site banner
PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   38166 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The Gays Destroyed The "No Politics" Rule

Pride month began, and the moderators of /r/Battletech enforced their "no politics" rule as they have through elections, wars, referedums, economic crisis, etc. A long standing rule fastidiously kept by most Battletech groups I frequent. It's preserved Battletech as one of my escapes for long years as every other hobby I had got overrun with far left politics. Alas, no longer.

In response, Catalyst games launched /r/OfficialBattletech, specifically calling out the "bigotry" of /r/Battletech, and announcing Battletech is a "safe space". They parachuted in a community leader with experience moderating "safe spaces". People began making the sorts of spurious claims against the mods of /r/Battletech you are used to seeing, calling them being fascist at best, literally "Heil Hitler" nazi's at worst on the most spurious of circumstantial evidence. The originator of /r/Battletech came out of nowhere and completely removed the mods of /r/Battletech to make damned sure /r/Battletech participates in Pride Month.

Because it's not political. It's just being a decent person.

So I guess Battletech is explicitly left wing now. You are no allowed to opt out of their politics.

Hobbies/Fandoms I'm allowed in

  • Video Games

  • Board Games

  • Science Fiction

  • Star Wars

  • Star Trek

  • Battletech

  • Woodworking

And I log into youtube to watch Stumpy Nubs tell me how to sharpen a chisel every day in fear some flashpoint will have occurred. That the Eye of Sauron finally noticed that woodworking is too white and must be destroyed. And suddenly every content creator I watch will be posting these mewling apology videos for not doing enough to foster diversity and inclusiveness in this important hobby. And the rest of the month ends up being pride themed woodworking content. Making your own buttplugs on a lathe or whatever. How to add glitter to a poly finish.

I'm coming for woodworking too, you son-of-a-bitch.

I'm already the guy who swoops in at the last second to bid one dollar more on that #8 jointer; the next step is transing you chisels and redoing you benchtop as a laminated rainbow.

(this is a joke, by the way. I can't really make an effort comment here without it being a personal attack so I'm not really sure what to do vis. conveying that I don't like it)

(this is a joke, by the way. I can't really make an effort comment here without it being a personal attack so I'm not really sure what to do vis. conveying that I don't like it)

Consider not commenting, then.

If you want to convey that you don't like a post without being willing to make the effort to articulate your objections in a way that is not a personal attack -- well, too bad. Don't.

And since you've been banned three times for this already, this ban will be for two weeks. Next time will likely be a permaban.

Would you at least agree that the woodworking community as it exists is rather unenthusiastic about expressing allyship?

Yes and no; it's super localized and age gated.

Where I am: Allyship isn't expressed; but it is 100% presumed. Eg, if someone made a rainbow themed credenza and people started complaining about it being political; the response wouldn't have been understanding lets say.

Back east: Probably not the case.

Where I am woodworking (especially hand tool woodworking; which is my bag) is a very expensive involved hobby for upper-class people, thus lower class beliefs re. lgbtq+ai^2 are cast out into the darkness along with watching nascar and listening to country music. That's prole shit! For the fucking poors!

In other places it's probably totally different, I bet.

I'm interested in knowing more about this. Growing up fairly poor it seemed like hand tools were ubiquitous but power tools were reserved for professionals and maybe rich hobbyists. I guess like horses and automobiles the ever-cheaper tech has reversed this dynamic?

Where do hand tool woodworking hobbyists congregate? Is Fine Woodworking magazine still relevant, or does it have too many power tools?

This comment got a report for "leave the internet at the door". I'm going to comment even though this is not a warning, because last week someone else got a ban for complaining about some subreddit drama that they shared as a top level comment. So some clarification needs to be made:

What makes this post different from the last one is that most of the personal trouble that WhiningCoil might have gotten into is left out of the post.

However, this post isn't necessarilly a good example, because it is skirting some other rules. There is a bit of consensus building equating pride month with "far-left politics". This is not written in a way to include everyone in the conversation as a result the comments that try to push back all start on a semi adversarial footing. They can't question your viewpoint without also making it a criticism of you.

They can't question your viewpoint without also making it a criticism of you.

I find your terms acceptable.

And then they get reported for antagonism, which is somewhat accurate, but then when I see where the antagonism originates I go and approve the comments. It creates work and headaches for the mods.

Regardless of how people feel about being personally insulted or antagonized we generally don't like to allow it. Because then we end up with an environment where such behavior is pervasive.

Activists have a ready response to no-politics rules: "The personal is political" or maybe "Privilege is getting to define someone else's existence as political."

I'm not sure they're wrong though? On its face, this advice is independent of whatever viewpoint you might hold. Any kind of activity with people interacting will always involve value judgements about how everyone should behave. Post a woodworking video about making a dog toy? That's a statement that you think having pet dogs is okay, and if a subreddit allows that video to be posted then they're saying they agree.

I guess the point is, if you don't like LGBT pride in your hobby, then you're not going to get anywhere by arguing for a generic "no politics" stance since to onlookers it seems like you're ashamed of your own position and unwilling to advocate it directly. If you can't articulate to your fellow hobbyists why LGBT specifically is bad and should be opposed, then you're just going to keep ceding ground to the activists on the other side who feel no such compunction in advocating against "bigotry" or whatever they call their opposition.

In his 2001 book, “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, Christopher Hitchens wrote the following as a warning:

PS: Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I’ll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of identity politics. I’ll rephrease that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying “The Personal is Political.” It began as a sort of reaction to the defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they felt, not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of small difference, because each identity group begat its subgroups and “specificities.” This tendency has often been satirised – the overweight caucuse of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs – but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance.

Anyway what you swiftly realize if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighborhood or environment, and travel beyond it, is, first, that we have a huge surplus of people who wouldn’t change anything about the way they were born, or the group they were born into, but second that “humanity” (and the idea of change) is best represented by those who have the wit not to think, or should I say feel, this way.”

I don't know if you're feigning ignorance, but you're saying the things that someone feigning ignorance would say. If pet dogs was an issue for a major political party , people had pet dog rallies that were specifically there to rub pet dogs in the face of people who didn't like them, if people routinely got fired from their jobs for their opinions on pet dogs, and if people's opinions on pet dogs--or even their refusal to speak about pet dogs--marked them as irredeemably evil and not fit for polite company then pet dogs would be political. Just "I have an opinion on whether it's okay" doesn't make it political.

Gays destroyed the what now rule?

You don't have to look all that far back to remember days where the dynamic you see was, in fact, entirely upside down. DADT was implemented in the 1990's, and was replaced by gays being allowed to serve openly a cool two decades later. When my parents left high school and the male graduates applied at the draft office, the military still undertook serious effort to root out anyone gay - and I live in a nation that is friendlier to gay people than most of Europe is.

