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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   28347 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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Ordinarily I wouldn't post personal Reddit drama here, but the thread is slow and I'm mad.

Here is a post that I saw on /r/baseball:

Anthony Bass promoting anti-LGBTQ propaganda on his Instagram

You probably noticed that the thread is locked with a moderator message: "The trolls are flooding in, and the conversation has run its course at this point. Friendly reminder to love your neighbor, and that it's not intolerant to oppose bigotry. Everyone have a nice holiday Monday!"

This message was posted only a few minutes after I was permanantly banned from /r/baseball for comments in that very thread! In fact, I believe they are referring to me as one of the "trolls flooding in". Lets take a look under the hood to see what counts as perma-ban and threadlock-worthy comments.

First, the actual article in question. Anthony Bass is a pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays. He posted an Instagram story saying Christians should boycott Target and Bud Light. That's it. That's the "anti-LGBTQ propaganda". I posted a top-level comment in the thread sarcastically making this point.

“”””Propaganda””””. Dude just told people not to but Bud Light or shop at Target. This place has lost the plot.

Is this a high-effort comment? No, but if you are familiar with the sports subs at all then you know that this type of low-effort sarcasm is all over the place. That's the posting culture there. I also got involved in another comment thread.

JaysRaineman73 -18 points 2 hours ago: "Who the fuck cares. So tired of this shit. I only care about how he plays on the field. If he’s not abusing or hurting anyone, it’s irrelevant."

realparkingbrake 11 points 2 hours ago: "On what planet does denying people the same rights as everyone else not qualify as abusing or hurting them?"

QuantumFreakonomics -4 points 2 hours ago: "What rights do they not have? Name them? How is he hurting anyone? How does asking people to not purchase products from a specific mega-corp hurt anyone? Am I hurting people every time I go to Walmart and not Target? Please, I’m begging you. Actually think about the things you are saying. Don’t just parrot the same irrelevant lines you’ve seen other people use."

PuppyPunter21 4 points an hour ago: "Well, if any players live in Florida, they have recently passed quite a few laws targeted against them. The continued promotion of these types of boycotts encites more hate. Covid caused more hate towards Asians, Kayne West promoted more antisemitism. Ignoring it isn't a solution."

QuantumFreakonomics 3 points an hour ago: " 'Well, if any players live in Florida, they have recently passed quite a few laws targeted against them.' What rights did these laws take away? The right to have teachers come out in front of their students? I had never heard of that "right" before a few years ago. 'The continued promotion of these types of boycotts encites more hate. Covid caused more hate towards Asians' Is your position that someone shouldn't be allowed to talk about an issue if it could possibly cause someone else to hate another group? I don't see how that is a workable position at all. Should we not have instituted Covid restrictions or even complained about covid in order to prevent Asian hate? 'Ignoring it isn't a solution.' Why not? People speaking their mind on public issues is the bedrock of Democracy. Some of those people are going to say things you don't like. A democracy where certain issues are not free to be discussed is not much of a democracy at all.

This was the extent of my participation in the thread. I did not expect my comments to be particularly well-received by the Reddit population, but I felt that I pointed out enough legitimate issues that I would be safe from accusations of trolling. I was wrong.

Here is the modmail message I received informing me of my permanent ban, along with the brief conversation we had before they muted me with their absolute power.1 For reference, here are the /r/baseball rules. Would an honest reading of these rules give you any reason at all to think that anything I posted would not be allowed, much less permaban worthy? You would have to be steeped in internet leftist culture to understand that, "Trolling, threatening, harassing, or inciting violence towards individuals or groups will not be tolerated. Racist, sexist, or otherwise intolerant language in both comments and submissions will be removed." means that pointed questions against the progressive consensus will get you tossed out.

I understand why so many subreddits are complete circlejerks now. It's not about echo-chambers and voting dynamics. They literally just banned everyone who disagreed.

1. Here is the source they cited for their "62%" figure. I'll let you decide for yourself whether this poll is applicable

Quoting an AAQC from someone else who commented here and then subsequently chose to delete it:

Don't speak in venues where you don't want to be heard. If you're banned, leave. The same goes, especially so, for reddit - you can stay outside and watch the little fishes flit about, but joining them for a swim is forbidden. Nonetheless, it's still possible to cast stones in from outside of the community and observe how the ripples propagate through it. After all, it is a "hive-mind."

The message of reddit is no longer the actual thoughts of its users: it's the message of reddit as medium - that is, a highly restrictive diet of information curated by those wanting to impose a particular reality tunnel on its users. By banning cogent rebuttals to its own view of the world, and elevating vigorous affirmations of the same, it creates the semblance of public discourse where there truly is none - only distorted, exaggerated angles and highlight reels that present a particular perspective, an optical illusion of sorts. A warped, fish-eye lens of discussion.

Participating in such media only lends credence to the illusion that "everyone is there" and that these "discussion forums" actually represent a healthy and diverse range of views. Surely, our stance must be correct, because otherwise someone would have upvoted "the real answer" in the comments? Much better to leave the system to its own designs to make more apparent what it truly is - a false representation, a simulacrum of discourse.

