. The only dynamic element they have is a tradition of branching choices, which anime and manga cannot do.

Anyway, it is not that important that DDLC is a knockoff, except that it provides some background for the type of people who like it. The art of this knockoff is quite faithful to the real deal, but the story is not. I have never played it and am not planning on it, because I am a snob, but from what I have gathered, it's like the anime girl version of Depression Quest. It also features a lot of annoying deconstructive quotes like, «these girls are like if you took all of the traits that make someone human and just took the cute bits» said by the player character in the middle of it. Quite rude for some foreigners to do, no? Kind of like making something in California called Champagne but you somehow criticize the concept of using Chardonnay grapes and making it have gas in it while you're at it, while taking the alcohol out of it for tee-totaling Americans. Almost like it's a product of hatred for the original thing.

Well, it will turn out that you will of course get a lot of fans that hate the fact that it comes in a wine bottle. The wine bottle of DDLC is that the characters look like cartoon, moe, teenage anime girls. They have round faces, big eyes, cute mannerisms, and wear bows and and school uniforms for most of the VN, as is customary.

Here are some examples of official art from the game.

Now, what if they were designed to look like real girls? Obviously they would look like this, right (edit: this is one of the original redesign posts)? Well no, because they obviously look like cross dressing men here. The fact that those redesigns look like men is now being denied by real girls who look nothing like those men.

I can only describe this as gas-lighting. And it perfectly parallels the way gender discourse from the left happens in the broader culture war. Transgenderism of course is the biggest gas-light of them all, but feminism broadly is filled with some of the most bald-faced untruths of any political ideology. Many feminists believe women aren't mentally different from men, and can beat men in fights, for example. On the trans issue, we are supposed to believe that people can be born the wrong sex, that sex doesn't exist, that there is, in a meaningful sense, more than two sexes, and that sex changing operations are good for people. To me, these claims are about as credible as the claim that those redesigns look at all like 16 year old girls with two X chromosomes and not cross-dressing men. It is hard for me to understand how blind or dishonest one must be to really make those claims.

You posted all this dumb shit about anime dating games (get control of your life, for god's sake) and didn't mention who did this redesign you're shidding and farding about. It was just, literally, some guy. Why did you waste everyone's time with this? Do you have autism? I don't even care if I get banned anymore.

Obviously this is unimportant. Just don't read if you don't like the subject matter (I don't know what it is about anime that seems to annoy so many non-fans, as if most people here don't waste their time with movies, TV, sports watching, and video games, which are all equivalent). It was just food for thought, it doesn't seem any worse to me than the median thread here in this regard? Don't we have media threads, for example, on the Odyssey movie, or gamergate++, pretty routinely? I skip more than half the threads I'd say because they don't appeal.

I don't think people are singling out anime here. I've played DDLC and enjoyed it.

But most of the other threads on the Motte touching on multimedia products are talking about the actual product itself, which is high budget, has backing by a major corporation, and there is always an opportunity cost where the resources going into these mammoth productions are not going to art that would appeal more to the non-woke or people on the right. There's more justification for them being in the culture war roundup than a "literally, who?" fan artist making bad fan art.

(I say that, even as I also tend to avoid a lot of those kinds of threads on here due to a general lack of interest.)

On one hand, I feel like I properly advertised the post as being about something unimportant and small scale. On the other, I also want to reject the attitude that individuals are categorically unimportant and worthless. The artist is a literally-who, but in the grand scheme of things, so is Blizzard corporation, or whoever. The idea that we must receive some kind of permission from above in the form of enough funding, enough recognition, enough attention, before we think, comment, and care, to me, is wrong. We should not let our minds be beholden to the collective in that way. I think we can produce fruitful thought by observing individuals who are not authorized by the blob to have millions of dollars or millions of eyes on them or dozens of published articles written on them.

I think that the issue is that the more niche you go, the sillier it seems to try and have a big hullabaloo.

To use an example from the other side. A while back feminists were up in arms on Tumblr about this picture, depicting a well-endowed, tan bimbo transforming into a more modestly endowed nerd. They said it was racist, sexist, etc.

But it was just a niche bit of fetish art, made by a niche fetish artist, that had accidentally escaped containment and reached a far larger audience than it was ever intended for. There was no larger political message in it, and the only artistic purpose was to help a small subset of fetishists get off to a debimbofication/nerdification image. I'm not even saying that that is beyond criticism or critique, but almost none of the feminist critique was coming from a well-informed place where anything they said was anything more than initial knee jerk reactions to seeing something they had no context for.

I agree with you, that people should be allowed to comment on, criticize and pay attention to small creators. There's no "you must be this big to ride", but I still think there is a discretion that is good to exercise when dealing with a strange tempest in a teapot.

But it was just a niche bit of fetish art, made by a niche fetish artist, that had accidentally escaped containment and reached a far larger audience than it was ever intended for.

As far as I can tell, this was not fetish art, and there are normal looking girls on tiktok insisting that they think they look like that. So it's a bit more normie/mainstream than your example, even if it's ultimately inconsequential.

Bit of a "lurk more" moment, I'm afraid!

It's a reversal of a older fetish meme. The original has the nerd pick up the book, turn into the bimbo. Bimbofication. Neither it, nor she, is that deep.

The reversed form ("Nerdification"? "Debimbofication"?) is perhaps making a statement (rah! Rah! Books!), but it's also a remix of the original fetish art consisting of just reversing the order of the frames.

And now there are lots of other remixes too -- they're separate people and dating!

It's true that you're not supposed to get off to either version, exactly, but the remix is 100% fetish art by volume, sssooo.

Edit: I think I have failed at reading comprehension; you didn't mean the (de-)bimbofication comic, but the original post's doki doki redraw. I'll leave my error, but apologize for my illiteracy!

It's a reversal of a older fetish meme. The original has the nerd pick up the book, turn into the bimbo. Bimbofication. Neither it, nor she, is that deep.

Do you have a link? I've always thought this was the original image. At first I thought you mean "meme" in the original sense of the word, but it seems you had a specific image in mind.

Weird hill to die on, but ok.

It's a horror game wearing the costume of a dating game. That's its claim to fame.

No, its claim to fame is that JAST took seven years to translate Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi and has a litigious policy regarding fantranslations, so the inferior DDLC hit the English gaming community first despite coming out four years later. (Admittedly, also that DDLC was free.)

(The time from when JAST C&Ded the fantranslation of Sumaga to releasing it is longer than the entire production cycle of Duke Nukem Forever. How much longer? Well, I dunno, because they still haven't yet, but I think we recently passed the 15-year mark.)

Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

You've been banned once for being egregiously obnoxious and this, if anything, is more obnoxious.

What is the content here? Basically "Look at these ugly trans girls" in some niche media nobody else cares about.

I know, not literally "nobody." (Yes, I am in fact familiar with light novels[ETA:visual novels, those too] and probably many other people here are as well.) But this is still not anything of significance. It's somebody redrawing some anime characters as trans, and we should care why? Because you don't like trans? Because you want a disgust reaction?

And I specifically warned you previously that "some rando on the Internet did a thing and I want to rant about it" is not worth starting a thread.

Transgenderism of course is the biggest gas-light of them all, but feminism broadly is filled with some of the most bald-faced untruths of any political ideology.

This is purely waging the culture war. What is "beliefs I don't like are stupid and bad" offering to discuss. Agree/disagree? And the feminism rant was a complete tangent from the main rant, which was "Trans bad." "Trans bad" because... someone redrew moe anime girls to look ugly.

You've run up a number of tempbans, your discourse in general is low quality dragged-in-from-some-Internet-rathole bullshit like this for you to rant about Things You Don't Like, and from a less obnoxious poster I'd just say "Knock it off" but you're already a ban evader we gave a long leash to because we dislike pulling the trigger when there is a small hope someone will actually improve this incarnation.

You're banned for a month. I should probably just make it permanent because almost certainly you will come back and do more of this and make us pull the final trigger in short order, or else you'll just roll a new account. In the extremely small likelihood that you actually care to modify your behavior and participate in a more meaningful way, know that the purpose of the Motte is not just to dump rants about things you don't like and rail about how much you hate your enemies. A disturbingly large number of posters have trouble accepting that, but few go on such a speed-run of shitting the place up every time they start a thread.

The idea that DDLC is niche media that nobody cares about is really bizarre.

This is equivalent to having someone post about Star Wars and you say 'I've heard of Star Trek but Star Wars? Yeah, you can google it up, but there's absolutely no reason to post about such a niche property. Banned for a month!'

He was not banned for posting about niche media.

It's somebody redrawing some anime characters as trans

Besides the point but it seems that the redraw wasn't intended to be trans but rather "more realistic" which I suppose is more indicative of the artists reality then anything. Or perhaps she's doing that typical artist thing where they declare their own personal aesthetic preferences as scientific or realistic or whatever word will make their preferences sound objectively correct. I have some creative hobbies and meeting these kinds of people in them is never a pleasant experience.

What is the content here? Basically "Look at these ugly trans girls" in some niche media nobody else cares about.

I think OP's post is a bad post, but I think your take is also a pretty bad strawman. DDLC is the most influential VN made by western devs (soon to be overtaken by TCOAAL) and arguably the most influential in the english speaking audience. When it went viral it firmly penetrated into the normiesphere.

The fansom has shrunk since then but I still think this incident is quite an interesting scissor statement that manages to piss off different people for different reasons.

Obviously I think OP is wrong but I have to accept that it's hard to grasp what is truly at the core of this situation.

DDLC is the most influential VN made by western devs

It is the #1 most popular (as opposed to most liked) OELVN on VNDB, but only by a tiny margin over Katawa Shoujo. Admittedly, it's a biased sample insofar as non-weebs who read DDLC wouldn't tend to visit VNDB.