Talk about the vacation plans you and your (fellow gay) SO have been making in 1993? You're fired, do not pass go, do not collect $200. You don't get to marry that person, because of course people of the same sex don't get to do that. Local drunks will ambush you if you go for a drink and the police will cackle about this. If you bring any of this up, well, it's really not politics, is it? It's just being a decent person.

Yes, there's excesses in this: call it part of man's desire to have his culture be superior over others. So it goes. But accusing the gays of this uniquely? Please. Many of them well remember how they used to live, they can see places in their own nations where people still do, and they act accordingly. There's nothing odd or particularly wicked about these people, and we don't have to pretend otherwise.

If making hobbyist spaces aggressively pro-gay is a reaction to past abuse, wouldn't the people most in favor of this be older gay men? In my experience, the people most invested in this stuff either aren't gay at all or if they are, their age and class background makes it very unlikely they ever got fired or beaten up for it.

The staunchest pro-gay activists I personally know are people who had to cut ties with just-about their entire social circle on account of being gay. This is one reason, I think, LGBT activism has kept going so strong: the community gets an ever-present supply of people who hate those who'd oppress them with extreme zeal.

Does anyone actually check those stories, or is it the LGBT equivalent of a confessional narrative? Because I've known children of urban lefty professors who make such claims, and while I can't be sure they're false....

Yes, every community has liars and free riders. LGBT activists are human as much as anyone else. Indeed.

Since the military has made gays openly serving a policy, how has their organization been doing? Have gays been rushing the fill the recruitment numbers? Or are they in a crisis to find anyone who even cares to join their organization?

Maybe there is a reason for this fence that has existed for thousands of years. Or you think you know better than all your ancestors?

I don't really think you can put the blame on declining military recruitment efforts on homosexuality. Race-based issues, COVID vaccination policies and the actual actions of the US military in combination with differing social attitudes among the population all seem like far more obvious causes for the decline than anything else, especially seeing as how we have successful historical examples of societies and militaries which didn't really care about homosexuality in the armed forces.

There are in fact many things about which I know better than all my ancestors. The safety of lead plumbing, the causes and transmission of infectious diseases – the list goes on.

Anyway, how do you know the person you are replying to has no Greek ancestors?

A fun legend but of dubious factual basis

http://ancientheroes.net/blog//did-an-army-of-lovers-really-dominate-ancient-greece

No differently than before, if the numbers are anything to go by; I see no dropoff in the slightest after 2011. Are the numbers wrong, or are you?

Your numbers lacks serious range, stopping around 2011 for some reason. I still can easily see a visual steep decline starting when “don’t ask don’t tell” was implemented, which actually helps prove my point.

https://warontherocks.com/2023/03/addressing-the-u-s-military-recruiting-crisis/

How bad is the recruiting crisis? During the last fiscal year, the Army missed its recruiting goal by 15,000 active-duty soldiers, or 25 percent of its target. This shortfall forced the Army to cut its planned active-duty end strength from 476,000 to 466,000. And the current fiscal year is likely to be even worse. Army officials project that active end strength could shrink by as much as 20,000 soldiers by September, down to 445,000. That means that the nation’s primary land force could plummet by as much as 7 percent in only two years — at a time when its missions are increasing in Europe and even in the Pacific, where the Army provides many of the critical wartime theater enablers without which the other services cannot function.

Try looking at actual numbers, not just the first graphic from a web search. Active duty numbers are published yearly and it's public information, and if you're not poor statista will compile that into more parse-able charts. There is a noticeable drop from a local peak in 2010 to 2016 but that has halfway recovered since. Keeping in mind that in raw numbers it's a drop on the order of 100,000 members, with a recovery on the order of 40,000 and that in per capita terms that is a continuing decline.

One hundred thousand fewer people on active duty, in an army of over a million, the cause of which the statistics (obviously) won't tell us.

If that's it, I'm going to keep filing this under the non-issue drawer, yeah.

The new sub removed a photo of some mechs painted up in police colors as police are hostile to pride and so posting that in pride month right after a pride related kerfuffle was considered unacceptable. There is nothing but excess in the way the pride people work and if it weren't for double standards they wouldn't have any standards at all.

Gays destroyed the what now rule?

You don't have to look all that far back to remember days where the dynamic you see was, in fact, entirely upside down. DADT was implemented in the 1990's, and was replaced by gays being allowed to serve openly a cool two decades later. When my parents left high school and the male graduates applied at the draft office, the military still undertook serious effort to root out anyone gay - and I live in a nation that is friendlier to gay people than most of Europe is.

DADT was not a serious effort to root anyone gay out, it was a serious effort to keep them in. It's fair to say it was still unfair, too restrictive, and discriminatory, but it is extremely dishonest to claim that the goal was to get rid of gay people.

Even with this example in mind, it is pretty clear that progressives are explicitly destroying attempts to keep non-political spaces. Given that their protestations that they just want to be left alone quickly turned to bullying bakers, and promoting mastectomies for minors, it's fair to say their goal was never to keep anything apolitical.

The progressives disagree with you that these spaces were ever non-political, and frankly, I think they're right. I could talk at length about Dutch pillarisation and the funny consequences this had for society, but the people who bemoan politics being everywhere now are people who haven't been paying attention for all that long.

The victory I wanted was for everyone else to not care, too. Instead, I got LGBTQ2A+ climbing night at the local gym, corporations under the auspices of straight white women plastering rainbows on every surface, and “we believe love is love and kindness is everything” along with casual discussions on the internet of the moral imperative to punch my face.

We replaced homophobia with political enmity, not indifference. To me, the pride flag feels sorta akin to the confederate flag. Its not exactly a symbol of hate or exclusion for most of the people flying it, but it sure feels that way on this side of things.

We replaced homophobia with political enmity, not indifference.

The enmity is because the homophobia, to a large degree, remains. Many homophobes have grudgingly agreed (or been forced by law or social pressure) to not actively persecute homosexuals, but their position remains that homosexuals are not legitimate members of society and should be tolerated only on the condition that they keep it to themselves - don't express affection in public, don't "shove it in my face", don't say gay acknowledge homosexuality. And, of course, many of them do persecute homosexuals.

Indifference is reacting to two men kissing in public the same way you'd react to a man and a woman kissing in public, not tolerating private homosexuality.

  • -10

Midwestern roots here- I don’t want to see any kissing in public or know anything of anyone’s sexual identity. It’s not my business and its quite impolite of you to make it so. So yeah, keep it to yourselves, everyone.

More seriously, I can’t quantify how many homophobes exist in the wild and the extent to which they make it known. I’d agree that homophobia remains, but I disagree it’s the cause for the political enmity. Hating across party lines is something new.

It feels like the implicit argument, to put words in your mouth, goes like this: the homophones, however many and however vocal, hate you and yours after all this time, so you are justified in hating them back, and twice as hard. There is no off ramp here.

Midwestern roots here- I don’t want to see any kissing in public or know anything of anyone’s sexual identity. It’s not my business and its quite impolite of you to make it so. So yeah, keep it to yourselves, everyone.