However, I get the feeling that there are many who fear silence and solitude and the inevitable gaps in the (externally visible) narratization of their selves this creates (though, watching others attempt to fill in the gaps can be quite illuminating). You have to say something, after all - otherwise, do you even exist, unless you have an active presence, take a stance and a position, on reddit, Twitter, & other fora (it's also interesting to consider this in light of what happens when you have that speech taken from you)?

Don't speak in venues where you don't want to be heard. If you're banned, leave. The same goes, especially so, for reddit - you can stay outside and watch the little fishes flit about, but joining them for a swim is forbidden. Nonetheless, it's still possible to cast stones in from outside of the community and observe how the ripples propagate through it. After all, it is a "hive-mind."

The message of reddit is no longer the actual thoughts of its users: it's the message of reddit as medium - that is, a highly restrictive diet of information curated by those wanting to impose a particular reality tunnel on its users. By banning cogent rebuttals to its own view of the world, and elevating vigorous affirmations of the same, it creates the semblance of public discourse where there truly is none - only distorted, exaggerated angles and highlight reels that present a particular perspective, an optical illusion of sorts. A warped, fish-eye lens of discussion.

Participating in such media only lends credence to the illusion that "everyone is there" and that these "discussion forums" actually represent a healthy and diverse range of views. Surely, our stance must be correct, because otherwise someone would have upvoted "the real answer" in the comments? Much better to leave the system to its own designs to make more apparent what it truly is - a false representation, a simulacrum of discourse.

However, I get the feeling that there are many who fear silence and solitude and the inevitable gaps in the (externally visible) narratization of their selves this creates (though, watching others attempt to fill in the gaps can be quite illuminating). You have to say something, after all - otherwise, do you even exist, unless you have an active presence, take a stance and a position, on reddit, Twitter, & other fora (it's also interesting to consider this in light of what happens when you have that speech taken from you)?

I'm kind of surprised you are surprised. I was permanently ip and device banned from reddit for using the /r/place thing the way it was intended to be used because an admin had a personal bone to pick with the community associated with the logo, a community that really is less objectionable than other allowed logos like 4chan. The whole phenomenon is why it was important for us to get off of reddit, they want an echo chamber and will have one. Only controlled opposition, complete with admin politically aligned moderators in control, is allowed and it's been that way for years.

Talking about some baseball player's Instagram post, reactions to it, and the Bud Light boycott is a valid Culture War topic, but this post is exactly why we say to leave the rest of the Internet at the door. You are literally just coming here to complain about being banned on reddit, with complete repostings of your entire personal thread just so you can bring your drama to what you presume will be more sympathetic ears.

Don't do this. Two-day ban to deny you the satisfaction of participating in this thread, because this is such an obvious and deliberate flaunting of the spirit and letter of the rules.

I strongly disagree with this characterization of OP's post. The rule states in relevant part that, "we ask that you refrain from posting bare links to culture-war-related discussions held outside of this sub. If you are going to link to another platform we ask that you please put in the work to contextualize the post and explain why it is relevant to readers of this community."

This is not a "bare link" to a culture war discussion from an outside website. The OP provided plenty of context, and it's obvious why this is relevant to the culture war--it's an example of progressive/woke discussion norms and of what is considered "out of bounds" in woke spaces.

The fact that OP is directly involved in this culture war drama should be irrelevant. If this interaction had happened on a college campus between students, with some of the students trying to "cancel" another student for saying what OP said, and someone had given this description of the events along with light commentary describing their thoughts on the matter, no one would have batted an eye. This is classic Culture War Thread content and OP shouldn't be punished for posting it.

The OP came here to bitch about being banned on reddit, complete with repostings of their arguments with the mods.

That's not what this place is for and you will absolutely be discouraged from doing that.

The fact that OP is directly involved in this culture war drama should be irrelevant.

It isn't.

If this interaction had happened on a college campus between students, with some of the students trying to "cancel" another student for saying what OP said, and someone had given this description of the events along with light commentary describing their thoughts on the matter

Then it would be a substantially different situation from this.

He has a good point. The rule's title is "leave the rest of the Internet at the door", but the rule's text doesn't actually say not to post about anything involving yourself and the rest of the Internet. It's an inaccurate title that doesn't really describe what the rule refers to. The rule itself only says that you shouldn't be posting bare links to such discussions without context that explains why it is relevant, not that you shouldn't be posting such things at all.

The OP clearly didn't post a bare link without context.

flaunting

*flouting

I agree with the other comments.

It's an interesting thread and a straight up ban on first offense with that hostile wording seems very excessive.

deleted

I think the rule is good. And that this discussion could have happened without the OP violating the rules.

I also think there needs to be some place on the internet for people to discuss their feelings about the echo chambers elsewhere, and I'm not sure there is a better place at this point than here.