(For anyone reading this who's confused: Katawa Shoujo is not actually Japanese, despite the Japanese title. It was made by 4chan, and originally in English, though they did translate it into Japanese afterward.)

Yes, I am in fact familiar with light novels

Confusing them with visual novels casts some doubt on this assertion.

I do actually know what both of them are, but you are correct, brain produced the wrong token output.

Are you certain that the correct response here is anything other than "take a breath, put the phone down, and go outside" ?

It's summer time, get a fishing pole and go do some catch and release.

  1. This could apply to any culture war post.

  2. Abandoning the field is a sure way to let your opponents succeed in whatever they're doing. And if you think the culture war is inconsequential, this is a strange place to be posting.

2 is basically saying "if you do this you will lose the culture war". Isn't the whole point of the "don't fight the culture war" rule that you are not allowed to act like you are primarily motivated by winning it? So maybe this is a strange place to be posting if you are swayed by that point.

I don't think that's quite right. It's saying 'don't fight the war'. So don't try to drive out your opponents, don't chimp out, don't dox, don't dogpile.

Discussing goals and tactics is fine I think.

You might argue that 'if we don't talk about this, we concede' implies that talking about it is fighting, but that's the syllogism that got us to the point where it's almost impossible to discuss in the first place.

One would hope we aspire to more than to be some internet person's outlet for "look at how stupid this single internet user is".

We were being told it's a single internet user, or just a couple crazy kids on the Internet, for years. It then turned out that, among many potential consequences, expressing a contrary opinion can get you fired. Trying this argument again is just insulting to anyonr whp hasn't spent the last 10 years in a comma.

It's summer time

Not here in Oz, it's not! I'll admit Victorian winter isn't that cold by Euro/US standards, but it's still wet and dark.

Strange how much pushback you are getting for reporting on a revealing example of distortion. As you have already stated Doki Doki Literature Club is a fake VN, but considered real by its fans, instead of them thinking of it as belonging to the EOVN genre. The piece of media in question is by its fans thought thusly due to them lacking direct knowledge of what it was referencing, something perhaps even its authors did.

Fans of this work are mostly consuming echoes of shadows, parodies of stereotypes they never experienced expressed sincerly. (Some French 20th philosopher probably wrote about this. Also about this specific work, some blogger, but I can't find it right now.) Because they never experienced sincerity, they can't see anything wrong with further parody. If this work is by them indistinguishable from sincere works, it stands to reason they would not perceive the difference between sincere fanart of it, and unitentional parody.

As you have already stated Doki Doki Literature Club is a fake VN, but considered real by its fans, instead of them thinking of it as belonging to the EOVN genre.

I'm a casual fan of visual novels, and I don't see much point in distinguishing visual novels this way by region of origin, the same way we do with manga vs. comics or anime vs. cartoons. Visual novels largely originated in Japan, so most will be Japanese by default, but I'm not really sure that I would call something like DDLC or works like that 4chan visual novel, Katawa Shoujo, "fake" visual novels. They're just visual novels that weren't made in Japan.

Like, we can discuss them as works of arts by region the way we do with phrases like "French cinema", or "South Indian cinema", but it would be silly to say that French films are "fake" films because the first films were screened in New York City or something.

The comparisons in the original OP to Champagne don't make sense, because I don't think even the Japanese think of "noberugēmu" as a characteristically Japanese art style, even if it is far more popular in Japan than in the West.

Because they never experienced sincerity, they can't see anything wrong with further parody.

I have played several Japanese visual novels, and I appreciated DDLC as a fun little horror parody of the medium.

I don't actually think the existential horror of Monika's existence as a sentient side character in a video game is nearly as good a horror beat as when the childhood friend commits suicide, and all your saves are deleted, so you can't reload from a previous save to make a different choice. As someone who had learned to play VNs a particular way, make choices, restart when I got a bad ending, the fact that the game took away that option and made you live with the consequences of a story beat was really effective meta storytelling, whether DDLC is a "real" VN or not.

As someone who had learned to play VNs a particular way, make choices, restart when I got a bad ending, the fact that the game took away that option and made you live with the consequences of a story beat was really effective meta storytelling, whether DDLC is a "real" VN or not.

Funny you should mention that...

There is an ongoing debate over whether Doki Doki Literature Club was a direct rip-off of the then-untranslated Japanese VN Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi (for the record, the author of DDLC said it was only pointed out to him how similar they were during the polishing phase), which did that beat much better.

In DDLC, Sayori's suicide is totally unavoidable, so it's not playing fair to guilt the player for it. Totono does not force you to do the two things you get guilted for; you can choose to avoid them (indeed, one of them's almost impossible to do by accident).

To add to the debating about whether Western visual novels are actually visual novels, or if they have to be Japanese...

Trends for video game genres are largely driven by technical limitations, not just by creativity, and for the purpose of technical limitations, VNs count among this. Japan's domestic PC market in the 80s and 90s was dominated by the domestic PC-98. These systems were designed with rendering Japanese text in mind, and because of that, required much higher resolution displays than comparable Western computers. However, their actual processing performance was no better. Turns out this is the exact combination that leads to Visual Novels, which are well-placed to take advantage of the combination of big displays and comparatively weak processing power by focusing on exquisitely detailed, static sprite art.

Western developers skipped this stage of technical limitations and went for WRPGs for their branching-choice games instead. Early ones driven more by gameplay than plot, and once the graphics caught up there was no need to dump the gameplay in favour of artwork by then.

As for whether they were drawing the DDLC characters as crossdressing men, when it comes to anime, crossdressing men are often just drawn identically to women anyway.

Western developers skipped this stage of technical limitations and went for WRPGs for their branching-choice games instead. Early ones driven more by gameplay than plot, and once the graphics caught up there was no need to dump the gameplay in favour of artwork by then.

A lot of the late 80s / early 90s western games had self limited graphics because the artists were apparently incapable of using custom palettes and the companies had outdated ideas about common graphics hardware. See eg. Sierra games of the late 80s, many of which had basically CGA level graphics even though EGA had been the norm for many years by then and VGA had been fast becoming the de facto standard (and everyone upgraded their PC every 2-4 years, so having to support particularly old computers just wasn't a thing).

Huh? I don't think this is right. Sierra was one of the companies pushing graphical standards in games, from EGA to VGA to FMV cutscenes. Even King's Quest I (their breakout hit) was released in EGA on MS-DOS systems in the mid-80s, so I'm actually not sure what game with "CGA-level graphics" you're referring to.

Sierra was one of the companies pushing graphical standards in games

If they had been, they wouldn't have released multiple games using CGA based graphics engine by the time VGA was available.

Even King's Quest I (their breakout hit) was released in EGA on MS-DOS systems in the mid-80s

That's not EGA. That's a tweaked CGA text mode which is why the resolution is only 160x200 (with a fixed palette) instead of 320x200 and why the graphics look like ass.

King Quest IV was the first KQ to use EGA graphics. By the time KQ V (AFAIK the first sierra game to use VGA) was released the graphics could have looked like this on a run of the mill new 286 PC (without animation obviously). I should know because the only reason our first PC (bought by my single mother in 1990, so far from being high end) couldn't handle 640x480x256 mode was that the particular Triden 8900 chipset had a hw bug that made it require a multisync monitor.

By 1988 common PC tech (VGA) allowed up to 320x400x256 resolution (or 640x480x16) - not that almost any game took advantage of it (I remember Scorched Earth did in 91-92 and that was written by a lone hobbyist). It took forever for games to switch to using 640x480x256 resolution with Warcraft 2 being one of the first (1995).

You can see similar stagnation on the sound side where almost every game was composed by people sitting in their ivory tower studios for hardware that almost nobody had (Roland MT-32 & later General MIDI) and then degraded with anemic results on the hardware people actually used (Soundblaster). On those rare occasions the game devs and composers had a clue, the results were legendary (the second originally composed for amiga but the only difference is in how grungy the sound quality is).

Ps. If we want to get technical, this level of graphics were strictly speaking possible on 1983 PC hardware (I recommend muting the video, it sounds like ass). Compared to that Kings Quest 1 graphics look like something a first grader might draw. What was that about "pushing graphical standards"?

From the Wikipedia page for King's Quest I:

Sierra continued to release King's Quest for other home computer systems over the next few years, such as MS-DOS for IBM PCs, the Atari ST, Amiga, Macintosh, and the Apple IIGS, adding support for newer graphics standards like EGA.

Not to mention that the screenshots you linked are distinctly labeled CGA and EGA (and include the comment "Very impressive graphics for its time")...

And VGA was absolutely not common in 1988 (it wasn't even invented until 1987, and it certainly took longer than one year to become highly adopted). The first VGA game I ever played was The Secret of Monkey Island, which was released in 1990. Wing Commander and King's Quest V, other major VGA releases, were also in late 1990. It's insane that you're linking to a screenshot of a 1998 game (when friggin' Pentiums were already obsolete) as an example of "what was possible" on a 286. You also can't compare even the contemporary demoscene (let alone modern retro demos) to game graphics of the time - it wasn't until Id Software's era that games started to catch up technically. Note that this had nothing to do with artists being "incapable of using custom palettes".

I'm guessing you're younger than me and didn't grow up in this era, which is why you're muddling the timeline so badly...? It was a different world. What was technically possible had little to do with what games actually looked like. (Note that game logic was also a significant part of the CPU's load, cutting into anything you could do with graphics.) During my childhood, Sierra games were the best looking games I ever had access to. If you want to argue this further, please give even one example of a contemporary game that looked better.

(Can't comment on the sound side. I was not an audiophile.)

