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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   24152 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026

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I played Link's Awakening with my wife and daughter. My wife was taken back at the ending (surprised, not disliking). I think she basically just assumed the whole time that it wouldn't end with everyone on Koholint basically dying, or vanishing from existence.

This got me thinking about how I played this, or watched my brother play it, when I was the same age as my daughter. None of the media she consumes challenges her with difficult endings. Everything HAS to return to the status quo at the end, because we can't risk anyone being unhappy. In Frozen, Anna is unfrozen. In Moana, even Maui gets his fucking hook back after it breaks. Fake out deaths and fake out status quo changes happen left and right, but it is really rare to see something that actually sticks.

I love downer endings, and I think it made me who I am. It makes me sad and disappointed and a little disgusted to see basically all of the media of my kids' day be bland and not challenging them to really feel something other than a vague blandly happy dance party ending. Dance party endings aren't new, but have been made ubiquitous in the past 20 years. Same with fake out deaths, and I blame Marvel for that. I guess I personally chalk this all up to the general trend towards never making anyone uncomfortable, which is tied in with the corporatization of media and corporate-memphization of media.

I don’t think it’s about “no downer ending” so much as leaving the status quo so that there’s room for expansion of the series. A movie that kills off a major character (let alone several) dies or gets seriously injured has less room for sequels. Had the Marvel snap storyline stuck, the series would have to change — no Spider-Man for example, and Thor being fat and depressed. How do you make the next several Marvel movies when you’ve wrecked the franchise by killing off major popular characters?

I love downer endings

I, along with probably the vast majority of readers, dislike / outright hate downer endings. I hate writers killing off characters I care about just "because the emotional conclusion needs main character to suffer loss" and other such bullshit (see eg. Harry Potter). That's just lazy and sloppy and feels like the writer pulling out the rug from under the reader in an intentional "hah, hah, fooled you, idiot!"-middle finger gesture instead of proper plotting and writing.

What I have no problem with and even like is the A Song of Ice and Fire type thing where it's made clear that this is the type of book where People Die (or even Anyone Can Die). The book sets proper expectations and then the "will they survive or not?" question becomes a part of the enjoyment when reading.

For a while (this is years ago) I got so fed-up with forced happy endings that I wanted the "this would be the logical outcome of what went before" bad endings.

But then again, after a while, where every ending is a bad ending and it's all morally grey and grubby and we're all cynics together in the rain and the muck, I wanted some happy endings again.

Forcing a happy ending where it shouldn't go is poor work, but so is "and everyone dies in the end, ha ha, I'm the Joker" type endings. I think this is why A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms got so much positive reaction: what, a guy who has a heart of gold? and is doing his best to live up to the noble qualities he thinks a true knight should have? and he isn't slapped down as a fool for it?

Same with Project Hail Mary - what, a guy who gets to have a happy ending instead of dying miserably and hopelessly in space? who gets to rescue his alien best buddy? Grace Rocky do indeed save stars?

Where a downer ending fits, it should be included. But grimdark for the sake of it burned itself out.

I’m inclined to forgive Project Hail Mary for that given the that it’s a giant Jesus allegory.

I don't think it is a Jesus allegory. There's certainly the Hail Mary pun, but plot-wise it's just a straightforward 'hero overcoming the odds' story written by an atheist.

-Dr. “Grace” (heh) is the only man who can save humanity

-After some initial reluctance in a pastoral garden area he is nabbed by soldiers and crucified along with two other scientists.

-In the underworld, he meets Rocky. Literally made out of dirt of like Adam. Also rocks are used as a spiritually significant metaphor throughout the bible: raising up new children of Abraham from these rocks, on this rock I will build my church, I will replace your heart of stone with a heart of flesh, etc etc.

Rocky is screwed. Rocky’s entire people are screwed. He’s trying to find the truth but there’s things about the universe that he just can’t understand without Grace showing him.

-the whole middle act is Rocky learning to live a life like Grace, even though as a sentient rock he will never really be able to competently follow his example.

-This culminates with Rocky’s death, both a metaphor for the death of the old man and being born again, and the literal physical martyrdom of the saints.

-Rocky awakes out of the underworld a new heaven and a new earth. Even though he lost his life for Dr Grace’s sake he saved it. And now he gets to stay with Grace forever.

It’s about as subtle as a rock.

story written by an atheist

So is Steven King, but he still wrote the Stand

I think you're really grasping at straws. Here's a quote from Weir himself:

I dislike social commentary. Like… I really hate it. When I’m reading a book, I just want to be entertained, not preached at by the author. Plus, it ruins the wonder of the story if I know the author has a political or social axe to grind. I no longer speculate about all possible outcomes of the story because I know for a fact that the universe of that book will conspire to ensure that the author’s political agenda is validated. I hate that.

I put no politics or social commentary into my stories at all. Anyone who thinks they see something like that is reading it in on their own. I have no point to make, and I’m not trying to affect the reader’s opinion on anything. My sole job is to entertain, and I stick to that.

He's talking more about politics, but when the author describes himself as an agnostic and says he deliberately avoids putting a political or social commentary in his books, I really don't think you can conclude that the book is a religious allegory.

In Protestant America, "Hail Mary" is more likely to be a gridiron-driven reference to an unlikely last-minute turnaround than it is to be a reference to the common Catholic prayer.

I'm not sure how it's possible to reference the former without referencing the latter, since the former exists as a reference to the latter.

The pun in Hail Mary is a reference to the prayer ("Hail Mary, full of Grace")

My sense about character deaths is that they are bellwethers for how serious the author is willing to be about following the plot where it is taken, like a sort of "will the ACLU defend actual nazis?" question. If the writing bends over backwards to let everyone survive, chances are it will also opt for the simple, emotionally safe option in other less obvious aspects, since it seems like a small sacrifice to make if you have already given up on allowing death, and only by removing all other sources of emotional discomfort does it become possible to capture the emotionally fragile segment of the market.

It might be too much of an ask to make a realistic war story child-friendly, but if you already wrote a story about war with no casualties, then going further to make one party a Disney villain with zero nuance and never letting the good guys tell a noble lie seems a more acceptable price to pay for getting the money of 10 year olds and polytraumatised sociology students.

In addition to what @roystgnr says, I feel like Rowling suffered from a syndrome many authors do, which is that she ended up loving her characters and as such didn't want to kill as many of them as would have made sense. Who really died in the final battle, that we actually care about? One half of an identical duo, Lupin, and Tonks. That's not that much, and many more would have been warranted if the Death Eaters were actually a real threat.

Maybe, but it is a children's story, and the expectations would have been that Lupin and Tonks get their happy ending after all they suffered before that. No, they die, and their child is left an orphan. That's dark enough for a kid's story: sometimes bad things happen to good people, and it's not fair, but this is how life is.

Harry Potter as an example is kind of strange. Harry's parents being dead is intro backstory. Mid-book 1 you find out that Wizard Hitler murdered them. Book 1 climax, you learn WH is coming back. Clearly there's some deadly shit about to go down.

Yet it takes until Book 4 before we get a major character death, and Book 6 before we get one that Harry and the readers really care about! The Watsonian explanation (Dr., not Emma) appears to be that Wizard Hitler is just even more outnumbered and incompetent (excepting the wizardry) than Regular Hitler was, and needs to lay low a lot, but the Doylist explanation is clearly that Rowling knew she was writing for kids and needed to pull her punches a bit.

Yet it takes until Book 4 before we get a major character death, and Book 6 before we get one that Harry and the readers really care about!

Yes, that's my point. It gets established for almost five books that no one the readers truly care about is harmed, then Sirius gets offed at the end of book 5 and in the final battle of the entire series in book 7 more people get offed with no preparation and with nothing left of the book for their deaths to even influence. Those deaths just feel like a poor writer going "the tropes say I should kill some characters, so I'll just off them right like that".

In contrast Dumbledore's death is long foreshadowed and provides good progression for the story and thus feels like natural instead of being an ass-pull just to piss of the reader.

So it's not that character deaths or loss for the main characters are bad as such but many times they're poorly done and just make the reader feel bad.

Yeah. I basically just treat the deaths as non-canon, especially given how prevalent and underwhelming they are all at once at the end. She's basically just like "okay, I don't need this character for the rest of the story, might as well kill them for some cheap feels". I'm not sad they're gone because I don't think Rowling earned it, in the same way that an author who has their character train for 10,000 years in a hyperbolic time chamber offscreen hasn't really earned their power spike and I don't treat the number seriously.

That reminds me of when I was reading Alice in Wonderland to my daughter. When I got to the end, and Alice woke up and it was all a dream, it blew her damned mind right out of her skull and through the milky way. She'd never encountered a since "and it was all dream" story before, so I'm glad Alice in Wonderland got to be her first. She talked about that "twist" for days on end.

That said, unlike almost every other book I've read to her, she never asked for it again. I think something about none of it being "real" took the stakes out of the story and ruined it for her.

That said I've opined for ages that there is nothing truly challenging in kid's movies anymore. Something that will give them some well deserved nightmares to work through. Like pink elephants on parade, or children being turned into donkeys, or Willy Wonka's magic tunnel through HELL, or the first 10 minutes of Transformers: The Movie where they kill literally every character you got attached to over about 100 syndicated episodes you'd watched in repeat since before you were making memories.

Man I'm dating myself with these references.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish wasn't bad on that front, but that's the only thing vaguely modern that I can think of.

Hey, I went to see Coyote vs. Acme today (Great movie! Go see it to give WB the middle finger!), and there was a trailer for a new movie by the folks who made "Coraline". If we can count on anyone to give children nightmares in the modern era, it'll be them...

All the sadness is front loaded.

Frozen, the parents die in a storm.

In moana the grandmother dies.

In the latest Star wars han solo dies and then Luke dies.

In tangled a baby is kidnapped.

Etc.

Coco has a proper sadness at the end. So there's at least something.

This post is poetry.

I too feel like I've see fake-out deaths happen more and more often, and I don't know if it's me growing up or if it's a real thing. But it just seems to keep happening in basically all major mainstream media works, like in the last couple seasons of Game of Thrones where, e.g. Jon Snow was saved from falling into an icy lake by his uncle coming out of nowhere, and then during the Battle of Winterfell, we kept seeing character after character get overwhelmed by zombies, only to cut away, and then later see that they somehow got out perfectly fine. Or the latest Star Wars films where we saw Kylo Ren walk out of a crashing spaceship unscathed without explanation, and then later come back from falling into a pit to save Rey, and then have Rey "die" only to get saved by him. Or recent Marvel films like Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness where Wong fell down the side of a mountain, only to be revealed to have landed on a ledge to survive. I haven't watched the latest Jurassic World film, but I heard that there was a scene near the end where a major character says "go on without me" to do a last stand, only to show up 15 minutes later unscathed, to be rescued.

If there is indeed a trend, I feel like it has to do with the extension of childhood that's been happening all throughout the West at least since my millennial generation and possibly longer. The writers want the benefits without the costs, the power without the responsibility, to have their cake and eat it too, to have that emotional death moment without the death. Children get to enjoy some of that, because they (usually) have guardians to take care of the responsibility stuff while giving them the benefits. I also expect that this effect might be stronger among mainstream media writers, as, I'm guessing, they're more likely, due to nepotism, to come from more wealthy and well-connected families which can allow them to live as children for decades at adult age.

I was thinking about Star wars recently, and one conclusion I came to is that it's really strange that these are films that:

  1. Were originally driven by a creative vision
  2. Were so beloved by fans, who knew them inside and out and just positively worshipped them
  3. And somehow, stewardship of them were handed over to corporations. People just doing their bare-minimum job, trying to get good numbers to please the board of directors and not offend anyone, but who don't really give a shit about anything.

Like, I wouldn't trust my corporate self to write and produce the continuations of beloved franchises. When you're at work, if you're not a visionary, you just care about not getting fired and keeping people happy.

It's just bizarre. Of course they failed so hard.

One problem's that, at scale, it has to get handed over. Even in the height of George Lucas-era Star Wars, you had stuff like suits arguing spice wasn't a drug (one of the bizarre situations where Kevin J Anderson was the good guy!), just because it wasn't practical for some rando writing a weird one-off novel in the universe to talk to the chief, if the chief's doing anything else. And that's kinda the good ending: Star Trek was notorious for no one in corporate caring about anything but the tv shows (and eventually not even that), so you'd get this endless parade of original fiction recycled into EU fic, regardless of whether it fit the characters or setting in the slightest.

But you definitely do get some variation. For all golden age minecrafters complain about Dinnerbone (sometimes with reason: hidden lava one-blocks in the nether), the difference between beta-era design and 1.12+ is pretty obvious. And even then, you can tell people care about the game to some extent, at least compared to some of the more obvious slop.

Star Trek tie-in fiction was rigorously policed; no out-of-character actions for the main characters (from the TV shows), the main characters don't die, no original characters that steal the spotlight from the main characters, everything had to reset so the next writer churning out the next book started from a clean slate.

The very earliest novels got away with more, because (as Diane Duane says) "from Paramount’s point of view, Star Trek novels were merely another kind of merchandising, like plastic phasers and James T. Kirk action figures" so they weren't keeping a close eye on them. But then the tie-in novels became a valuable merchandising stream, and that meant looking for professional writers (rather than fan writers turned pro) to do them, and the drawing-up of guidelines as to what could and couldn't be done in the 80s and updated in the 90s.

I don't know what the current state of play is, given that we got ST: Disco and Starfleet High, so the tie-in novels might be wild and woolly again: yes we welcome trans pansexual non-binary differently abled neurodivergent body-positive multiracial folx of colour as main characters! your villains not only can, but must, be cis het old(er) conservative white guys!

That's fair: very few big intellectual property things are completely unpoliced by their owners. I was moving more from the early TOS works being hilariously off-kilter, but even TNG and some early Voyager stories were often very weird from a tonally and character look. Not even necessarily bad books: Children of Hamlin was reasonably good and even got the general TNG ethos, but it's just written like someone had a glance at a wikipedia summary of the series.

IIRC, much of the strictness of the guideline enforcement in the tie-in novels was due to one guy (Gene Roddenberry's assistant Richard Arnold) who apparently saw himself as enforcing the Will of Gene on the unenlightened writerly horde. Though it's not clear how much of it was the Will of Gene as opposed to the Will of Richard Arnold; apparently on more than one occasion an author managed to do an end-run around Arnold and contact Roddenberry directly with his proposed novel which had attracted Arnold's ire for some reason or other, only to have Roddenberry say "looks fine to me, go ahead and publish it". In any event, Arnold and his influence on the tie-in novels went away shortly after Roddenberry's death, and the guidelines loosened significantly.

just because it wasn't practical for some rando writing a weird one-off novel in the universe to talk to the chief

This seems like an easily mostly-solved problem: if the suits are confidently unanimous you don't bug the chief; if not, you send a quick email, archive the response, and summarize it in the Show Bible.

Not a perfect solution, since the suits might be unanimously idiots or might have not seen some foreshadowing or planning that part of "established" canon was a lie, or the chief might still change his mind later and not care that a random novel gets invalidated by it, but still better than adjudicating canon by majority suit vote.

This seems like an easily mostly-solved problem: if the suits are confidently unanimous you don't bug the chief; if not, you send a quick email, archive the response, and summarize it in the Show Bible.

I don't think we're there yet, but this seems like the kind of thing LLMs could be used to handle. However, LLMs could also obviate the need for an actual coherent extended universe, as the sheer volume of fanfiction being generated could take away the meaning and value of official canon in the eyes of fans.

Star Wars failed in the fan mind before it was handed over to corporations. Lucas had control of the prequels and they had problems.

Definitely agree, but it's very different. The prequels were not a problem of vision, but of execution (for the most part). They failed because Lucas was old and thought he was better then he was, not because he tried to please too many people.

And that failure mode was such that they kind of ended up really weird and quirky, though really bad. I kind of believe that if the prequels had a normal script revision process, and actual directors, they might not have been completely terrible. This is in contrast to the Disney ones which failed because they're bland and corporateized.

Lucas spent the better part of 20 years trying to get someone else on board to direct another Star Wars trilogy. He was lobbying Steven Spielberg especially hard in the mid-90s. Spielberg finally told him, in the nicest possible way, that if Lucas wanted it done so badly he should fuck off and do it himself. So he did. It’s not like he was overprotective of his baby, no one else wanted it.

That's interesting. I didn't know that either. I wonder why no one else wanted to do it? It seems like that would have been the dream project for a lot of up-and-coming young directors.

And yeah... I can't help but think that it would have been better off with someone else other than Lucas at the helm. Spielberg would have been amazing, I wonder why he was so against it? Maybe he was just scared that he couldn't do it justice.