You can do this here. What you can't do is bring up a bunch of specific subreddits, specific people, and specific details of the situation. Leave the specifics out and talk in generalities.

The rule does not forbid bringing up specific communities, people, or details. It just says:

If you are going to link to another platform we ask that you please put in the work to contextualize the post and explain why it is relevant to readers of this community.

So you can be specific, you just have to contextualize.

If you want an easy way to avoid drama leave out the details.

No amount of details or contextualizing will save a post if it's bring drama down upon us.

Personal vendettas are unlikely to pass muster.

So this post brought drama down upon us? From /r/baseball?

Yes, only one person (the original poster) but that's enough.

There is a different spinoff site for this sort of thing.

What? Are you saying that the op itself is the drama which the op brought down upon us? What does "drama" mean?

More comments

I really thought we had another rule to use specific groups instead of general. I suppose the closest is the CW prompt's "[Avoid] making sweeping generalizations" or perhaps "be as precise and charitable as you can." Yeah, those are in theory compatible with generalities.

It still rubs me the wrong way.

  1. All reddit mods are terrible

  2. some reddit mods are terrible

  3. [these specific] reddit mods are terrible.

The rule you pointed out covers 1, the op did 3 which isn't allowed cuz no drama. 2 is allowable and what the op could have said.

How could you argue 2 without 3?

"I had an experience in an unnamed subreddit..."

I can see how technically his post violates the rule, but "Two-day ban to deny you the satisfaction of participating in this thread" seems rather savage to me given that I am not convinced he broke the rule deliberately.

This just explains why I’ve radicalized. The conversation is over. It’s why I love Desantis attacking Disney though I think Disney falls within the spirit of free speech. The point of the game now is finding wedges of power and taking them when you got them. Use your power, use lawfare, break all norms. When you can take a win take a win. Any courtesies won’t be extended to you from the other side.

And by breaking thing I associate with civil society that’s where I think the right is winning. Texas lawsuit oriented abortion law pre-roe overturned was working. Lawfare works. Desantis Disney assault is working. Bud lights boycott led to the target change of corporate behavior. Busing migrants to blue cities worked. All of these are combinations of activision, lawfare, using government authority outside of the spirit of the constitution. Things the right wouldn’t do before. They need to keep doing these things and probably 10-50x the amount of them. And it’s why I’m a big Desantis backer because I think he’s the best the right has for working outside their comfort zone.

That’s fucking stupid.

What good is owning the libs if you have to dismantle civil society to do it?

Abandoning all courtesy doesn’t look like DeSantis. It looks like free helicopter rides. This isn’t some novel theory, but the oldest excuse in the book. Oddly enough, it doesn’t tend to work out in the long run.

DeSantis is most effective when he uses the rules in his favor. You’re getting way more actual value out of his educational reforms than from any grandstanding over Disney. The latter is intra-party maneuvering, not an external strategy.

The goal isn’t to “own the libs”. It’s to win and make society how you want it.

The Disney strategy is part of getting the PMC back in the fold. Right now they have to be woke because that’s the activist class that will hurt them. Punishing corporates for being woke and having a right activist class is part of a strategy to make corporates more neutral again.

What good is owning the libs if you have to dismantle civil society to do it?

What good is overgrazing if it destroys the commons?

Well, if overgrazing secures you benefits, and the commons are going to be gone very soon regardless, then the choice is between securing some benefits by overgrazing, or securing little to no meaningful benefit as the commons disperse too many ways to be of value. This presumes the commons can't be meaningfully preserved, and that overgrazing is net-benefit at least for you personally, but neither seem unreasonable assumptions in a variety of real-world scenarios.

Getting back to the discussion over the weekend, your use of "civil society" is shorthand for a whole lot of points that can't, in fact, reasonably be assumed. The day before the Rwandan genocide, did Rwanda have "civil society"? The month before? The year before? Unless we're assuming spontaneous mass possession by demons, there has to be some sort of runup to the fabric of society abruptly failing, right? What does that runup look like?

The latter is intra-party maneuvering, not an external strategy.

The intra-party maneuvering is vital, in the same way a rudder is vital. It's the small things that determine where a much larger thing is going to go, and where the thing is going to go is the whole of the question. Without that, there's nothing of value in the exercise at all.

If you have a principled view that government enforcement of ideology against or through business interests is a bad idea, I invite you to climb into your time machine and deliver an impassioned plea to some point at least twenty years ago, probably more like fifty. It is far, far, far too late now.

What good is owning the libs if you have to dismantle civil society to do it?

Civil society is already dismantled; instead we have a progressive orthodoxy wearing its skin. Case in point above, the conviction on felony charges of two tiki-torch carriers at the Unite the Right rally. If those in charge don't care to allow the right the benefit of "civil society" (including the right to protest), they should not be surprised when the right decides that what the left is calling "civil society" is of no value to them.