Not to mention that the screenshots you linked are distinctly labeled CGA and EGA

If you look at them, the EGA image uses the same low resolution blocky graphics as the CGA, just with a different palette (same as in the Tandy version I believe). That limitation was present throughout all Sierra games made with their AGI interpreter until they finally moved to actual EGA graphics with SCI in Kings Quest IV. Of course even those were much lower resolution than what EGA was capable of.

VGA was absolutely not common in 1988

It was common enough that not only were there multiple super VGA adapters on the market but that the industry recognized the need to standardize them in late 1988. Hells, there was even a ”laptop” with vga by 1988 (My mom used to take it home from work occasionally on weekends, so that was my personal hands-on introduction to PC and programming - in addition to playing games at friends’). And besides, we're talking about "pushing graphical standards in games".

If Sierra had actually pushed graphical standards (as opposed to persistently catering to the lowest common denominator), by 1988 the games could have looked like the second and third images here. First is original low res game graphics, 2nd is how it could have looked on VGA, 3rd is how that could have been displayed on EGA without requiring any additional storage and the 4th is Nano Banana reimagining of the original that was used to produce 2nd and 3rd images by downscaling to 640x350 and dithering to 16 color images with a fixed palette (not even optimized per screen) - all images upscaled to 1280x800 for ease of comparison and avoiding aspect ratio problems. In fact the games could have looked like the 3rd image by 1985 as far as the hardware was concerned (EGA was released in late 84).

I'm guessing you're younger than me and didn't grow up in this era

Not only did I grow up in that era but by 1991 I was writing VGA graphics code, so I was familiar with what the hardware had been capable of with reasonable effort since the introduction of VGA (at least for paid developers who had actual budget to buy hw documentation books etc). Obviously I wasn't writing anything professional level, but did know enough to use the magic spells mov ax, 13h; int 10h and xor ax, ax; mov dx, 3c8h; out dx, al; inc dx; rep outsb (If you know you know and if you don't you may not be qualified to judge the topic in the first place).

Note that game logic was also a significant part of the CPU's load

Sure, for an action game. For adventure games like the ones Sierra made? Not even remotely because they essentially had no running logic until you typed something in the parser or changed screens.

please give even one example of a contemporary game that looked better.

Defender of the Crown from 1987. Note the lack of fugly blockiness.

Falcon, also from 1987. Not that the graphics are pretty as such but at least they aren't a horrible blockfest.

For VGA graphics, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade from 1989 - over a year before Kings Quest V.

A-10 Tank Killer, also from 1989.

But like I said earlier, "A lot of the late 80s / early 90s western games had self limited graphics because the artists were apparently incapable of using custom palettes and the companies had outdated ideas about common graphics hardware." The problems were industry wide and it took until the mid 90s before parts of the industry started really pushing the envelope, Doom being one of the early examples.

(If you know you know and if you don't you may not be qualified to judge the topic in the first place).

Oh, believe me, I very much know, and your elitism is hilariously cringe. "I coded in mode 13h, you ignorant plebes wouldn't understand what good graphics are."

Going to ignore your technobabble (though the screenshots are fun), because it's irrelevant if there were no actual games being produced looking like that. Thanks for at least moving on to some examples, which (of course) look nothing like the first half of your post. I'll give you Defender of the Crown (though you picked a static screenshot - the action screenshots don't look that good), which does outclass anything Sierra had until KQ4. Falcon and A-10 Tank Killer? Meh. As for Lucasfilm/Lucasarts, I agree wholeheartedly. They were also a company that was pushing graphics standards in games - I did mention Monkey Island, after all, and I sadly missed out on Indiana Jones and Loom. Of course, when Sierra caught up, it also produced absolutely gorgeous games like Gabriel Knight and King's Quest VI.

So I'm genuinely putting some effort in here, trying to parse through your tech snobbery and find some interpretation that matches the reality I experienced. I think your point is that the games industry as a whole wasn't using graphics hardware to its absolute fullest in the same way that the demoscene would (a few years later). And I can agree with that! It's pretty amazing what you can get old tech to do with modern knowledge (and no need to attach it to a playable game); hell, there are C64 demos that blow my mind.

It doesn't change that Sierra was at the forefront of graphics in the games industry, and you're absolutely wrong that it's because the artists were stupid and lazy. Tools didn't exist, market pressures did. Art, design, and playability (and being able to support what you sneeringly called "the lowest common denominator") mattered more than raw graphics (this was the era when the underpowered NES was dominant, after all). Sorry, but if you were there in the 1980s you wouldn't have upended the industry with your brilliance, any more than you would have been a king in the 1300s. It was a different world and you're not smarter than everybody who was living in it. Even if you did code in assembly (gasp)!

I'm not nearly as versed in the technical side as you, but my impression from reading this blog is that you're sort of both right? It's just that the 1980s were such a rapid time for PC tech development that it really depends on which particular year you look at. At the very start, in 1980, Sierra made a splash simply by having graphics at all, when there weren't a lot of computer games for sale on the Apple II, and the few that existed were either text adventures (still limited even in how much text they could have) or something like a port of breakout with very limited graphics. You could do better with arcade cabinets or video game consoles, of course, but those were specialized machines, not a general purpose PC. In that world, the graphics of [early Sierra]](https://www.filfre.net/2011/10/the-wizard-and-the-princess-part-1/) really stood out, and it took some skilled hacking from Ken Williams to make it work.

But then Sierra turned into a real company, with pressure to steadily release new games, so they stopped trying to push the edge in graphics and just churned out varients of more or less the same game, using their tried and true EGA-based engine that the made for the first King's Quest in 1984. Which looked nice enough when it first came out, but quickly aged, so their main claim was being easy enough to work with that non-hackers could make games, and they could sell to a wide audience.

But then at some point that formula stopped working, and they had to really double down again on graphics with their VGA games in the early 90s. Which weren't exactly a huge technical breakthough- the tech already existed to support it, and would have been even better on the Amiga- but they did a great job of just hiring skilled artists to make the pixel art look amazing, even if it wasn't super high tech. So then they got a new lease on life as a company making relatively simple, easy, family-friendly games which looked gorgeous but were also easy to run on less expensive computers.

Would you agree with that summary of the timeline?

More comments

Now, what if they were designed to look like real girls? Obviously they would look like this, right (edit: this is one of the original redesign posts)? Well no, because they obviously look like cross dressing men here. The fact that those redesigns look like men is now being denied by real girls who look nothing like those men.

As someone who is not familiar with this style of art, I'm having a difficult time understanding what here is meant to be sarcastic and what isn't. Would you mind laying out your point a bit more plainly?

I am being plain. The redesigns look like men. Some users pointed that out and redrew the design to look like 3d girls. Then some girls who look nothing like the men started gas lighting saying that they think they look like the men drawings and not like redrawn girl versions.

The redesigns look like men. Some users pointed that out and redrew the design to look like 3d girls. Then some girls who look nothing like the men started gas lighting saying that they think they look like the men drawings and not like redrawn girl versions.

Thanks for clarifying this. For what it may be worth, when I saw the character renderings, it did not occur to me that there was a trans acceptance angle. The characters looked kinda unattractive and mannish to me but I would have guessed that it was due to the artist being a lousy artist.

That being said, I concede that progressives sometimes push their agenda in deniable ways.

It's unfortunate that I kinda like women with features that could be described as "handsome" or "boyish." And even I can spot the gaslighting.

I honestly just chalk it up to the original fan artist not being very good at figure drawing. I read enough badly drawn webcomics in the early 2000's to not see much strange in an accidentally "mannish" or "ugly" drawing of a female.

I genuinely feel like this is people making a mountain out of a molehill. Like, do we really need to transvestigate fan art that is in no way associated with the actual game? Someone made some bad art online, and some people apparently like it. You can judge them for their bad taste, but what are we doing here?

I honestly just chalk it up to the original fan artist not being very good at figure drawing. I read enough badly drawn webcomics in the early 2000's to not see much strange in an accidentally "mannish" or "ugly" drawing of a female.

That's also what I thought.

I genuinely feel like this is people making a mountain out of a molehill. Like, do we really need to transvestigate fan art that is in no way associated with the actual game?

For me, it's an interesting idea: That someone is using fan art to push a progressive pro-trans agenda. And to mix metaphors, perhaps the molehill has a slippery slope.

For me, it's an interesting idea: That someone is using fan art to push a progressive pro-trans agenda. And to mix metaphors, perhaps the molehill has a slippery slope.

I just do not buy this. We live in the era of Miku Binder Thomas Jefferson. If people want to make progressive reinterpretations of characters they do so, openly and proudly.

There is no way that the fan artist here could have known that if they made slightly mannish images that so many people would go to bat for them, showing off their faces as "evidence" that teenage girls really do look like that.

I just see it as a combination of a bad artist, and teenage girls having low self esteem and body image issues, and accidentally creating the perfect toxoplasma moment.

I just do not buy this. We live in the era of Miku Binder Thomas Jefferson. If people want to make progressive reinterpretations of characters they do so, openly and proudly.

There is no way that the fan artist here could have known that if they made slightly mannish images that so many people would go to bat for them, showing off their faces as "evidence" that teenage girls really do look like that.

I just see it as a combination of a bad artist, and teenage girls having low self esteem and body image issues, and accidentally creating the perfect toxoplasma moment.

After I made that comment, I went and looked at the other work of this creator. As an example, it includes illustrations of someone who is clearly a man who is wearing a cutesy little sailor outfit (including a miniskirt). Having had a chance to reflect, I would interpret this as art designed to appeal to those with a fetish for cross-dressing, autogynophilia, etc. That same fetish (in my opinion) drives much of the trans agenda, but given the context I am not ready to conclude that there's any political agenda being pushed by this particular creator.

