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naraburns  nihil supernum  16d ago (text post)   3352 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for July 2026

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

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

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

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@naraburns:

@urquan:

@Amadan:

@Ioper:

Contributions for the week of June 29, 2026

@gattsuru:

@RussianAmericanMormon:

Contributions for the week of July 6, 2026

@birb_cromble:

@Rov_Scam:

@dr_analog:

@FCfromSSC:

Contributions for the week of July 13, 2026

@RenOS:

@JTarrou:

@faceh:

@johnfabian:

@FtttG:

@YoungAchamian:

@gattsuru:

Metamotte

@ZorbaTHut:

@StableOutshoot:

Contributions for the week of July 20, 2026

@urquan:

@georgioz:

@Shakes:

@MartianNight:

@FCfromSSC:

Contributions for the week of July 27, 2026

@FtttG:

@cjet79:

@Shakes:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@gattsuru:

@JeSuisCharlie:

@hanikrummihundursvin:

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"You know, sometimes when I read accounts of dating by other men I feel like I'm reading text from an alternate universe."

@urquan I am sorry, but my paranoia demands I ask you directly about this. I am very confused by your post. I know you and I know you are a good writer. But your post alternates between paragraphs that either read very human (your tee-totaller upbringing, your own experiences) or scream AI. Some examples of the latter:

Run Maggie through the hunter rules. She was married when you met her. There was no flirtation window, no escalation timeline, no enthusiastic messaging to evaluate. A system designed like clockwork to convert matches into notches would have filtered out the one woman who it sounds like you genuinely loved. You didn't run her to ground. She turned up on your doorstep because of who you'd been at the table for months. You don't grieve a "plain-looking but not fat" woman with a ranking out of 10 for five years, you grieve a person. Everything in your post says your actual type isn't a body specification; to use your own words, it's being in awe of someone. Which means the hunt was never your game, and becoming a better hunter won't fix your problem.

That is just too polished. The perfect triplet (no flirtation window...), the perfect recalls to the post's content, the "Not-X-but-Y", the whole paragraph neatly wrapping around the hunter concept, landing cleanly where it started.

You're a bartender. You've done stand-up. You dress fashionably. You're handsome, you've lost weight (and things have gotten worse since then!). Your default register is charge, banter, performance, charm. That register reads, to a lot of women, as sexual pursuit, which would explain the strangest pattern in your account: women preemptively negotiating sex with a guy whose actual ceiling is making out.

The most obvious. AIs love registers and to speak in registers that heavily overuse the word register. This is not a human register.

It might be worth one experiment before you write off the apps. Run the D&D table version of yourself inside Hinge. Answer the weird prompt, ask the question only she could answer, don't propose a date until you're actually curious about a specific person. And if curiosity never comes, don't propose one at all. See if genuine warmth or personal curiosity exists for you in text. It might not. But you've never actually tested it. You've been testing charm, which is a different vibe altogether, and it's not the one that gave you Maggie.

Again too clean. Again with the triplets. Again with the perfect landing. This closes with a thesis restatement, a punchline, a callback. Humans rarely do that, but then again I am on the Motte. And perhaps Claude writes like the Motte rather than the other way around.

That would have been where an LLM would have wrapped it up, but since I am human I can't help myself but slap on a comment about perhaps the biggest tell: the total lack of misanthropy and the therapeutic outlook. AI may motte better than us but it will never recreate our cynicism.

not sure why you wrote this column when Pangram exists? copied the first 2000 words in and 100% human generated

It's a pretty grim future we're looking at when any good writing is getting called out as being written by an LLM. You've read @urquan posts before, right? But you don't recognize any of his rhetorical style? It's AI to use triplets? Is this what every Quality Contributions thread is going to look like in a year or two? Come on, man.

I would strongly guess human.

Writing skill: Once you get in the habit of certain writing techniques, it becomes hard not to use them. Just a simple one: if I am listing things out I find it very uncomfortable to do any list length other than three.

Tone: It's a shade too harsh. Unless you beat most AIs over the head it feels impossible for them to give this level of tough but fair criticism. I'd guess without using an AI that it would respond to the post with sympathy for their plight, maybe actions for change, and maybe additional criticisms of the women.

Disappointed that Faceh's comment got so many nominations and upvotes, given that his comment was a trivially dispprovable claim (discussions of birth rates focus mostly on men) and his 'evidence' was three articles he didn't like combined with a nonsequitous call to action (find me a pronatal policy that tries to limit women's behaviour, when there are literally no pronatal policies that limit men's behaviour). For an apparently 'quality contribution', there's no actual contribution there, no argument beyond the impulse to blame women.

sigh.

My whole, larger point is that there is literally never any moment, ever, where women receive any blame, either individually or collectively. There is never any attempt to make a policy adjustment that would disadvantage women even slightly. If discussion of a given policy would upset women, it does not get discussed. If women deem a particular factual argument as 'creepy' and forbidden, you are de facto not allowed to make the argument within earshot of a woman.

The mainstream is keen to discuss MALE shortcomings, and discuss how men's behavior impacts women's happiness and thus all the things that males could be doing differently. But as I've pointed out before, good luck finding a single article that asks "what are the concerns that males have, are they valid, and what can we do to alleviate them?" Its rare to even find an article on the topic written by a male author.

That comment was far from my best work, but I've got a large amount of contributions on this topic (to my chagrin) by now and I have yet to hear a single gosh-darn refutation of the point. It often ends with the obtuse implication or direct statment "you are probably unsuccessful with women and thus resentful, and now its clear you're misogynist. Therefore (somehow) we can ignore your arguments entirely."

Such attacks are boring. Unpersuasive. Fallacious. And if the goal is to shame, intimidate, or otherwise get me to back down, ineffective. The opposite of effective. My psychological makeup is such that when you make such attempts on me, I will literally plant my feet HARDER. It is immensely gratifying to me to stand up for an unpopular point that is nonetheless correct, and feel the frustration of those who are used to using social influence to shut down debate when they realize I'm not letting it go. I care very, very little about being popular.

The fact that this forum is one of the only ones on the public-facing internet where you can point out unpopular facts and level such arguments and not get dogpiled and/or downvoted into oblivion, and I choose to use said forum to point out the glaring asymmetry in favor of women, is probably why it reads as 'misogynist' to people who come from other forums where I would be simply banned or drowned out.

EDIT: Oh look, Just today Another article written by a woman writing about how bad dating is... and how this impacts women's feelings.

TO HER CREDIT, we get this passage:

Meanwhile, a lot of men are feeling painfully inadequate. It’s not that money is the only thing a man can offer; after all, fewer women need a breadwinner now. But researchers told me that the qualities women now value more than ever—sensitivity, openness, communication skills—are not typically ingrained in men from childhood. And although men strive to meet those modern expectations, the old standards haven’t disappeared. Men are supposed to pay for dinner but also treat women as equals; to initiate flirty banter but never be creepy or aggressive; to be sturdy and masculine but also empathetic and thoughtful. Arthur, a 46-year-old in New Jersey who responded to my survey, said that he’s dated women who think he’s too nice. One explained that she broke up with him because he has “dad energy.” (“I’m not 100 percent sure what that means,” Arthur told me, “but I’m guessing it’s not very sexy.”) Another said she liked how sweet and supportive he was, yet also wanted him to be more decisive—to be “the man” in the relationship, as Arthur saw it. He wasn’t sure how to exhibit both traits at once.

My own experience is almost the inverse. I feel overqualified for the husband position at this point, and I'm continually seeing women who might, in theory, make good wives go down self-defeating, sometimes self-destructive paths such that I have a hard time seeing them as marriage material.

@faceh can you list some interesting websites or forums similar to the Motte? I often out of reading material here and, like a junkie, I need another hit of interesting discussion. I prefer to avoid reddit but if there are some decent subreddits please link them.

Unfortunately a lot of that has been pushed into walled gardens and groupchats.

Aristillus.xyz was great back in the day, I haven't be on there much lately.

Lesswrong is the classic and still active, but you have a LOT of reading to do to catch up there.

I've been banned from Reddit and have no interest in a new account so not much recommendation to make there.

Certain parts of twitter are still putting out good stuff.

I have a list of relatively reliable pro-masculinity X.com accounts that avoid the standard manosphere that are worth following, IMHO.

The Eternal September has made things rough out there. This site is one of my few regular go-tos anymore.

Whenever female accountability comes up, or lack thereof, I'm always reminded of that old IBM quote.

a computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision

There's a growing list of female founders/CEOs who turned out to be completely fabricating their company's relevant numbers. Even LITERAL BILL GATES' daughter.

Elizabeth Holmes is the most well known one, I believe.

She tried to use a pregnancy as a tactic to avoid the prison sentence. I repeat, she intentionally had a kid, whilst knowing she was going to be sent behind bars for a long while.

I don't think I need to add much commentary beyond that. And no, I'm not suggesting men don't commit corporate fraud! This is about accountability.

My whole, larger point is that there is literally never any moment, ever, where women receive any blame, either individually or collectively

Two wrongs don't make a right. Blaming the male half of humanity collectively for an obvious technological shock is just as stupid as blaming the female half. I agree with you that all those 'nobody is coupling up any more because men are terrible' articles are stupid and wrong, but the correct response is to diagnose what the actual problem is, not to reflexively say 'no, it's the women!' as good as that may feel.

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He's not suggesting blaming the female half of humanity collectively though.

just as stupid as blaming the female half.

I'm not blaming them any more than I blame a 10-year-old kid for scribbling over a priceless work of art with permanent marker. Quite frankly they probably aren't aware of the damage the vandalism is causing, and why the work of art was 'valuable' and irreplaceable. But they are indeed creating the issue, and one can still see their behavior as problematic without 'blaming' them.

So in this case, I'm pointing out the source and/or cause of the observed issue.

Nothing can be fixed if we aren't willing to openly say that women's behavior has changed, and these changes have led to the current predicaments.

I'm not the guy chalking this up to a nefarious Jewish plot or even 'feminism' as some abstract force of history. I'm also prepared to acknowledge the role of technology in creating the behavioral changes.

But I will keep pointing out the information that everyone else studiously ignores. You seem to want to continue ignoring it, I don't know why precisely.

Nothing can be fixed if we aren't willing to openly say that women's behavior has changed, and these changes have led to the current predicaments.

I'm perfectly willing to say that women's behaviour has changed, as has men's behaviour, as a consequence of the technological shock of digital entertainment and smartphones. Many people are. Freya India wrote a whole book on it. The New Statesman investigated it. Academics are studying how female educational hypergamy manifests on Tinder. Activists are trying (and succeeding) in banning smartphones from schools and blocking teenage girls from Instagram and Tiktok because of the uniquely negative effect social media has one teenage girls.

The difference between our positions is that when I see a technology breaking the world, I worry about the technology. You seem to want to ignore the technology so that you can feel righteous fury (exclusively) against women.

Let's say you win the argument and everyone spontaneously agrees with you. Yes, say women, we are like ten year olds scrawling on priceless paintings, we deserve to be blamed exclusively for the breakdown in relationship formation, faceh is right about everything.

What then? What policy proposal derives from that? Do we change the law so that women can't have smartphones and have to go out and touch grass, but men can still spend 20+ hours per week playing video games and 10+ hours watching porn?

Of course, in the real world, if you want women's behaviour to change, they have to believe that you don't hate them. After all, if you hate them, how can they trust that you have their best interests at heart?

You seem to want to ignore the technology so that you can feel righteous fury (exclusively) against women.

Here, read this diatribe I wrote very specifically about the impacts of modern tech on the Zoomer mindset:

https://www.themotte.org/post/1002/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/213098?context=8#context

I point out the dating issue, but directly in the context of tech changes.

Two years ago. Do you get why I find your assessment of my opinions nonpersuasive? You're attempting psychoanalysis that is completely underinformed.

I've noticed the other topics you bring up. But doing even a moderate amount of research reveals one gender is behaving far, far worse than the other, across the board. Tech is not the fully explanatory factor.

There's clearly a variable at work that centers on the X chromosome.