Civil society is already dismantled;

If that were truly the case, you wouldn't be worried about the Cops catching you carrying a concealed firearm because at least one of the following statements would be true. A) what laws there may be on the books are simply left unenforced, B) the consequences of being caught are so trivial that the law may as well have gone unenforced, C) that things have devolved to the point where in both the citizenry and police both exist in a state of nature and thus all you have to do to avoid consequences is to ensure that attempting to bring said consequences is more expensive than letting you walk.

You are forgetting the concept of anarcho-tyranny. The cops can arrest otherwise law abiding citizens for carrying concealed firearms while simultaneously ignoring people who commit actual property destruction and violence.

Civil society is partly dismantled but the current situation is nothing what it would be like if civil society were utterly dismantled. Our society is still vastly more similar to pre-wokism America than it is similar to anarchy or to a totalitarian dictatorship. Plus to me it seems that wokism reached a high-water mark sometime around two years ago and has actually been receding since then.

None of which to say that one should not be concerned, but to me it seems that saying civil society is dismantled and we have a progressive orthodoxy wearing its skin is almost as hyperbolic as saying that the Republicans are planning to put all transgender people in camps. It is, at best, directionally correct.

Civil society is partly dismantled but the current situation is nothing what it would be like if civil society were utterly dismantled.

Yes, if it were utterly dismantled progressives might receive harm from the right.

Plus to me it seems that wokism reached a high-water mark sometime around two years ago and has actually been receding since then.

No, what happened is Trump was defeated and as a result wokism is proceeding more efficiently and quietly because there's less opposition to it able to even be heard. At least until the Bud Light thing.

In the last few years, Musk bought Twitter and, encouraged by this, anti-wokists and race realists ran wild all over it. Substack became very popular and is now host to all kinds of respected independent journalism. Joe Rogan still has one of the world's most popular podcasts despite cancellation attempts. Conservatives managed to launch a successful wide-scale boycott. Non-wokes actually to large extent (not at the infrastructure level, but at almost every other level) managed to build their own Internet. Affirmative action policies were defeated in multiple California elections. Despite censorship, a bunch of city subreddits are full of people complaining about crime and saying that wokism has gone too far.

Musk is turning Twitter back over to mainstream media figure Linda Yaccarino. Substack is irrelevant. Meanwhile DEI initiatives continue to advance, prompted by Biden-administration regulations and by existing DEI supporters in industry, government, primary and secondary education, and universities. Left-wing cancelation continues unabated.

Keep in mind, though, that Reddit does not represent the entire left. Especially when it comes to politics, and especially on the big subs, it highly over-represents constantly online, politically angry, mostly young wokes who are convinced that they are on the right side of history. It is like deciding that having a conversation with the right is pointless because 4chan exists.

Fair. It’s always a bit difficult to seperate online discourse from facts on the ground. Though it seems to me a lot of the online stuff bleeds into real stuff.

Where the analogy fails is that the views of the modal 4chan right-winger are very far removed from those of any right-wing Anglophone who wields any power or influence (Holocaust denial is a meme on 4chan, but you'll never catch Trump, DeSantis, Johnson or Sunak saying anything which could be even uncharitably misconstrued as antisemitic).

By contrast, the typical opinions of Reddit mods may be unrepresentative of the left as a whole, but they are very representative of the views held by leftists and liberals who wield power and influence in Anglophone society. Pro-lockdown, pro-vaccination cert, pro-censorship, pro-hate speech legislation, pro-arming Ukraine, pro-trans, pro-BLM and so on. These stances may not be popular among the Anglophone left as a whole, but they are absolutely popular among our left-liberal ruling classes.

You make a good point. Maybe a bit exaggerated, because most leftists who wield power and influence in Anglophone society do not favor open borders, very high minimum wage and/or UBI, massively cutting the number of police, or other common Reddit causes. But still, a good point.

Same here, in my case I go as far back as gamergate.

It was a harrowing experience to have all my lefty heroes seemingly turn into irrational monsters overnight who simply refused to listen and circled the wagons around a handful of clearly corrupt people.

That's when I got intimately familiar with the typical lefty 1-2 punch: first they silence you, and then they lie about what you said.

The couple years after gamergate was an experience of getting repeatedly caught off-guard and surprised by the sheer pettiness and malice of people I had respected and admired. We used to have a saying back in those days: you don't join GG, you get thrown in the pit with the rest of us; and, boy, was that the case for me.

For one, that comment of yours was blatantly false. There's no such thing as "just" telling people to not drink Bud Light, the context of doing so is common knowledge. I would expect more awareness of that on the forum where leftist causes are routinely delved into for any sort of covert allegiance with communism/leninism/pedophilia and whatnot.

Were I a mod there I'd ban you not even because you're a "heretic", but for feigning ignorance.

There's often a point to feigning ignorance: if the censor refuses to state what is banned because doing so would be embarrassing or expose hypocrisy, he's already feigning ignorance. You can then honestly say "by your openly expressed standards, there's nothing wrong with this", because he shouldn't be hiding his standards in the first place.

