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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34441 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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A couple months ago, you got dinged for posting a low-effort sneer.

This one is... well, you used a lot more words this time, but it's basically the same post.

I don't know why Aella is your trigger, but whatever, clearly you really don't like her. You are certainly free to criticize her and her polling methodology. But "I think she's a stupid whore, why are you simps talking about her?" is just telling people you don't like the topic of conversation and you want them to stop.

Instead, try just not reading threads that are of no interest to you.

FWIW, I didn't think this was a low-effort sneer, and I thought it was very much relevant and on-topic for what the person brought up. It's the core criticism.

Is it basically the same post, though? Same target, still kind of derogatory, but this time it looks like he's actually making arguments.

If I read it correctly, his argument is as follows:

  1. A decent amount of Aella's following is probably due to sex appeal

  2. People who are following people due to sex appeal are probably in worse marriages on average

  3. The people in the polls probably disproportionately consist of people following Aella

  4. Conclusion: the people in Aella's polls probably have worse marriages than average

And then (the step further)

  1. It seems plausible that consuming Aella's content might hurt marriages

  2. The people in her survey seem in kind of a worse state than one would expect

  3. Maybe stay a little further away from Aella if you want a healthy marriage

(Okay, this was presented significantly less after the manner of a syllogism than the first)

This second part seems less well supported, and since it follows the data the opposite way from the first set, it might be hard to disambiguate effects (how can we tell the direction of causation here? How do we even know that there is a difference, aside from anecdata and a priori sorts of things?).

It wasn't exactly the most courteous way of saying things, but there was definitely more substance to this than in the linked post (well, the directly linked one. His further reply had more depth, but wasn't quite saying the same things as this post, if I'm reading it rightly).

FWIW I agree with you

Well, hold on a second: I obviously disagree with this person, their methodology, and even the conclusion from what are in my opinion poorly constructed polling.

But: is it in an insult to call her a whore? Isn't that...her job?

Instead, try just not reading threads that are of no interest to you.

This thread, as well as the phenomenon of people it rat-spaces developing this much of a blindspot is incredibly interesting to me, whic is probably why I've responded to both things with similar criticism.

Ymeshukeut or however you spell his username is obviously very critical of any criticism of the 2020 election and has been since when we were still on /r/ssc. Do you make mod posts telling him to just avoid the topic? If not why not?

I was previously "dinged" for being overly concise, so I expanded my point substantially. I understand that you disagree with the conclusion, but I don't think it's fair to imply that it is unacceptable to be critical of this person and her polls.

Aging whore asks her simps if they are happily married, finds out that they would rather pay her for secks than pursue meaningful relationships with their wives.

This is what you appear to object to. I can restate it as: "a person who sells a product is losing access to the product and has switched to writing about why fans of her product are anti-fans of other products", but that seems...unnecessarily vague.

But: is it in an insult to call her a whore?

Well yeah, that is why you called her a whore. If calling her a whore was not insulting then you would have found some other word.

I think there's the significant point that the job of person making a poll on sexual satisfaction with partners is offering sexual satisfaction as a non-partner. Yes, maybe he could have used another word, but the point was (primarily) to draw attention to that.

This is part of why I think this discussion is interesting, and want to see it happening despite amadans wishes.

This is not an accurate statement of my wishes. I did not shut down the discussion. You are the one who appeared to be trying to shut down the discussion.

You're also free to start a thread about the etymology and ethics of "whore."

What you're not free to do is try to derail the thread every time Aella comes up with a rant about how you don't understand why people are giving the whore attention.

The poll is biased. It is biased due to the profession and stated motivations of the person who conducted the poll, and her audience.

How on EARTH is this not relevant to the discussion?

Discussion about the use of the word “whore” wasnt started by me. The crux of my post was talking about bias and selection. You and the person my deleted post replied to wanted to get into some semantics argument about words.

Maybe start throwing vague threats about what is “allowed” (or perhaps who is allowed criticism) at “goodguy”, or tell him to break his desire to discuss semantics into another thread. I’m trying to talk about polling bias here.

I didn't mod you for calling her a whore. She is a public figure and we don't really have a rule against insulting public figures. On the other hand, we'd prefer people comment more substantively than "This public figure I don't like is a retard/incel/whore." But that in itself wouldn't be modded. It certainly set the tone for your comment, though, which is basically to dunk on your outgroup.

Ymeshukeut or however you spell his username is obviously very critical of any criticism of the 2020 election and has been since when we were still on /r/ssc. Do you make mod posts telling him to just avoid the topic? If not why not?

Because he's not telling other people that it's a stupid topic and only loser simps are still talking about it.

but I don't think it's fair to imply that it is unacceptable to be critical of this person and her polls.

I just said in the post you are replying to that you can criticize her and her polls.

Isn't she a sex worker/former sex worker, though? Whore is a bit of a strong word, but "whorelord" is on her Twitter profile.

I don't have anything against this person, but I guess her following is mostly based on the fact that she's literate and pretty and a libertarian?

Pretty? Lmao she's not even very attractive.

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