I was not the most aware kid in the 90s, nor was I a Star Wars fan, but I recall that Star Wars held a near-sacred status among both scifi nerds and film enthusiasts in that time. IIRC, they were the highest grossing movies of all time until Titanic, and with about a decade having passed between the 3rd and then-latest installment, in the days of limited VHS or TV runs, its myth and legend grew. I imagine that the responsibility of handling such a holy franchise and the pressure that comes with it was probably too daunting for most directors, perhaps even Spielberg. Since Lucas was still alive, if the results were anything less than mindblowing and revolutionary like Star Wars was in 1977, whichever director was at the helm would surely get dragged through the mud (Lucas himself was dragged, of course, mostly deservedly so IMHO).

Well you see what a thankless task it ended up being for Lucas. And it would have been even worse for an outside director if they fumbled it. It would have been worse than Kathleen Kennedy heat. It’s a lot of pressure.

Also IIRC there’s some union issues as well. Lucasfilm was bypassing SAG and the DGA and it would have been dicey for Spielberg to effectively cross the picket line. That’s why he didn’t direct Return of the Jedi, but I can’t remember if it was still a problem by ‘98.

Well you see what a thankless task it ended up being for Lucas.

Plenty of noob directors have been fumbling existing franchises with no problem recently, despite the risk of backlash. It beggars belief that nobody wanted to take a chance.

The union thing sounds more plausible. The other thing may be that Lucas probably aimed for directors of his generation/people he respected while Disney specifically sought out young, pliable talent. Those people would have more options and might not like to be caught between Lucas and the fans.

But Disney Star Wars was able to get Ron Howard though so maybe no one wanted to work under Lucas? He doesn't seem like a Tiger Mom Producer (he handed over ROTJ and ESB and they're widely considered good) but it is possible no one wanted to take over something he'd be storyboarding for years.

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I didn't know that, that's interesting.

I think the problem is partly in the forst films Lucas had push back on his bad ideas from other talented people and partly Lucas had a blind spot about what fans liked about the series (the Jedi thing but also lots of things he changed about the originals in the special editions) and was further removed from the source material as he aged and viewed his past through increasingly nostalgia tinted memories.

Definitely. That's what I mean by saying that he thought he was better than he was, and that it would have been solved with a normal script revision process. By the 90s, he was untouchable, and no one would have dared give notes to the man who made Star wars, but that's exactly what it needed. Everyone needs an editor

Definitely agree, but it's very different. The prequels were not a problem of vision, but of execution (for the most part). They failed because Lucas was old and thought he was better then he was, not because he tried to please too many people.

The basic idea of the prequels is fundamentally bad. The cool thing about the original movies is that the force (and jedis by extension) was mysterious it could do miracles but you didn't know if it could any specific thing. That only works if there are almost no jedis going around (which the original trilogy did, Luke wasn't even a real one), if you fill the setting with jedis it either becomes a fixed set of spells (the prequels), which only appeals to DnD nerds, or a deus ex machina that solves every problem (the sequels), which appeals to nobody.

Don't bring up the EU, nobody reads that.

The original trilogy really is a miraculous convergence where brilliance met technological limitations in the best possible way, and he was somehow lucky enough to remove all his bad ideas while keeping all his good ones. All of the missing stuff contributed to the magical, mysterious atmosphere, while he kept just enough details to make it seem realistic. The prequels were... the opposite.

Yeah, but Lucas's vision for the original trilogy was similarly bad right from the start, with the "Whills" being conscious microbes living within the Force. This was in his earliest drafts for Star Wars. I don't know why he removed it before making Star Wars a reality, maybe a reader talked him off this idea but it saved the movie, and by the time he made the prequel trilogy, no one could talk him off bad ideas.

Don't bring up the EU, nobody reads that.

The EU is widely read and beloved by Star Wars fans. Hardly "nobody".

Not to the same extent as now, IMO. The prequels have their haters, but they have just as many fans. The sequels are so bad that even some prequel haters have softened their stance and talk about how at least Lucas had a vision, even if it was imperfect. The sequels do have fans, to be sure, but they are by far in the minority whereas opinion on the prequels was much more evenly split.

I'm an Old School Star Wars fan (I saw A New Hope in theaters when it was just a little SF flick starting to get buzz).

I think you're forgetting just how much fans loathed the prequels when they first came out. Well, loathed is a strong term. They still went to see them. Fans had been waiting for 16 years after Return of the Jedi, the hype was overwhelming, and while A Phantom Menace was of course a box office success, hardcore SW fans were trashing it and the rest of the prequels almost immediately. Today maybe the backlash against Jar Jar Binks and Jake Lloyd's acting seems overdone, but at the time those prequels felt like a huge let-down, as pretty as they were. The plot went in weird directions, the characters weren't what people were expecting, and of course over a decade of EU content and fan speculation got blown away. The prequels were really... not good, and the consensus was that George Lucas was a good visual director but hugely overrated as a writer.

Of course, then the sequels came out and made the prequels look like golden age SF by comparison.

I'm old enough to remember watching the prequels in first run in cinemas, and the hatedom for the prequels at the time was worse than the hatedom the sequels got. The prequels are less hated now because of the passage of time. It doesn't help that the prequels recovered from a truly atrocious start (The Phantom Menace remains in my view comfortably the worst of the nine) meaning that Revenge of the Sith not sucking was something people ignored at the time, whereas the sequels got worse and worse (The Farce Awakens is a perfectly OK remake of A New Hope).

and the hatedom for the prequels at the time was worse than the hatedom the sequels got.

It was wall to wall, while the Sequel Hate became polarized like everything else today. It became another pseudo-political thing where the sides also got associated with tribes.

Ironically, I think this is why everyone feels the sequels discourse is more toxic (putting aside recency bias).

The prequels got so much hate there was really no point in arguing. If you liked it, you put up with it or ignored it. And if you were a kid you likely didn't give a shit. Sure boomer, the lightsaber fights are too twirly. The hate was also pointed at cast and crew who were either totemic enough to be able to not care (Lucas) or it was awful for (Lloyd) but it wasn't as bad for fans.

The sequels hate is much more evenly split (especially since even pro-Sequels fans may hate one of Abrams or Johnson) and no one can really triumph. It's turned into a bunch of warring tribes who turn their fire on each other constantly. It felt like there was actually something to play for so it became even more bitter. You add in the culture war stuff with "the Force is Female" pivot and the reactionary counter-attack and LucasFilm's possibly well-meaning attempts to correct for past abuse by coming out strongly against chuds in a way that seemed pretty self-serving (it happened when their shitty shows were getting bad reviews) and it became just like any other culture war topic with the same heat and long-term bitterness.

I'm not forgetting that at all. But I think your argument is missing that there was not only the group of fans who loathed the prequels. There were also fans who enjoyed them quite a bit. I remember going to see Phantom Menace as a teenager with my friends, and we all came out of that movie stoked about how cool it was to see the Old Republic and the Jedi order at its peak, things we had only imagined before. I fully acknowledge that there were fans who very vocally and bitterly hated the prequels, but they were not even close to unanimous among the fan base.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the prequels were (mostly) fine as movies, particularly The Phantom Menace. They weren't fine as Star Wars movies.

I think my take is best summed up by the midichlorian scene. In a different setting, this is a fine scene! Sure, you can measure the space magic capabilities of someone with a blood test. That's fine! If it was in Star Trek, sure, or if it was measuring for bionic strength in Mass Effect, for instance. It is, however, completely wrong for Star Wars and The Force.

It is, however, completely wrong for Star Wars and The Force.

Exactly. Star Trek is (or was) hard(ish) science, the technobabble was at least a pretence at 'based on current understanding of scientific principles'. Star Wars is space fantasy, so blood tests for midichlorians sits very uneasily alongside 'I got spontaneously pregnant without having sex'. Going back to the original movies, the Force and the Jedi etc. are regarded as 'hokey ancient religions' and mysticism, not Based On True Science.

The prequels have their haters, but they have just as many fans.

How much of this is just a function of people who saw the prequels as kids imprinting on the films at an early age, and enjoying them despite their uneven quality? Similar to all the people who love Disney direct-to-video sequels because they grew up with them.

If that's the true explanation, then just as the prequels started to be rehabilitated in the public eye as people who saw them as kids grew up and started making video essays about why the prequels were great, I wonder if we won't see the same thing happen as the kids who grew up with the sequels grow up?

I think some of that is "I thought the prequels were shit, then I saw what they did with the newer ones, man I didn't know when I had it good" (same as with Jackson's Hobbit movies against Rings of Power). Did anyone really want Kylo Ren, man-boy rebel without a clue? Or the 'mystery' around Rey: her parents abandoned her and ran away! No, they will come back for her one day! No, they were junkies who sold her and crashed their ship and died! No, she in fact has a secret destiny as the descendant of Palpatine which is why her parents hid her!

How much of this is just a function of people who saw the prequels as kids imprinting on the films at an early age, and enjoying them despite their uneven quality? Similar to all the people who love Disney direct-to-video sequels because they grew up with them.

This is an open question, and certainly it's nonzero, but my anecdotal experience is that, even among the younger viewers, respect for the prequels (mostly undeserved, IMHO) seems more driven by how much better they are than the sequels than by nostalgia. I've seen a number of completely new young fans who never watched the prequels or the sequels (or the originals) until recently express the opinion that the prequels are much better than the sequels.

If that's the true explanation, then just as the prequels started to be rehabilitated in the public eye as people who saw them as kids grew up and started making video essays about why the prequels were great, I wonder if we won't see the same thing happen as the kids who grew up with the sequels grow up?

We should be able to detect this pretty soon, if not now. The Force Awakens came out 11 years ago, which is less than the 16 years between The Phantom Menace and that film, but still plenty of time for then-10-year-olds to become influential in the social medias to shape the overall public view of it.

How much of this is just a function of people who saw the prequels as kids imprinting on the films at an early age, and enjoying them despite their uneven quality?

Partly that.

But part of it may be that but a lot of it is just that the term "prequels hate" can mean the films or the setting.

A lot of people hated the films for the way they handled certain characters and plots or because they felt the CGI was overdone. But that is not the same as hating them as settings.

Many fans were willing to take the bit of the films they didn't like in exchange for a living Republic and Jedi Order and Republic and all the stories you could tell with them

So a lot of people have more fondness for the "prequel era" because that stuff also included Republic Commando, The Clone Wars, etc.

That audience is younger and so has gained more power and influence over time. Especially since the attempt to mainly cater to the OT-setting fans after the LucasArts sale was a huge disaster, partly because they confused Prequel Film Hate for New Worldbuilding Hate.

I wonder if we won't see the same thing happen as the kids who grew up with the sequels grow up?

We might. The problem I see is that there's almost no consistent throughline in these movies and their setting is basically the OT setting but worse. But maybe the books are cool. I couldn't bring myself to check.

The prequels were disappointing to fans because they weren't what we had been waiting all this time for, it barely "looked" like Star Wars but they were Lucas's new vision, something new cooked fresh with new base ingredients. Now it turns out I'm allergic to slapstick cartoon rabbits in my space operas, but that recipe can have its fans. The sequels were exactly what the fans had been waiting for, it looks like Star Wars from front to back, but they ultimately served us an old batch of og Star Wars that had been wasting in Lucasfilm's vault with moldy rotten ingredients; yes it's the original recipe but the quality and freshness isn't there anymore.

What would have satisfied fans is doing what Jon Favreau did with seasons 1 and 2 of The Mandalorian. The original recipe for Star Wars is samurai/western + pulp sci-fi setting, The Mandalorian (seasons 1 and 2, it got bad after) was adapting new or different samurai/western stories in the setting. Same recipe, fresh ingredients.

Same recipe, fresh ingredients.

Given that Disney owns both now, I've been thinking a spiritual successor to Firefly would fit well in the Star Wars universe. But I wouldn't trust the company blindly to produce a good show these days.

Andor was good, though. Same idea; new characters and setting.

I think they tried with the Han Solo movie? I mean, for things going full circle, Mal is clearly inspired by Solo to begin with, the rogue, wisecracking, charming smuggler flying an aging piece of junk that he can keep relevant against much fancier ships due to his perfect familiarity with it and its quirks. Haven't seen the Solo movie personally, the marketing for the movie and the troubled development killed any interest I could have had, but reading the synopsis gives me the impression that it's what they tried. Though looking at visuals, they seemed to have failed at capturing the frontier vibe (which, again, The Mandalorian captured perfectly).

I don't think Firefly could be made in today's Hollywood - it is far too obviously the Lost Cause in space.

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Maybe... But the prequels seemed to succeed as children's movies and as vehicles for other media like animation and video games.

The sequels seem to have produced first anger and then apathy. Even the children don't care. Only the mega fans that seemingly can't get offended by anything seem excited. No media products seem to be set during or after the sequel trilogy, everything is just set way earlier or at most between the OT and ST.

Something has gone very wrong with the sequel trilogy in a way that they didn't with the prequel trilogy.

While I don't especially like the prequels, they do have a kind of child-like earnest charm that I enjoy.

At least Rogue One bucked that trend in the Star Wars films. Spoiler: Everyone dies

Rogue One is probably the third best Star Wars film.

Fourth if we count the Christmas special

I have not had the pleasure to see that fine film, the Ewok Adventure was enough for me of stand alone made for TV films.

You're right; Rogue One would be fifth.

They even managed a popular spin off TV show from it!

Dream stories are weird. Because you experience the dream as though you were really interacting with people, it is tempting to think of dreams as creating a new reality and everyone dying when the dream disappears. But that's just your experience. There's no tragedy and nobody's actually dying. The dream is fictional within the context of the story.

(This doesn't count stories where the dream explicitly creates something real, but I don't remember that happening here.)

(This doesn't count stories where the dream explicitly creates something real, but I don't remember that happening here.)

Marin becomes a seagull in the real world if you beat the game without dying.

I'd count that as an easter egg, not a plot element that proves it's all real.

I'm not so sure. I always interpreted that ending as suggesting that the Wind Fish was dreaming essentially real people into existence, which is why he can grant Marin's wish to be a seagull. Though it is quite sad if she's the only one who survives the awakening besides Link.

I see the Wind Fish as similar to MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI or Anu, a deity who dreams beings into existence.

Heck, even in stories where it is a mortal doing the dreaming, the dreams can sometimes be "real." See the tulpa-like dream creations in Borges' The Circular Ruin, for example.

I think of it like this. Watching a movie is like eating. The ending of a movie can be considered the terminal condition. You eat because you are hungry. You eat and eat until you feel full, and then you stop. Without that feeling, you would just continue eating forever. A movie works in a somewhat similar way. Something happens, a crisis or a problem appears, and the story continues until we reach a point where we feel that the original question has been answered and we can stop.

From that angle, I think returning to the status quo can be looked at a little more charitably.

I find the nature law arguement from Christiany useful here. Something is good when it is allowed to exist according to its proper nature, while evil is often understood as a kind of damage, sickness, or deviation from that form. If a cat loses one of its legs, the answer is to restore the missing leg, not to decide that four legs are boring and give the cat six tentacles instead.

A story usually starts because something has gone wrong. So fixing the problem often means restoring things to something resembling their proper condition.

So it qualifies as a proper terminal condition. And it's also believable.

A happy ending can easily feel like cheating. The dead don't rise. Sacrifices can't simply be undone. Many things in reality are impossible or irreversible. So such endings feel hollow.

But the status quo has happened. We have seen it. The glorious past. People look backward and reminisce about bygone days because the past is real and imaginable. It happened once. Maybe it can happen again. To be normal, to be healthy, to have your family, to go home again, even without being extraordinary, shouldn't that already be enough to be happy?

This is the default answer. 30 points out of 100. Passable. But sometimes you just wish for more.

Fiction can be seen as a kind of prosthesis, like an artificial eye or leg: we use it to replace a missing part of ourselves. A 30 point answer can fill in the absence, but it doesn't fits perfectly. It's a general answer, made for everyone, so gaps remain.

A movie might end, but if the ending does not satisfy the audience, then in some sense the act of viewing does not stop. The audience starts looking for that satisfying answer somewhere else: another movie, another book, another game, another version of essentially the same kind of story.

There are not really a hundred completely different movies. Sometimes it feels as if there has only ever been one movie: the one you haven't reached the ending yet.

And that's roughly how I think about the psychology behind this.