I think this is such a case. Yes, QF knows what supporting the boycott actually means, but likewise, the moderators know why they're not letting people support the boycott, and they're refusing to say it.

As a complete aside, that feigning ignorance of the true standards is the part of the whole affirmative action debate I find most infuriating. If organizations were required to just say something like, "We, Harvard/Yale/whatever consider you, an Asian, as having lesser worth to our organization on the basis of your intrinsic Asian-ness and as such we'll dock you points compared to individuals of other races that we have judged to provide greater value to our organization when you try to join us," it would, perhaps be not nice, but at least it would be honest. The judgments of the people making these decisions would be laid bare for the rest of society to judge and make decisions based on. There could be honest discussions on whether or not such judgments by such organizations are moral and policy discussions on how much they should be allowed. Yet they insist on continuing to (attempt to) hide the ball. All part of the game, I suppose.

There's no such thing as "just" telling people to not drink Bud Light, the context of doing so is common knowledge.

I don't think that means there isn't "just" telling people not to drink Bud Light or shop at Target or whatever. It just means that when you "just" tell people to do that, you also necessarily include the context of the common knowledge. That doesn't make a message to Christians to boycott Bud Light not "just" telling people not to drink Bud Light; that's still literally "just" what it is.

This seems like quibbling over the definition of "Just". Physically what you're doing is "Just saying words" but this isn't a defense because cognitively, your brain is assigning meaning to those words and wielding them with intent. There is no such thing as Just doing without meaning. Sure. Literally all you're doing observably is Just saying words, sure.

When someone says

There's no such thing as "just" telling people to not drink Bud Light, the context of doing so is common knowledge.

I think it's clear enough which of these they mean that we don't have to quibble about their usage of language.

This seems like quibbling over the definition of "Just".

I mean, yes. That's what the whole subthread is about, starting with the claim that the statement was "blatantly false" in the comment to which I was responding. I don't think it's blatantly false. You could say that it's arguably misleading, especially in the context of a Christian boycott of Bud Light and Target being clear "enemy action" from the perspective of partisan Reddit mods, but if there's room to quibble over the words - and there is such room - then it's not the case that it's blatantly false.

It seems a bit melodramatic to describe telling people not to drink Bud Light using the scary word "propaganda", though.

Pretty much what Scott calls "the worst argument in the world". When I hear the phrase "anti-LGBTQ propaganda", I think of people who want to make sodomy illegal, or gay men being thrown off rooftops, or the promotion of conversion therapy etc. I do not think "public figure urges people not to drink a particular brand of beer".

It doesn't seem melodramatic to me. I mean, everyone knows what the current culture war is, it's clear which actions are enemy action. Propaganda is just the memes the enemy is spreading to further their cause and people are pointing at them.

Regardless of whether you think people should be censoring each other over the direction of their activism to begin with, I think it's perfectly sensible to say "This is clear enemy action" and use the word "Propaganda" for that once you are committed to this sort of combat.

I know this is probably the wrong place to get into a quibble over definitions, but I really don't think "one guy using his personal social media account to back a boycott and encouraging his fans to do likewise" can reasonably be described as "propaganda". I'm aware that the moderators of this subreddit consider it (reasonably) as clear enemy action, but that doesn't answer my question: not everything which is clear enemy action is propaganda. If Anthony Bass had been arrested for beating up a trans person because they were trans, that would also be "clear enemy action" in the "current culture war", but it wouldn't be propaganda. From context it doesn't even seem like Bass was using any memes to further his cause, it sounds like he was just saying "I endorse this cause and you should too". For reference, a pro-LGBTQ meme would be something like "#lovewins" or "born this way" or "trans women are women", while an anti-LGBTQ meme is the "groomer" accusation: it doesn't sound like Bass was saying "if you drink Bud Light you're a groomer", which absolutely would be a meme.

I think /u/QuantumFreakonomics's contention that it was a bit hysterical to frame "a private citizen endorsing a boycott which is contrary to woke orthodoxy" as "propaganda" was fair. The fact that I know what the mods were doing from a game-theoretic perspective doesn't change my assessment that it's hysterical and melodramatic to frame it as such.

The shared message in question isn't just saying not to drink bud light or shop at Target. It never says the g-word, but the phrase "shoving it in children's faces" has pretty unambiguous implications.

I understand why so many subreddits are complete circlejerks now. It's not about echo-chambers and voting dynamics. They literally just banned everyone who disagreed.

Banning all harmful voices is in line with their ethos. Has been for quite some time.

Popper suggested how to abolish freedom of speech all the way back in 1945.

Why wouldn't they ?

If you ban everyone who transgresses your holy values from an important online space, you are strenghtening your religion's position, no ?

They see this as good and laudable. "It prevents violence".

They've mostly dispensed with even the pretense of being interested in a debate.

Better learn to turn every criticism into a fifty Stalins type criticism. Maybe that'd work.

reddit sucks. news at 11... it has been going downhill for a long time in terms of worsening censorship of anything outside of an increasingly narrow approved worldview. mods have too much power, no way to remove bad mods. it's ridiculously easy to get banned on subs on reddit for even dumbest of reasons or no reason at all.