Do you go around telling straight people to keep it to themselves? What about seeing a man and woman holding hands with prominent rings that indicate their marriage? Or are we going to say that straight isn't a sexual orientation? You may have some friends over at /r/GamingCirclejerk if you think that.

If you only ever raise issues with the identities of gay people publicly, how are you meaningfully going to differentiate yourself from those who just hate gay people?

Midwestern roots here- I don’t want to see any kissing in public or know anything of anyone’s sexual identity. It’s not my business and its quite impolite of you to make it so. So yeah, keep it to yourselves, everyone.

I'm not particularly approving of PDA either, but that's not the core of I'm talking about. It's merely an illustration. You have aggressive homophobes who actively lobby to oppress homosexuals (e.g. they want to roll back things like gay marriage), but you also have low-key homophobes. They grudgingly tolerate homosexuals on a day-to-day level, but they'd prefer they be excluded from public life, regard them as intrinsically suspect (see also: groomer discourse), and will support homophobic politicians and policies.

It feels like the implicit argument, to put words in your mouth, goes like this: the homophones, however many and however vocal, hate you and yours after all this time, so you are justified in hating them back, and twice as hard. There is no off ramp here.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the enmity continues to exist because the war is still on. It's not like all the homophobes gave up and decided it was okay after all. Homophobia still has social and political power, even if it has fallen on hard times. As @Nantafiria notes, you still have children being disowned by their families for being homosexual. You still have anti-homosexual laws being proposed (and passed). It's not about justification, it's about acknowledging what is actually going on. As long as you have people trying to shove homosexuals back in the closet, homosexuals (and their allies) are going to shove back.

There might have been a compromise built around public institutional neutrality and pluralist tolerance, but that was never actually on the table. Instead we got attempts to entrench legal discrimination. Every concession to tolerance and legal recognition of homosexuality was, in effect, torn from the unwilling hands of people who want homosexuals to stay in the closet (or not exist). As long as that is the case, you're not going to get people to back down from ostentatious celebration and inclusion of homosexuality and hostility towards even mere disapproval. Though it almost certainly is no off ramp at this point - when total victory is in sight, there's no reason to settle for anything less than unconditional surrender.

Thank you for sharing your view on the matter from the other side. I’m sure I don’t notice much of what is going on because it’s not directed at me.

I do see quite a few anti-trans laws being passed in national news but I haven’t seen any anti-homosexual. Are you lumping the one in with the other or perhaps I just haven’t noticed? Would you mind providing an example or two?

Though it almost certainly is no off ramp at this point - when total victory is in sight, there's no reason to settle for anything less than total victory…

The push for total victory is counter productive - it pushed me in the opposite direction and I’d guess I’m not alone. I got off the train when actual friends started unironically talking about literally bashing in the skulls of people with my political beliefs. I know I shouldn’t pin the beliefs of Bay Area radicalists on the movement at large, but I don’t know how to not do that, either.

don't express affection in public, don't "shove it in my face", don't say gay acknowledge homosexuality

Correct. Homosexuality is fundamentally anti-social and anti-civilizational in a lot of ways. Merely being allowed to not be killed over it is a huge ask.

When you inevitable complain that homosexuality isn't anti-civilizational, consider that a civilization of homosexuals isn't possible. It will be gone within a human lifetime. Only a civilization that encourages self-reproduction is possible over timelines longer than a few decades.

Do you feel the same way about, say, monks or nuns? What is your criteria for anti-civilizational to a degree that deserves execution? It can't be "a civilization composed exclusively of X couldn't survive" because that's a criterion that would condemn, among others: men, women, the elderly, babies, doctors, etc...

"We can't have a civilization if it's literally 100% X" doesn't imply "X is fundamentally anti-civilizational".

I find his universalization a bit hyperbolic, but if it isn't too much to ask would you say that acceptance of homosexuality is closer to being moral or immoral as it concerns moral duties and virtues?

More comments

Indifference is reacting to two men kissing in public the same way you'd react to a man and a woman kissing in public, not tolerating private homosexuality.

Correct. The right way to go about it though is to discourage both men and women kissing in public. Keep those to your bedroom, the rest of society doesn't need to see it. Until westerners grok this simple fact they should be treated to frequent public displays of gay men passionately kissing until it dawns upon them that a man and a woman kissing is indecent in the exact same way and to the exact same degree as two men kissing, it's just that their own oversexualised social mood makes them ignore the depravity of the former.

I think it's rather unfair to blame that one on the rank-and-file westerners. It wasn't that long ago when kissing in public was seen as indecent. The oversexualization came about through a massive amount of psyops, and arguably it was done specifically to pave the way for double mastectomies for minors, and whatever lies beyond.

This makes no sense, there is massive political enmity aimed at people who are not homophobic, and who are saying homosexuals are legitimate members of society, and shouldn't be prohibited from expressing affection any more than straight people are.

don't say gay acknowledge homosexuality

There's been a bunch of these bills passed, so I can't vouch for every one, but "don't say gay" is mostly a lie. It's mostly "don't show porn to kids, and don't indoctrinate them with whacky pomo theories".

For a while they were at the very least acting like all they wanted is apolitical treatment, if they never believed it, why should I take them at their word regarding anything?

but the people who bemoan politics being everywhere now are people who haven't been paying attention for all that long.

That's flatly wrong. It was indeed possible to participate in hobby groups and focus on the hobby instead of any politics for many, many years prior to the awokening.

For a while they were at the very least acting like all they wanted is apolitical treatment, if they never believed it, why should I take them at their word regarding anything?

The standard response, and the correct one, is that the people who used to get them fired and beaten and marginalised are suddenly uncommonly invested in a tolerance they never believed in. Why should they believe anyone who talks about it when it never seems to have been on the table before?

That's flatly wrong. It was indeed possible to participate in hobby groups and focus on the hobby instead of any politics for many, many years prior to the awokening.

Not for gay people, it wasn't. And lest you compare their fate to yours, they were in fact born that way in a way the people bemoaning anything rainbow-colored aren't.

  • -19

Not for gay people, it wasn't.

Yes, it was, speaking as one. It's not relevant, why would I fucking bring it up? I participated in a load of internet forums during the good era of the internet and not once did it become necessary to announce what categories of people I was attracted to, or even my actual real life sex, age, or location.

Strange as it may seem these days, it is completely possible to NOT plaster all the details of your personal life all over the internet all the time. In fact, it used to be the norm to avoid doing that at all costs!

I participated in a load of internet forums during the good era of the internet and not once did it become necessary to announce what categories of people I was attracted to, or even my actual real life sex, age, or location.

That was, coincidentally, the time when it was perfectly normal to call a game mechanic you were not fond of "gay".

It was indeed nice when people weren't perpetual offense-seeking fannies, yes. I wasn't offended by it, despite being a homosexualist. Toughen up.

More comments

I, too, was around for that era of the internet - and I, too, miss it dearly. It died once the internet stopped being for nerds and started being for everyone. Neither of us are getting those days back.