There's a conflict within the left between the faction that believes that beauty and art is acceptable, as long as it promotes the correct slogans, and the faction that glorifies the grotesque and believes that beauty is intrinsically linked with fascism.

This ain't no trans conflict. It's a conflict between these factions.

Now, what if they were designed to look like real girls? Obviously they would look like this, right (edit: this is one of the original redesign posts)? Well no, because they obviously look like cross dressing men here. The fact that those redesigns look like men is now being denied by real girls who look nothing like those men.

Get this guy a job in western AAA game maker.

The fact that those redesigns look like men is now being denied by real girls who look nothing like those men.

That last link says "fixing this ugly ass art cause they look like men" which sounds like girls are not denying it at all.

That last link says "fixing this ugly ass art cause they look like men" which sounds like girls are not denying it at all.

I think the person was being sarcastic.

She is positioning her real self as the "artwork" being "fixed" by filters, meaning she identifies her real self with the ugly drawings.

The only dynamic element they have is a tradition of branching choices, which anime and manga cannot do.

Japanese Wikipedia indicates that a few gamebook/choose-your-own-adventure manga works have been published.

Ah, good point, I remember some of those as a kid. Not manga, but paper choose your own adventure. But the base rate of branching stories in VNs is >95% I'd say and in manga it's the exception, obviously.

I have never played it and am not planning on it, because I am a snob, but from what I have gathered, it's like the anime girl version of Depression Quest.

Not quite. It's a visual novel, but it's a lot more game-side of visual novels (failure modes, bad ends, some basic minigames, a meta bit where using out-of-game contexts matters). I won't pretend it's some great and mechanically deep game, but it's not the schlock that DQ was.

And in terms of story, it's favored among the tumblrite set because it's a metaphor for mental illness, but only one (short-lived) character is specifically depressed. The rest are more psychotic, and the actual narrative for them is much more externally driven as to why they're going increasingly nuts. Will admit there's a very self-referential deconstructive bit, though it's less gooner or anti-gooner and more Undertale-like as a comment about video games in general.

If you want a plot synopsis, the Random Encounters song covers it in less than five minutes (and is very catchy).

I... didn't play every route (again, not a great game, I'm not in its target audience), but I don't remember seeing that quote, and it'd be a little weird in-context -- especially in the middle of the game, the surviving girls are definitely not just the cute bits floating around dereferenced.

I'm also not sure those are official updates. DDLC had a big redraw thing (that got some controversy) in the COVID era, and some pretty slop ports, but I'm not seeing any talk on their reddit about anything new coming down or any new hires. I didn't think there was much left for them to do; the paid version already had some goofy 'explained too much about the setting' content thrown in as a 'secret'.

I agree that it's weird art, even by the modern standards (or even old Excel Saga standards).

the Random Encounters song covers it in less than five minutes (and is very catchy)

I'd never seen that. And seeing it now leads down a rabbit hole of different original songs about Doki Doki Literature Club rendered in Minecraft style, at least half a dozen of which have tens of millions of YouTube hits each. Despite the creepiness of the game, there's something super-wholesome about these sorts of inventive fan communities going off and doing their own things, connected by and occasionally going viral on the internet. It's like the Chaotic Good version of the "toaster fucker problem".

Visual novels are the video game version of anime and manga and as a consequence, they can only be produced in the Japan region of Asia.

Do you mean this in a literal linguistic way, as in if it doesn't come in Japan it doesn't technically count as a "visual novel" even if it's identical in every way, as in the Champagne example? Because this is entirely false. Neither "visual" nor "novel" are Japanese words. We don't have an equivalent word in English because that's what these are.

Or do you mean this in a less literal but more meaningful way, as in only the Japanese have the cultural competence to actually make one of these any good. Because I would mostly agree with that, I don't think I've ever seen a decent visual novel come from anywhere other than Japan even if hypothetically one could.

Or do you mean this in a less literal but more meaningful way, as in only the Japanese have the cultural competence to actually make one of these any good. Because I would mostly agree with that, I don't think I've ever seen a decent visual novel come from anywhere other than Japan even if hypothetically one could.

I usually find Western erotic games to be superior to Japanese h-games, even apart from the bother of setting up a Japanese locale emulator to get the damn game to run. But that may just be because I don't like ugly bastards. I certainly prefer anime-style graphics to something like Daz 3D, but in the age of Koikatsu Party and Pony Diffusion any Western dev can make those.

If you're just comparing quick cheap goonslop and/or small indie projects, then sure both of them can make some passable stuff. But if we look at proper visual "novels", masterpieces like Grisaia no Kajitsu, G Senjou no Maou, or Steins Gate, there just is nothing in the West even remotely comparable. The West does not have a sufficiently large audience, nor a sufficiently talented voice acting scene, nor the level of culture to put forth the kind effort and budget required to make a proper visual novel.

Um, I haven't played G-Senjou no Maou, but I've played the other two and I wouldn't describe them as "masterpieces". I'd describe them as "decent VNs with AAA production values" (well, Steins;Gate and Kajitsu; Meikyuu and Rakuen I'd describe as "AAA sequelitis").

(Kajitsu's way too long for its plot and a bit cookie-cutter; Steins;Gate has an interesting premise and then hamfistedly declares that 90% of the interestingness is arbitrarily denied by "convergence" and mostly does romantic misery porn instead. Chaos;Head's (a lot) less polished, but it delivers on much more of its premise than Steins;Gate.)

All of your criticisms are directionally true, I just think the quality of the games is high enough to make up for this (with the exception of Meikyuu which... meh, they could have done better). Maybe they just uniquely appealed to me and my sense of humor. I laughed throughout the entire (quite lengthy) common route in Kajitsu and would gladly have played more (which is why I've replayed it two more times over the years). The character routes, especially the flashbacks, can be a bit of a slog but are still quite good. Likewise, I think Steins;Gate is peak when it is making jokes and being hilarious, while the sad drama stuff does drag on a bit. Overall though, I think they needed the sadder slower parts to tell a meaningful story, and they did, and nothing the West has ever made is even slightly close.

...Hmm.

So, I find slice-of-life comedy completely useless (LCD sense of humour =/= mine, probably aspie-related). What I was saying was too long about Kajitsu was the common route, which has a pretty-terrible word-count-to-plot ratio; I liked some of the heroine routes (mostly Sachi and Michiru; Amane and Makina routes should have been combined, and Yumiko route is bleh).

I'm fine with romantic dramas (the two VNs I've ever rated 10/10 are School Days and Totono, and Saya no Uta's 9/10), but Steins;Gate pulls the same "blow up your relationship or the world ends, lol" trick four times (in lieu of any kind of creative solution, because "convergence"), which is why I called it misery porn.

What about Slay the Princess or the Coffin of Andy and Leyley? They're both overwhelmingly positive on Steam, comparable to Steins Gate.

I don't generally do spooky horror stuff, so haven't played either of them. That said, they appear to still be small scale indie games with stylized but clearly budget art styles, little to no voice acting, and about 4 hours of content each. They are small indie games. Their target audiences apparently like them for what they are, but they are not what I'm talking about. Stein's Gate is about 30 hours and Grisaia no Kajitsu is about 60 if you play all routes. (And both have sequels with even more content, albeit slightly less amazing) These are big meaty stories with intricate details, whole casts of characters, recurring jokes, themes. They develop characters and make you feel for them. They go into backstories. They have slice of life and action and drama. They do everything because they are not constrained by the limitations of a 90 minute cinema timer or the indie creator's non-existent budget.

They are to full visual novels what Five Nights and Freddy's is to Elden Ring. They're different things which cater to different target audiences (with some overlap). But there's a difference in scale and ambition which (in visual novels) the West can't realistically match.

OK, slay the princess was short. But it was voiced and interesting. As for Coffin, I watched a streamer play through it and do voices for it and it was a pretty gripping, intense experience. There is a lot going on beyond 'incest haha'. There are themes, developed characters, intricate details for both.

Most of the reviewers had 10-20 hours.

Furthermore, the quality of a visual novel or any piece of literature is not decided by size. Otherwise Chinese webnovel bros would be the undisputed masters of writing. Visual novels don't need flashy graphics or voice acting to be excellent, the primary thing is the writing and all else is a cherry on top.

The test of quality should be in its review score. Anything overwhelmingly positive on steam has a perfectly good claim to high quality for its genre.

The West does not have a sufficiently large audience, nor a sufficiently talented voice acting scene, nor the level of culture to put forth the kind effort and budget required to make a proper visual novel.

Japan is not more cultured than the West. Anything Japan can do, the West can also do and vis versa. They're just more into visual novel type games, less into shooters or grand strategy. They could make a first rate shooter or 4X game, they just choose not to. Just because a Western audience might generally prefer more gameplay (putting it up from visual novel to 'story rich') or less gameplay (novel, cartoon) it doesn't mean there's some deficiency in the West compared to Japan.

Slay the Princess is fully voiced, at least as far as I played it (I got pissed off and quit, IIRC).

Which perfect woman was too much?

I got pissed off when I didn't manage to kill her the first time and then I got told "You cannot go further astray" when I tried to do it right the second time.

So IIRC I tracked down the save file, murdered it, killed her properly, got the deliberately-terrible reward, and quit.

I usually find Western erotic games to be superior to Japanese h-games

This is the opinion that matters on this one. If anyone else disagrees I honestly dont care

But that may just be because I don't like ugly bastards.

The obvious answer is of course to combine western player characters and Japanese love interests.