@ace said it. You were in the wrong place, and what did you expect?

My friend, your words are wasted over there. Those are Motte-style arguments, and there’s a reason the Motte is no longer on reddit.

Don't call it the progressive consensus. That implies that a majority of left-leaning people are onboard with it. Call it the progressive orthodoxy.

Not trying to sound condescending but I can't help but think of that one James Franco meme. Reddit in general and Reddit mods in particular have undergone such an intense purity spiral in the last seven years that you're best off just assuming any English-speaking sub which isn't loudly and conspicuously heretical (even ostensibly apolitical hobby and sports subs) has been taken over by woke mods. The site is a lost cause as far as meaningful discussion is concerned.

Hell, even subs that are loudly and conspicuously heretical appear to have been taken over by woke mods. I was permanently banned from /r/ActualPublicFreakouts - Reddit’s current go-to spot for videos of minorities behaving badly - (ostensibly) for making a few (fairly mild) off-color racial jokes. Certainly I would expect an instant ban for doing anything of the sort on a large public-facing sub, but on a sub that seems tailor-made for people who would be into that? It’s the sort of thing that fuels my suspicion that any remaining redoubts of non-progressivism are honeypots designed to corral all the heretics into one place for observation and eventual termination.

Reddit is overwhelmingly woke, urban and (within the US at least) Democrat, to the degree "heretical" subreddits exist they are populated by woke democrat-voting heretics. As a general rule the mainstream right, IE the 3,000,000 people a night who were tuning in to Tucker Carlson, the 10,000,000 million people per show who listen to Rogan and the 74,000,000 who voted for Trump in 2020 are posting but they are not posting anywhere you as a member of opposing polity would be likely to encounter them and that is (at least in part) by design.

Status independence is a hell of a drug.

IE the 3,000,000 people a night who were tuning in to Tucker Carlson

Emphasis mine. The mainstream right, which has so much influence it couldn't even keep Carlson on Fox News. That's not status independence, that's irrelevance.

Case in point, I ate a permanent ban from Reddit for “hate speech” by posting copypasta which contained no hate speech whatsoever on an sub completely dedicated to shitposting. A copy pasta I had posted several times without so much as a warning.

After a few suspensions for essentially hurting people’s feelings I was clearly on the chopping block and all I had to do was annoy one person enough to have them report a comment and then it was over, no appeals.

I deleted the app shortly after my appeal was denied.

Increasingly convinced that I made the right decision uninstalling the Reddit app from my phone. Just about the only sub I still enjoy any more is /r/4chan.

Quitting Heroin for Fentanyl is a bold strategy Cotton, lets see how it works out. ;-)

Why wouldn’t you just browse 4chan?

Reddit subs dedicated to 4chan posts are much, much better than going to 4chan because they typically filter out the porn(which is the vast majority of 4chan) and in practice they mostly highlight the better posts(which is definitely not the majority of even the non-porn posts on 4chan).

I strongly disagree with this extremely overbroad assertion.

In the first place, /r/4chan is not a substitute for 4chan. 4chan is a discussion platform that happens to be humorous on occasion, while /r/4chan is focused exclusively on finding humor (not necessarily "the better posts") on 4chan. If you want to read a non-humorous discussion of electric cars or urban planning or Big Yud, you won't find it on /r/4chan—you've got to go to 4chan itself.

In the second place, it is not reasonable to say that pornography "is the vast majority of 4chan". Even assuming for the sake of argument that the statement is technically true—i. e., that, of all posts made on 4chan, "the vast majority" are pornographic (and I do not necessarily accept that premise)—it is not actually possible for a user to browse the entire category of "all posts made on 4chan". In practice, it is extremely easy for a person who uses the catalog view to ignore (1) the obviously-pornographic boards and (2) the few obviously-pornographic threads that are tolerated by the jannies on the non-pornographic boards, and to focus only on threads that actually contain discussion.

I've tried once or twice but found the user interface impenetrable.

Some would argue that's a feature. The medium is the message.

Try using the catalog view instead of the default view. And, in the settings, enable the "Inline quote links" option, so that you can follow a conversation without having to bounce up and down the page.

As an aside, here's one thing I noticed about the Bud Light boycott: A lot of people here have pointed out that the similarities among major brands of light beer have made it a relatively easy thing to boycott since alternatives are readily available. I was already inclined to agree with this sentiment, precisely because it underscores why this boycott hasn't seemed to have much of an effect in my neck of the woods. A lot of products are popular by default, and they're usually the products that are marketed by major brands and have a ton of advertising. You don't need to know a lot about soft drinks to know that Coke is popular and that most people will find it an acceptable beverage; if you're having a party and serve Coke and someone doesn't like it, they'll at least understand why you chose it in a way they wouldn't if Cheerwine was the only option. In certain areas Bud Light is like this for beer; it's not so much a choice but the lack of a choice. Drinking Bud Light is staring into the void.

