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.
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
Anyone using the word "chud", references to "sky daddy", or Darwin using "blood libel" on anyone being trans-skeptical.
"Tranny" is not a slur. I'm all for civility, but you'll never satisfy people who keep inventing things to be offended at.
I think banning "sky daddy" is fair, but I looked at the search results and I can see only one instance that is on the use side of the use-mention distinction (magicalkittycat from 5 months ago). The others - it seems like 75% of uses of "chud" at this point are by self-identified chuds (like the Asmongold fandom) though personally I would have also liked to see that one buried, and "blood libel" is in a different class as it evokes disagreement with its substance rather than its style. (Contrast "sky daddy": Christians would not disagree that God is a father figure, nor that He is at least metaphorically situated in the sky. The offense is caused by the baby talk formulation, implying that believers are stupid and emotionally immature)
Who is "inventing things to be offended at"? The term obviously was invented by people who are against "trannies" with the intent to offend, and to pretend otherwise is a level of gaslighting that would get you an A+ on your * Studies course paper if you deployed it for the other team.
Well, you're not looking hard enough- I did it too, I just used the plural so it won't show up in a simple search. As a bonus, it was a reply to a meta thread.
I used it, I meant it specifically in the offensive way, and it was absolutely necessary for it to be in the offensive mode to do that to make the point. (There are a few expressions like this, actually.)
Also, my username is offensive in a religious sense, and is intended to be.
Same thing with "gay" and "trans" for that matter- if I can't say that, or call something that, then I lose the ability to explain certain things about sex/uality. I believe there's a reasonable chance I'm going to need to do that with "trannies" specifically because the fact it's offensive, and the fact it means what it means, is required.
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This is not even slightly obvious to me -- the very same word is (very commonly for like 50+ years) used to refer to a somewhat cumbersome to pronounce/type automotive component, and the general format is in extensive use in casual English. (see esp. Australia; "sunnies", "mozzies", "footie", "barbie" etc etc etc)
It doesn't at all diminish/insult transmissions! Why would it be an obvious slur against... trann-o's?
I mean, your case would be more compelling if you could show even one person who uses the term while neither personally disliking transsexuals or transsexualism, nor engaging in some sort of reclamation exercise.
This is like the troon discussion all over again. Not only is this line of reasoning proving too much ("baboon does not diminish/insult the primates! coon does not diminish/insult raccoons! Why would they be an obvious slur against (...)?"), if you actually believed it you would just find yourself constantly surprised by reality, specifically why certain classes of similar-looking words keep coined by groups of people for other groups they hate and why the target groups keep reacting negatively to those words being used to them. Yes, some leftists famously use a strategy where they pretend to not understand something that is common sense but not backed by an articulate theory that looks good in front of an audience. That doesn't mean you should lower yourself to their level; if you think that you should do that because some leftists somewhere got to, that's a textbook example of fighting the culture war here, as opposed to discussing it.
I would argue the other side on "troon" -- it's a neologism for one thing, and not at all an established diminutive in English. Not inherently insulting per se, but AFAIK as you say was coined by haters so two strikes at least.
"Tranny" is much older; even if you exclude transmissions from the conversation, it was common argot for "transvestite" for the longest time before the gender deal was much of a glimmer in anyone's eye.
The fact that the people who are making a big deal about being called how they want in terms of pronouns and/or general gender essence are also wanting to dictate the name of their condition is a pretty big push actually -- "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" is actually a pretty mild form of disagreement in such cases, and (as you say) it could be done in a much stronger way.
So I'll argue that using "tranny" is just a way of saying "i reject your hypothesis" -- aggressive, but only as insulting as you want to make it and far from contentless.
Even 'gay' is not (hopefully) a slur when you are talking about an actual gay person -- if there were a movement to require non-chuds to refer to gay people only as 'homosexual' (certainly no homo!) or something even more cumbersome, would you support it?
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Yes, because whenever the left tries to come up with an insult, the right just appropriates it, instead of banning people and acting offended.
Uh, no. There's no disagreement on substance. The whole point is to accuse the interlocutor of mal intent, instead od debating the substance.
No, actually, it wasn't. It was ages ago, but I clearly remember it being used as a diminutive. You know which word was invented by people who are against X to be used against X? That word is "chud", so if anything feels like gas lighting, it's the arbitrary switching of criteria for which word is supposed to be considered an insult.
By whom?
It is a diminutive, which contributes to its usability as a slur, just like "sky daddy" (your example!) is insulting in a way "sky dad" or "sky father" would not be.
Good for them, I guess (not that they have a choice most of the time), but that doesn't matter. The goal ostensibly was to have a diversity of opinions on this forum, not to settle scores or enact justice for the right wing. There is a perfectly usable neutral word ("transsexual") which is less offputting to a demographic we need more of, because it is barely represented on this political discussion forum even though it is politically dominant in most relevant countries. On the other hand, the only advantages of allowing "tranny" are saving 5 bytes of space per use and letting some right-wingers feel good (and I doubt they would even quit if they were denied this little pleasure).
Also, in case that was not clear the first time around, I'd be very happy with a policy that bans all uses (as opposed to mentions) of "tranny", "sky daddy" and "chud".
Good progressive liberals. It was a term of affection.
Well, if the only goal is to have more leftists, that's one thing, but let's not call that "policing on tone". It's the old "affirmiitve action for left-wingers" model that was tried here (as much as the mods might deny it), and didn't accomplish much.
Honestly, I wouldn't care much if the name "TrannyPorn0" was banned, and the user was forced to change it, but it's pretty clear people didn't want to ban the name, which no one complained about at the time. What people did complain about was his choice of topics, which he always addressed with complete civility. Even you didn't bring up any examples of him actually misbehaving, despite trying to portray him as some sort of horrible person who's posts would have been banned on tone alone.
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