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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2287 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 11, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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They’ve clearly taken their foot off the cancellation gas pedal since 2022, and even then we were just one of many many communities (some with far more egregiously ‘unwoke’ content) that were warned but not banned, most of which are still on the site. Stuff is broadly tolerated even on semi-mainstream subs now that never was back then, a lot of professional moderators/admins were laid off and a lot of volunteers quit for various reasons, and the AI that’s replacing them cares far more about things like direct use of slurs and harassment (which were never really tolerated and still aren’t here) than it did about simply discussing heterodox views.

I really think the chance we would draw any admin attention whatsoever in 2026 on Reddit is extremely minimal. But we could always do eg a ‘trial week’ and see.

We were already on the admins' radar when we moved. I agree that we probably moved sooner than we had to, but I absolutely think we'd have been banned eventually, and if we returned, sneerclubbers and other old friends would be reporting every post about HBD, Jews, trans, and Boogalooing. We mods get shit here for sometimes cracking down on people stepping a little over the line in their eagerness to express how much they hate their enemies, but I think people have short memories if they think half of what they get away with here would fly on Reddit.

Yes, we're probably in a long, slow death spiral. I occasionally visit forums I frequented twenty years ago; some of them are still around with the same dozen or so people who were there twenty years ago. Maybe that is the Motte's fate. I'd like to think there is a way out of that, but you're kidding yourself if you think "woke" is so over that we can go back to the days of the first Trump administration on Reddit.

Again though, there are a LOT of like dissident right euro and US politics subreddits going far harder on those topics than anyone here (even securesignals) and they’re not banned.

Are there really? Reddit is actually letting people post that they want to kill da Joos now? I wasn't aware of that, but if that's so and you can post that trans women are men, then maybe we could make the transition. I am skeptical, though, especially since even a temporary liberalizing could easily be reversed.

We don’t let people post the former here so I don’t see how that’s relevant (even I won’t strawman any regulars by implying they say that), and yeah there are plenty of semi mainstream subs where people post the latter, like BaR, RedScarePod, 4Chan, Greentext etc.

I wasn't sure what you meant by "going far harder on those topics than anyone here" - going harder than SS would mean actually saying the quiet part out loud. I guess I can wade into the cesspool of marginal subs and see how much wrongthink is really being tolerated. I doubt Zorba will be moved to take use back to reddit, though.

But that’s what I’m saying, you imply that Reddit still bans people for calling for genocide, and indeed it does, but so do we (and that’s a good thing for civility), so my point is that this isn’t a different standard.

most of which are still on the site

/r/blockedandreported is basically just Motte Lite.

Being Motte Lite, it's also pretty stupid most of the time, yet the stupider the subreddit the more offense they tend to generate to outsiders.

(Honestly the only thing I've learned from that place is that being able to clearly think about things that make most people really mad is actually pretty rare, and I get the impression that the flood of Substacks are from people who want to monetize that scarce resource.)

Yeah, and while that subreddit is more centrist and less intelligent than this place, the general tone and the heterodox positions at the right wing tail are not dissimilar from us in terms of no no content.

Honestly the only thing I've learned from that place is that being able to clearly think about things that make most people really mad is actually pretty rare

Isnt that by definition?

What is this place?

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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.


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