But where I live, in Western PA, it isn't. Among light beers, Miller Lite is clearly number one, followed by a tie between Coors Light and IC Light, the local option. Bud Light is a distant fourth, at least according to my own totally unscientific observations. Actually, fourth might be too generous as Busch Light is pretty common and Keystone and Natty are the go-tos for poor college students. What this means for Bud Light is that drinking it around here is a conscious choice. You don't select it by default, you select it because you've tried the other options and prefer Bud. This means three things. First, the boycott is more something that is on the news than something people are actively participating in, since they never drank Bud Light anyway. Hence, there seems to be little social pressure to jump on the boycott bandwagon, since there is none. Second, Bud Light drinking here is more of a personal thing than a cultural thing. Drinking Bud Light never signaled anything about you other than that you liked Bud Light, so there's no cultural associations with continuing to drink it despite the boycott. Finally, it's much harder to switch to a competitor because drinking Bud Light means having consciously rejected the competitors in the past; you're less inclined to switch if it's a beer you know you don't like.

So I still see people, even those I know or suspect to be conservative, drinking Bud Light in numbers roughly equivalent to what I saw before. As one conservative friend told me today: "I've drinking this beer since I was sixteen. I'm not going to stop just because some guy wants to wear a dress."

What about Yuengling? I seem to recall that company having some sort of association with the right wing, though I can't remember the details.

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You love to see it. I hope you're enjoying the beer, beyond drinking from America's oldest brewery still family owned, by Republicans who voted Trump at that. It's the ideal substitute.

And while yuengling lager and black and tan are quite different from a mass market light beer, they also produce Flight, which is a Michelob ultra competitor. 95 calories and easy drinking.

They did. Dick Yuengling invited Trump to speak at the brewery during the 2016 campaign, which underscored his history of working to prevent his employees from unionizing. Several members of my own family said they were going to permanently boycott Yuengling for this. That boycott lasted only a few weeks, though Yuengling is a unique beer that isn't easily replaceable by competitors. I mean what exactly are its competitors anyway? The closest national brand I can think of is Michelob Amber Bock, and you don't really see that much anymore. Dos Equis Amber, maybe?

I've drinking this beer since I was sixteen.

Which is why they think the brand is in decline. The older drinkers who've been drinking it for years are sticking with it, but they're not getting the new younger drinkers (for various reasons). That's why the influencer disaster. I've tried to find the demographics of Mulvaney's audience but that seems to be commercial information that isn't readily available. So I'm going to assume it's majorly women in the age range 18-30 (or so).

They want the 18 year girls to start drinking Bud Light, so by extension the association with "I'm a guy who has been drinking this since I was 16 and I'm 30/40/however old now" is unfavourable. Young drinkers are not going to be wooed by a dad beer, so this is why they tried to use Mulvaney to make it hip'n'happening.

Your friend may continue to drink it, but he's not the market they're trying to attract now. The (unfortunate) head of marketing for Bud Light in this interview, from around the 25th minute, about what she wanted to do. Evolve and Elevate. Representation. Inclusivity. The words that came back to haunt her:

"(And) we had this hangover. I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humour and it was really important that we had another approach".

Good find on (at least one) of the original sources this and another interview are the ones I'd seen passed around in the early days of the controversy but most of the links/mirrors have since been scrubbed. Clearly the lady realized that she was giving proverbial ammunition to her opponents and sought to deny them the easy reload.

The problem is I have a tiny modicum of sympathy for her. Bud Light is (or was) the Number One brand, but it was in a slow, easy, steady decline: younger drinkers aren't drinking, or if they're drinking, they're not drinking beer, or if they are drinking beer, they're not drinking the old familiar "dad drinks that" brands.

So she was handed the job of "revitalise the brand and get young people drinking it" and being a modern woman who is in marketing she immediately went "we must be diverse and inclusive!" and then picked the single most terrible choice ever for the brand. The only way to make it worse would be a historical revamp about "hey, did you know that Bud was Adolf Hitler's favourite beer? and he should know because Germans love beer!" 🤦‍♀️

As others have pointed out, there's ways to do this that can pivot slowly away from the traditional market to bring in younger, more progressive drinkers. But not by some gay guy doing a performance-art drag act who, when he smiles, has a face that - in the words of an Irish saying - has a mouth like a hake.

Comparison photo of hake heads here.

I actually have a fair bit of sympathy but she was still monumentaly stupid and as the poster in the hallway outside my office reads...

"The penalty for stupidity is death"

If anything she got off lightly.

I'm trying to stay away from politics for now, but I feel a bit compelled to add to your comment.

As someone who's been involved in them before, Internet communities dedicated to the arts are probably the worst in this regard. There was a Discord server I was in a couple years back dedicated to a specific electronic band where the very same thing happened to me, except it was more farcical than this. So, some background - I was an early user of the server, I was casual friends with one of the mods there, and while little interesting conversation could be found from them they were at least pleasant to talk to. At first, the server was a fairly low-key place where one could talk about a certain artist's works, share their own music, etc. I came to be known as a regular there.