Edit: I present Exhibit A ("1girl" anime style) and Exhibit B (from Summertime Saga, an apparently popular western erotic game). Obviously somewhat NSFW. I realize that according to the internets (or at least many such western game creators) men are obligated to prefer HHH-size boobies but, at the risk of coming off as a deviant, I'm going to have to go with Exhibit A (even though it was created in 30 seconds using an ancient AI SD 1.5 finetune).

Warning: extremely pretentious weeb discussion below.

Personally, I would argue that they are different in the first way; in my view, the difference between a "visual novel" in the Western and Japanese sense is a semantic shift, in the same way that " マンション / mansion" in Japanese means a small apartment, but "mansion" in English means a large free-standing house, with connotations of land and status.

In the Western context, visual novels are really just considered cheap porn, and even when Western indies try to surpass this definition, it's much like trying to build a bigger apartment to try and re-create a mansion (in the English sense). Apartments are great and all (as many Western indie games are pretty great), but fundamentally they're just contained in different categories.

In contrast, there is a Japanese otaku subculture where visual novels are considered a serious artform, and as a result there are real auteurs, who would have been acclaimed authors of high society in another life, who end up in a position of writing high-budget erotic games (although again, "エロゲー / erotic games" is a bit of a semantic shift, the difference between Hot Singles In Your Area and Lolita).

For example, I would consider White Album 2, Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai and Albatross Koukairoku (amongst others) to be legitimate works of literary art that equal or surpass much of the actual literary canon; there's frankly no Western "visual novel" that would even come close in my estimation.

I agree with your object level criticisms about how Westerners have approached this problem, but would categorize all of that under the second way. If a certain culture or group of people publish a bunch of smut novels and can't figure out how to write a decent novel they're still "novels", just not very good ones. If they start filming and publishing porn films, they're still "films". It's the same type of media, even if it's only one specific genre within that media. Visual novel is a form of media, and it's trivial to make something that's in the media. It's highly nontrivial to make one that's good. A mansion is a type of house. A building is a structure which can contain many different types and serve many different purposes. I argue that the word "visual novel" is more akin to "building", and the West can make those. You don't look at a log cabin and say "it's not a building because it's smaller than this mansion". They're not the same, they're not really in the same ballpark in terms of quality. But in a literal and linguistic way they are still the same category of object.

Yeah I think we're 99% on the same page here, that the Japanese are building mansions (of varying quality of course, most "authentic" Japanese visual novels are still awful, as most of everything is awful) while Westerners are only constructing a bunch of log cabins (apart from Katawa Shoujo as someone mentioned downthread, which is structurally identical to a Japanese mansion except in language).

I would say the difference between your viewpoint and mine is that I think to further torture this metaphor, that Westeners view the definition of "building" as identical to the definition of "log cabin" and cannot imagine a building to be like anything else that isn't a log cabin. DDLC broke fairly hard out of containment, and while Salvato himself is pretty tapped into Japanese VN culture, normie reception to DDLC was generally along the lines of "this is the only good visual novel, how did he do it?", which isn't helped by how the game is framed, from the normie perspective at least, as a structural deconstruction of every other visual novel being a cheap dating sim.

In Japan, while obviously still extremely niche relative to broader society, the conception of the building as something greater than a log cabin actually exists, and by extension the idea of the visual novel as an actual artform actually exists. Typing this out it sounds extremely pretentious, but I think this conception of "the building as greater than the log cabin" purely exists only amongst the Japanese and highly Japanese-influenced people, and hence it wouldn't really be wrong to claim that it's different in a real, linguistic way.

I don't think this is quite right. Because obviously a significant fraction of westerners have played Japanese visual novels and are aware of what can be done. And while this is not the normie, even the normie anime-viewer, neither are the people making western visual novels. The average normie does not write their own visual novel. And when someone who clearly does know and care about visual novels makes one, like DDLC, it's still not a full length visual novel. Not because they don't know or care, but because they can't.

The real issue is infrastructure. The big fancy good mansion visual novels in Japan cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, involve many high quality writers, artists, and voice actors. Anyone in the West who imagines a full length real visual novel cannot get the funding to make it, and cannot find/hire voice actors who would both be willing to work on the project, and good enough to do it well. There ARE no Western equivalents to Rie Kugimiya, Tomokazu Sugita, or Mamoru Miyano.

It's not merely an issue of imagination. Anyone can imagine things. It's the technology and infrastructure required to take that imagination and turn it into reality. And I suppose in some sense this is downstream of culture and imagination. The majority of Western audience imagine and ask for log cabins, so none of the investors or talents try to create this infrastructure. And if some rich visionary made an expensive AAA visual novel it probably wouldn't sell enough to recoup its costs, so the investors aren't wrong. But it's more complicated than simply "no one can imagine anything better". We can clearly see the better things, which is how you and I are talking about them right now. But even the most skilled and creative architect can't go out into the woods with nothing more than a rusty hatchet and make themselves a mansion. Individual people with ideas can only make indie games.

While I agree with you that budget is certainly a factor, I think budget alone kind of overstates the case that you're trying to make.

Two of the most influential visual novels in the genre, Tsukihime and Higurashi, were both literally created by a couple dudes in a basement each, and while certainly not gold-plated 6-figure mansion experiences, still vastly outstrip the scope, ambition and quality of any Western visual novel I'm aware of. Maybe they're kinda shabby mansions, but they're clearly larger and of different provenance to the log cabins.

Visual novels are like, the cheapest medium out there to create behind literal novels; while you certainly need budget for the best graphics and voice actors, you can get very far by just having a good writer, a good artist and a good composer.

While I agree that there's no, say, Western Clannad because of budgetary reasons, I think it's much more a deficiency of vision (and frankly, skill, because all the competent people do something respectable instead) that is why no serious Western competitor to something like Tsukihime or Higurashi exists.

While I agree that there's no, say, Western Clannad because of budgetary reasons

Ahem. The OG Clannad might disagree about that.

So tell me if I understand this correctly. The controversy is that a fan artist, in no way affiliated with the original game, made bad Doki Doki Literature fan art where they made the teenage girl characters look mannish?

This truly seems like a tempest in a teapot to me.

Like, whenever I learn about a controversy on any social media site that I'm not on (and that's basically all of them), I always feel like I'm getting news from a parallel world slightly worse than ours. Is this seriously a controversy? Was the fan artist particularly well known or influential before this? Why should literally anyone not involved in the flame war on Tik Tok care one iota about this?

This truly seems like a tempest in a teapot to me.

That's why I called a mise en abyme.

Why should literally anyone not involved in the flame war on Tik Tok care one iota about this

The idea is that it reflects greater trends.

The artist in question has about 400,000 followers, so, more than BAP on X.

The artist in question has about 400,000 followers, so, more than BAP on X.

My limited understand is that Tik Tok followers are different from followers on older sites like Youtube or X/Twitter. I remember hearing some influencer on a podcast or radio show say that Tik Tok follower counts are so inflated that advertisers and brand deals had to adjust in response.

I suspect a lot of Tik Tok followers are bots or fakes, more so than on other sites.

But even so. I just feel like going after a random fan artist feels like such small potatoes for the culture war in general.

Like, what does this battle accomplish in the larger culture war one way or the other? There were always going to be bad artists who made cringey art, and tried to defend it in social justice terms. Why feed the toxoplasma and take up arms in this case? When it's not even the actual video game studio doing the culture war thing, I don't see what anyone is hoping to accomplish here.

I just thought it was funny how people are gas-lighting about the art looking like men. It says something about human nature and the culture war more broadly.

Something I noticed being in the Homestuck fandom for a while, during content droughts what seemed like the majority of the new fanart you’d see produced was like this; black butch Rose, trans Jade built like a linebacker, basically everyone brownwashed, visually queered, and made uglier and/or fatter. When big updates would drop, more normal people would come back to the fandom, and you’d see a lot more art that was pretty and actually representative of the characters. I think the people who are still making fan content for a more obscure piece of media that hasn’t seen updates in years are more likely to be weird, deep into queer subcultures, or have an axe to grind with representation.

It can get annoying, especially in the modern media environment where Twitter and other social media collapses the distance between creators and fans. Relatively small groups of very motivated people can exert surprising amounts of influence on creators these days, pushing for their preferred (queer) ships to be made canon. In the case of Homestuck, the creator would go as far as to reboot the whole story and make gay everyone who wasn’t gay yet besides John. See Korra and RWBY for other, less extreme examples.

It has made me much less tolerant overall, seeing how quickly fandoms get overtaken and everything has to be made gayer to accommodate them. I don’t mind LGBT people being represented in theory, but as a straight person I don’t get any enjoyment out of reading about such relationships, and representation seems increasingly zero-sum when a property giving some gay representation inevitably leads to them demanding more and more.

but as a straight person I don’t get any enjoyment out of reading about such relationships

Weird. I enjoy reading straight relationships just fine. Just not when they're bad and shoehorned in and superfluous to the plot, like a lot of Hollywood movie romance subplots.

What you might be seeing is that a lot of gay relationships in fiction are quite low effort, because they're being written cynically as representation slop, or because they're written by people who aren't gay (I would be fucking shit at writing straight romance, I don't know the internal experience of the courtship at all) or because they're being written as a wish fulfilment by the kind of gay authors who didn't have a social life.

I don't know, I don't get particular enjoyment out of straight or gay relationships, most media I prefer isn't really improved by relationships though. Stories well told in my opinion strip out most things that aren't critical and romantic relationships are either very critical to the story or should be basically minimally addressed imo. And if it's a story where the relationship is critical, which I probably wouldn't want to read in the first place, I'd probably prefer it to be something more relatable like a straight relationship.

or because they're being written as a wish fulfilment

Doesn't this describe like 90% of female romance authors?