I'd recommend more anime, then. #NotJoking

Back when the internet was making anime more accessible and known, one of the things I recall about the discourse of Japanese vs American cartoons was the quote-unquote 'maturity potential' of the media. A lot of Japanese anime is as sacharine as anything American, but there's also a lot more willingness to engage in darker themes and imperfect happy endings.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann infamously killed it's not-really-decoy protagonist a quarter of the way in, and ends with the savior of everything living alone as a widower with none of the glory of a hero. The Gundam series somewhat more famously was able to sneak a war drama into a toy advertisement because the executives didn't care, and 'Kill 'em all Tomino' went on to earn his moniker. The original Digimon ended with the children protagonists having to separate from their platonic life monsters after an almost seven-stages-of-grief. Full Metal Alchemist has an optimistic ending, but only after some real costs.

These aren't even the sort of genres or tragedies intended to make you miserable. The above are fairly optimistic, even triumphant, finales.

Oh, i definitely plan to show her lots of anime. But the ones I know are mostly for teenagers. FMA, Cowboy Bebop, The Big O, Trigun, Evangelion. Probably Avatar The Last Airbender is something I can show her when she's just a little older.

How old? Dennou Coil is decent for older children.

Ah, younger child?

In that case, I would actually recommend Digimon, series 1 and 3 in particular. If she can accept the dated animation style and the call-out-your-attacks monster battle format, there's a surprisingly deep childhood development story (or several) in there, with aspects for both boys and girls. Even if monster media are typically boy-coded, in contrast to pokemon the digimon companions are all fully-thinking characters in their own right who serve as foils for their child, both as a mix of easy best friend but also someone who gives them the push they need outside of their comfort zone. One of the conceits of the franchise is basically that maturity begets power. So the general format of an episode is that the focus human child is grappling with some flaw/fear/insecurity, overcomes it with the help of their companion, and emerges a marginally better child... but with much growing to go, and sometimes entire character arcs struggling with an issue, because these are 50-60 episode series.

The first Digimon series, Digimon Adventure, is basically a sort of Narnia-isekai where a bunch of kids at a summer camp find themselves in a mysterious new world with no adults to rely on. So they have to band together, figure out how to survive while trying to find a way back home, overcome interpersonal tensions to become friends who recognize eachother's strengths, and overcome their own weaknesses to become fully actualized. Along the way they stumble into / realize they are part of a much larger meta-plot, which forces them to face different sorts of malevolent forces that would harm / manipulate / exploit them, even as they make their own mistakes, forcing even greater maturity.

The third Digimon series, Digimon Tamers, is urban fantasy secret pet genre, but also an early 2000s AI allegory story. The kids are in 'real' Japan where digimon are 'just' children's media, but then the 'main' viewpoint character finds his partner, who was just born and has the mentality of a child, and has to keep it a secret from his family while starting to counter the digimon starting to emerge into the real world. A smaller core cast lets there be a bit more focus onto them, with greater themes of growing into maturity and responsibility but also forgiveness and redemption. Compared to the previous two, it delves more into the 'alien mindset' of not just monsters-from-another-world, but AI in particular who have various degrees of caring about humans across the spectrum.

Am I claiming it's a marvel of writing you'll love? Probably not. But it might be something you could tolerably appreciate while a child looks at the pretty colors or flashy monsters, and they might get a good moral or two out of it.

Adventure is also helped by having a really nice score.

It's been a long time since I played Link's Awakening, but I seem to recall it's not so much a downer ending as a "Buddhist" ending. To read it as "everyone dies at the end" is to impose a Western (Christian) lens on the story which is not present in the original.

If we're going to extrapolate a trend, maybe its that in the '90s there was more media being produced in Japan with distinctively Japanese cultural assumptions, since it was aimed primarily at domestic audiences, and the translation into English was only an afterthought.

The nightmare at the end is afraid of the dream ending though. There is definitely something that is lost

Interesting. What do you think is Buddhist about it? To be fair, I am Western, so I will always end up imposing some sort of a lens on that. There's a lot of western media and philosophy about dreams too, though.

It makes me think of the famous Iroha poem:

Colors are fragrant, but they Will eventually scatter; Who in our world Shall always be? The deep mountains of conditions [samskara] — We cross them today And we shall not have shallow dreams Nor be intoxicated.

Then we have the "Nightmares", which grow increasingly aggressive as you get closer to waking the Wind Fish. These represent attachments, which try to keep you trapped in the world of maya.

(Importantly, in the game, death is not the same as nirvana. Death just reincarnates you back into the world of illusion, and is an obstacle on your path to awakening.)

And also, something about the eight instruments of the Wind Fish and the Noble Eightfold Path? (OK, maybe this is a stretch.)

I won't go so far as to say that the game is "preaching" a Buddhist message. It just seems like its overall narrative speaks to a culture with Buddhist background assumptions, in the same way that (to take an example mentioned below) The Land Before Time is not exactly a "Christian" story, but the overall "sacrifice → tribulation → paradise" theme is one that Western audiences will understand instinctively because of their Christian background.

And also, something about the eight instruments of the Wind Fish and the Noble Eightfold Path?

Haha, I like that and I'd kinda buy it. The first Zelda game has 8 pieces of the triforce of wisdom, second has the 6 crystals for the palaces, third has the 3 pendants and 7 maidens, and this has 8 again.

There are only a few small numbers that a game can use. Seeing meaning in the numbers is pareidolia unless there's a lot more and the numbers are just a tiny bit of it.

Such as the old Ultima series, which invented an elaborate system of 3 core principles that combine into 8 virtues, and built the entire world and all the plot around it.

broken poetry formatting

In order to create a line break (such as between lines of a poetic stanza), you need to add two extra spaces at the end of each line.

Your wife was taken aback, but what about your daughter’s reaction?

Also, was this the Switch remake?

No, we played the original, not switch.

My daughter liked it a lot, but probably didn't fully grasp the implications. Also, I showed her the secret ending, where Marin gets her wish granted and becomes a seagull, so a little less sad. She also gets hung up on small details like "what is link going to do now that he's in the ocean?", and others like this, which makes sense, but it's not the point of the story. She may be a bit too young, but maybe it will stick with her and come back to it, like I did.

I remember playing Link's Awakening as a kid. And yeah, that ending hit hard. I kept expecting some kind of happy ending, and then the game just landed the punch. Which made it a million times more memorable and impactful.

This is what makes The Snowman such classic.

I'm having a hard time thinking of any children's media from 20+ years ago where the main character really loses something at the end. There are a lot of stories with a loss at the beginning (Batman, The Land Before Time, The Lion King, for example). Let me do an informal survey:

G:

  1. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971): happy ending
  2. Robin Hood (Disney, 1973): happy ending
  3. The Fox and the Hound (1981): loss
  4. An American Tail (1986): happy ending
  5. The Land Before Time (1988): happy ending
  6. The Little Mermaid (1989): happy ending
  7. Aladdin (1992): happy ending
  8. The Lion King (1994): happy ending
  9. Toy Story (1995): happy ending
  10. Babe (1995): happy ending
  11. Mulan (1998): happy ending

PG:

  1. Jaws (1975): loss
  2. Star Wars (1977): loss
  3. The Empire Strikes Back (1980): loss
  4. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981): happy ending
  5. The Return of the Jedi (1983): loss
  6. Ghostbusters (1984): happy ending
  7. The NeverEnding Story (1984): happy ending
  8. The Karate Kid (1984): happy ending
  9. Back to the Future (1985): happy ending
  10. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1986): happy ending
  11. The Goonies (1985): happy ending
  12. Stand by Me (1986): loss (I think)
  13. The Princess Bride (1987): happy ending
  14. Willow (1988): happy ending
  15. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989): happy ending
  16. Home Alone (1990): happy ending
  17. My Girl (1991): loss
  18. The Iron Giant (1999): loss
  19. Spirited Away (2001): loss

I'd do a more thorough survey but I'm tired. The basic story, though, is that G-rated movies have always had happy endings without much real emotional impact (The Fox and the Hound being a notable exception).

If you're looking for kids' movies with depth, I'd recommend Studio Ghibli. There's not a lot you can do about your kids' peers liking saccharine trivialities but it doesn't hurt to try introducing something more interesting.

Yeah, as mentioned in another response, maybe part of what I dislike is that there's so much fake out loss. Though I'm not certain exactly why that bothers me, and I need to think more about it.

And loss at the beginning vs loss at the end is a good distinction as well, and I'd also need to think about that more, too. At least loss at the beginning, vs no loss or fake out loss, affects the status quo, and shows kids that important things in life change: we really do lose people we love and they don't just come back.

Heh, and you're forgetting the most important loss in the neverending story - the horse! At the very least that was a scarring moment!

There are tons of children's movies that deal with the permanent death of a beloved character as a major part of the story: Bambi (1942), Old Yeller (1957), Charlotte's Web (1973), The Hobbit (1977), The Land Before Time (1988), The Lion King (1994), Antz (1998), The Princess and the Frog (2009), Summer Wars (2009), etc. They still have happy endings, but the fundamental message is that death is a natural part of life and we need to accept it and learn to move forward despite our losses. Why not show her one of those?

Yes, they are a little old, but that doesn't mean they are bad. The great thing about little kids is that YOU control what they watch, not them. If you think the media of your past is what made you who you are today, why not restrict her to that media? What is your daughter going to do, take out a Disney+ subscription on her credit card?

From "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" by AntiDem:

First, as the leftists used to say, “Kill Your Television”. I am not one who generally thinks that machines are inherently evil. Television is an exception. It is no more and no less than a hypnotic mind control device. Don’t believe me? Sit a hyperactive toddler in front of a television and watch what happens. They freeze, turn away from everything they were doing, and stare at the screen. Gavin McInnes once noted that the “on” switch of his television was an “off” switch for his kids, and so it is. Do you think this device does not place ideas in the minds of those who fall into a trance in its presence? And what ideas do you think the Hollywood/New York axis wishes to place there? I recall reading one account of a father who, tired of his two under-10 daughters’ bratty attitudes, limited their television viewing to a DVD box set of Little House on The Prairie. The change in his daughters’ behavior was dramatic – within a couple of weeks, they were referring to him and his wife as “Ma” and “Pa”, and offering to help with chores. The lesson is obvious: people (and especially children) learn their social norms from television, far more even than from the people around them.

Ideally, one would cut oneself off from it totally. Many find this rather difficult (I must admit, myself included at times). Some keep a television set, but make sure it is disconnected from broadcast channels and use it only as a monitor for a carefully-selected library of DVDs. Others (myself included) don’t own a set, but download a few select programs from torrent sites and watch on laptops or tablets. My total viewership of television programs tops out at perhaps 3-4 hours per week during particularly good seasons. Any traditionalist should strive to do the same. In fact, traditionalists should reject – should “drop out” of – all popular culture (especially that produced after, say, 1966) to the greatest degree possible, and make sure their children are exposed to it as little as possible. Music, video games, even the web – either drop out of it completely, or, at very least, carefully limit the time and scope of it in your life and the lives of your children.

And from "Culture Is Not About Esthetics" by Gwern Branwen:

Or consider another medium: movies. Have you seen the IMDB’s Top 250 movies? There are excellent movies in there. Some are profound, others moving, and not a few profoundly moving. Why are you going to watch Transformers 2 or Ice Age 3? For entertainment value? But there are movies in that list which are far more entertaining, I assure you.

Even if you’ve seen the top 50, there’s another 200 to choose from. If you think the IMDB is too faddish and Internet-centric, there’s no shortage of other lists - the New York Times would be happy to tell you all about “The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made” (6 years at 3 movies a week). And what about television? If we ask IMDB about movies by year or all the movies and TV episodes it knows about, it’s happy to tell us: 1,111,244 episodes; 263,524 movies; and 1,920,757 works in total (as of 2011-06-28). We can also look at movie production over time, where we find that as early as 1917 (109 ya) there were 5,490 movies made. (A current estimate for the EU is “1100 features and 1400 shorts per year”.) So even if we got in at the beginning, we never had a chance at watching so much as a small fraction.

Here’s a thought problem: suppose an intensive study revealed, authoritatively, that removing all subsidies and ‘intellectual property rights’ would cause movie production to fall by 95%. Would you regard that as a disaster, something to be decried and abhorred and legislated against? I suspect so. Suppose the study found that, specifically, this 95% fall was composed partially of movies never getting made, but also partially of movies getting made and then lost or never distributed or never shown at all (perhaps because in the absence of copyright, pirates would undercut them and take all profits); would this change your opinion much? Probably not for the better - if anything, it’s even more horrifying, in the same way almost winning the lottery but missing by 1 number is more saddening than missing it by 2 numbers.

But the interesting thing is that this is already happening: less than 5% of movies are available to the public[23], and only around 10% of silent films survive in any sense anywhere[24]. So that 95% fall has already happened; civilization seems to have survived[25]. (A reflection on the ‘movie canon’: if you believe the canon is aesthetically invalid and has not successfully picked out the best movies made, then that implies anywhere up to 90% of the best movies ever made are lost forever to you.)

[23] “…But tragically, some of the world’s strangest movies will never be available on DVD at all. The TCM database estimates that only 4.8% of all films ever made are currently available to the public. Though the Internet has been invaluable in finding strange and forgotten relics, some films, whether through accident, disaster or perceived disinterest, have been lost or temporarily displaced.” –io9, “Weird and Wonderful Movies That You’ll Never Get to See”

[24] “Pandora’s digital box: Pix and pixels”, quoting Jan-Christopher Horak, Director, UCLA Film and Television Archive.

[25] Of course, one could argue that there is something uniquely optimal and special about the current existing level of movie production, such that this invisible 95% fall is acceptable but another 95% fall would be cataclysmic. I hope the reader understands that this is a deeply untrustworthy position to take (and they should read the Bostrom link on the ‘status quo bias’) - I’d parody this argument as “oh, that 95% fall is OK because it still leaves us a number of movies which is bigger than some-number-I-made-up-just-now-based-on-the-information-you’ve-provided-me; but another 95% fall, well, that’d just be madness!”

And from "Culture Is Not About Esthetics" by Gwern Branwen:

My response to that seems like it will endlessly chase it around the Internet. I have posted it at least four times. Probably more, but I can only track down four occurrences. Let this be the fifth.

My previous response when we saw that essay before. I think I'll copy it here. Yet again.

I responded once on Lesswrong and once on SSC to this. So here we go again:

I think gwern sells short the argument that older fiction books are produced in different societies and reflect ideas and prejudices from those societies that we might not share. He addresses it in a reply to one of the comments, but the reply is mostly “there are prejudices in older works that don’t matter because the conflicts no longer exist” (for instance, the Pharisees in the New Testament).

I don’t think that reply is on point. While there are some prejudices that are obsolete, there are others which are not–sexism is endemic in older works, for instance. gwern’s reply to that is that the world was sexist back then and it would be worse propaganda to depict the old world with modern values. But that is only relevant insofar as the fiction is about the old world–fiction which is set in modern times can simultaneously depict less sexism than older fiction and be true to the world in which it is set. It also fails to consider that there’s a difference between accurately depicting the world as sexist and writing fiction which approves of this state of affairs.

And some ideas in some media are really new. Quick, how many American TV shows with female action heroes can you name that came out prior to Xena? Heck, forget sexism and any other form of -ism; how many American TV shows that are heavily story arc driven can you name that came out prior to about 20 years ago?

He also didn’t address differences that are not propaganda-based, such as there not being Shakespeare plays about the Internet. Science fiction is especially prone to this due to advances in scientific knowledge.

11/2016 edit: Also, people have pointed out that if there are more works of all types, there are also more top-X%-works (or more works that line up with a given person's preferences by X%).

He addresses it in a reply to one of the comments, but the reply is mostly “there are prejudices in older works that don’t matter because the conflicts no longer exist” (for instance, the Pharisees in the New Testament)

You could not be farther from truth. Pharisees specifically were the most powerful faction of Jews at the time, they formed the central religious authority of Sanhedrin and they formed the core of what later came as Rabbinic Judaism. Saint Paul himself was a learned Pharisee, taught by famous rabbi Gamaliel and many of his ideas actually reflect this reading of Old Testament. So in that sense Pharisees live to this day in a very literal, historical sense.

More generally, Pharisees represent the legalistic tendency of any moral philosophy. They have parallels everywhere, the age old "letter of law" vs "spirit of law" conflict. You see it in discussions such as Originalism vs Living Constitution interpretation of constitutional law. You see it in day-to-day adherence to your local HR decrees in your company etc. It may be one of the most important and impactful conflict today.

You could not be farther from truth.

I was not claiming that; I was summarizing gwern's response., Do you believe I summarized the response incorrectly?

I don't have time to read all of the cited stuff now, but I should ask, do you have kids? My experience is that they will want what they want, and you can't really fight against it too hard, because that makes them want it more. It all ends up being a negotiation, whether you want it to or not, unless you're willing to run your household like Captain Von Trap (and even he couldn't control his kids despite his efforts). I do show them all the things from my childhood and things I love, but you can't make them just like you, forcibly - it doesn't work. They know of the modern media from school and friends, and want that, hard. And in order to be a part of their life, you need to allow them to partake in it at least sometimes, or else they will be really unhappy.

And note: my daughter watches very little media, and doesn't control what she consumes directly, but rather by petitioning me for it. We basically have family movie night once per week, which is how she has taken in all the movies she has seen. We have no tv, and she has no iPad, and has never used one, and wouldn't know how to navigate kids YouTube.

I think it depends. If you never see something you can’t want it. If all a kid gets is old music and occasionally a DVD movie, they’ll see it as normal.

Yeah, but like I said before, that's not an option. She knows all of this from her friends and school.

Knowing of modern media and even occasionally seeing it at a friend’s house is not the same as having it in their home given to them by their own parents. We do this all the time with other things. Teenagers have house parties and quite often alcohol will be served. Teens do know what alcohol is, and probably (especially for young men) they’ve had some before they are of legal age. That doesn’t mean you need to normalize it and it especially doesn’t mean that you need to supply them a fully stocked liquor cabinet and a personal Bartisian so they can wind down after grade school with a nice Manhattan.

And if you don’t normalize it, the chances of your child not really wanting it go up. They can see the negative consequences of bad behavior, or media and the like that are bad for them. They’ll notice just how crazy modern media can be. They’ll be repulsed by seeing just how much everyone is in lockstep over culture issues and just how weird it all is.

My experience is that they will want what they want, and you can't really fight against it too hard, because that makes them want it more. It all ends up being a negotiation, whether you want it to or not...

That makes no sense to me. When I was growing up, if my parents disallowed something, that was all there was to it. Sometimes, if I could, I might try to go behind their backs (e.g. trying to catch Power Rangers on TV even though it was banned), but it was never a negotiation and nor did I have any illusions that I had a say in what was and early allowed. As I am not a parent I can't offer any meaningful advice or critique of any kind as to what the difference might be, only to say that your statement here is completely at odds with my experience growing up. And my parents were hardly super strict, either. It was simply well understood by both sides that this stuff wasn't remotely up for debate.

Well, it's possible you were not as strong minded a child as mine. How much were you willing to really push for what you wanted, and make your parents miserable until you got it?

As I said: I knew perfectly well that wouldn't have been acceptable. I don't think being strong minded even comes into it. I'm actually a pretty stubborn person (as many people can attest), but I'm not a fool either. I don't waste my energy on things that have zero chance of success, and as a child I didn't waste my energy on nagging my parents as a result.

Nagging is one thing. What about just becoming really sad?

My parents have way more backbone than to let that get to them.

Well, at some point as a parent you need to decide what's more important. I need my daughter to listen to me when it's important, but you have to pick your battles. I ultimately decided I don't want to send the message to her that I don't care about her feelings, and that I'm never going to listen to her preferences. I have the feeling that my parents may have been more like your parents to some degree, and I'm not certain I'm personally happy with the results, and how it has impacted my long-term mental health.

Maybe this is some of the appeal of horror media. It's one of the main forms of media that is just happy to end with a downer ending.

For example, I love that in the movie Weapons the parents and kids who were whammied by the witch didn't just get better when the spell was broken. Something was taken from them, and while months later some of the kids are slowly regaining the ability to talk, the parents, who suffered under the effects longest, have to be institutionalized.

I remember loving the Goosebumps books as a kid, and several books end with the monster or whatever winning. For example, I vividly remember the "baby's first body horror" book, Chicken Chicken, ends with the characters being cursed to turn into pigs, after they re-offend the witch that cursed and decursed them with a chicken transformation.

Though I suppose the problem is that when you start reading horror, you know the odds are weighted in that direction. (Even if there are several horror films where the evil is sealed or contained for a time, and the protagonists live to fight another day.)

Link's Awakening's a little weird because it's very vague about whether the island is remade the next time the Wind Fish dreams (or the people inside it are reincarnated/remade a la the Marin/seagull). But you saw a good bit of that sort of Labyrinth style complicated ending for a while, with A Link To The Past (Navi and the bad future go away, but so does everything good you did in that future), Wind Waker (Hyrule's wish is lost), and Twilight Princess (Midna goes away). But that said, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were both optimistic to the point of an awkward fit with the rest of the story, especially TotK.

Some of it's a not-unreasonable reaction to Newberry Award syndrome, because so many downer endings in even many great video games got pretty glurge after the fifth or sixth time, but it's definitely been a bit of an overreaction, especially at the younger end of the age range.

That said, while more complex or downer endings are more uncommon, they're not completely gone.

I remember finishing that game as a kid. Even then, I knew that 'it was all a dream' was a lazy, fakeout ending. I'd rather have a happy ending than that hackiness.

Well, they don't spell anything out for you, which is also something I like about it. But I don't think "it was all just a dream, and didn't really happen" is what was intended.

It was the dream of a deity, that link was caught up in. A god dreamed and by doing so created a realish place and realish people.

You can see that at the end, after link wakes up, he sits there thinking about whether it was all just his own dream, and is sad, but then sees the windfish flying overhead, and has some level of catharsis about the fact that it was real and worth it on some level. So the fact that the windfish comes to him at least shows that there was some magic going on, not just his own dream. Not to mention the secret ending showing that the windfish granted Marin's wish to live on in some way as a seagull.

I use the Twin Peaks filter:

It's all a dream.

That doesn't mean it's not real!

I'd push back pretty hard on this take, it's not your typical "it was all a dream" rug pull ending. I mean the game is literally called Link's Awakening, I don't think it's a fake out that Link was not awake the whole game.

And even beyond the title, the story insinuates multiple times that you are living in the wind fishes' dream and that the island isn't real; it's this slow realization that makes the leadup to the end bittersweet. It's not something they drop on you out of the blue as a "twist", the villains even talk about how everything will disappear.

The manga makes it even more explicit, I believe, that a large part of why the monsters are so riled up is that they know if they don't stop you, they all vanish.

They killed Data in that Star Trek movie and it's been just a shadow of itself after that. Even bringing him back (kind of) in Picard didn't do it for me. i will never fully forgive them.

I've had friends die and I still dream about them from time to time, as if it had never happened. Death sucks.

Maybe I'm immature or fundamentally out of touch with mortality but I don't take it well. Yes sure maybe there's salvation in suffering or whatever but I find very little art/positives in losing someone you have feelings for.

Interesting. I guess I could say there are 3 things you can do in media:

  1. Have deaths and downer endings
  2. Not have deaths and downer endings
  3. Have fake out deaths so you can avoid the downer ending

I love 1, but I probably hate 3 more than 2, and 3 is everywhere. I'm not 100% sure I know why I think 3 is worse than 2 though, I'll have to think about it.

You mentioned blaming Marvel fake-outs, but which category do you put Infinity War in? That was pretty shocking in the theater to the audience, and was probably also the franchise high-point (alternatively: final good marvel movie), although that's probably just a timing coincidence.

When I think about my reaction to various things like Godzilla Minus One, Fight Club, Rogue One, Fail-Safe, Dr Strangelove, Outer Wilds, 3:10 to Yuma, Double Indemnity, etc., I can't really pinpoint any consistent personal preference. I guess it probably is when a clear choice is made artistically, either way.

Godzilla Minus One was SO ridiculous. The movie sacrificed one emotional death (FMC's), one character development (the natural story arc is for MC to finally redeem himself for his cowardice by carrying out a successful kamikaze mission on Godzilla), and one dramatically satisfying ending (the threat is gone) on the altar of a sequel hook.

I means, tons of movies have sequel hooks, but they are usually schlock; Godzilla Minus One hurts because it was so good. It's like if Titanic had ended with an elderly Rose suddenly opening her eyes, startled, then the camera zooms into her window for a menacing shot of the same iceberg that sank the ship all those years ago!

the natural story arc is for MC to finally redeem himself for his cowardice by carrying out a successful kamikaze mission on Godzilla

It's unlikely that anything mainstream in Japan published after 1945 would glorify a kamikaze attack. (Unless it's Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato, and Matsumoto didn't like that ending for exactly that reason.)

One of the points of Godzilla Minus Zero is that kamikaze attacks were a senseless waste of life.

Yeah the last 4 minutes definitely subverted all my expectations, based on what they had achieved already. Didn't know if those choices were from a japanese culture angle, or yeah just the allure of making a follow-up. Although I still liked it and would always recommend it, I'm maybe less interested in rewatches.

then the camera zooms into her window for a menacing shot of the same iceberg that sank the ship all those years ago!

As long as this is accompanied by the foreboding godzilla theme playing, I suppose I'd allow it.

People can die without the ending being a downer (e.g. Anna Karenina).

Are we entering a new phase of the gender wars? To pull a term from Asmongold: "the age of the chud." That is to say: openly, unapologetically sexist men, who don't even try to hide it or justify it.

I can't exactly prove any of this, so I'm just going to list a bunch of anecdotes and vibes to show what I mean. You can decide for yourself if you agree or disagree.

The story thus far: for most of human history, humans had a patriarchy where men controlled most positions of power. Starting in 1919 with the 19th amendment in the US, and a similar date in most European countries, women got the right to vote and generally got legal equality with men. But certain social and institutional barriers remained, so 3rd wave feminists worked to gradually push back and get more rights and power for women. This was generally seen as a good thing by all, with only the most unashamedly reactionary men being opposed.

In the 80s and 90s, this was mostly done by trying to treat everyone the same, with the hope that taking away men's sexism would naturally create equality with men. But over time this proved insufficient, so left-leaning groups started pushing for more and more efforts to actively favor women. This was seen most acutely in corporate recruiting, where companies would heavily recruit in trying to get more women in male-leaning professions, especially engineering and management, and punish heavily anyone who was accused of making women feel "unwelcome." Male employees who wanted to fit in were forced to learn academic feminist jargon, and generally act like an "ally," regardless of their own personal views.

But has any of this actually worked? Well... no. Or at least, it's hit a wall. Engineering and the physical trades remain stubbornly male dominated. Women do a bit better in management, but only when they can sit in large meetings and avoid personal responsibility for anything. Their strong preference remains fields like nursing, HR, and marketing.

On a more personal level, I think any of us who have paid attention long enough have seen the cycle play out long enough to become jaded. Talking like a feminist might get you some kudos ("good boy points"), but it won't get you respected as a thinker- you're still expected to do your duty as an ally by following behind the female leaders. It certainly won't get you laid, which admittedly is not the fairest way to judge an ideology, but it does tend to influence the thinking of young men. It also won't get you the respect of other men, unless they're the most simptastic of feminist men who will still dislike you for being a man. It doesn't seem to get you anything at all, no matter how well you articulate the feminist talking points.

Enter: the chud. Or "C.H.U.D." if you will, since the term comes from an 80s movie where it's an acronym, but it's recently become internet slang for the sort of man who openly embraces reactionary cultural politics, without any veneer of intellectualism. They seem to have found a new way to play the game: you don't debate the feminists, you don't even try, you just do whatever the hell you want and ignore them, while openly embracing some of the worst stereotypes. Trump was probably the trailblazer here, with his total lack of shame, but lots of guys have learned this power.

At the same time, there's been a resurgance in traditional feminine behavior. Things like wearing makeup, lipstock, playing with dolls, openly crying, doing needlework, and sometimes even wearing sexy clothes. For a while these sorts of things were demonized by the more militant wing of the feminist movement, to the point where women felt a bit guilty for indulging in them, but now it seems like they're admitting that it's ok for women to have their traditional feminine interests too. And lots of chuds eat this up, too. I've also noticed a lot more games have blatant fan service in them, almost to the point where I'm numb to it, but this is a level of T&A that would have been protested if it was in old movies.

For a long time, the practical center on feminism was that it was good for the economy. Left or right, everyone agreed that we needed more women in the workforce to grow the economy. But with AI and automation, that's much less clear. So many white collar jobs are getting automated, and it's only going to get worse. Every new woman in the office is simply competition with a man for the same scarce job. The place where we actually need women is at home, having babies, and that doesn't seem to be happening nearly enough.

I think we're on the verge of rolling back a lot of feminism. I know you might say "oh, that's just internet talk, no one actually believes that in real life." But the internet is where we go to talk politics now. If you can win on the internet, you win in real life, too. We might see corporate and political groups stop trying to recruit women, and men being openly sexist again.

As an example, consider our new Secretary of War (that's war, not defense), Pete Hegseth. He opposes feminism, says that women should not be in combat roles, and has instituted mandatory testosterone testing for the military. He's also just generally blunt and aggressive in the way he talks. The left hates him but... he's still in charge. In his personal life, he is twice divorced due to having a lot of affairs.

Or consider JD Vance. He's a lot more intellectual than Hegseth, but still something of a chud. He opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, and childlessness in general. He's flirted with the idea that parents should have more voting rights than non-parents. He wants to "de-woke-ify" all federal institutions. He's saying all kinds of things that would have gotten me fired from most corporate jobs, and yet there's a strong chance that he'll become president.

On a final note, consider the voting demographics. In pretty much every election, the women trend left and the men trend right. If only men voted, the right would basically win every election easily. And that's true internationally, not just in the US. So I'm sure there are a few strategists thinking... "hmm... are we sure we can't repeal that 19th amendment? Or at least make it more difficult for women to vote?" Because that would be an instant knockout blow to the left.

I will say, I don't support any of this. I still consider myself something of a feminist, and I wouldn't fit in at all in a world of chuds. But... I see the appeal, especially for young men, and I think that might be where the world is trending, unless the world finds a more reasonable compromise in the gender wars.

The logistics of repealing an amendment make this an incredibly unlikely outcome from normal politics.

For the 19th to be repealed, the political landscape would need to change enough for a substantial percentage of women to support it also. I'm not sure what could cause such a shift to happen.

The gender wars do seem up right now. I wonder how much is economics and how much is dating trouble.

On a final note, consider the voting demographics. In pretty much every election, the women trend left and the men trend right. If only men voted, the right would basically win every election easily. And that's true internationally, not just in the US. So I'm sure there are a few strategists thinking... "hmm... are we sure we can't repeal that 19th amendment? Or at least make it more difficult for women to vote?" Because that would be an instant knockout blow to the left.

It was men who created the left as well as the right. It was men who did the French revolution as well as the Russian one. It was men who handed the vote to women. The strategists can think all they want, men make stupid mistakes all the time, too, and enfranchising women is a mistake that can be repeated. Especially in a world in which the right has only a very tenuous hold on power, and in which most people, institutions, media and governments are strongly on the left.

I will say, I don't support any of this. I still consider myself something of a feminist, and I wouldn't fit in at all in a world of chuds. But... I see the appeal, especially for young men, and I think that might be where the world is trending, unless the world finds a more reasonable compromise in the gender wars.

The gender wars in the West will be won by men totally and unconditionally, because women have sold out to their own enemies. Inshallah.

Edit: Sorry, that wasn't speaking plainly. I mean that women implemented unchecked mass muslim immigration, and the likely consequence of this is that Western countries will soon be Muslim countries, with Muslim laws and customs, eliminating feminism and putting women back in their places.

Sorry, that wasn't speaking plainly. I mean that women implemented unchecked mass muslim immigration, and the likely consequence of this is that Western countries will soon be Muslim countries, with Muslim laws and customs, eliminating feminism and putting women back in their places.

I don't see that happening in the majority of them. A more likely outcome is that eventually after a lot of rape and bloodshed the normies will eventually wake up. If this happens soon enough there will be riots, bloodshed and mass deportations, but then they will recover. If it happens later there will be civil wars and/or genocide. But I suspect the native populations will come out on top due to superior technology, entrenchment in their locality, and the ability to enlist the aid of allies in the event of literal civil war (ie the U.S.) Progressivism's primary path to victory is in superficial virtue signalling in which the majority of people inflict costs on people other than themselves. Once the majority of people's safety is threatened it will fall from grace. It's just a question of collateral damage.

Once the majority of people's safety is threatened it will fall from grace.

No. You have fundamentally misunderstood what progressivism is.

Progressivism is the reification of female political power. Everything a progressive does is downstream of that.

Female political power is not reduced when immigrants devalue the youngest (or future) women by raping or murdering them. Indeed, it actually increases- less intra-gender competition means more power for the average woman (socialize gains, privatize losses). Hence, women will aid and abet those crimes, and use their power to force men to do the same.

When the wages of women drop relative to those of men, progressivism recedes, like it did in the 1950s. Women now have to compete with each other more for access to men, so their political power drops. Society thus becomes more aligned with what men want.