We can have them back, those rules just need to be enforced instead of implicitly understood by everyone.

Enforced anonymity would do a lot to fix the internet, or small portions of it.

More comments

The standard response, and the correct one, is that the people who used to get them fired and beaten and marginalised are suddenly uncommonly invested in a tolerance they never believed in.

That may be the standard response, but no honest person can claim it's correct. For example, you are not talking to a person who tried to get them fired, beaten, and marginalized, you are talking to a person who tried to protect the from getting fired, beaten, and marginalized, and tried talking extremely bigoted and aggressive people into acceptence.

The correct response is that people who were arguing for broad principles of acceptance and free speech are suddenly uncommonly invested in intolerance. I'm not going to say that they never believed in it, because it's starting to look like they always did, and were just hiding it.

Not for gay people, it wasn't.

Yes it was. No one cared what you were doing outside the hobby group.

no honest person

You can do better than insist you're only talking to liars, and I'd appreciate if you did that rather than accuse me of lying to your face.

Because, for what it's worth, I'm sure those are the things you believe. And I'm also sure gay people are right to point out that these beliefs, today, are the ones of people who'd love to shove them back down the closet. Until there is a way to distinguish the likes of you from the likes of them, a good deal of them are going to take a dim view of people who bemoan a lost tolerance. A tolerance, I'll add, that they didn't see much of in the first place.

No one cared what you were doing outside the hobby group.

The workplace. The military. Public life in general.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. History didn't start off in the 2010s, and plenty of people cared about that just fine.

Until there is a way to distinguish the likes of you from the likes of them, a good deal of them are going to take a dim view of people who bemoan a lost tolerance.

But there was a way to determine it, public people like James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, Peter Boghosian, the Weinstein Brothers, etc. have a track record. Private people like me also do, even though it may not be accessible by randos on the Internet, it was accessible to people in my immediate environment, who suddenly decided continue the march of progress and steamroll over all concerns.

The workplace. The military. Public life in general.

Scroll back in the conversation, it was about hobby groups. You were claiming politically neutral spaces never existed, that's what I'm disputing. You might notice the issue people are raising isn't about taking politics out of public life - something that might very well be a contradiction - but about having some spaces were we can set aside intra-societal disputes, and focus on the things that we have in common.

More comments

Frankly, this is bullshit. Name a single "non-political" internet space that ever had giant crosses plastered across it, and the rules updated to include "in this space we believe: there is no god but Jesus, all who do not praise him will be banned"

"There is no such thing as no-politics" is just used as an excuse to do whatever you want to people, claiming there are no standards of decency and pluralism that should stop you.

I refer to my original comment, where being known as gay would get you barred from the military or most any normal person's job, and where this was so pervasive it was the expectation. "There's no such thing as no-politics" indeed, because these gay people I've met and spoken to never had a choice.

  • -19

"We never had a choice!" he screamed from atop a float shaped like a dick as it slowly trundled down the main thoroughfare during the second week of Pride Month.

That might apply to some places. It doesn't apply to the hobby groups that are being discussed. You absolutely could participate in Battletech or video games without saying anything whatsoever about your private life.

I mean, you certainly couldn't play Counter-Strike without someone saying quite an awful lot about your private life. And your mom's private life, too, for that matter.

No, you couldn't pay Counter Strike without someone baselessly speculating about your private life. There were no consequences for what they said, because none of it was real, they were just fishing around for insults. There is so much difference between "anonymous person makes something up to annoy you" and "being known as gay would get you barred from the military or most any normal person's job" that it's a difference in kind, not degree.

No, being known as gay would get you barred from high status jobs, which most normal people don’t have.

More to the point, the objection isn’t actually ‘gays should go into the closet’. There are people who believe that but it’s not the contention at issue. The contention at issue is whether a ‘no discussion of current events, period, with current events defined as anything after 1988’ rule should preclude 2023 pride month specific content. Which seems obvious.

I get why gay activists feel like they should have a special exception. I just don’t care. They got what they wanted.

So? Why should I care about what an unrelated organization did? This is a hobby space ffs, not some government or public entity. You’re trying to justify totalitarianism based on some kind of collective blood libel that almost no one alive in the country has anything to do with.

They absolutely had a choice. They made the choice to be gay, and not just homosexual, and that was a political act of their own free will.

Nah.

  • -22

It would be better to just drop the conversation altogether rather than leaving comments like this.

More comments

Sounds like the problem here is the originator opening the gates. Otherwise the mods and population could have kept chugging along. At least until someone justified a wargoal to Reddit admins.

I don’t think that plays out the same way for woodworking. There’s no originator to destabilize the whole community. You’d have to go straight to the top and try for mass demonetization. As I understand it, YouTube is absolute garbage as a platform, but I don’t think it tends to moderate for not saying something. I hope.

I recall something similar happening when I last was looking for Minecraft launchers. One of them was reasonably recommended, but the latest commit had deleted a woke code of conduct. Ooo, scary—oh. He also booted anyone he thought was too left-leaning from the permissions. There goes the neighborhood.

Easy fork, right? Just make their own PolyMC and don’t let this guy in. But network effects mean that requires a bunch of hand-wringing warning people off the old brand name, which is now dead to “anyone of sane mind.”

I mention all that because my first reflex was to tell you to suck it up and make /r/TrueBattletech or whatever. There’s clearly a supply of recently unemployed moderators. But I realize that the network effects are stacked against you, and that no matter what you do, it will be painted as a reactionary shithole. That sucks, and I’m sorry to hear about it.

While we’re on the subject…Please tell me that RogueTech is still okay?

I don’t think that plays out the same way for woodworking. There’s no originator to destabilize the whole community

If it happened to knitters it can happen to woodworkers. Centralization helps but isn't critical. There was no centralized platform for internet atheists, but Atheism+ still happened.

I don’t think that plays out the same way for woodworking. There’s no originator to destabilize the whole community. You’d have to go straight to the top and try for mass demonetization. As I understand it, YouTube is absolute garbage as a platform, but I don’t think it tends to moderate for not saying something. I hope.

I put nothing past them. Having centralization of a hobby makes it easier. But activist and infiltrators make it work just as well, just slower, without.

Maybe it starts with a campaign for all woodworkers to start putting their pronouns in their correspondence, and announce it at the beginning of each video. It's not like everyone would do it overnight. But maybe a few would. Then maybe one of the really big channels on Youtube gets talked into doing it, and suddenly there is a sea change. Next thing you know, if you aren't announcing your pronouns at the beginning of your woodworking videos, the comments section becomes a sea of accusations of bigotry. I know, I know, comments on youtube, what do you expect? Well, at the moment, most comment sections on woodworking video are actually profoundly helpful. I know, right?

Then the pressure ramps up. Suddenly all the channels are trying to outdo each other promoting Pride, or donating to LGBT causes. A little bit later, they are just straight up proselytizing for Democrats and calling all Republican's Nazi's.