The issue is not that the gay relationships I see are not genuine enough (with the solution being to consume even more genuine LGBT media), it is that they come at the cost of things I actually want to read about. Whether it is the main focus or just the spice, I enjoy M/F romance in my media. Gay romance does nothing for me. Possibly it’s just a relatability thing, but I imagine this is why representation is such an important point for activists - most people want to see themselves in their stories. I believe you when you say you enjoy straight relationships, but I still would bet that on the whole, gay people don’t get as much enjoyment out of them as they do homosexual romance. I understand why they’d push for more and more representation, but it doesn’t change that their tastes are adversarial to mine.

Most of the examples I gave came at the explicit cost of a hetero ship that the story had previously pushed, sunk after years of fans aggressively pushing for the gay alternative until it became canon. Yang/Blake in RWBY is a pretty obvious example of this. Homestuck was even more egregious; by the end of the story it seemed like every character not named John Egbert was in a gay romance, or about to be. I would call these changes anything but cynical (the creators probably felt strongly about their inclusion by the time they did it), but they ruined big parts of the story for me nonetheless.

Somewhat related to this subject is something I’ve been wanting to write more about for a while. Non-toxic straight relationships in media where the man takes the role of protector and emotional anchor while the woman is more emotional, soft, delicate, in need of protecting, etc. are a lot harder to find these days. This has been stigmatized heavily from decades of feminist criticism, so writers tend to avoid depicting women that way with men. This type of pairing has not gone away entirely, though - the only time you see it is when the writer makes the man into a woman. Historia and Ymir in AOT, or the relationship between the two researchers in this SCP are the examples that come to mind right now, but if you keep an eye out for it you’ll see what I mean. You can probably find counter examples in anime, obviously, or in Western media if the couple is toxic, breaks up, someone dies, or is otherwise sunk.

To preempt the what does this matter response from other people reading: abandon the reigns of cultural criticism at your own peril. Much of what people believe about the world comes from the media they consume. Fandom culture is upstream of future creators. LGBT people are active and relentless in pushing for what they want, and as a result the media landscape has gotten much, much gayer in the last decade. Your family, friends, children, coworkers, etc. will all be influenced by media to some degree, so it’s something to take seriously.

The issue is not that the gay relationships I see are not genuine enough (with the solution being to consume even more genuine LGBT media)

The solution is that we shame and mock people who write bad, shoehorned in romances. None of us should have to read bad content.

Possibly it’s just a relatability thing, but I imagine this is why representation is such an important point for activists - most people want to see themselves in their stories.

I never really understood this. I don't need my heroes to be proxies for me. I appreciate good characters for their own sake.

Most of the examples I gave came at the explicit cost of a hetero ship that the story had previously pushed, sunk after years of fans aggressively pushing for the gay alternative until it became canon.

I don't like instances of fandoms pressing things on authors, no matter the direction. Every author should just ignore their fandom and do what they were going to in the first place. Any time I detect that a decision was made in response to fan pressure, I hate it. Romance or no.

I never really understood this. I don't need my heroes to be proxies for me. I appreciate good characters for their own sake.

Same! If I wanted to read about someone like me, I'd just go experience life directly. I turn to fiction because I'm looking for something not like my experience.

Or in other words, you want an actual romance that makes sense, not a religious screed about how much the author loves LGBTesus.

Christian media has the same problem; ironically, by writing something competent it also tends to cease being explicitly Christian media ("Lord of the Rings is evil because it has witchcraft") even if it was written with that exact intent (again, LoTR being a blatant example of that).

The most prominent Homestuck alumni has arguably done exactly this in his games; as despite what the LGBTesus-worshippers will claim "LGBT themes" in the game are completely-to-almost-completely absent (so no "I'm So Oppressed" scenes for the fandom to get off on, though this reaction is baited a couple of times) despite the fact one such relationship is prominent in the story and the main character is of indeterminate sex (it makes thematic sense for them to be a 'they'). One does notice that it may arguably be creeping into certain areas, but you have to go digging for it, it's played for laughs (and remembering that ghost writers carry their religion with them in a way this author does not), and there's a roughly equal amount of casual blasphemy if you're paying attention.

I understand why they’d push for more and more representation

That's just called being selfish, though. I get that an explicit pillar of that religion is that these people get to be that way because Muh Oppression, but as always it remains the case that they're not making representation better, they're just enshittifying making fiction worse.

You're being pretty vague here. I assume you're taking about Toby Fox's games? Can you get more specific about what you see as "casual blasphemy" and LGBT themes "played for laughs"?

Can you get more specific about what you see as "casual blasphemy"

Sure. In the most recent chapter, we have "only women can give birth [to slam dunks]", the antagonist casually misgendering-as-insult (the fandom is too stupid to realize this, though), and your gender identity owes me 5 dollars.

The closest thing that you could consider a trans allegory is... a lot more complicated than that. Her Undertale counterpart is kind of like that as well (she is yet another reference to this game). Most of that conflict is resolved in a way not comprehensible to LGBTesus-followers; it's a lot more prosocial 'coming to terms with oneself' than the 'fuck everyone else, I'm an X now'. It's actually something common to Japanese media covering this trope (basically, they don't make it your problem). Kodaka in particular has done it a couple times.

Otherwise, though, the main romance is a lesbian one, but this isn't treated as noteworthy in basically any way. (It's possible to read it that way, but I don't think that's what he means.) There's also a male character that gets catfished; the drama there is, well, that he got catfished, not that it's a guy on the other end.

My apologies for the vagueposting; I don't intend to be some sort of vagueposting king, running over anthropomorphic deer with my truck after consuming the 7 ice-cold beers.

Previous discussion

Is it really that disgusting for a straight man to think about having sex with a man?

Scientific study from year 2017 (news article):

  • 120 male participants viewed photographs in six categories: neutral items (e. g., a binder clip); disgusting items (e. g., a bowl full of maggots); man+woman public displays of affection; man+woman kissing; man+man public displays of affection; and man+man kissing. Afterward, their disgust was measured through levels of a digestive enzyme that appears in the saliva of a stressed human.

  • A statistically significant increase in enzyme level was found only when comparing man+man kissing to neutral items (p < 0.2 %), comparing man+man kissing to man+woman public displays of affection (p < 2.0 %), and comparing disgusting items to neutral items (p < 3.6 %). This result was obtained among all participants, not just among the ones who self-reported as disliking homosexual men in an online survey that was administered prior to the experiment.

Presumably, actual sex would prompt an even greater response than mere kissing.

I feel like this came up in the previous discussion too, but there is the almost uncontrollable null hypothesis that it's still all subtle social conditioning (since it seems that disgust responses towards interracial relations were once similarly common but now I wouldn't be surprised if even a bona fide KKK member would struggle to muster visceral disgust at a WM*F couple making out). Of course if true this is a boon to the progressive case for deep social engineering.

Why would social conditioning be the null hypothesis?

Well, a wordcel beloved of many here once quipped that the sovereign determines the null hypothesis, and the current sovereign surely is not on the side of aversion to homosexuality being natural or inevitable.

More prosaically, if what you are seeking to prove is that homosexuality is unnatural, then the outcome that gut responses are not against it due to nature is a null result.

Not nature is not the same as socially conditioned though. Theres other options.

Not to mention I don't think you can socially condition people into finding things gross, well besides on an individual basis like a clockwork orange but that wouldn't scale. Disgust reactions seem very visceral and deep seated.

Not to mention I don't think you can socially condition people into finding things gross

I can't, society at large surely can. Apart from the examples that already came up, there are the food cases of raw fish, animal meat, insects, milk and a variety of fermented products, of which I'd wager the majority of humans on the planet experiences disgust reactions to at least one of. How does your model of disgust reactions as something natural explain that?

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Homestuck fandom

Viciously hates both the author and the other parts of the fandom and has done so for more than a decade. To be fair Andrew Hussie also hates the entire fandom intern and has not been shy in expressing this.

Homestuck

That was some kind of patient zero shit for tumblerism and reddit nonsense. I'm still wondering if the whole thing was a psy-op.

You have to press the Enter key twice in order to leave behind the blockquote.

Ah dang it. Thanks. You know you're getting old when you get filtered by reddit's markdown, specifically something which you already know how it works.

So the EU has renewed the general refugee status of Ukrainians in Europe. Obviously this is reasonable on humanitarian grounds, war is terrible and if we can shelter people safely away from it it is the decent thing to do. (Just try not to apply similar standards to Gaza, a conflict which has a far higher casualty rate among the civilian population.)

However, there is a new provision:

On 15 July 2026, as part of the extension of temporary protection, EU countries also agreed that, recognising both the need to protect displaced persons and Ukraine's need to defend itself against Russia's illegal war of aggression, temporary protection should be granted only to those complying with their military obligations in Ukraine. This change applies only to new applicants and does not affect people already benefiting from temporary protection in the EU.

Personally I am a bit of two minds about the Ukraine war. On the one hand, I am all for my taxes paying for Ukrainian weapons for as long as Ukraine cares to fight Russia. Punishing a defector against the rule based international order while also weakening the main NATO adversary seems an excellent investment.

On the other hand, Ukraine seems like the kind of meat-grinder conflict like WW1 where the best option is not to fight it, and the second best option is to stop fighting sooner rather than condemning another few hundred thousands to death in a likely futile attempt to change the strategic picture. In WW1, among millions of volunteers butchering each other in the trenches, the wisest were probably the few who decided that they did not give a fuck about any dead archduke and would try to reach a neutral country rather than being compelled to murder and get murdered by the crazies who had taken over their countries.

My understanding is that Ukraine (unlike the German basic law) does not recognize conscious objectors to military service. Yet we only extend the right to refuse military service to the Ukrainian men who had already fled from the draft, but not the ones coming now.

