As far as I know, it's been a while since our last meta thread, so let's have a space for the administration of praise and the airing of grievances. Hopefully we can keep the conversation distant enough from first order culture war issues to justify this being a separate thread from the main CW thread.
I've been here on and off over the years since about 2016. To my mind, the two most exciting times to be a part of this community were the period around the first Trump election, and then again in 2022 around the time of the site migration. I don't think it's a coincidence that these time periods coincided with major new social and political issues entering the public consciousness (or at least, entering the consciousness of this community): in 2016, the culture war as we know it was still very fresh and nascent, with battle lines still being drawn and positions still being clarified, and in 2022, DALL-E and ChatGPT introduced machine learning to those of us who had not been feverishly following the LessWrong comments section since the 00s.
Unsurprisingly, discussion is good when there's something new and shiny to discuss. But eventually, you start to run out of things to talk about. People have been complaining about this problem with regards to the "classic" culture war issues for at least a good 3 or 4 years now. In the time period from 2014-2018, there was still a sense that it was all brand new: people were being forced to think about questions and perspectives that they had never thought about before, they were still figuring out how to make sense of their own positions and the positions of others. But now it's all well-trodden ground. You can only rehash the same foundational questions about race and free speech so many times before people on both sides start to think "yes, I've seen it all before, I know how this ends".
Even with AI, despite it still being a very rapidly evolving field, I've been feeling less motivated to participate in AI discussions lately, largely because it feels like such a straightforwardly empirical question. The classic culture war questions are the sorts of evergreen philosophical questions that you could, in principle, go back and forth on endlessly. You can walk away and come back in 10 years and the same questions will still be sitting there. But with AI, it ultimately all boils down to "well we'll just have to wait and see" in the end. Either there will be a singularity and/or the extinction of humanity, or there will not be. Sitting here and talking about it won't change much. We kinda just have to wait to see what happens.
Perhaps these forces have played a role in causing the forum to become less theoretical and abstract over time, leading to the rise of what I like to call "nuts and bolts" type posts: local politics at the city/state level, the minutiae of urban and suburban life, court cases and legal briefings. I don't remember these types of posts being so common in the early years of the forum (probably because, again, the culture war was brand new and people wanted to discuss the hottest culture war questions). I'm glad that at least some people are invested in doing the actual necessary work that makes the world function. But these types of posts generally bore me to tears, so I skip over them. I'm sure many people skip over the dumb shit I like to post about too, so, I understand that it goes both ways and there are no hard feelings. At least I'm still trying to be the change I want to see and I try to balance out the discussion with more philosophical posts.
Something I do lament is the evaporative cooling of interesting characters over time, not only due to bans but also due to natural attrition. At this point in the community's lifespan, it's unlikely that we're going to get another Hlynka, or another TracingWoodgrains. One starts to get the impression that the window for new foundational community narratives has passed.
All complaining aside, I still derive an incredible amount of value from this forum, as evidenced by my return to daily participation, and I would hate to ever see it go. It doesn't remind me of the Old Internet, but it does remind me of the Middle Internet: that time period from roughly 2012-2018 when there was a flourishing of strange ideas and it genuinely seemed like many bold new things were possible. (Maybe it reminds some other people of Usenet, I don't know; that was before my time.) I sincerely hope that this forum can remain roughly stable in its current state for as long as possible.
Anyway, what do you think? What do you think about how TheMotte has evolved over the years, what do you like about it now, what do you want to see changed, etc.
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Notes -
For a moment there I added an extra 0 to that number and thought "damn!!" but 25k is not enough for me to try what I assume is a part time job engagement farming for followers. Someone pointed out that WaltBismark was on here a couple of years ago, reading his comments I got the impression that writing the way they do goes beyond just putting your opinions in text, it really feels like they are deliberately crafting their posts to be engagement hooks.
But in general I agree with what I think is your general thrust. I think the push to monetize destroys the authenticity of one's opinions. Reading folks opinions here, I generally frame them as honest without ulterior motives. Beyond the usually annoying behavior of treating every conversation like its a debate-me-bro spectator sport, repeat with sleazy moves to convince the audience, not the conversant, similar to what George_Hale mentioned in some other thread(I swear it was this but I can't find it). After all why lie on some obscure forum beyond lying to oneself? There isn't much social cachet to be gained, there isn't money to be earned, I doubt anyone generates a significant following from Motteposting. I can believe this is someone's actual unfiltered thoughts on a topic. That changes when money becomes involved, and it destroys something precious.
I never understand who is paying anyone on the internet. I am suitably too autistic to understand following others or hero worship. Idk who pays for OnlyFans, Twitch Streamers, Substacks, Twitter Premium, Linkedin Premium, etc. I have no idea why anyone cares what influencers think, and who even pays them enough money for it to be full time.
The fundamental drive behind forum posts like the those on the motte and most consumer oriented writing are the same. In both cases it boils down to narcissism. Humans have the urges to feel validated and to have enhanced appraisals of themselves. In consumer products, this can be seen in the popularity of wish fulfillment fantasies that dominate fiction markets, including those targeting white male nerds, as well as the much larger markets for non-fictional things, such as political punditry. Political punditry in particular wears it's narcissism on its sleeve. If you're a poor black woman, products marketed to you will tell you about how you're oppressed, victimized, exploited, underserved. If you're a wealthy white male STEMlord, products marketed to you will tell you about how you're oppressed, victimized, exploited...
The motte is a place where elaborate fantasies are constructed and then validated by likeminded peers. Frequently, easily debunkable beliefs and objective claims are espoused. This is all the more apparent in the age in which Google Gemini is embedded in browsers. False statistics can easily be disproven. Yet, they cannot be halted.
The general trend of fantasies here is that they valorize the concepts of IQ and people supposedly high in IQ, propound worldviews of a cynical nature which would seem to confirm the attitudes of anti-social, socially unpopular types, and thus act to reassure a certain audience that their temperaments, traits, and backgrounds are correct and worthy of status and praise, and that accusations thrown their way lack merit.
As for the reason people would pay for writing, at the best of times its for the same reason they'd pay to see any art or craft performed at a high level. One of the claims in this thread is that Substack provides only mediocre examples of writing, but that isn't true. I don't spend a lot of time on Substack myself, but I do enjoy the writings of Sam Kriss, in large part because of its aesthetic qualities. If I were wealthier I might even pay for it. Instances of quality writing here are comparatively fleeting and don't reach the same heights.
Interesting, and interesting idea to mull over. We are increasingly a more navel-gazing, narcissistic culture. However without really distilling and stewing on this yet, I can tell you that the projections of the Mottean purpose for its posters rings hollow for my personal perspective. And despite enjoying that idea that I'm some special unique snowflake (some nice tasty narcissism) I know I am not. So I'd extrapolate my own motivations towards others as well. I come here because I enjoy the search and discovery of Truth(tm). What truth that is? Well that's the fun part. It's like internet archeology/anthropology, there are so many truths, so many narratives that everyone believes. Shaped by their culture, their personality, their identity. So many different flavors to taste.
Why do I post here? Originally because some people have wrong/dumb/misguided ideas and it rose to an emotive level that I felt it best to tell them that. But I also enjoy an argument, I'm a disagreeable contrarian, and because a discussion is the anvil upon which ideas are tempered. I'm not playing for the cheers of the crowd, I'm not in the arena for their adulation. If I was, it is possible I would post more tho... so maybe it's not the worst thing. I think one of the worst corruptions of the principles of open-discourse is the devolution into debatebro crowd-based arguments. The one where arguments are soldiers, you aren't fighting to understand or even to test your own ideas but to win the adoration of the audience.
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