Because it's a community, and it's also a hustle. In a sense it's zero sum, because there are only so many eyeballs you can get on your content. And most of the creators network extensively, and you don't want to find yourself outside the network. Same as most Youtube verticals.

Maybe a few channels find themselves left out of the network because at some point the meat AI that is the typical mob of "creators" that's been trained by the Youtube Algorithm hits a line they simply cannot cross along with everyone else. Maybe they can't throw their family under the bus as being bigots. Maybe they actually don't agree with mutilating and sterilizing children as a form of "trans health care". When all their former friends and colleagues treat them as persona non grata, they are immediately radicalized in the other direction.

And that is the hellscape I'm afraid is in woodworkings future. Because I've seen it happen, over, and over, and over again.

deleted

I recall something similar happening when I last was looking for Minecraft launchers. One of them was reasonably recommended, but the latest commit had deleted a woke code of conduct. Ooo, scary—oh. He also booted anyone he thought was too left-leaning from the permissions. There goes the neighborhood.

To be fair to the broader Minecraft community there, launchers by necessity have to have the ability to run arbitrary Java code with a pretty minimal level of sandboxing: there's a lot of harm that can and has happened through supply chain attacks. Booting a lot of maintainers has been one of the warning signs for a GitHub compromise.

If you want a real spicy version, I'd point to how LexManos got kicked out of leadership roles.

I think there are a lot of reasons to distrust upvotes as a metric of value or even general preferences.

If the userbase did, in fact, overwhelmingly prefer to amend the rules, that’s fine. Would that have resulted in this sort of originator revolt?

That's why it's important to have a principled rule in the first place, because majorities don't have principles.

Reddit has always been a place for left-wing moderators to run rampant and take action against people they don't agree with.

This is a classic misremembering of history that is repeated at Twitter (walked back a bit), Reddit, Youtube, etc. These sites were BUILT by right of center users because they were places that gave a platform for things outside the left wing media window (including even Fox). Stephan Moleneaux (sp?) was a power user on all three at one point. The_donald was once the most active subreddit. These sites only really started systematic censorship after they became the default platform for XXX sort of media. Its basically a classic bait and switch. People invested in the platforms when they were neutral or right of center. Then they basically came to those people and said, "haha that $10k is mine now."

Reddit has always been a place for left-wing moderators to run rampant and take action against people they don't agree with.

This is blatant retconning. No, it has not always been this way. For many years, yes, but not forever.

ShitRedditSays was the first reddit which banned posters for dissent, and for a long time the only one. Before, it was assumed downvotes (which if getting sufficiently many, didn't yet make you wait between posting comments) were sufficient.

Reddit has always been a place for left-wing moderators to run rampant and take action against people they don't agree with.

Is that what kids call Year Zero? I distinctly remember Reddit moderators and users successfully coordinating to bully a woke Reddit CEO out of her job.

Yeah, Reddit circa 2005 was pretty libertarian as I recall, you had to go out of your way to find leftist subs. Then the Digg Exodus happened, and the Great Awokening, and here we are.

In practice Pao was less woke than her successor, but the uproar from users provided the current CEO and the board (and Conde Nast, which was and remains the largest shareholder) with the pretext to fire her for someone else.

So? How were people supposed to know she's going to get replaced by someone worse?

In another thread you're telling someone that the Bud Light boycott is totally conservative win, from your response here I'm betting you will switch to saying Bud Light going even more woke was the boycott's fault.

Why wouldn’t she be replaced by someone worse? It’s exactly the problem of not understanding how organizations work and what the differences between them are.

Reddit was and is unprofitable and the money it does make is derived from cat gifs, the AskX subs and porn. It was entirely beholden to the ideological whims of its leadership and board, and its primary owner is literally the publisher of Teen Vogue.

Again: so? Aall that means they could have just hired someone worse than Pao to begin with. If Reddit was and is unprofitable, that means Bud Light can become unprofitable, and the same logic will apply.

It could, but Bud Light operates in a very different market from Reddit. Switching beers is much easier than upending a community is.

Woodworking as very white, conservative, and higher-income hobby has been a meme for a while, although I don't know how many actual woodworkers (eg Katz-Moses, Matt Estlea, etc) or even CNC spammers in the YouTube sphere care, and the smaller profile of the community makes it less relevant for the sort of people looking for status to hollow out and wear like a skin suit.

There's been some PRIDE-style stuff, both of the productive and defined-by-opposition variants (tbf, including my own attempts, though the stuff I can link isn't as rainbowy as the stuff I won't). But it's definitely less assumed that it's the sort of thing that Must Be Announced as in the broader Maker sphere, rather than someone's own personal interests.

Culture shouldn't be corporate. A corporation shouldn't run something that ultimately isn't about money and that can shape the values and culture of the participants. Woodworking is safe since nobody owns woodworking. There may very well be communist, jihadist, trans, national socialists etc who do wood working, but ultimately they can't set policy in the wood working world. Copy right law ensures that a few people who often don't even belong to a fandom can control it without the fandoms or society at large's best interest at heart.

Getting deep into a corporate product is slightly cringe, opt for forms of entertainment that aren't copyrighted or have some natural monopoly.

I guess I'd need to know about the content of the stories to judge if they were "political", but painting a mech in rainbow colors strikes me as so milquetoast that deleting such posts is petty.

I disagree strongly. Rainbow colors are a political statement in the same way that a swastika is a political statement.

The anthology is here.

The whole purpose of a Battletech sub is to discuss a fictional universe that exists after massive social and economic changes more than 1,000 years removed from our own. Shit that happens in our world that seems really all encompassing should have less bearing on any discussion there than Monophysite vs Miaphysite debates have on our culture wars. It's supposed to be a place where the debate is focused on the merits of House Steiner vs House Liao or why catgirls from the Magestry of Canopus are clearly the best faction.

I tend toward inclusionism in the Gwern sense: I can understand the problems that arise when not filtering for quality or subject matter focus, but I think on average the sort of people who moderate decisions about that tend to overcorrect. So I'm not sure how much value my opinion would hold. Even within that constraint, I think it depends on the purpose of the rule.

Is the rule against literal veneers? There's a reddit thing (eg) where people will throw a Pride or trans flag (sometimes with poorly-executed paint) onto something, charitably to celebrate Pride, less charitably for karma farming. This isn't in that set; even the lowest-quality story is still actually a story of its own, in the setting, if sometimes not especially good even by the low standards of BattleTech writing.

Is the rule about avoiding specific current-day events at the object level? The anthology doesn't have a bunch of stories set in the 1990s or 2000s, with some sprinkles of BattleTech flavor. ((This might seem like a bar set low enough for earthworms, but I'll point to If You Were A Dinosaur My Love.)) Masquerade and Old Wounds, Old Words are probably the weakest, since the main character's background as an arena fighter and recent war college graduate, respectively, more drive the story than actually show up in it. But Small is about infantry versus a Mech, Test Drive is about stealing a mech (even if one step involves squicking out some Clan-sphere bandits with the idea of 'free love'), and Dragon Slayer a set of Elementals (power armor) against a conventional mech.