Most of the risk of death is actually to military personnel. Numbers are contested, but it seems that being in the armed forces probably increases one's risk of death by more than 10x compared to civilians. If anyone has a claim that they are in physical danger from the war, it is military-age men.

I am also wondering what the long term plan of the EU is. In two years, will Merz and vdL tell the Ukrainian boys who fled to Germany at age 12 that they are now old enough to die for their country and ship them back?

ersonally I am a bit of two minds about the Ukraine war. On the one hand, I am all for my taxes paying for Ukrainian weapons for as long as Ukraine cares to fight Russia. Punishing a defector against the rule based international order while also weakening the main NATO adversary seems an excellent investment.

I think we need to continue giving Ukraine money in the long run. For the sole fact that saving the innocent people in the country is a good for its own sake.

I agree that this is an excellent reason, but is contingent on the outcome of the war.

Well they should. Germany should just summarily execute the draft dodgers- shipping them back to their country is a light sentence.

Should we also execute Russian draft dodgers?

Also, should we generally enforce other countries laws? Send back the North Korean defector, or the girl who fled an abusive marriage in Afghanistan?

On the one hand, I am all for my taxes paying for Ukrainian weapons for as long as Ukraine cares to fight Russia.

I see various commenters repeating this claim. Have they considered the high probability that the causality is the other way around?

I have considered it, and rejected it. When Russia was not engaged in a genocidal* war against Ukraine, Ukrainians did not wish to fight Russia. Now Russia is engaged in a genocidal war against Ukraine, Ukrainians do wish to fight Russia. So Occam's razor says that Ukrainian belligerence is caused by Russian policy, which is not consistent with it being caused by European aid. (Which was not particularly significant at the time the key decision to fight was taken in Kyiv).

* Genocidal both in the technical sense that abolishing Ukrainian nationhood and forcibly Russifying Ukrainians is a stated Russian war aim, and in the colloquial sense that Russia is killing large numbers of Ukrainian civilians in Russian-occupied Ukraine.

I think it’s implied that the conditional is “Ukraine cares to fight Russia assuming it has the means to do so”

Or, rephrased, “if Ukraine cares to fight Russia but lacks weapons, then I’m fine giving it weapons.”

Again, have you considered the possibility that to the extent Ukrainian soldiers keep defending their positions – which in itself is not sufficient to win the war, to be sure –, they are largely doing so under the assumption that not only will NATO keep supporting them but will in fact escalate the war should the defense positions collapse?

Yes. Whether or not Ukraine fights is entirely their decision. But if they're willing to take up arms, I'm willing to have my tax money go towards making sure they have those arms to take up.

Fear for your life because you're gay and people in your country hate you? Fine we'll help you out. Fear for your life because your government wants to blow you up? Sorry we prefer you dead actually.

All those great speeches about liberalism and the banality of evil just to end up here again.

Fear for your life because a foreign invader wants to blow you up?

Come on now, do you really think that the 'Ukrainian Government wants to blow up Ukrainian soliders' is a reasonable take?

They would much rather put drones in the line of danger than soldiers. Unlike Vladimir's meat grinder tactics.

Conscientious objectors are people too. You don't get to force people who swore no oath to kill because you want to win a war.

Moreover, conscription is slavery and morally reprehensible as such. Press gangs likely occupy the lowest circles of hell, along with pirates and other enemies of humanity.

I think it's as reasonable a take as the claims of the asylum seekers about being gay etc. usually are.

How are they even remotely similar? Individual asylum seekers lying about being gay to get asylum vs a Ukrainian government which is, in reality, doing as much as it can to minimise casualties of its own soldiers getting accused of deliberately blowing them up.

Even if we assume that asylum applicants claiming to be in fatal danger at home in the Third World due to being gay are actually gay, we can safely assume that the level of discrimination they do suffer as a result is usually not fatal or even significant. Severe persecution of homosexuality is more of an exception than the norm even in these areas, as far as I know. And yet the EU authorities generally accept these claims or at least do not expel such applicants.

When applying the same loose standards to Ukrainian male refugees who would be conscripted at home were they repatriated, then yes, we can safely assume that, in the circumstances the government will be putting them in, they will not be leaving the army until they die or get crippled. They will be, in effect, sent to be blown up in some futile operation. This NAFO notion that meat grinder tactics are totally alien from noble Westernized Ukrainians who share zero cultural similarities with the Moskal is frankly laughable and cringe.

My understanding was that although very few countries bother to do much persecution of homosexuals, there’s plenty of countries where informal lynchings of sodomites are common and ignored by the police.

They will be, in effect, sent to be blown up in same futile operation

I think this is the key part of our disagreement. You think that Ukraine defending itself is pointless or illegitimate, and should therefore just surrender so Russia can do whatever it wants.

I think that a country defending itself from an expansionist dictatorship with genocidal aspirations is not only legitimate and noble, but also something that the west should support, in order to reinforce the post-war norm that big countries can't just annex small countries if they feel like it. And what the Ukrainians are doing seems far from futile.

'some', not 'same'; it was a typo. Yes, it's plain observable fact that the Ukrainian army has engaged in futile operations like the Kursk incursion, plus counterattacks and defensive operations with no chance of success (trying to establish a Dniepr bridgehead etc). And yes, nameless conscripts get sacrificed. All of this then gets conveniently forgotten in Western mainstream media.

(Also I find it curious that you responded to just one half-sentence.)

Who actually believes unironically in the universality of such norms anyway? Do the same people oppose Israel as well, as an expansionist regime with genocidal aspirations? Or Azerbaijan? I doubt.

(Also I find it curious that you responded to just one half-sentence.)

I quoted that part because it's the fundamental crux of our disagreement. You believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the Ukrainian state should just surrender because fighting is, in your words, futile. I don't think it should, unless the people wish it (which they don't).

It's also worth pointing out that IGI-111 was claiming that Ukrainian soldiers were being blown up by the Ukrainian government.

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Regardless of what anyone here thinks, this is aimed at locking up Ukranian refugees from the press gangs and delivering them back to their government like escaped slaves.

We can take it as read that they think dying for their country isn't legitimate or noble, or they would have done it voluntarily.

Some people are just wrong- Dulce et decorum est. They’re committing treason and that’s it.

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It reminds me of the time around 2017 I think when the EU was pointedly ignoring the Spanish government arresting pensioners in Barcelona for wanting the chance to vote for Catalan independence while screeching about how the UK was acting like some colonial overlord in Scotland for not allowing them independence, even though they explicitly chose not to in 2014.

All those great speeches about liberalism and the banality of evil just to end up here again.

This sort of BS was already on display when the EU banned Russian tourists from its territory. Some Baltic or Finnish girlboss politician declared that visiting Europe is a privilege, not a right - and this was coming from the same ruling clique that engineered the refugee crisis in 2015.

temporary protection should be granted only to those complying with their military obligations in Ukraine

Amusingly understated way to say Tinder dates and nightclub carousel riding will continue for Ukrainian women while any Ukrainian men should get sent to the trenches to be shot at and bombed.

gordon_ramsay.jpg:

EU to black and brown migrants: “Oh dear, oh dear, gorgeous”
EU to Ukrainian men fleeing conscription: “You fucking donkey”

You repost that meme over and over, but Arun Pudur's citations are "per media reports." Yes, I'm sure if you search Tinder for "Ukrainian women" you will find a lot.

Are there any actual numbers indicating just how many Ukrainian women have left Ukraine and joined Tinder? Do you know what percentage of Ukrainian women have fled compared to the percentage of Ukrainian men who have fled?

You repost that meme

Happy to share awareness among those who are less initiated and to remind those who may have forgotten.

Do you know what percentage of Ukrainian women have fled compared to the percentage of Ukrainian men who have fled?

Playing along with the (rhetorical) question, over 30% of Ukrainian women aged 20-29 were already gone as of May 2023 (at the latest, since that was when the report was published) vs. pre-war, as opposed to 4-5% of Ukrainian men (a minority but material fraction of whom may had literally died in war). As of or before May 2023 this would already have been quite dispiriting for a young Ukrainian man getting shot at and/or bombed in the trenches (if he hadn't already died), much less facing a 2:3 girl:guy ratio in those age groups if/when he returns to civilian life (assuming he survives). Competition from 30-39 year old men for 20-29 women would also be more intense than usual given the even greater relative outmigration of 30-39 year-old women.

The ratio from the May 2023 report would have only deteriorated given any Ukrainian outmigration that has occurred since the time the figures were originally gathered (the ratio declines linearly for any proportional outmigration, for example, another 4-5% decrease from prewar in young Ukrainian men and 32-33% decrease from prewar in young Ukrainian women would mean about a remaining 1:3 girl:guy ratio).

Are there any actual numbers indicating just how many Ukrainianu women have left Ukraine and joined Tinder?

Women, especially young attractive women, are generally present on Tinder and/or other online dating sites, if not Instagram, TikTok, SnapChat, etc. No marginal joining needed to continue thotting about, just maintaining or augmenting one's presence would be more than enough.

I'm assuming his larger point is that Ukrainian women, unlike men, are not being drafted, either for military service or labour (I guess) and are generally not prevented from leaving the country.

It seems that it's harder as a Ukrainian than an African to take refuge in Europe and it's harder for a European than an Indian to take refuge in America, when ideally it should be the other way round. Why do we not incentivize the best and most culturally similar minds to come to our countries?

The first part is entirely wrong. Ukrainians got collective protection immediately in 2022, and soon many will be eligable for permanent residency. The only talk now is about men who could serve in the military, and even then my guess is it would be a small minority who would actually be "deported" and the countries most likely to do it would be neighbouring ones like Poland.