When the wages of women rise relative to those of men, progressivism accelerates, like it did in the early 1900s. Men now have to compete with each other more for access to women, so their political power drops. Society thus becomes more aligned with what women want.

How does that alignment happen, and what does it affect? Basic commoditization of the compliment predicts it. Each gender will instinctively use their power to erase the distinction between members of the other gender and enhances the distinction between members of their own gender. So, women will want mass male immigration and men will want mass female immigration- women prioritize safety, emphasize feelings, and prioritize capital to protect their source of worth (and that denies the worth/framing of the mechanisms upon which men compete with men, rendering men interchangeable); men prioritize freedom, emphasize rules, and prioritize labor as ways to protect their source of worth (and that denies the worth/framing of the mechanisms upon which women compete with women, rendering women interchangeable).

If AI devalues female labor more than male labor, the future will be less progressive.
If it does not, the future will be more progressive.
Simple as.

If AI companies manage to send the US into the next Great Depression society will (as a response) change just as much as it did in the 1930s, but it is the effects on the relative power of the average man and woman at that time (and not their absolute power) that will determine how things actually go.

I'd point out though that mass female immigration is something that has never happened anywhere, and would never be permitted to happen.

The vast majority of both Filipino and Ukrainian emigrants are female. In the latter case this may have also been true even before the war, I think.

I'm assuming most of those Filipinas are technically temporary migrant workers with permits etc., not immigrants. Regarding Ukraine, I have to say don't know. I've never seen data on this, but I'd surprised to hear that the majority of Ukrainian immigrants have ever been women. I'm also of the view here that a distinction between refugees and immigrants is to be made, but that's a bit different subject. But anyway, OP is probably correct that men in general would have mass female immigration if they could, but no society is going to condone that, because Briffault's law and gynonormativity don't allow it.

A large majority of the original entry of Ukrainian refugees to Finland (seems to be calculated for 2023 even for those entering in 2022) were women. This seems to have balanced a bit for the following years, but there are still more women than men coming in. The society has fully condoned this at basically every phase.

The whole idea that "Western females would be forming SS death squads" if a majority of reguees were women should have been conclusively debunked by the entry of Ukrainian refugees, but still continues to live, somehow. The most I've heard is that there has been some negativity from Polish women, but insofar as I know, this hasn't resulted to them voting for anti-immigration, anti-Ukrainian parties, for instance.

I maintain that the unspoken impetus to form death squads is there but I think two other factors are at play here which explain the current situation. One is that, unlike in the case of the 2015 migrant wave, the overwhelming majority in the EU countries, even in Central and Eastern Europe, is on board with viewing these people as factual refugees. Two: the effect of pro-Ukrainian propaganda is overwhelming, and easily impedes any possible public expression of displeasure with hordes of Ukrainian women crossing the borders.

This seems like too static/linear of a view when the actual dynamics are nonlinear. It might be the case that when the muslim population is small then the marginal increase in muslim acceptance might align with female political power. But if we reach a state of muslims actually becoming a substantial voting block in their own right and trying to institute shariah law this would significantly curtail female political power and outweighs any of these more subtle effects. I can't see the broader white female population sitting down and accepting that.

When people on the center or right say "Islam was right about women", the left doesn't agree and then continue with what they're doing, they get mad at the very concept and play word games and have cognitive dissonance. This is only possible when they have no skin in the game, when the islamists are still rare enough that they themselves are not affected. They don't literally want Shariah law, they are in denial about it being a realistic possibility. If reality actually threatens them with Shariah law they will step back and have regrets, precisely because that threatens their female political power and actual daily lives.

I don't see that happening in the majority of them.

Maybe some will escape. The Eastern ones. Poland. Hungary. But most seem to share the same dynamics.

A more likely outcome is that eventually after a lot of rape and bloodshed the normies will eventually wake up. If this happens soon enough there will be riots, bloodshed and mass deportations, but then they will recover. If it happens later there will be civil wars and/or genocide.

The anti-immigration or even pro-remigration "normies" will not have a simultaneous, coordinated mass awakening. The coordination isn't there, and the institutions and in fact quite a large number of people who are also "normies" but solidly pro-immigration are actively working against them and they won't stop anytime soon. There is no monolithic entity waiting to rise up, no sword brotherhood, no organization large enough to make a difference and overcome the forces that are already practised hands at maintaining the pro-immigration status quo. Pardon me, but your vision is wishful thinking.

But I suspect the native populations will come out on top due to superior technology,

The natives and the immigrants have access to the same technology. And much technology that matters in the modern day is centralized, and those centers are in the hands of pro-immigration entities.

entrenchment in their locality,

The natives are almost as deracinated, atomized and globalized as the immigrants. Perhaps even more so, culturally.

and the ability to enlist the aid of allies in the event of literal civil war (ie the U.S.)

The US has hardly been the stalwart opponent of mass migrations the globe over. There aren't any other allies either.

Progressivism's primary path to victory is in superficial virtue signalling in which the majority of people inflict costs on people other than themselves.

Progressivism has already won the war on demographics, politics and culture. The virtue signalling has always just been one tool out of many. Europe is a dead civilization, walking on only on inertia. At the last count that I heard, 43% of all children in Germany were of immigrant stock. Not all of them may be Muslims, and not all of the Muslims may favor islamic culture over Europe, but the tendencies are clear - Europe is sclerotic, incapable of decisive action, in fact actively disposed against it, has no claim on Leitkultur, is unable to assimilate newcomers, does not deter newcomers either, the newcomers' countries of origin are not about to stop exporting people, and the newcomers are overwhelmingly muslim and more fertile than the natives. Future generations will be majority muslim. The countries of Western Europe will be muslim countries before the century is out.

Once the majority of people's safety is threatened it will fall from grace. It's just a question of collateral damage.

The time for that was ten years ago, or much earlier. People have safety and prosperity enough to remain pacified as the world that gave them their safety and prosperity ends.

I repeat for emphasis: The conflict is already resolved, the war is lost, the progressives have won, permanently and irreversibly, and anything to the contrary is wishful thinking.

I will personally continue to do what little I can to spite them, but I am under no illusions as to the course of history.

If we look at history, it's clear that a lot can change in a few decades. Europe was not like this 70 years ago, Europe will probably not be like this 70 years from now. This masochistic self-hatred is a recent phenomenon, not an inherent property of Europeanness. It has been metastasizing for decades to reach this point, but the fact that this was possible demonstrates how attitudes and behaviors can change over time. Progressivism thrives in weak, spoiled, privileged populations who value appearances and virtue signalling over hard truths. When put through a crucible of hardship and suffering with a clear causal link to Progressive policies, people become disillusioned. The story of ex-leftists come when they witness of experience leftists being awful and it actually effects them (similarly, ex-rigthists often have similar stories of encounters with awful racists).

The balance of politics to me appears to be one of negative feedback. Whichever side is more powerful and complacent with enabling their extremists to cause more harm starts to bleed followers until they get their act together or lose their power. I just don't see a plausible future in which the majority of people just lie down and be like "yup, I guess we have Shariah law now". That's not how humans work. They are selfish, myopic, and ignorant, but they are still selfish. They will act in their own interest as long as there isn't a large opposing majority stopping them. So if the majority of them are threatened the majority of them will act.

[...] how attitudes and behaviors can change over time. Progressivism thrives in weak, spoiled, privileged populations who value appearances and virtue signalling over hard truths. When put through a crucible of hardship and suffering with a clear causal link to Progressive policies, people become disillusioned.

So if the majority of them are threatened the majority of them will act.

This is true. And it was understood at least two generations ago, by both leftist and muslim thinkers (and by rightist thinkers too, but those failed to make an impact): The path to victory lies in engineering who the majority is. Demographics is destiny. There is no need to make the natives accept shariah law. There is no need to be afraid of the natives becoming disillusioned by hardship. Demographic engineering simply sidelines the natives, marginalizes them numerically, and eventually turns democratic institutions against them because they no longer are the majority.

By the time the natives rise up, it will be too late.

Europe is sclerotic, incapable of decisive action, in fact actively disposed against it, has no claim on Leitkultur

I'll take the other side of statement, and say that they are perfectly capable of it, and what you've been describing is a result of that fact.

Please elaborate.

It's not that deep, but looking at everything that's happening in Europe, I find it hard to believe this is happening as a result of naive optimism and/or a misunderstanding that was cemented by our leaders being sclerotic and indecisive. Any native pushback is being coordinated against with military-like precision and discipline. Media are deployed to create hit pieces, information is censored, vast resources are deployed to ensure things go the way they are going now (orders of magnitude more than it would cost to prevent them from happening).

Simply put, I'm taking the "treason" side of the "stupidity or treason" dillema.

[I'm speaking generally of many different countries' leaders around the world when I say: I believe] It's because they think they need more workers or else everything will be even worse. They think a declining population is "the end of the world" / has worse consequences than anything else, so they HAVE to shore up population numbers, by any means necessary.

[IMO] They're wrong. They've overlooked how bad the consequences of other things can be. A declining population is not the only possible situation with very bad consequences. But it's what they think.

Is "Prioritize maintaining population numbers over everything else, therefore coordinate with desperate skill to knowingly go against the wishes of your people, all with a self-satisfied attitude/assumption of knowing better than the benighted rubes" stupidity or treason? IMO could be described as either. The attitude problem encourages the hostile "treason" assumption. But I call it, really, hubris.

They think they're doing the right thing for the people they think they know better than. Well, and I think I know better than them.

(BTW. I realized this most thoroughly and clearly from reading The [End of the] World] [is Just the] Beginning by Peter Zeihan. Great title BTW. And he details what he expects the consequences of depopulation will be.)

It's because they think they need more workers or else everything will be even worse

I don't buy that, because a cursory look at the relevant numbers shows that immigrants are a net financial drain. That made some sort of sense for intra-European migration, but makes zero sense for the sort of immigration that people create drama over.

And if they really actually believed that argument, they would have a public debate on it, not lie and scramble to control the conversation.

Understood. You may be correct. Perhaps it is treason. But it can't be all treason - I do see a great big lot of stupidity.

It could get ugly fast. It was always rumored that N.O.M.A.A.M. never fully decommissioned their arms stockpiles after the Black Friday Agreement. That said, the group has never been that effective since their leader Caliph al-Bundi was killed in a drone strike in 1997.

To seriously answer your question, this is just the same social dissolution ratfucking that was inflicted on black America from the 60s to the 90s. And in the hood, simping ain’t pimping.

I think this is mostly just a rhetorical adjustment. Liberal arguments just work much better within a western cultural worldview which basically everyone in America has adopted. Traditional arguments do not play well on message boards or in conversations. Enter the Chud or the anti-suicidal empathy guy that just doesn’t care about proper debate form.

I’ve come to a conclusion that traditional viewpoints often just work in society.

Chud is basically the rhetorically trick you use when a lefty accuses you over being a Nazi. “Fine whatever I am the Chud”.

Social fashions swing widely. Hard to see any larger trend than that yet.

The more interesting part is the internal dissension among feminists, who have created their own destructor in the trans ideology and can't quite figure out how to blame it on the Patriarchy. The strange bedfellows made between the GC crowd and the political right are paralleling the splintering of the gay movement over the same issues, as well as political islam and a few other things. It will be interesting to see if either can keep their current influence among their political movements.

What is GC?

Gender Critical

Gender critical.

That is to say: openly, unapologetically sexist men, who don't even try to hide it or justify it.

I think we need to be careful about how we use this word, and disambiguate it the same way we would "racist". In "Against Murderism", Scott argued that the word "racist" is generally assigned three mutually exclusive definitions:

  1. Definition by Belief (belief that races are different from one another)
  2. Definition by Motivation (a desire to bring harm to races other than one's own)
  3. Definition by Consequences (racist things or beliefs are those which cause harm to people of other races, even if that was not their intention)

Of these, the only one that really makes any sense to me is the second one.

Along the same lines, I don't think most chuds actively wish harm on women. I think when these men are accused of being "sexist", it's based on the first definition: the belief that men and women are different. Spoiler alert: they are, and the belief that they aren't (or that they would be, if not for the patriarchy/social conditioning/culture) is one of the silliest beliefs the human race has ever produced. Stereotypes exist for a reason, and most stereotypes about women (and men!) are true far more often than not.

#1 is not how Scott phrased it. He phrased it thusly (as his #2, but that's not important):

"Definition By Belief: A belief that some race has negative qualities or is inferior, especially if this is innate/genetic."

The "inferior" option, with the relevant substitutions, threads between your Scylla and Charybdis; it doesn't require actively wishing harm, and it's not plainly true (it is a moral judgement).

I won't deny that there's equivocation going on, though.

Yeah, that's fair. But Scott was quick to point out that, even if this is the definition you're ostensibly using, it's not applied at all consistently. No one would be accused of racism for asserting that Ethiopians and Kenyans have an innate advantage over white Europeans in long-distance running.

The first definition absolutely makes sense too. You just have to expand it and include a potential conclusion to that line of thinking.

Belief: Black people generally have lower IQ than whites.

Conclusion: I will not waste time interviewing black people as I don't want low IQ people for this job.

The problem is that just because a population of black people have lower IQ's, that doesn't mean an individual black person cannot have a high IQ and pull the average up. If his application otherwise looks good, it would be unfair to judge him merely on the color of his skin.

This kind of discrimination based on belief may not be intended to cause harm, but it is still obviously racist.

The conclusion doesn't follow from the belief.

If you want high-IQ people, give a double-blind IQ proxy test and don't be shocked when the results do not match the general population.

If you want athletic people who can haul a fatassed American out of a burning house, test that and don't be surprised when few or no women pass.

People are brain-broke about this shit. There is no impact of racism here, and probably never was. Companies generally aren't systematically racist, and never were. The bus company coordinated with the NAACP and sponsored Rosa Parks' lawsuit.

For the truly underprivileged, they will never get a better chance in life than an even break. Give them a simple test to see if they qualify, not a decades-long "education" of religious indoctrination and active falsehood geared to the mores of the upper class. THAT is where the "systemic racism" is.

Sure, but to what degree can a selfish employer solve that issue? If a black man has a higher than mean IQ for his race, that means that now his time can now be bought, at a bargain price, and so I can get away with paying him less with the same amount of profit, which is what I want. I do better, my competition does worse because they were all "poopoo peepee, it's too much trouble for me" (which is how racism does its damage, and the crime-of-the-heart against which we want to convict). Yes, this doesn't last- because as he gains experience and credibility my ability to maintain the arbitrage decreases- but I can still find them and exploit it because I'm unwilling to listen if and when my moral compass tells me black men are inherently bad. That is itself labor and risk, as the normie sees it; should I not be justly rewarded for my effort [as compared to theirs]?

In this way we see that sufficiently-advanced mercantilism mitigates racism: indeed, these societies tend to converge on being less racist than others for this reason. (They're the least sexist, too, for similar reasons.)

I believe IBM is on the record, verbatim, as explaining that this is why they were willing to hire gay men in the '90s.

You are correct that it fails to solve racism. In your example, the fact that the reason the black man's labor was worth less remains caused by- and not even himself- but by the existence of other people that share his skin color being inherently worse than the median man of another color. One could make the eugenic argument that his success permits him to make more of himself, diluting the pool of 'people who look like him sucks ass' over time, but that doesn't happen for free (he's actually liable to reproduce less, not more, and you still have regression to the mean to worry about- which is an underrated benefit to affirmative action re: society offers, as part of his pension, that his "failsons" won't be left behind).

The difference between gay people and black people is that being gay doesn't correlate positively or negatively with work performance (unless it's fashion or interior design), but that's not what I wanted to talk about.

What both you and @FtttG are missing is that the cost of assessing and interviewing each candidate is non-negligible. If you have just five applicants for your job and one of them is black, skipping him or her because you think blacks have lower intelligence or impulse control is stupid.

But if you have five hundred applicants, and you believe can just throw out a hundred of them and raise the average quality of the remaining applicants for free, why not do so? It's the same as being a hiring manager at a white shoe law firm and discarding every resume that isn't from a recent Harvard or Yale law graduate.

As long as you have enough good applicants, you lose nothing by discarding specific groups. And you are correct that companies lower than you on the totem pole can exploit this by preferentially hiring from these groups.

The obvious other way out of this is making the applicants bear the cost of proving their worth. Have the applicants pay to get tested and get a blue checkmark: "certified not urban youth, more of an Urkel tbh".

The belief that black people on average have lower IQs than white people in no way leads inevitably to the decision not to bother interviewing black people for an intellectually demanding role, any more than the belief that Kenyans and Ethiopians have a massive advantage in long-distance running leads inevitably to the decision to ban Caucasians from competing in marathons.

Sure, but belief + said decision is still racism, even if there was no desire to harm anyone behind it. And that type of decision making is often what people want to spread awareness about and litigate against.

But the "decision" part is doing all the work here: If someone were to categorically refuse hiring black people, that would generally be considered racism no matter the motivation. If anything, the belief would be the closest candidate to a valid justification.

So it's not about the belief, the belief is a red herring. To conclude racism, you need to observe the decision, which as @FtttG pointed out doesn't automatically follow from the belief. If you equivocate between belief and belief + decision, you'll incorrectly conclude racism.

That's fair. My main point is that malice does not factor into racism either. FtttG claimed that the only way something is racist is if the motivation is to bring harm to the other race. I outlined a different motivation that is not about actively harming anyone, but still leads to a racist decision. My point is that racism is simply discrimination based on race. Whether your motivation for this discrimination is neutral or harmful does not change that.

Whether your motivation for this discrimination is neutral or harmful does not change that.

Sure, but then this just makes it so that "racism" describes lots of entirely innocuous and even virtuous and desirable behavior. That's the far more important aspect of that definition of "racism" due to how it takes away what many people would consider perhaps the most salient characteristic of that word, which is that it's automatically bad.

Fair enough, and I agree this is genuinely not caught by Scotts categorization, which is too narrow in only focusing on hatred.

But I still think categorizing it under "by belief" leads you wrong. Instead I'd suggest amending the definition of "by motivation" such that "didn't hire someone (or treated them different in any other way) because of their race" counts as "by motive": The specific action or rule is motivated by race.

I guess on the object level in this discussion it comes down to "Do the 'sexist' men actually support formally unequal treatment of men and women?"

I can get behind the motivation being the dividing line. And evidently, there does exist sexist men who believe women and men should be treated differently. Just the idea that women should be treated more gently and men more harshly is arguably sexist, although also very accepted as long as you package it right. "Don't hit women!" "You can't say that about a girl!" And so on.

The chuds are doing the more classically sexist thing, where they argue that women are incapable of controlling their emotions and having logical discussions, so they should stay away from careers that require this.

Though to your point, I agree that not every man called sexist is one. There are a good amount of people using the word to discredit people or silence conversations for their own gain, when the accusation is totally unwarranted which in turn waters down the seriousness of the word until it becomes something you can call yourself with little risk.

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But there's nothing intrinsically bad about holding the belief that black people have lower IQs, on average, than white people. It's analogous to saying that believing in gravity is bad, because it might lead people to the decision to push someone off a cliff. Factual statements and beliefs are morally inert.

That's fair to distinguish the different types. There's definitely an increasing amount of people who are just in category 1: acknowledging real psychological differences between the sexes, but without any particular malice. But... I think there's some guys in category 2, also, who really do have some malice towards women. They usually mask it as jokes, from edgy "shock jock" pundits like Nick Fuentes, but... when they keep making the same sort of joke over and over, I get the feeling they really do believe in it to some extent.

Nick Fuentes

There's nothing surprising about a closeted gay man who hates women.

There is, perhaps, a bit of a rollback in social attitudes. An expansion in the overton window to things that would have been acceptable in the 1980's.

What there is not is a full scale opposition to women's lib. Even hardcore chuds would laugh you out of the room/look on in stunned silence if you started quoting Edward Hammond Clarke. The actual views held by anti-suffragettes were not things that are popular with present day anti-19th amendment believers. The woman's anti-suffrage league today would be seen as frighteningly radical by people who oppose the nineteenth amendment. Female domesticity is something you find advocated by the most extreme religious right republicans, not the populist chuds(who merely don't care who they offend).

Even hardcore chuds would laugh you out of the room/look on in stunned silence if you started quoting Edward Hammond Clarke. The actual views held by anti-suffragettes were not things that are popular with present day anti-19th amendment believers

Hmm, I've never heard of him before. Let me take a quick trip over to wikipedia to see what he believed...

He claimed that a woman's health would deteriorate as a result of higher education, and moreover that the education of women would come at the expense of their reproductive health.

hahaha, what crazy nonsense. Good thing no one believes that anymore. There's definitely no relation between women's higher education and a lower birth rate, is there...?

(There is)

You're sanewashing. There's a difference between "education causes women to have less kids" (nobody argues with this) and "education is bad for women's health, especially reproductive health". The idea that education causes health conditions that reduce fertility is ridiculous; educated women don't have children because they don't want to, not because they are physically unable to.

In Nordic countries, like Finland, more educated women have more kids than the less educated ones.

I don't necessarily support repealing the 19th, but as you said it is becoming harder to deny that the continued liberation of modern women has indirectly negatively affected the modern average man. From a Western woman's point of view, and as a beneficiary of all of these shifts, it's easy to see why (and how) they successfully defend their right to liberation. They're not directly hurting anyone, and our liberal society operates on and defends that sort of philosophy.

It has also directly negatively affected modern men. Any man who didn't get a job because of gender quotas, any man who was victim of domestic violence but treated as the perpetrator, etc.

I don't support repealing the 19th either. There are many equality-improving things we can try first.

I don't feel that women's liberation has indirectly negatively affected me, just as I do not think that the LGBT movement has affected me as a straight guy much either way. Sure, an employee in a hardware store has twice as many people competing for his job, but there are also about twice as many people shopping in the hardware store.

My dating life might not be going great, but it is not so shitty that going for traditional family values (30yo marries 18yo virgin, they find out if they are sexually compatible after the ceremony and start making babies) would be an improvement.

Sure, female voters popularized woke. But I don't see how Hegseth's idea of masculinity would be an improvement for my gender. We are not in the bronze age any more, the horrors of the modern battlefield can not be overcome through testosterone injections and cosplaying as Spartans. After WW1, it is in my best interests that the (generally) less belligerent half of mankind has the franchise lest I choke to my death in some godforsaken trench in Verdun.

going for traditional family values (30yo marries 18yo virgin, they find out if they are sexually compatible after the ceremony and start making babies

It's worth mentioning that there is really nothing trad* about large marital age gaps (except maybe for widowers). Amish and Haredi men marry when they are 21/22. Their brides are typically 1-2 years younger. 'Sexual compatibility' isn't really a thing. Couples grow together, both in their sex lives, and the rest of their lives.

*Caveat here that I'm talking about the west. You do see larger age gaps in Africa, but it's not as if those guys are sleeping around in their 20s, they just can't afford the bride price when they're young and poor.

After WW1, it is in my best interests that the (generally) less belligerent half of mankind has the franchise lest I choke to my death in some godforsaken trench in Verdun.

And after the 21st century, we will gladly take back the trenches if that would get us functional societies at home.

I don't see how Hegseth's idea of masculinity would be an improvement for my gender.

I don't either, but the more you ignore the drawbacks and broad impact it has had, the more you unintentionally create the Pete Hegseth's of the world. I don't think many people here want some type of Gilead. That's not the impression I get. Some perhaps, but in general I see a demographic-wide frustration that has a pretty clear source. It's not the women themselves. It's society's over-correction when it comes to freeing women while ignoring what still ails men.

Men are worse off on education at every level below graduate school, on deaths of despair, on suicide, on homelessness, on incarceration, on custody outcomes, on workplace deaths, on labor force, and on friendship and social isolation.

Women are worse off on earnings at the top, health research, and sexual violence.

The issues with women's suffering are addressed heavily in society: MeToo movement, abortion advocacy, more research into female specific illnesses, repeated emphasis on women's empowerment in high profile positions, etc.

The issues with men's suffering are not addressed heavily, and those issues are increasing. They are also (relative to women's issues) largely ignored.

It's society's over-correction when it comes to freeing women while ignoring what still ails men.

Society doesn't just ignore men. Men are being sacrificed at the altar of women's rights. Gender quotas will by their nature discriminate against men. MeToo made it possible for women to climb the career ladder while throwing men under the buss. Male sexuality has been demonized and made out to be inherently predatory. The US has issues with title IX laws and using the Duluth model to respond to domestic violence.

So not only are existing problems unaddressed. New problems have been created and either ignored, or passed of as equality victories.

it is in my best interests that the (generally) less belligerent half of mankind has the franchise

How did you think the men got the idea to go to Verdun in the first place? The female of the species is deadlier precisely because it orders you to death on its behalf, and so you have the basic principal-agent problem.

The biological imperative for men is to go to war and die; the biological imperative for women is to be worth it. If we want to disarm that, and I think it is a net good to disarm it, both sides need to stand down. Right now, only men have [fallen into economic hardship and been forced to].

I have no faith women won't order me to war because some foreign king personally offended them; I have no reason to believe that obeying them will go well for me.

How did you think the men got the idea to go to Verdun in the first place? The female of the species is deadlier precisely because it orders you to death on its behalf, and so you have the basic principal-agent problem.

All the people actually giving orders at Verdun were men. All the political leaders and electorates in WWI were entirely male. And the actual draft was enforced by male police and security forces and the war was not driven by concerns of protecting women and children but by the male leaderships geopolitical concerns. Blaming women for "ordering" based on a social shaming campaign when men were the ones giving all the actual orders seems entirely backwards.

The biological imperative for men is to go to war and die; the biological imperative for women is to be worth it. If we want to disarm that, and I think it is a net good to disarm it, both sides need to stand down.

Haven't they? Every major Western country has an all volunteer military that allows women in combat roles. No one is forcing you to go die for anything. And frankly the existential risk to most westerners is functionally zero there is very little chance of Belgium or Ireland finding themselves in some kind of existential war.

Haven't they? Every major Western country has an all volunteer military that allows women in combat roles. No one is forcing you to go die for anything.

Not right now, because it's peacetime. But that can change, and for example Germany is debating to reinstall conscription - and constitutionally, only men can be conscripted.

Ukraine (not obviously a non-western country) shows that if the need becomes pressing, it's still men's job to die, and Ukraine's western allies support this state of affairs.

Not right now, because it's peacetime. But that can change, and for example Germany is debating to reinstall conscription - and constitutionally, only men can be conscripted.

Which, according to women/feminists/leftists, is good and proper, because household workloads are unequally distributed among men and women.

Or at least that was the last thing I heard when the topic was du jour. Haven't heard anything about it in a while.

the existential risk to most westerners is functionally zero

Yeah, I slept through 2020 and 2021, too. The ability of the public to be absolutely hysterical and jump straight into a war (foreign or domestic, 2020 being the latter re: BLM) a lot of stuff is and remains very real; I have that in my own country right now, that's where my examples are pulled from.

These people will vote for much evil if they're permitted to do so; exhibit A being the immigrant situation, and that's just the economic war, not a truly kinetic one. No risk to them, just like getting drafted into Vietnam was. And I absolutely believe those people would try to draft every other Canadian to throw their lives away just to make a point- that's literally what they voted for.

So no, I don't think I'll be forgetting that any time soon.

All the political leaders and electorates in WWI were entirely male.

If it was that bad then, how much the worse now that half the electorate is under moral hazard conditions to pull the trigger? And as we see in Ukraine, the minute the fighting starts it is exclusively the women who [are permitted to and as such immediately] make a run for it, which is absolutely crooked- that whole "be worth it" thing evidently won't matter when it counts.

If it was that bad then, how much the worse now that half the electorate is under moral hazard conditions to pull the trigger? And as we see in Ukraine, the minute the fighting starts it is exclusively the women who [are permitted to and as such immediately] make a run for it, which is absolutely crooked- that whole "be worth it" thing evidently won't matter when it counts.

That seems like cheating. If your argument against female suffrage (and to be fair, it's not clear if you're arguing that) is that they don't have skin in the game if a war starts, it seems unreasonable to use a war where women were literally disenfranchised as evidence that it could be worse.

In Better Angels of our Nature, Stephen Pinker makes a pretty convincing case that female politicians at least are slightly less warmongering than their male counterparts.

Stephen Pinker makes a pretty convincing case that female politicians at least are slightly less warmongering than their male counterparts.

I don't care about female politicians, I care about female voters.

What policy and politicians do female voters prefer?
The one that was actively facilitating a massive invasion of military-aged men?
That one whose party apparatus directly supported burning down a bunch of cities in the US?

"Gender of peace", my ass. Civil warmongering is still warmongering.

What policy and politicians do female voters prefer?

They prefer less war than men in the UK.

And in the US.

You seem to be defining the BLM riots/protests and Biden's immigration policy as war, which they are not.

Although with regards to the BLM riots, I asked Claude to dig into the crosstabs of this Yougov survey on whether they were 'mostly peaceful' or not. 67% of women said they were, with 66% of men said they were, so there's no sigificant difference there. The same is true about questions of police response, who is responsible for the protests turning violent, and other similar questions.

There is a small gap between men and women on immigration/border issues in the Anglosphere, but it's trumped by a much larger partisan one.

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Yeah, I slept through 2020 and 2021, too. The ability of the public to be absolutely hysterical and jump straight into a war (foreign or domestic, 2020 being the latter re: BLM) a lot of stuff is and remains very real; I have that in my own country right now, that's where my examples are pulled from.

Public hysteria and domestic disturbance is a world of difference from Verdun. There's no realistic path of mass hysteria leading to millions of Canadian youth being machine gunned in the mud by the Germans or any other enemy.

If it was that bad then, how much the worse now that half the electorate is under moral hazard conditions to pull the trigger? And as we see in Ukraine, the minute the fighting starts it is exclusively the women who [are permitted to and as such immediately] make a run for it,

Serious question would you support a 50 50 gender ratio quota in combat arms to get rid of that moral hazard? Your not the first person I've seen make this argument but it always feels a little just so to me. Demanding Women's political participation be curtailed because they don't have "skin in the game" is usually done by people who don't want women in combat arms either so it's neat little trick. Women don't belong in combat arms therefore they have no right to participate in the political process because of the "moral hazard" If the moral hazard is the issue then getting more women into combat arms seems to solve it in a much easier and equitable way. But to be frank from your posts I take it you are Canadian? I find the idea that Canadian men will be subjected to a mass draft to die in a war started by women who don't understand the cost to be totally fanciful. Ukraine isn't a modern feminist Western country so I don't really think the example applies, and remember American feminists were fighting to get women into combat arms during the GWOT.

There's no realistic path of mass hysteria leading to millions of Canadian youth being machine gunned in the mud by the Germans

The Germans ain't who the Boomer's elbows are raised against in jingoistic yawp. There is a reason that every 20th century anti-war piece blames those who have no skin in the game [at that time, mainly the old] for this shit: because it's true.

They knew a time of war that I do not; I therefore heed their warnings.

I find the idea that Canadian men will be subjected to a mass draft to die in a war started by women who don't understand the cost

The female (and the old) do understand the cost; they simply believe themselves worth that cost. So great is the society they create(d) that men should compete to bow down to them, they believe.

Serious question would you support a 50 50 gender ratio quota in combat arms to get rid of that moral hazard?

Yes, actually. Sure, we could do division of labor beyond that- a woman driving truck or doing supply work is another man that can be spared to the front- but the thing is they're just as conscripted as the men are to do that, and they know that. It's more mechanized, but trucks and supply depots and arms factories are legitimate military targets just as much if not even more so than the grunts on the line are.

If men aren't permitted to flee the country on the belief they might be drafted, neither are the women. The draft should be just as existentially terrible to anyone who has a vote on it.

The ultimate problem I'm trying to point out here is that man's life and woman's life don't carry the same moral weight any more (and that's something detrimental to any society where this is true).

They used to- which is why, due to the division of labor ['assigned to' human beings through inherent sexual dimorphism], the disposable gender had special privileges over the non-disposable one in return for their sacrifice upon "women and children first" (and the like). The duty is still there, but the privileges are not, and there's only the one answer to that.

Serious question would you support a 50 50 gender ratio quota in combat arms to get rid of that moral hazard?

Equal rights regarding conscription both in theory and practice would go a long way. If female conscription is treated the same as male, they carry the same risk as men (all else being equal, but two men of different age, health, occupation, etc. don't carry the same risk either).

Quotas aren't justice, because they treat groups as ethical entities, not persons.

That is to say: openly, unapologetically sexist men, who don't even try to hide it or justify it.

I think this is definitely true, but only in the sense of "sexism" as would be understood by a majority of mainstream self-identifying feminists, as a consequence of that latter group trying to - and mostly succeeding in - redefining what "sexism" means to cover huge swaths of both innocuous and virtuous behavior. Which predictably resulted in the word - and concept - "sexism" losing much/most of its negative connotations. In terms of the definition of "sexism" that led to it gaining those negative connotations in the first place - i.e. something like "drawing un-evidenced/unsupported conclusions about an individual purely on the basis of their sex" - there's probably a bit of a blip, but it's certainly not evident to be more, by my observations. Certainly whatever blip it is doesn't rise to even within 1 order of magnitude of that type of sexism directed by mainstream self-identified feminists towards males, so if it's more than a blip, it's not easy to notice, at least.