I'd probably give Old Words as clearly acting as a proxy for political discussion -- a large part of the crux rotates around two characters discussing various terms for religious taboos, afaict all real-world ones rather than BattleTech ones -- and put down a maybe for Masquerade. I'd probably put 60% BattleTech as more than enough for a link, but I'm not the one making the call.

Is the rule to avoid unnecessary political discussion, when not necessary for the BattleTech content? I don't think any of the stories actually needed the LGBT stuff to be successful stories; Dragon Slayer in particular feels a little like it got crowbarred in, and Small you could miss if you were speed-reading. I'm not sure how interesting Old Wounds Old Words would be if stripped from any real-world historical context, but people do read LitRPG or learn how to speak Klingon. The anthology as-is would flunk it, but then again, so would a lot of writing -- firearms and military tactics as well as their real-world ramifications are pretty common in a setting like this, Clanners have a caste system that lends to some very obvious metaphors a lot of people touch -- and I don't think it'd be a reasonable rule.

Here is my bugbear with it.

Being gay is not political. Pride month is explicitly political, with all the accompanied political fundraising, canvasing, local DNC candidates having booths at the events, etc. Another Battletech group I'm a part of had someone try to use the bruhaha on Reddit as an excuse to post a thinly veiled miniature raffle to fundraise for The Trevor Project. It was swiftly deleted under the "No Real World Politics Rule" of that group.

We'll see how long that lasts.

Want to do your big gay Battletech fanfiction? Sure, why not. Want to coordinate it with an event as specifically and manifestly political as Pride month? That's real world politics. You're outta here (at least in my perfect world).

I’ve never heard of Battletech until now, but the post from the new guard made reference to the old guard having an ”1988” stipulation rule - is this some attempt to delineate the franchise prior to some woke spoilage?

You're more likely to have heard of it under the MechWarrior or MechCommander name (used for games, some books), as opposed to BattleTech (some RPGs, some books) or Battledroids (original tabletop game, largely dropped post-1986).

The old rule #1 was :

1: All posts must be BattleTech related

We allow anything, as long as it is talking about BattleTech. If you don't like something, downvote it or filter it out.

However, it is not appropriate to use BattleTech as a veneer to discuss the real world, politics, or current events in this subreddit.

The year 1988 serves as a line when it comes to judging whether a post is about BattleTech, or using BattleTech as an excuse to discuss the real world, politics, or current events. Users may attempt to rectify this deficiency by including additional statements focusing on and generating discussion about BattleTech (and likewise the more discussion about real-world events, the more it weighs against the topic). The farther away from that line towards the present a real-world event mentioned is, the more the topic is presumptively about the real world and not about BattleTech, and the higher the burden.

This covers everything from mechs painted in flag patterns, topical issues, and everything else real-world.

Battletech's a little weird because it's technically an alternate history/future setting, even if most players or readers (especially of the MechWarrior stuff) would be surprised to hear that. While the play focus is usually around giant robots fighting interstellar wars somewhere in the 3000s, officially the branching point was the fall of the Soviet Union in 2011, with the resulting differences in interstate politics leading to development of a functional fusion reactor in 2018 and (eventually) the titular mecha and faster-than-light travel.

It would be very rare for pre-divergence issues to end up relevant for a discussion, but it's at least imaginable: several of the Houses for Inner Sphere are both pastiches of and descended from real-world states. But a political discussion of an event that occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union doesn't really make sense from a lore perspective; the setting expects such an extreme divergence within just a few years that it's unlikely almost any specific event occurred in both cases.

((I don't know how effective this was.))

It is hard for me to understand how posting about Pride could fall afoul of such a rule given that Pride, as both celebration and flag, pre-date 1988.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden existed in 1988 too, but it would be disingenuous to post something involving them that is like 99% of the things posted about them online, and excuse it with "well, they existed in 1988".

Nobody of significance would write something that's about Pride (or Trump) that solely extrapolates from their status in 1988.

I'm not sure how accurate the summary here is, but from a quick look at the anthology, I expect that the previous moderation team was not particularly focused on the 1988-rule at the time.

My understanding is 1988 is when Battletech came out, and the historical timeline and the Battletech timeline diverge. So anything you post about actual history after 1988 will never be about Battletech, and does not belong on a sub that is only about Battletech. Why include that rule when there is already a no politics rule? I donno, maybe they had to when some really aggressive rules lawyer user kept harassing them. Maybe they are just autist that can't help but be overly specific.

Naturally the 88 in 1988 was used to accuse the mods of being actual Nazi's.

My understanding is 1988 is when Battletech came out

Sorry, late response since I've been busy, but this isn't true. It came out in 1984 by the FASA company.

So I guess Battletech is explicitly left wing now. You are not allowed to opt out of their politics.

I don’t want to be accused of parroting the standard libertarian line, but, you need to make your own stuff dude. You need to make your own Battletech, and enforce YOUR politics. (This is the royal “you” - the responsibility falls on all of us, not just you alone). You can’t depend on anyone else to do it for you, or to provide a space that will be amenable to you.

The right can’t complain about losing the culture war if they’re not even playing in the first place. Where’s your culture? What have you made?

The thing is that BT has existed for 35 years and used to be a thing everyone could participate in. One of the authors of some of the old books got cancelled for being too right wing a few years ago, so its not like conservatives didn't try to make our own things (the biggest BT author from back in the day is pretty woke though, this was a bi-partisan institution IMO). But now that the previous thing that everyone had and which conservatives did contribute to is taken over now we need to make our own thing.

How come that didn't apply to the left? How come the left gets to take all the previously neutral stuff instead of being told to fuck off from that and make a left wing BT? Cause this is ALWAYS how it goes. Frankly, when one side takes a previously jointly held territory and then replies to complaints with "just make your own thing without any of the history and existing buy in" that is such an obviously hostile comment that I cannot believe you actually think its fair. Its bullshit. And based on everything we have seen the result will inevitably be that if the new rightwing thing is at all good the left will either do their best to colonize that ALSO or they will use their control over other previously neutral ground to cut the legs out from under it.

You are describing what I used to criticize here as liberalism of the gaps: the theory that the solution to culture and institutions falling to progressivism via post-detraditionalization liberalism is MOAR liberalism!

No, the solution to protecting tradition and institutions is protecting tradition and institutions, both through fortification and legal protection. Libertarian solutions to protecting / building institutions cannot work in a legal landscape that makes a key component: free association, illegal.

OP is pointing this out with the fact that 'no politics' is subverted when you declare X value neutral. But the other side of the coin is also on display. When X is value neutral, anti-X is illegal discrimination / harassment. Start your own... cannot work without first winning back the neutral ground, which cannot be done when you spend all your time abandoning your institutions and fortifying elsewhere.