Just try not to apply similar standards to Gaza, a conflict which has a far higher casualty rate among the civilian population.

I strongly suspect that most people with "FREE PALESTINE" in their Instagram bios don't want to let Palestinian refugees into Europe (or anywhere outside of Gaza), because that would constitute "ethnic cleansing".

I do not think that this is a common objection.

Providing a better alternative to anyone living in shitty conditions is generally not considered ethnic cleansing, especially not on part of the party providing the alternative (unless it is also responsible for creating the shitty conditions).

"We can't take you, because then we would be complicit in ethnic cleansing" is a reasoning on par with "I can't unlock your shackles, because then you might resist and I would be responsible for a violent rape". I do not recall seeing either in the wild.

From AP News, Why Egypt and other Arab countries are unwilling to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza:

Their refusal is rooted in fear that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into their countries and nullify Palestinian demands for statehood.

Arab countries and many Palestinians also suspect Israel might use this opportunity to force permanent demographic changes to wreck Palestinian demands for statehood in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which was also captured by Israel in 1967.

El-Sissi repeated warnings Wednesday that an exodus from Gaza was intended to “eliminate the Palestinian cause … the most important cause of our region.”

“All historical precedent points to the fact that when Palestinians are forced to leave Palestinian territory, they are not allowed to return back,” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Egypt doesn’t want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing in Gaza." [emphasis mine]

Obviously I don't believe these people. The reason Egypt doesn't want to accept refugees from Gaza is the same reason they built a massive wall along the border which extends several feet below ground level: they know that if Gazans come into Egypt, they will cause trouble. But the stated position of the Egyptian government is that accepting Gazan refugees into Egypt is tantamount to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and plenty of Western people seem to accept this reasoning at face value.

See also this article in The Journal (kind of like the Irish equivalent of the Guardian):

The language employed in Katz’s statement is an example of what Baoumi called “humanitarian camouflage”, or as the Arabic saying goes, “poison in honey”.

By this he means that Israel often attempts to “conceal criminal behaviour in the guise of a humanitarian cause”.

In this case, he said Israel is trying to justify “the mass displacement and ethnic cleansing” of Gaza [emphasis mine] by cloaking it in the language of international legal principles.

Palestinians in Gaza: do they have a right to seek asylum elsewhere?:

UNHCR has not overtly espoused this argument, which is belied by the fact that some Gaza residents are paying large amounts of money to leave, and which effectively denies them the right to exercise freedom of choice. Even so, there is an indication of such thinking in the statement provided by UNHCR, which prioritizes ‘final status issues’ over the question of asylum, and which asserts that an exodus from Gaza will make the resolution of the Palestinian refugee situation as a whole “even more intractable.”

In other words, the people of Gaza should not seek protection elsewhere, because to do so would complicate and compromise the UN-endorsed principle that Palestinian refugees have a right to return to and establish their own state. And that is an awkward position to take for an organization that simultaneously affirms that people have a universal and non-negotiable right to seek asylum.

A final point to be made about the UNHCR statement concerns its suggestion that if the Palestinians currently trapped in Gaza were to leave the territory and seek asylum elsewhere, this would facilitate any intention that Israel might have to deport, forcibly transfer or ‘ethnically cleanse’ those people [emphasis mine]. As many commentators have pointed out, if that were to happen, Israel would almost certainly not allow them to come back, and would be likely to repopulate Gaza with militant Jewish settlers, as is happening in the West Bank.

This was just a cursory Google on my phone, and it wasn't difficult to find three completely separate sources making the same basic argument: that allowing Palestinian civilians to flee Gaza amounts to ethnically cleansing it, and that it is only just to sacrifice said civilians on the altar of an independent Palestinian state, even if they would prefer not to be so sacrificed.

Eh. The fundamental argument that if you respond to "Country X occupies the land and immiserates the people" by taking in all the people and giving them a better life, you make country X's job very easy and hasten the opportunity for them to do it to you next, is sound enough, both for X=Israel and X=Russia. The fundamental difference here is that the Eurocrat lobby assert their mandate over anyone who would stand against them, within or without their dominion, by claiming moral superiority as the defenders of universal individual human rights, and to my best knowledge Egypt does no such thing. By doing this, but then still turning around and making their military convenience trump those same notions they just declared universal (e.g. when browbeating the internal opposition that takes issue with their importing of Muslim refugees), they are guilty of hypocrisy. In my eyes, official hypocrisy, being a meta-level crime against the very concept of principles, is a worse crime than any object-level violation of principles can be.

(Those who build moral frameworks to protect hypocrisy, like the concept of "whataboutism", get close to being yet another level of abstraction up, thus deserving their own deeper circle of hell.)

When Arab countries say this, they are not sincere. They don't care for the Palestinians specifically to any degree, they just care about using the Palestinians as a weapon against Israel. Actually caring about the Palestinians is limited to the Palestinians themselves and to left-wing Westerners, and I don't think left-wing Westerners mind them immigrating any more than other immigrants (though they may be inconsistent about immigration in general).

Maybe we should ship them to Madagascar or something.

When Arab countries say this, they are not sincere.

This is perfectly compatible with Westerners absorbing their position uncritically.

Yeah. This is the perfect rhetorical situation for those countries since it lets them not take the refugees whilst ultimately being able to push associated blame onto Israel.

I know the Arabs don't give a shit about the Palestinians, but The Journal is a left-leaning Irish outlet quite forcefully arguing that it would be wrong for Ireland to accept Palestinian refugees (and I'm pretty confident I could find plenty of articles in which they argue the opposite about those coming from Ukraine). E.g.:

Palestinians not being ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homeland is good for everyone including Europe. The only exception is Israel.

European governments going hard against Israel and trying to support palestinians "where they are" instead of allowing more MENA refugees into Europe, would be a great policy that would appease alot of the bleeding heart left, but alas they prefer to do the opposite.

Palestinians not being ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homeland is good for everyone

Except, presumably, the Palestinian civilians getting caught in the crossfire of the conflict in Gaza.

They should be given free passage to the West Bank until Gaza is rebuilt.

They should be given free passage to the West Bank until Gaza is rebuilt.

I'm pretty sure an Israeli government with an empty Gaza would fill it with Jewish settlements, just like they are with the West Bank.

I think you're almost exactly wrong.

https://old.reddit.com/r/uknews/comments/1uxxd2g/family_of_18_from_gaza_wins_human_rights/

This news is being widely celebrated by the Free Palpatine lot. It's about being anti-West and more specifically anti-Right Wing, not any greater principle. Right Wingers don't want the Gazans in their countries, that's all the justification the far left need to import as many of them as possible, by any means, by hook or by crook.

This news is being widely celebrated by the Free Palpatine lot

The Emperor did nothing wrong! Him being a fascist Sith Lord is just propaganda by the invidious terrorists of the Rebellion. The so called "Death Star" is just a mining platform!

Meanwhile, in the Emperor's own words, "Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station"

Emperor's own words, "Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station"

The only person who left that room alive was a despicable Jedi dragging a body, and we already know they were traitors to humanity. My cousin told me he saw Jedi gambling for slaves so the whole order was a corrupt organ of the Deep Galactic State. Clearly we can't take his word for it.

There is no evidence our beloved Emperor ever said those words. And if he did he was probably being ironic. When he somehow returns he will have a great explanation I am sure.

My cousin told me he saw Jedi gambling for slaves so the whole order was a corrupt organ of the Deep Galactic State.

I mean, it's nothing new: they let slaves fight their war...No peep from the vaunted moral authorities of the Republic as thousands* of beings were made to wage war and die for them

The one point Karen Traviss made in her Jedi rants that couldn't be denied .

* The scale is all fucked up.

Jedi? Space me! Say what you like about the tenets of Galactic Imperialism, dude, at least it's an ethos.

"Somehow, Palpatine has returned beaten the allegations."

What proportion of Gaza's civilian population has left Gaza for another country since the war began vs. what proportion of Ukraine's?

I strongly suspect that most people with "FREE PALESTINE" in their Instagram bios don't want to let Palestinian refugees into Europe (or anywhere outside of Gaza), because that would constitute "ethnic cleansing".

My guess would be that most westerners on the Free Palestine side would be pretty cool with Gazans coming to Europe, given their broad support of third world immigration generally.

Now Israel's Arab neighbours, they are the ones who don't want the Palestinians.

It isn't difficult to find examples of Westerners who explicitly argue that allowing Palestinian civilians to leave Gaza would amount to ethnic cleansing.

Yeah but a lot of that'd depend on framing.

They're largely against sending them en-masse to neighboring countries. If either an individual family wanted to come to America, or somehow the entire population was going to be airlifted to an affluent Western country I think that most of those types would be for it.

The article I linked to in the Journal was specifically about countries like Spain, Ireland and Norway taking in refugees.

I am also wondering what the long term plan of the EU is. In two years, will Merz and vdL tell the Ukrainian boys who fled to Germany at age 12 that they are now old enough to die for their country and ship them back?

It is funny when the amount of African refugees who they apparently cannot ship back due to asylum claims, meanwhile Ukraine obligations might past muster as something that is 'dangerous but needs to be done'. Also what happens if Ukraine hypothetically passes some law allowing for female conscription? Do all European residing Ukrainian women get sent back?

It is generally easier to send people back to their country of origin when said country actually wants to take the people back. The issue with arab (pretty sure most of them are not African) refugees and illegal immigrants is that their country is unwilling to accept their citizens back at the airport. They are more than happy to get rid of them.

A lot of that is due to the diaspora being worth more as a remittance check and overseas political pressure arm than as a domestic citizen, though.


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