At some point, after an influx of new users, the server took on an explicitly political bent, despite (if I remember correctly) a rule stating no politics in the server. People would speak at length about politics and always from an incredibly progressive viewpoint, and when people would bring up concerns about the politicisation of the server the response was "Some people don't have the privilege of not thinking about politics". You had regular bashing of people like Jordan Peterson in there. You had users openly endorsing sentiments like "I hate men", stating that there was value in these open and unabashed statements of group hatred because it might enlighten people about their "privilege". The progressive conceptualisation of identity-based privilege and oppression, as well as the directionality of that oppression, were all taken as unchallengeable fact in that server and it never needed to be rigorously proved or demonstrated, just asserted.

Quite predictably, there was also talk about the underrepresentation of women in electronic music. The answer was always that some nebulous socialisation of sorts dissuaded them from trying their hand at it. Inherent or innate factors were not considered. As far as I know, no studies on the gender difference in empathising-systemising (E-S) or the impact of E-S on music preferences were ever linked there. It's also worth noting that the server at this point was also filled to the brim with purportedly gender-dysphoric people who identified as something or other. IIRC, one of the most political people on the server at the time I was there was a trans woman from Iran. I remember this person posting video of their "interpretive dance" which basically consisted of them uncoordinatedly jumping up and down on their bed while a song played in the background. I swear to God, I am not making this up.

I made quite a lot of attempts to argue that politics should be out of the server, that it didn't belong in a server dedicated to an electronic artist, and nobody really acted on it - instead, they continued having political discussion in complete contradiction to the rule. Eventually, I decided that if they didn't want to adhere to an ethic of "no politics", I would not be bound by that rule either. When they were having one of their many progressive-leaning discussions, I decided to outline some of my problems with that ideology in as polite and moderate a fashion as I knew how. I garnered responses, and before I could answer them a moderator came in and stated that things were "getting too political". The politics rule was conveniently invoked, and the entire conversation was shut down in a manner that allowed progressives to have the last word.

I left the server for a bit, and when I came back, things didn't seem to be that much better. I had only a bit of time to speak with some of the users there before I was abruptly banned from the server, and a longstanding friend of mine (who was still in there) posted me the text of conversations involving the mods - including the one who I was friends with for a good while - where they were shit-talking me. Stating that I had expressed "harmful things", and that I "creeped them out". My "harmful" take was stating that the relations between the sexes aren't characterised by oppression.

Apparently the topic of my banning still comes up with some regularity every now and then in that server.

Yeah, that matches my experiences as well. Deranged far left politics never fall afoul of a "no politics" rule. Arguing with them does. They are just socially normalizing their cult as "basic human decency" through raw exercises in power. You thought like a normal person, that politics are politics, and a no politics rule should apply to it. You need to think like a cultural marxist, where if there is a no politics rule, and long far left screeds aren't having the rule applied to them, then they don't count as politics. The rules and how they are enforced dictate reality, not the other way around. Because there is no reality. Only "social constructs", which you must constantly reshape so people have no choice but to perceive the world the way you want them to.

You would have to be steeped in internet leftist culture to understand that, "Trolling, threatening, harassing, or inciting violence towards individuals or groups will not be tolerated. Racist, sexist, or otherwise intolerant language in both comments and submissions will be removed." means that pointed questions against the progressive consensus will get you tossed out.

And was it your impression that reddit moderators were not "steeped in internet leftist culture"? This seems to me like jumping into a pool and wondering why it's wet.

Forget it, Jake, it's Reddit.

Reddit's admins and mods have cultivated the culture they want and get, you can argue with them but it's only going to get you a ban and 99% of replies are either going to be people performatively responding for approval or others marking their account for more focus from the Eye of Sauron.

If you wish to fight them, take note of the Fox /r/antiwork piece and do likewise. Let their absurdity distance them from any audience of normies. Don't honestly post in a popular sub expecting to make a major influence.

It's a shame because Reddit largely killed the standalone forum for non-ossified communities. For the passively apolitical majority, those who are okay with simply ignoring the politics or are used to hearing it as background noise and don't think there's anything weird with it, it's a Schelling point for conversations on any topic.

Yes it is practically impossible to find any other frequented forum for almost any topic at this point. It is easy to say just ignore reddit idiots but it is a real problem when reddit keeps luring in any online community and then causing its takeover by "those people"

I don't know if it's more damaging socially, but the single biggest argument against reddit usage I can come up with these days is to just post about their moderation team. The Challenor affair was the most visible and egregious (Reddit hiring a chief moderator who did not notice their father tying up a small child in the attic and raping/abusing them for several weeks, then banning people who reported on the story with no explanation) but when you look at people like BardFinn the idea that any conversation is improved by having people like them deciding the rules of polite discourse is just too funny not to laugh at.

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