Show me an example where conservatives/traditionalists abandoned X to go build their own X-prime, where X-prime remains both not a ghetto and not actively infiltrated.

Your question about why traditionalists don't build their own X is easily answered in that they can't build their own X, and part of the reason is ironically because half their rank are actually liberals who keep telling them to build their own X.

Example:

Jonny Vanheusterwhilton is a made up character who used to get picked on as a child for his ridiculous last name, but that is completely irrelevant to this story so let's call him JV and we don't need to spell out his last name again.

Jonny V (JV), has lived in his neighborhood his whole life, even buying his parents' house when they retired. It's June 1st, and bigot that he is, JV (Jonny) bemoans that the neighborhood is plastered in Pride Flags and preachy yard signs. He's saddened that his neighborhood July 4th picnic has been discontinued and replaced with a late June Pride Party.

Jonny's actually not even a bigot, not even by modern standards, nor even a conservative. He is very pro-LGBT right, a believer in letting people live their own lives etc. He's just a combination of patriotic, nostalgic, and finds pride to be tacky and over commercialized. Yet this gets Jonny labeled a right wing bigot, which almost frustrates him as much as getting picked on for his name as a child.

Eventually his friend, @Primaprimaprima encourages him to just build his own neighborhood. (+) Out of options and tired of being picked on JV sells his family house and buys some farmland with several others in a less desirable exurban part of the town to turn into a new neighborhood. Saddened by the lack of mature hardwoods, history, culture, or accessibility to the broader city, JB puts that aside and focuses on the upside: no more Pride Month.

Although JV is not a conservative, it took partnership with a lot of them, and some outright bigots to even get this neighborhood started. No worries, though, because they aren't banning anyone. JV has a simple liberal solution: Their HOA will just say, no value-messaging yard decorations.

The HOA includes a lot of other shit JV doesn't like. His old neighborhood didn't have an HOA, but now, just to get back to neutral JV has to accommodate regulating EVERYTHING, even the length of his grass. He hates mowing. Almost as much as he hates his last name. Or being called a bigot.

Trouble begins when some of their conservative neighbors put up a cross on their front door, or Easter decorations. 'Hey,' yell the libertarian sect. NO MESSAGING. The French neighbor, Le Prima, convinces everyone that secularism is the best they can hope for in this new arrangement, the conservatives mostly* sadly acquiesce, telling themselves, at least it's better than Pride Month. (*A few with conviction move away to an even shittier, further exurb, to find out what happened to them scroll up to the + above and start reading. Continue recursively.)

This satisfies JV until July 4th comes around, JV's favorite holiday. There will be no J4 parade, and he is forced to take down the American flag he hung must come down at once.... Oh well... at least in the name of fairness this is a compromise.

JV wonders how previous generations like the one he grew up in were able to use maintain communities with shared traditions, while keeping out the elements they didn't like without over-regulating everything. JV can't ponder long before his neighbor accusingly reminds him about the types of discrimination that happened in yesterday. Remembering quickly that nostalgia for any aspect of the past is for bigots, JV quickly stops his musing, and never follows his train of thought to the answer: The type of community JV is describing is found alive in the neighborhood he left, albeit with different values.

Well all goes well for 2 more years until, as the city grows, his neighborhood does too. His exurb becomes a desirable suburb, and now folks who would have simply ignored the neighborhood move in. Doesn't matter thinks, JV, they'll have to live by our rules just like everyone else.

Imagine Jonny Vanheusterwhilton's shock on June 1st of the current year, when after returning from a trip oversees, he sees PRIDE FLAGS everywhere and a flier for a neighborhood pride parade.

"But.. but...but...," stutters Jonny. "I thought we didn't allow value messaging!"

"We don't," his helpful, new neighbor replies. "But... this was brought up at the HOA meeting you missed. You see us new neighbors quickly explained that this isn't about value messaging. It's common decency. To suppress it wouldn't be neutral, it would be bigoted and hateful. They saw it our way.

There were a few hold-out undesirables, but our lawyers were there to make sure they understood this is not negotiable, it's equality. I mean, anything less would be like not allowing you to hold your wife's hand while walking around the neighborhood."

"I'm actually gay," says Jonny.

"And a happy Pride Month to you!," the neighbor replies cheerily, while handing him a school board voting guide for the candidates who most protect trans youth.

That night, JV's visiting his old friend distraught. "It's simple," says Primaprimaprima as he opens a beer and hands to JV. "Just start your own neighborhood."

This is only the sole option because conservatives clearly don’t care about actually conquering institutions, as Trump’s polling over DeSantis transparently shows.

Corporations, trade unions, NGOs, they're all just spokes on a wheel. One's on top, then another and another. And on and on it spins crushing those who just want to play a game/sell their labor/cook some food.

I didn't vote for Trump to stop the wheel with my ostensible allies at the top, I voted for Trump to shatter the wheel to splinters.

You can not shatter the wheel. You can only be on top of it or beneath it. This sort of fanciful thinking derives from the same place that makes progressives think that they can overcome human nature through socialization. In the end these two western pathologies have the same root.

Did it work, did he shatter the wheel? Did taking over the wheel work for your ostensible enemies?

Is no one going to point out the Game of Thrones reference or is it too obvious?

No, of course not, but he had the best chance of anyone of doing so. Probably still does.

Better chance of catching a bullet to the skull thanks to one three letter agency or another.

I'm sure the conservatives would all love to conquer the institutions, they're mostly wary that yet another "ally" savvy to the ways of the institutions will turn out to be an infiltrator who will betray them when the stakes get high enough. Many would rather bet on the boisterous man who makes himself an enemy of institutions at every turn. He might not be the best to convert institutions, but perhaps he will succeed at razing them or culling them (he hasn't so far, but there's also a much longer record of conservatives betraying their base).

My point exactly. (with the caveat that these people aren't conservatives. They are right-wing, republican liberals.)

This is an unfair argument.

Take Kiwi Farms, for example. You could extend your argument you make, smugly saying: 'make your own payment processor, make your own DNS, make your own web-host.' The left extends controls over previously neutral institutions and you say 'why not make your own?' Why not make your own laws, your own bank, your own country? Your own autonomous sovereignty, right-wingers?

Imagine my face: it is a chiseled, manly expression, saying YES.

All culture war issues are essentially coup-complete ones now because of the left's influence over the government and the media. If you want to keep the globohomo out of your Battletech: you must first overthrow the US government.

I'd say you've got a decent chance of getting there working through the system, if only because nuclear war is fairly likely and in the aftermath with the highly-lopsided deaths, the really-scary tools of impeachment and constitutional amendment are unlocked (as they haven't been since, really, the Civil War). With super-angry Republicans suddenly getting those, I'd be substantially more worried about overcorrection and White Terror than about them failing.

Ok, maybe my disclaimer had the opposite effect from what I intended. Sorry for not being more clear.