What then? What policy proposal derives from that? Do we change the law so that women can't have smartphones and have to go out and touch grass, but men can still spend 20+ hours per week playing video games and 10+ hours watching porn?

We go back to 1993. I've said this repeatedly. Remove the policies that advantage women in obtaining admission to college and getting access to loans. Literally just put things back to a more even playing field from 30 years ago. No need to go back to the 50's.

Just repeal the Gender Equity in Education Act of 1993 on the grounds that it has COMPLETELY FAILED TO ACHIEVE GENDER EQUITY IN EDUCATION.

If this small, moderate, and fundamentally inoffensive policy change is beyond the pale for you, then I simply don't believe you're engaging with the issue in good faith. You will resist ANY change and thus you are nothing but an obstacle to be overcome.

SO: Would you accept this policy change?

After all, if you hate them, how can they trust that you have their best interests at heart?

Do women, in general, have a good track record for 'picking' people who have their best interests at heart?

Be honest. We went through the entire #metoo era where we learned that women keep getting 'fooled' by predatory men and then not mentioning it until years later.

Why should they trust themselves to know who has their best interests at heart?

Activists are trying (and succeeding) in banning smartphones from schools and blocking teenage girls from Instagram and Tiktok because of the uniquely negative effect social media has one teenage girls.

They are succeeding in destroying the anonymous internet where people can say mean things about women and politicians, and women politicians, without repercussions. Good thing every single comment section will soon require state ID, for, uh, age verification.

Of course, in the real world, if you want women's behaviour to change, they have to believe that you don't hate them.

How so? The current regime very obviously hates men, doesn't very much bother anymore to hide that fact, and is at the same time extremely successful in shaping male behaviour. Which brings us back to faceh's original point.

They are succeeding in destroying the anonymous internet where people can say mean things about women and politicians, and women politicians, without repercussions.

Don't forget revenge porn laws that allow them to nuke anybody who publicly shares photos that these women themselves transmitted.

My guess is this will ultimately allow any woman who had an OnlyFans career to completely remove all evidence of it from the internet and sic the government on anyone who tries to bring it up in the future.

The current regime very obviously hates men, doesn't very much bother anymore to hide that fact, and is at the same time extremely successful in shaping male behaviour.

I wouldn't even go that far, but then again, I think that indifference is arguably worse than hate, and the current regime is CLEARLY indifferent to male struggles.

If men's issues were cared about, then the CEOs of Match group and every other dating app would be having to testify in front of congress to explain why their systems are so bad at what they purport to do.

Don't forget revenge porn laws that allow them to nuke anybody who publicly shares photos that these women themselves transmitted.

In the context of what you are responding to, this seems rather like an arson-murder-and-jaywalking complaint. They are destroying internet anonymity, and I'm not allowed to repost their old OnlyFans pics anymore!

You know, I'm old enough to remember when there was an entire feminist movement devoted to letting women post their nipples on instagram. Like, there was a point in time where women were fighting to be able to (in theory) bare their breasts online and in public.

Also Slutwalks.

Just sayin'.

Its schizophrenic to say that nudity (at least, topless nudity) isn't a big deal and shouldn't come with social Disapprobation but then make a law to criminalize posting a person's nudes online.

We've got literal Porn Stars trying to get their own content removed from the internet. I'm actually somewhat sympathetic but this ultimately creates a method for one gender to remove evidence of their past behavior from easy access, and not the other.

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I wouldn't even go that far, but then again, I think that indifference is arguably worse than hate, and the current regime is CLEARLY indifferent to male struggles.

The current regime is indifferent to male struggles. It alternates power with a regime that actively hates them.

Throughout all of human history the world has been indifferent to male struggles. Nothing has changed here. It’s just how this has become institutionalized into politics and law.

Sperm is cheap.

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Fair enough.

I think the problem is that his comment is really doing two things. @faceh is trying to make a point about how social norms and messaging affect men - MeToo and the articles he linked are illustrative examples of this - but is asking for examples of concrete pro-natal policies. Explicitly pro-natal policies are rare and thus hard to list. I can only really think of subsidized fertility treatments and government support for families with children. I think this serves to dilute the argument about culture and rules regarding relationships, sex, and dating.

If we expand our list to include these rules, I think there are actually many policies that could be reasonably argued as pro-natal that restrict in order to protect women. They are just not branded as such. For example child support, alimony, and intimate partner violence laws are all policies that disproportionately restrict men. These all affect the incentives for women to get into long-term relationships and have kids. Meanwhile, I truly am hard-pressed to think of policies that are explicitly aimed at making relationships and children look like a better choice for men.

I truly am hard-pressed to think of policies that are explicitly aimed at making relationships and children look like a better choice for men.

The obvious one to me would be joint tax filing. In practice, that acts as a big tax break for married men. And child benefits in general incentivise both men and women to have children. Surely those would count?

And rules against abortion are a big obvious restriction on female behaviour.

I think Faceh's comment is a great example of the problem with gender discourse online. There are certainly problems that need solving (low coupling leading to low birth rates being the one I care about the most). But since the cause is a technological shock affecting everyone, it doesn't fire up the blood in the same way. Much more fun to feel the righteous fury of blaming the opposite sex.

Out of these, I'm not sure anything other than child benefits count as a valid example. Abortion laws restrict female behaviour, but I don't see how they would "make relationships and children look like a better choice for men" - if anything the possibility of a pregnancy that you won't be allowed to abort adds a risk factor to relationships for men (who would be on the hook financially and often reputationally) as well. At least in Germany, the tax breaks for the married are essentially designed in such a way that they reduce the tax on the difference between the greater and the lesser earner, so men in a marriage only benefit to the extent that they pay more than their equal share into it and you might as you well see it as a tax credit for subsidising your wife. A 0<x<1 fraction of negative money is still negative money.

That being said, my meta^n-contrarian streak aside, I agree the original post should not be in this list. When reading something with the AAQC label, I hope for something a bit more rarefied than a standard internet argument, even a winning one; but a refutation of an assertion (which a supermajority of the community already clearly disagree with) with three unsurprising counterexamples and the claim that you have never personally seen a counter-counterexample is something you can find just about anywhere. This seems like a pretty egregious case of AAQC being used as a "super agree", with mod complicity. (Sorry to @faceh, whose post wound up being the jar of skub through no fault of his own.)

Fine with me.

Also I suspect that the comment thread as a whole is what might make the lead comment worth AAQCing.

Lol, I got a ban and a Quality Contribution nomination in the same week. The Motte is a truly wonderful place. Sincerely.

You're what we call a "high-variance poaster".

Nominative determinism theory disproven!

Who ever voted me here needs to get their brain checked. I don't belong in these hallowed halls. That comment was just a banal observation that anyone who spends more than 5 mins thinking about "liberalism" would realize.

I feel you, I'm kind of salty that something I banged out in a few minutes got nominated while a bunch of other posts I'd put a lot more effort into got snubbed. Clearly I do not understand what the people want.

Classic Opus Dissonance. Happens to every writer.

I presume most people downvoted my psyops post either because I said that Biden legitimately won in 2020, or because I criticised the anti-Zionist movement. I'm curious about the ratio, and also people who downvoted for some other reason.

I came away from that post feeling like you were really failing to model those movements. I channeled that into our resulting conversation, but I could see someone downvoting and moving on instead. That would most likely be driven by feeling attacked/insulted, a common enough response to being accused of lying.

There is also the trans issue. Going as hardline as you did on it in that post - literally using it as an example of obvious absurdity - gets more upvotes than downvotes here, but it does get some downvotes.

(I'm not one of the people who downvoted that post.)

I still have no idea why people downvote here, we aren't reddit, just because the feature exists doesn't mean it should be used.

I downvote when I see the same tired and repeatedly proven wrong arguments trotted out for the 100th time. Especially when they are deployed as thought terminating cliches purposely deployed to sidestep a point that was made.

It's overused, but I don't really see the problem with downvoting uncivil posts.

But people aren't downvoting "uncivil" posts, they are downvoting posts they disagree with.

I rarely downvote, but when I do it is because it is either a personal attack, or an attack on the concept of thought itself.

I downvote uncivil posts, and your initial post seemed to say that downvoting for any reason was senseless, so I felt the need to object.

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