I think that as with most issues, the culture is splintering. 30 years ago, almost everyone in the West got their news from a few mainstream sources whereas today it's very easy to find a subculture which (1) present a lot of information, analysis, and arguments which contradict the mainstream; and (2) have bubble-esqe features. So I would say that there are a lot more extreme people on both sides of this issue, like a lot of issues. Which means more chuds.

The story thus far: for most of human history, humans had a patriarchy where men controlled most positions of power. Starting in 1919 with the 19th amendment in the US, and a similar date in most European countries, women got the right to vote and generally got legal equality with men. But certain social and institutional barriers remained, so 3rd wave feminists worked to gradually push back and get more rights and power for women. This was generally seen as a good thing by all, with only the most unashamedly reactionary men being opposed.

Most of human history was spent as hunter-gatherers. Which tended to practice all kinds of arrangements when it comes to gender roles, though notably both monogamy and male leadership were probably the norm as we can gather.

Also, men controlling positions of power is quite reductionist. It's true that most people who historically had leadership positions were men, but that was not really because they were men. In most of settled, recorded history, power was held by what were essentially warlords - which of course favours violent men. But most (99%) of men were just as powerless and unequal as men. Indeed, if you compared the position of a wife of a wealthy landowner with that of a coal miner in the 19th century or that of a duchess with that of a peasant, it's pretty clear that the sex-reductionist view falls apart somewhat quickly.

Patriarchy, as it was, benefitted a small group of older men and then their wives. Plenty of young men got shafted and arguably by a greater extent than the women. What's worse? Being fed into the meat grinder of WW1 or not being able to vote? Getting black lung or not being able to open a bank account?

In the 80s and 90s, this was mostly done by trying to treat everyone the same, with the hope that taking away men's sexism would naturally create equality with men. But over time this proved insufficient, so left-leaning groups started pushing for more and more efforts to actively favor women.

But has any of this actually worked? Well... no. Or at least, it's hit a wall. Engineering and the physical trades remain stubbornly male dominated. Women do a bit better in management, but only when they can sit in large meetings and avoid personal responsibility for anything. Their strong preference remains fields like nursing, HR, and marketing.

Young, childless women unequivocally and consistently do better than their male counterparts now. It is true that companies are not allowed to price in the detriments of hiring a woman (periods, sexual harassment lawsuits, pregnancy) and that the regulatory and welfare state creates and redistributes away investment and jobs towards women (HR and nursing for example, DEI), but it's wrong to say it hasn't worked. It has. It's just not made young women happy.

Indeed, young women in Anglo countries are unhappier than ever! Make of that what you will.

At the same time, there's been a resurgance in traditional feminine behavior. Things like wearing makeup, lipstock, playing with dolls, openly crying, doing needlework, and sometimes even wearing sexy clothes.

The reality is that women have less childbearing intentions than ever and enter into fewer relationships than ever. What some random influencers are doing doesn't really matter at a macro level.

But most (99%) of men were just as powerless and unequal as men. Indeed, if you compared the position of a wife of a wealthy landowner with that of a coal miner in the 19th century or that of a duchess with that of a peasant, it's pretty clear that the sex-reductionist view falls apart somewhat quickly.

Sure, of course most men are going to be lower class in any society. But, relative to the women in their own social class, they still had some power. The stereotypical coal miner still had some power over his wife that would shock people today. Moreover, he could probably find a wife quite easily, because women really needed a guy like him to earn money for her, whereas now he'd be considered "low SMV" unless he was particularly handsome.

Young, childless women unequivocally and consistently do better than their male counterparts now. It is true that companies are not allowed to price in the detriments of hiring a woman (periods, sexual harassment lawsuits, pregnancy) and that the regulatory and welfare state creates and redistributes away investment and jobs towards women (HR and nursing for example, DEI), but it's wrong to say it hasn't worked.

Yeah that's fair. And I think there's a generational disconnect there. The older men, especialy the ones with long established careers, don't feel threatened and still want to help promote women. The younger men absolutely feel threatened, and feel like they need to organize to protect themselves.

The stereotypical coal miner still had some power over his wife that would shock people today.

The problem with that argument is that human relationships are not zero-sum. The fact that our coal miner could probably spend half of his payday check in the pub, then go home, beat up and rape his wife without anyone in his society having a problem with that gains him a lot less than it costs his spouse.

You can't just conduct the cruelty you receive from the people above you to the people below you and be content that you arrive at net zero. No amount of wife-beating is going to make up for the fact that you will get black lung disease.

The younger men absolutely feel threatened, and feel like they need to organize to protect themselves.

Do they? I do not see how young men would make up a particular coherent group as far as competing with women for jobs is concerned. I might as soon expect that the right-handed organize to out the competition of the left-handed, or that the scions of noble lines organize to prohibit the commoners from taking their jobs. More realistically, the meatbags will futilely organize to prevent the bots from taking most of their jobs.

The problem with that argument is that human relationships are not zero-sum. The fact that our coal miner could probably spend half of his payday check in the pub, then go home, beat up and rape his wife without anyone in his society having a problem with that gains him a lot less than it costs his spouse.

This was never socially acceptable in cisHajnal Europe (with the possible exception of the marital rape), and the man who did it was subject to the disgust and loathing of his community, and if his brothers-in-law were to beat him up then it is very unlikely that any of the people who watched and applauded would remember who did it when the cops showed up.

The problem with that argument is that human relationships are not zero-sum. ... You can't just conduct the cruelty you receive from the people above you to the people below you and be content that you arrive at net zero. No amount of wife-beating is going to make up for the fact that you will get black lung disease.

Absolutely. But a lot of feminist takes are also based on the zero-sum view, and they have the same flaw. If the abuse of our coal miner's marital authority is negative-sum, it remains possible – and, I believe, true – that the proper use of his authority is positive-sum.

I guess it depends on your definition of success. Is more HR a good or a bad?

Most of human history was spent as hunter-gatherers.

No, because that's prehistory. History is generally considered to start when writing is discovered, and thus when we get access to his story without dozens of layers of potentially-inaccurate retelling. Hunter-gatherers basically don't write to us; steppe pastoralists don't write to us very much either.

Maybe you only did it for rhetorical effect but the word "history" is not a portmanteau of "his story".

I'm aware of feminists doing the "his story" bit for decades. They're wrong of course but they enjoy reciting it.

It's perfectly fine as a rhetorical technique, to illustrate the idea that history as written has tended to privilege the perspective of males over females. But there are a distressingly large number of midwits who seem to think that "his story" is literally the etymology of the term.

I know the Idiot's Guide to Latin has sidebars called "Hysteria's Herstory". I'm not sure if it explicitly says or merely implies the false etymology.

Was legitimately wrong (I think I was taught this wrongly by feminists who saw it as androcentric); thanks.

A derivative of a word meaning "man" is in there, but it's "tor", not "his".

My point remains that for most of the existence of "humans", we were hunter-gatherers.

Okay, but the OP said "most of human history", not "most of the existence of humans". Thus, your "correction" was spurious. Hypercorrection is a pet peeve of mine.

Okay, but the OP said "most of human history", not "most of the existence of humans". Thus, your "correction" was spurious. Hypercorrection is a pet peeve of mine.

AFAIK it's becoming pretty common among scholars to use the concept of "history" in a broader sense. For example historian Yuval Noah Harari teaches a fascinating history class which starts long before the days written records.

That being said, @BahRamYou is the master of his own words. It's not clear to me what he meant by the word "history" so I can't really say anything more.

Honestly I wrote those paragraphs pretty tongue in cheek, so you and @magic9mushroom or @IdiocyInAction shouldn't take them too seriously. There's no way I can address something as broad as "all human history" in just two paragraphs, whether that's literally the entire time that Homo Sapiens have existed or "just" written history. I think I actually had that thought about whether I was referring to only written history or not, and decided I didn't really care. All I meant was that there did indeed used to be something of a patriarchy, as feminists use the term, but it has been pretty thoroughly dismantled in modern times, but perhaps is making a comeback.

Honestly I wrote those paragraphs pretty tongue in cheek, so you and @magic9mushroom or @IdiocyInAction shouldn't take them too seriously. There's no way I can address something as broad as "all human history" in just two paragraphs, whether that's literally the entire time that Homo Sapiens have existed or "just" written history. I think I actually had that thought about whether I was referring to only written history or not, and decided I didn't really care

I understand. For me it's a kind of interesting side question -- how one should define the word "history." Admittedly it's pretty much just a matter of semantics, but I still find it interesting. When I was in high school, I was taught the "written records" interpretation. In fact, the teacher told me that if written records existed but were not able to be translated, the society would be considered pre-historic. As mentioned above, it seems the trend is to take a broader view.

As far as the return of patriarchy goes, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, my take is that it's another example of the fracturing of the culture. People are more willing to speak out if they know that they are not alone. The internet has allowed people to connect; share ideas; form bubbles; etc., with like-minded people.

For many years I have had a negative opinion about feminism, but being able to connect with similar-minded people has made me more confident in terms of speaking out and has also helped me to think about these issues in a way that is clearer, sharper, and easier to convey. For example, these days if I meet a feminist in real life who complains about the paucity of women in some elite role in society, I am ready to immediately ask her thoughts about the paucity of women losing their lives in mine cave-ins and such. An argument which is obvious in hindsight, but it really helps to have access to the internet to be able to formulate a response like that. And to know that I am not alone and not crazy for disliking feminism.

Multiply that by a few tens of thousands (or perhaps hundreds of thousands) and it definitely could feel like there are a lot of chuds coming out of the woodwork.

I was taught "records" at some point, but on the other hand it's been 40 years since my first trip to a "Museum of Natural History" where it was considered unremarkable that "Natural" basically meant "Pre-".

More comments

I was definitely feeling this when attempting to listen to the gamergate summary posted below. Even though my own take has been pretty consistent now and when living through it, it just feels especially quaint and from a different head-in-sand era to offer any charity to the antics of quinn/sarkeesian and the media figures trying to circle the wagons around them. In comparison, the current popular thing is the asmongold "only accept total chud victory" / "welcome home to mcdonalds" celebrations at all the closures of 'modern' projects/studios/companies, while showing pictures of how much more their staff was now made up of women compared to the good old days, and having zero patience for even the slightest escape-hatch attempt for sympathy for lost jobs.

It definitely looks like the dominance of the "you're debating not to change the mind of your debate opponent, but those of the audience" angle. Once some people start being beyond the reach of shaming & guilting, and just let it rip, only to be met with massive growing popularity like fuentes/asmongold/etc., I think that's certainly showing the new era we're in.

There was a time when most of the popular MRAs on youtube were actually women, like karen straughan, who often had sons or at least positive relationships with their male relatives. I can't recall this ever being treated as a reason to dismiss their takes, or thought of as anything but positive. Meanwhile, we're currently at the point where any adult man who isn't at least vaguely benevolently chauvinistic/sexist is now suspected of simply being a "wifeguy"/"girldad" as an explanation.

There was a time when most of the popular MRAs on youtube were actually women, like karen straughan, who often had sons or at least positive relationships with their male relatives.

I don’t think it was ever any different. Male MRAs have only every gained credence within their own subculture; normally they are only given any mainstream attention in order to be presented as bogeymen worthy of contempt and ridicule. Female MRAs and anti-feminist talking heads in general thrive in comparison because culture war clashes between feminists and anti-feminists are basically mommy wars in the wider sense of the word – struggles between subgroups of women, which in turn provides further proof that the feminist capture of mainstream culture is complete. This has been the case for decades; just look at who the proponents and opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment were, for example. It’s inconceivable for any man or group of men to even vocally oppose feminist policies and get rewarded with any level of mainstream legitimacy.

Karen Straughan managed to occupy a very odd niche of a woman who ingrouped men. Whilst I didn't keep up with Straughan entirely, so I would not be in the know if she foided out at any point, she is still seemingly the only woman that has earnestly done this publicly.

Most of the time this doesn't happen until women are old. And then it's not always a case of them ingrouping men but rather outgrouping a lot of women. Similar to how Ann Coulter is often at odds with her own gender due to political differences.

If we contrast Karen with the modern 'conservative' women and many of the 'MRA' women, who placed themselves as anti-feminist in some way, they were and are just making feminist arguments in a roundabout way. Where 'feminism and the left' are bad because it's bad for conservative women. What's actually good for women is traditionalism! Well... That's still revolving around what's good for women. I always saw that as completely different from 'This is bad because it's bad for boys and men'.

And when one sees through that you recognize it's just another permutation of the eternal feminist paradox, where the definition of feminism rests on who is defining who the 'real women' are. And all feminists who disagree with one another do is assert that they and those who agree with them are the real women.

Most modern influencer women who play the role of the conservative/anti-feminist can't keep the act up for long. They're self interested parties. They don't ingroup men, they ingroup women. Or are complete narcissists. That's the lesson that's been learned. They will say and do things for money like a cam girl will.

I had thought the 'boy mom' thing would maybe spiral into women and mothers interested in the welfare of their sons and by extension boys and men in general, but it kind of says it on the tin. It's more about a new identity for women of sorts.

To conclude, one can always easily sniff out who is an actual interested party with regards to the welfare of men. They ask and answer 'Is this good for men, yes or no? The e-thots can't do this. The 'boy moms' can't do this. The wifeguys and girldads can't do this. It's not that you need to be a good liar even. There are plenty of grifters and frauds in these spaces. They just can't maintain the act.

Wouldn't it be a contradiction for any woman to become a thought leader as an anti-feminist? By definition she should be trying to not lead, and simply support a man. It's the same reason women would never support a male as a feminist leader.

The female influencers who I've seen play the act best tend to just kinda... flirt with anti-feminism but then just duck any sort of serious discussion. They're entertainers first and foremost, not political pundits.

A religious patriarchy in power generally does not permit women to become spiritual leaders in any capacity; in that sense I think you’re correct.

Wouldn't it be a contradiction for any woman to become a thought leader as an anti-feminist?

Maybe?

But come on, that's like asking why there are no black men in the KKK, or why an Ashkenazi does not place emphasis on the latter part of their name. With the added dimension that, if you're asking why tomboys don't do this... men don't really like doing this either, so why would a woman who is closer to understanding to how men think -> "complaining is just a you problem, get good" embrace this either? I guess you could ask the same question of ex-women, but they're too small of a group to do that.

It doesn't make socioeconomic sense for an average woman to publicly do that. Privately, sure, but it's simply unhealthy to be a Uncle Tom strike-breaker in public for the same reasons it was unhealthy for mid-20th century men. The best you're going to get is how Charlie Kirk's widow acts.

Wouldn't it be a contradiction for any woman to become a thought leader as an anti-feminist? By definition she should be trying to not lead

I don't think that is the case. Even using the motte definition of "believes that equal rights between men and women is just," there's no reason why someone who is anti- that would believe that women ought not be leaders. If we take the more well-understood definition of something like "supports the movement that is labeled 'feminism,'" then it becomes even more stark, because the idea that women could be thought leaders is neither unique nor even unusual to the feminist movement.

I can't think of a reasonable definition of "anti-feminist" that would map onto the real world that would imply that they must be against women being thought leaders.

No? There were female thought leaders from societies without feminism.

This is because society has substantial memetic immunity against self-interested men, for good reason. 'Traditionalism is good for women' is in part because under traditionalism men are supposed to be self-sacrificing to justify their leadership position.

I'm not seeing the good reason. We're not living under a traditionalist society. Our leaders are not self-sacrificing. It's just a death spiral of weak men failing shit tests put to them by self interested women.

I’m guessing OP’s argument also implies that society does not have substantial memetic immunity against self-interested women, which seems to be the larger point here. Society operates under the unspoken assumption that women are generally weaker in every sense, so it’s understandable and warranted when they act in self-interested ways.

The feminist movement has definitely lost some power, but I think the shift is smaller than it looks. Companies like YouTube, Twitch, and X only needed to back off from feminism a little bit to roll back Biden-era censorship and allow anti-feminist speech to regain the same level of popularity it had in the late 2010s -- when PewDiePie, then the most popular channel on YouTube, would tell rape jokes and debunk the wage gap to his viewers.

On the other hand, women's right to vote is a lot more universally popular and harder to roll back. A lot more people support basic gender equality than support the worst excesses of the feminist movement. (In 2020, Ms. Magazine celebrated an all-time high of only 60% of women identifying as feminists, and as a footnote mentioned that 98% of people believed gender equality is important.) So while some people might performatively oppose women's sufferage as a way of making clear that they don't care what the feminist movement thinks of them, I don't think we're at any risk of women actually losing the right to vote.

It’s also fair to say that the Manosphere in general is a shadow of its former self. Red Pill theories, PUA and MRA used to be relatively much more relevant online between 2009 and 2015 or so. I’m guessing it was because this was a time of general political stagnation and apathy which provided an opportunity for such niche trends to gain popularity, but then the rise of the Alt-Right and the Trump phenomenon shook things up and siphoned off whatever level of interest they’d have otherwise enjoyed.

n the late 2010s -- when PewDiePie, then the most popular channel on YouTube, would tell rape jokes and debunk the wage gap to his viewers.

I never watched PewDiePie, so I can't speak to exactly what he was saying. But I will say... that was then and this is now? Back then, the internet was still a clear second place compared to newspapers and TV in actually changing people's minds. Now, I'd say the internet is the clear first place. And it's not just one channel, it's a lot of channels saying things like this.

In 2020, Ms. Magazine celebrated an all-time high of only 60% of women identifying as feminists, and as a footnote mentioned that 98% of people believed gender equality is important

That actually seems shockingly low. An explicitly feminist magazine, polling only women, could only get to 60% self-identifying as feminist? A label which doesn't really mean anything specific? That implies a lot of people are strongly running away from any sort of feminism.

An explicitly feminist magazine, polling only women

They were reporting on a Pew Research study, but I used that link because Ms. Magazine called it an "all-time high". The feminist movement had never been supported by a supermajority of women, much less people at large. There was always opposition, even on TV, on networks like Fox News. So to correctly model the world, you have to account for the fact that women got a lot of equality regardless.

But has any of this actually worked? Well... no. Or at least, it's hit a wall. Engineering and the physical trades remain stubbornly male dominated. Women do a bit better in management, but only when they can sit in large meetings and avoid personal responsibility for anything. Their strong preference remains fields like nursing, HR, and marketing.

I think you're understating it. Women have been a majority of new doctors and lawyers for years. Young women (in the UK at least) outearn young men and there are more male NEETs than female ones. Women are about 62% of accountants. I think you can make the strong case that, in the modern economy, women are better suited to the working world. There's obviously still strong male and female preferences (vis. people vs things) and most workaholics are men but it's not as if women are just doing pretend makework while men do all the actual work.

Of course, you still see a wage gap within marriages because a) women prefer men who earn more money than them, b) women have a comparative advantage in having children and c) women who have children prefer to spend time with them while preferring their husbands work full time.

As an example, consider our new Secretary of War (that's war, not defense), Pete Hegseth. He opposes feminism, says that women should not be in combat roles, and has instituted mandatory testosterone testing for the military. He's also just generally blunt and aggressive in the way he talks. The left hates him but... he's still in charge. In his personal life, he is twice divorced due to having a lot of affairs.

Or consider JD Vance. He's a lot more intellectual than Hegseth, but still something of a chud. He opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, and childlessness in general. He's flirted with the idea that parents should have more voting rights than non-parents. He wants to "de-woke-ify" all federal institutions. He's saying all kinds of things that would have gotten me fired from most corporate jobs, and yet there's a strong chance that he'll become president.

I'm not sure you can interpret much from either of these men. Hegseth seems pretty representative of Trumpian boorishness and chaos, rather than some kind of shift in the makeup of elites, and JD Vance's believes are pretty much in line with broad social conservatism. Vance's beliefs aren't too far from someone like Catherine Pakaluk, does that make her a Chud?

My firm almost certainly hires more women than men (and for some time now). Our top performers are 2:1 male to female. Our worst performers are also men.

Also women seem to be in position to be more threatened by AI. Which explains why the foaming at the mouth AI haters are mostly women.

Also women seem to be in position to be more threatened by AI.

Do they? I don't know the stats exactly, but I was under the impression that women tended to do more people-oriented work like e.g. nurses, therapists, caretakers, while men tended to do more thing-oriented work like e.g. programmers, analysts, engineers. And the latter set of jobs seem to be more threatened than the former by AI right now. On top of that, threatening someone's job is far more negatively impactful for men than for women; a woman losing her job doesn't also have extremely negative impact on her sexual market value the same way that a man losing his job does, and that's a great determinant to someone's general life satisfaction.

Speaking of sexual market value, there's an argument that generative AI also tends to be more beneficial to women for simulating sexual relationships, as women tend to prioritize emotional connection more than physical ones, and currently AI can generate text that simulates emotions much better than it can generate atoms that simulate physical flesh and blood. So we could see a future with billions of femcels happily chatting with their AI boyfriends on their phones while billions of incels cry to sleep after jerking it to their ideal GF on a 2D screen on their phone.

HOWEVER, a counter-argument could be that women are more status-conscious and so they may be less likely to accept an AI partner as a good substitute; an AI can simulate status, but it can't actually be a high status man. So I think the jury's still out on that.

Of course, innovations in robotics and material sciences could make these even out or even flip, but those haven't happened yet.

Which explains why the foaming at the mouth AI haters are mostly women.

This doesn't match my experience, but I feel like this could be more down to sex differences in how people react to things they hate in the modern environment than to do with sex differences in how much they actually are threatened by it.

I also think there may be a portion of image/video generation that women tend to get more upset about. That is, image/video generation allows for the creation of infinitely diverse, bespoke porn, which cuts out actual women from the production cycle, arguably lowering the price they can charge for actual photos and actually filmed videos. It also greatly lowers the barrier to entry for someone to take a real photo of a real clothed person and to draw over it in a way that makes it appear as if she's nude, or even to create a completely new image with a new pose and setting for the same face, which I believe women tend to find problematic more often than men do. Likewise with the ability for someone to take a photo and then generate more images and audio to put together to a video where only the first frame is a real photo, and the rest of the video is a depiction of the actual person doing something that never happened.

By women I meant corporate bitches.

By women I meant corporate bitches.

Ah. I'd guess

sex differences in how people react to things they hate in the modern environment

is a big factor in that case, since corporate bitches tend to be some of the least encumbered when it comes to expressing righteous indignation over some sort of ideological/political issue and/or have immense amounts of practice and encouragement of it in the last few decades, which should be the formative years of most of anyone in corporate.

In terms of the threat to their actual work, if we presume that corporate bitches disproportionately fill what might be hyperbolically called sinecures, doing makework, versus men who disproportionately fill jobs where their actual productivity actually drives the company's performance, I'm not sure that women are worse situated either. AI is able to do productive work, allowing the productive workers to be replaced, but sinecures and makework can be justified and invented as much as needed, to fill demand, and I don't see any signs that the demand for more corporate bitches is going down any time soon.

However, there's also the argument that AI is capable of making the productive people so much more productive and capable of performing a lot of the makework tasks such that companies do decide to cut down on the demand for corporate bitches, in favor of profits. So who knows.

But most importantly, the perception of the corporate bitches versus men could indeed be that the former is more threatened than the latter, since, presuming that there's truth to the hyperbole, the former's work is, in fact, easier for AI to replace than the latter's. So you're probably right.

I dunno about that, computer programmers are very male. Including the 'women'.

Also women seem to be in position to be more threatened by AI. Which explains why the foaming at the mouth AI haters are mostly women.

I would put that down more to women being more risk averse and less interested in technology generally. Women are more NIMBYish than men when it comes to building houses, and men are more optimistic about technological progress generally.

And I don't think we can confidently argue that women are more threatened by AI in any case. If AI takes over all jobs, then really the only 'jobs' left will be interpersonal roles e.g. mothers and fathers, and the housewife role works better for women than for men. I suspect AI will hit white collar workers harder than blue collar ones, but blue collar workers aren't just plumbers and tradesmen, it also includes nurses, care workers, childcare workers and cleaners. And one of the main male blue collar roles (drivers) are getting automated away as we speak.

I think you're understating it. Women have been a majority of new doctors and lawyers for years.

That's fair. There are certainly some fields where feminism has worked as intended? women have caught up to, or surpassed men.

The question now is... is that a good thing? There's no longer a shortage of people willing and able to be doctors and lawyers. Instead, people fight viciously in competition to get those high-prestige jobs. I do not know if the current status quo of "give it to the teacher's pets" will hold, there. Perhaps the chuds will also take over that competition by simply banning female doctors and lawyers, instead of trying to out-study them on the exams?

Vance's beliefs aren't too far from someone like Catherine Pakaluk, does that make her a Chud?

Well, this is the first time I've heard of her, so it's hard to say. She seems quite conservative and reactionary. But I think she's still a bit too refined and intellectual to a be a proper "chud." Frankly, I'm not sure it's possible for any woman to be a chud, that's almost an oxymoron.

You don't need to ban female doctors. You need to end affirmative action programs and then institute new ones that favor conservative leaning men. I know it's hard to imagine exactly what that looks like but, you know, reversing the progressive behavior is how you get the biological solution to work.

An interesting outcome is that it has gotten so bad that in some specialties (Peds, most famously) you do have outright affirmative action for men.

Only half-assed affirmative action for men--there is little done to combat the routine sexism men face in caring fields, particularly around "vulnerable" patients. The destruction of the female-centered culture is where the affirmative action is needed, much as the primary affirmative action for women in male-dominated fields is the destruction of male-centered culture.

Not going to argue that all kinds of problems aren't around, but it's pretty "normal" AA. Can get higher positions with a weaker application because of the bits between your legs.

Because of AA or because half your clientele refuse to see a male practitioner and the law neither permits you to override their bigotry nor fire the discriminated-against providers for not seeing enough patients?

I don't understand what you are saying.

There is overwhelming female interest in pediatrics to the point where programs will incentive recruitment of male residents even if they aren't good.

That's affirmative action.

Women probably want to be pediatricians at much higher rates- it makes up for the unexceptional-by-doctor-standards pay with 'working with babies a lot'.

Yes they have higher desire for those positions and Peds pays a lot less. That makes it hard to attract men.

But I think she's still a bit too refined and intellectual to a be a proper "chud." Frankly, I'm not sure it's possible for any woman to be a chud, that's almost an oxymoron.

I guess that's what I'm getting at. You describe JD Vance as a chud because he has socially conservative or anti-woke beliefs, but I think we agree that those aren't the same thing. I would argue they probably aren't even very correlated. The barstool conservative may be anti-woke because he doesn't like being scolded and doesn't like woke's puritanism, but he's not socially conservative.

Perhaps the chuds will also take over that competition by simply banning female doctors

I imagine this would cause the nurses and obstetricians to go on strike, and cause a huge shortage of doctors.

As the average age of populations increase and they become more sickly, health care workers will have increased economic and political bargaining power. This is probably to the benefit of women indirectly.

I think banning female doctors might be close to political suicide, and even if a chud aligned strongman dictator took power he would have no incentive to deliver on promises to ban female doctors. Who would be looking after the health of his women, female doctors or male doctors? It would be female doctors for anything related to reproductive organs.

I think you can make the strong case that, in the modern economy, women are better suited to the working world.

So basically, the only gender demanding affirmative action is also the one that from an objective view would be paying a penalty for.

That's kind of what's being litigated now, and why it's being litigated now. Basically, men only make 80% on the dollar in a system that is to a point set up to advantage women, and women are very interested in making sure that is never fixed.

If equality is to be true- if men and women are to have equal moral worth- this needs to be equalized. And I think it would be wise to note the previous answer, "strict legal equality", resulted in selective enforcement of various equality laws, which was how the gynosupremacy got established in the first place- so it might not be the answer now.

Strict legal equality and equal opportunities were never the problem. The issue is that the goal was always equality of outcome, with the assumption that women were oppressed. So instead of A woman and man with the same skillset and drive will have the same opportunities in life, the goalpost moved to the idea that less than equal representation is a sign of discrimination, while women doing better than men is a sign of equality.

This belief is what justifies the current state of affairs. Swapping the genders around so men are now seen as the oppressed group might feel good, but won't solve much in the long run. Rolling back to strict legal equality while recognizing that innate differences between genders will likely results in non-50% representation in many fields, seems much better.

In other words, you could also look at this as a problem of the state trying to micromanage in order to reach a specific outcome. If the state realizes this doesn't work, a rollback to legal equality but this time we learn from experience and don't pass laws that escalate it, should be possible.

but this time we learn from experience and don't pass laws that escalate it, should be possible

No, this is impossible.

Selective prosecution means it doesn't matter how fairly you write equality law.

Which means if you want fairness (and aren't at the same time doing an overhaul of the justice system to prevent that) then you can't have equality law.

This is the same kind of talking point the leftists used to argue for preferential hiring of women.

"Biases in the population means it doesn't matter how fairly you write equality law. The only way to remove those biases is by forcibly including more women in workplaces, which will normalize it."

You are treading dangerous ground here. If anything, the rise of the chud indicates that explicitly giving preferential treatment to one gender will only result in resentment and backlash in the long run.

You misunderstand.

My argument is that legal equality itself is something inherently giving preferential treatment to women.

Women have enough social power to force men to treat them [more than] fairly already; by your words, you prove that the same does not hold true for men.

This is reflected by the fact that, even if you did write the laws perfectly neutrally (and in most nations they are not), they'll only be enforced in favor of women.

Thus, the only fair way is for there to be no law.

Granted, you could do some unfair laws- if you assume men and women are already equal, then the number of crimes committed against them should match, and having quotas for how many cases can be prosecuted (if no man comes in claiming workplace discrimination, that means it isn't happening, so no woman gets to do it either; if no man is demanding Title IX redress, then assuming things are already fair, then no woman gets it either that year) might solve that kind of abuse.

if you assume men and women are already equal, then the number of crimes committed against them should match

Not necessarily. You can assume equality before the law while also acknowledging that there are overall differences between the genders. Men may commit more violent crimes than women, but in each trial the judgement should be based on the specific case rather than the person's gender. The differences in crime rates would be caused by nature or nurture, neither of which the law is capable of controlling directly.

Again, I remind you that feminists have tried using the law as a blunt instrument to change the culture through gender quotas, which has not at all resulted in women being seen as more competent. Instead, they are regarded with increased scrutiny by coworkers, as there is no longer a guarantee that they were hired based on their skills.

Instead, they are regarded with increased scrutiny by coworkers, as there is no longer a guarantee that they were hired based on their skills.

How the co-worker men feel doesn't matter: they have no power to do anything about it, and they know it.

And you can't measure "the degree to which the State induces quiet quitting" in anything outside of a vibes-based manner- you can't go to your boss, or do a risk assessment about it, because even if you did selfish women would [ab]use the current law to throw you in jail for strike-breaking!

The differences in crime rates would be caused by nature or nurture, neither of which the law is capable of controlling directly.

This is why I don't believe for a second that the "crime rate" is actually more of a man thing. Women are just as destructive; assuming equality, we should expect them to be responsible for half of all [anti-social behavior which merits prosecution, or 'crime' for short]. But the ways in which women crime are a lot less identifiable, a lot less cut and dry, than the ways in which men commit them.

So a legal system- one based on evidence and precedent- is the wrong tool to hold women to account for that.

In the same way that 90% of schoolchildren convicted for fighting are male. You can't prosecute bullying or exclusion, which are the ways women destroy each other, with a zero-tolerance policy based on who convinces who to throw the first punch.

And if you want to tell me "well, women destroying each other isn't as big a deal as it is when men do it"... well, that's not equality now, is it?

That's your black pill. The leftists were correct: fairness does not work. There will always be a thumb on the scale and the only real questions are whose thumb, which side of the scale, and just how heavy is it pushing.

While actual complete 100% equality is probably impossible, it is still an ideal worth striving for. There are many cases where striving for objectivity is the best we can do, and once people stop doing that, leaning into their biases instead, the value of what they are doing plummets.

This is part of what is wrong with journalism and academia. Standards have shifted so far towards "bias can never be avoided" that presenting your own POV as objective fact while ignoring the other side is increasingly accepted, because everyone is biased anyway so it is pointless to try and mitigate it.

It is well known that no trial is completely fair. Lawyers literally try to pack juries in a way that make them favorable to their clients. But the law should still strive for objectivity and try to get as close as possible, otherwise it will only become more dystopian with time.

While actual complete 100% equality is probably impossible, it is still an ideal worth striving for.

Striving for "equality" in practice gets you female supremacy.

otherwise it will only become more dystopian with time.

Yes.

Rent control doesn't work. And yet...

Here a false doctrine is arguably more useful for the state (or the people who run the state) than a true one. If a doctrine is true and the issue resolves itself it's no longer a lever.

If a doctrine is false it will continually contradict reality and will require constant government intervention.


What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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