In general I am opposed to the naive libertarian line of "just build your own X". I know very well that you can't build your own university system, you can't build your own DNS, you can't build your own facebook. That's why I'm not a libertarian.

But! There comes a point where you have to make an assessment of the situation, and you either decide you're going to do something about it, or you need to just live with the consequences. It should be assumed at this point that any cultural space that is in any sense "mainstream" or "corporate" is leftist by default. It's omnipresent; so don't be surprised when they come for you and your favorite thing. That's the default assumption.

So you have two choices: you can either do something to influence culture, or you can accept the culture that other people have made for you. Yes, you can't just set up your own parallel culture overnight, but you can't say that you're just condemned to inaction either. I mean, look at Stonetoss. He's creating a cultural product that is to the right of even what the majority of mottizens would want, with all the attendant controversy, but he's still out there doing his thing. Why can't you do what Stonetoss is doing? If culture is that important to you, why aren't you making something?

I know exactly what it's like to have something you love colonized and ruined by wokeists. I'm not just glibly dismissing the issue. It's just that I can only see this narrative play out so many times, the narrative of "I can't believe those leftists came for X classic wonderful thing AGAIN!" before I ask, ok yes we know that this is their M.O., so what are YOU doing about it?

I actually do make things: I'm a writer, but the content I make is perhaps too spicy for here, being 4chan-adjacent. :P

Kiwifarms is still up and still thriving, though, in part precisely because its users care.

You don’t need to make your own country, you just need to stand up for yourself and make persecution too bothersome to enforce. You don’t need the powers that be to agree with you, you just need them - as with the Bud Light boycott reaction - to say “it’s not worth it”.

The threshold for “it’s not worth it” is actually quite low, but fat American rightists grown comfortable on cheap entertainment and cheaper corn syrup find it hard to meet even that reduced standard.

DeSantis in Florida, which isn’t even a red state traditionally, shows how easy it is for real legislative wins. You can drive these people from the institutions, try to make them destitute, defund them, cancel them, and reduce their influence with barely any ‘revolution’ at all. Imagine that x30 GOP states, plus a Republican president and conservative SCOTUS engaging in consistent rapid lawfare against the left. But the right just don’t care. They want their Donald back to own the libtards on bird app.

Kiwifarms is still up and still thriving, though

Not on the clearnet. kiwifarms.net has been down for several weeks.

Right, Kiwifarms has survived as well as it has because Null is both extremely stubborn and extremely competent. But that's not enough against people willing to break the internet (transit providers null routing their ASNs) to get rid of them.

The threshold for “it’s not worth it” is actually quite low

I don’t believe this. The implication of your entire comment is that progressive activists would rather not have to expend effort against their enemies. I think that’s wrong. The substitution of the progressive surrogate goal in the place of meaningful labor in order to satisfy the Kaczynskian power process is the whole point of progressive activism. They love crushing their enemies. Victory begets victory. It does not beget resting on one’s laurels.

You seem to be under the impression that conservatives won the Bud Light fiasco. If they did, then why is Bud Light still donating to the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce? They lost 20% of their entire multinational conglomerate’s market cap and they’re still pulling this shit.

They lost 20% of their entire multinational conglomerate’s market cap and they’re still pulling this shit.

Being between the Devil and the deep blue sea, and seeing that they couldn't just slap some redneck branding on the cans and get the lost customers back again, they have little choice but to kiss the boot and submit to the lash and prove their undying fealty by money and blood. Like it or lump it, they got themselves identified as the 'gay beer' and now they have to go with the flow there, especially as they were getting backlash for being insufficiently robust in defence of Dylan Mulvaney.

Conservatives on the bud light boycott explicitly didn’t have a win condition- they declared they were burning bridges to make an example out of them. There might be worse yet to come- it’s possible that republicans will at some point in the future investigate them for trying to sell alcohol to minors(which I have a strong prior that 110% of alcohol companies do).

The point of the bud light boycott wasn’t to get bud light to change. It was to make other corps more susceptible to pressure campaigns and gestures wildly at target and the MLB.

MLB

Didn't the Sisters get de-disinvited?

They got reinvited.

LA Dodgers apologize to Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, reinvites group to ... https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/sanfrancisco/news/la-dodgers-sisters-of-perputual-indulgence-apology-pride-night/

Yes. But the MLB backed away from pride logos and at least one team, the rangers(incidentally the top performing team this year) will not be holding a pride night.

Haven't the Rangers never held a pride night? I remember reading a few years ago that they were in hot water for being the only MLB team to not have one. I had assumed they caved at some point like everyone else, but maybe not.

More comments

You seem to be under the impression that conservatives won the Bud Light fiasco. If they did, then why is Bud Light still donating to the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce?

If donations to the “National LGBT Chamber of Commerce” were what conservative boycott organizers cared about they’d have acted years ago. They didn’t. The evidence is that conservatives don’t care much about companies donating to these kinds of political organizations.

They did claim the two most senior scalps in the marketing of Bud Light, and neither they nor other beer brands that cared to the same audience will try a similar marketing technique again. Look at how quickly so many on the left walked back anti-police rhetoric as soon as polling data showed even a small swing against them.

neither they nor other beer brands that cared to the same audience will try a similar marketing technique again.

Why not? Has the internal culture changed? Have they become more sensitive to the values of their core customers? The evidence suggests they still think LGBT inclusivity is more important than appeasing the politics of rednecks. Unless AB’ internal messaging is explicitly marking this as a cynical move to stay in good graces with the powers that be, some poor sap is going to rise through the ranks actually believing that LGBT inclusion is a core value of Bud Light, and then they’ll make the exact same mistake as soon as they’re put in charge of marketing.

There is a vast gulf between the Battletech and Kiwifarms situations. The latter attracted culture warfare in a way that a Battletech successor would not.

The comparison is in scope, not in kind. The reason there isn't a conservative Battletech is the same reason why there isn't a conservative credit-card. If the left is going to turn every conceivable facet of human existence into culture-war, things as diverse as crochet, miniature-painting, hiking, whatever - it is a total war.

Innocence (or a complete lack of relevance to politics) is no defense: they're going to come for your little comfy niche hobby eventually and cover it with rainbow paint. And unless you're willing to fight as hard as the Kiwis you'll be shoved out and marginalized and kicked out of your own communities. You can't flee. You can't abandon the high ground to the woke. You have to fight.

Why are you so sure? These people are petty tyrants. I see non explicitly left wing "spiritual successors" to brands that went woke get deplatformed all the time. Think of all the projects taken off kickstarter. Think of all the publishers banned from DriveThruRPG. Think of all the projects that lost their payment processing because of Stripe or Mastercard. Look at all the lawfare directed at Gygax's son.

Nothing is too small or petty for these people to attack and destroy. It's like, their favorite thing. They are also ideologically beholden to wiping you off the face of the earth, because even a single person like me spoils their utopia.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


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.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats