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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13117 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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This is a microcosm of exactly why even if I agreed with them on something, I would never stand with or support such ardent leftists on any topic, even to my detriment. The people highlighted in the original article and in your comment are so thoroughly tedious and fundamentally unlikeable that I will voluntarily self-harm in order to spend as little time around them as possible and retard their political movement's growth as much as I can.

And you're right, it is utterly impossible to explain to them how much damage they are doing to their causes by being so completely insufferable that it actively turns people against them. Because their reaction will simply be "good".

The reason for this is that such people, I suspect, are not in it for the cause, not in it to make any real positive changes or to support the operation of a local bar. They're in it to feel good about themselves. And what makes them feel good about themselves is shouting people down, asserting power and authority over them, and "making a change", even if that change is wrecking things for everyone else.

"Turns people away from their cause" may be wishful thinking or just world fallacy. The left is still doing pretty well; tolerating such people hasn't killed it, and the general attitude that they exemplify is widely present.

It's true you don't like the left when they are present, but that doesn't count unless you would have liked the left without them, and that's unlikely. It's the mirror image of some hater of Trump claiming that some action Trump did made him distrust Trump--did he really trust Trump before it happened?

I mean, there are lots of people who liked the fictitious version of the left that was just about freedom of expression and abortion and "women and men should both be allowed to have bank accounts" and "cops randomly beating up anyone is bad actually" and gay rights and "reality-based community" and the kind of ideas you'd find in old popular fiction books. It just turned out never to have existed outside of those nice-sounding stories.

Is that a "real left" or isn't it? And what exactly does that mean?

The reason for this is that such people, I suspect, are not in it for the cause, not in it to make any real positive changes or to support the operation of a local bar. They're in it to feel good about themselves. And what makes them feel good about themselves is shouting people down, asserting power and authority over them, and "making a change",

Yeah, I think it was Paul Graham who pointed out that wokeness is a magnet for some of the worst people, i.e. those who want to sadistically harm others while receiving moral permission (or even moral plaudits) for doing so.

Over the years, I've interacted with a few wokies and I definitely get the feeling that a lot of them get a sort of sadistic joy when they get the opportunity to scold another person for violating the most recent rules of Woke.

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