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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28350 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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It's getting unavoidable - the quality of news and novel information obtained from time here is crashing. I used to hear things here first - now I usually don't hear them here at all.

Recently I brought up Rich Men North of Richmond - only because no one else did - and pretty well everyone shit on it for one reason or another. 'Should've sang about this instead,' 'this song is better,' 'why'd he bring this up' etc. But it's the biggest song on the planet. You were all wrong and I was right to bring it to your attention. How can we raise the quality of posts back to be worthy of attention, so readers are informed about developments in the culture war?

  • -22

I'm mostly here for Wellness Wednesday and Friday Fun now, and I can't really say that I mind. I haven't seen any CW developments for a while that are genuinely of a new kind.

Rich Men North of Richmond didn't get posted here because the people here probably didn't have an extended interaction with the song.

TheMotte talks about stuff that you'd expect a narrow slice of rationalists, who are already a very narrow slice of the internet, talk about.

You'll hear about breakthroughs in gene editing before they hit peer review, but if you expect pop culture commentary you are going to need to post it yourself.

I didn't post it because I've been modded before on low-effort posts, so I know better than to post a top-level comment. I'd say OP perfectly describes why I never start a new topic, and I know there are others like me.

That might be true now, or more appropriately I should say that might be becoming increasingly true, but in my experience if I checked the motte in the morning I'd be up-to-date on the culture war for the afternoon. Many, many examples spring to mind but let's just give one good one - I learned here there was a man named "George Floyd'

Such a shitty song and missed opportunity. What kind of stupid will miss that the events should be chronological ...

Emos weren't known for being smart.

... We have strong views here, and make the case for them. People 'shit on' the song because they materially disagreed with its contents. We'll find a way to disagree with almost any popular political thing. We still appreciated your post at the time, it got 25 upvotes. I would like more toplevel posts though.

It's getting unavoidable - the quality of news and novel information obtained from time here is crashing. I used to hear things here first - now I usually don't hear them here at all.

It's getting unavoidable that we're having far more people complain and add low-effort negative comments than actually take time to flesh out top level posts that are high quality. As @Amadan and others have consistently said, if you don't like the status quo why don't you contribute yourself, or try to organize something else to change it?

High quality, intellectual writing doesn't just drop out of thin air because you complain about it. It comes from intelligent people who are driven to write, and who want to sharpen their minds in an environment that tests their opinions.

Frankly, I'm concerned that the "quality of news an novel information" has gone up here much more than I'd like. In terms of a vision for this site, I'm far more in the camp of having great writers like @ymeskhout and @DaseindustriesLtd write long effortposts about serious issues they've spent a lot of time thinking about, rather than helping people like you get their latest CW fix.

There are a million places on the internet you can go to keep up with the spectacle of the twenty four hour news cycle. There aren't as many places where you can find in-depth analyses of Straussian themes, or a discussion that weaves together modern internet drama with the age-old idea of sacrifice and meaning and suffering, or the how the relationship between the rich and the poor has changed dramatically in the modern era.

These sorts of well thought out, insightful and useful write-ups are rare and take time to formulate. Expecting brilliant insights on every latest piece of CW gossip is ridiculous. Sure it might drive more engagement, but it would also likely lead us in a race to the bottom.

@Zorba something is up with the site code that makes trying to copy/paste a nightmare. It just doesn't work right. It either tries to copy or paste more than what one was trying to. Something is also up with text selection in the response box, selecting and editing text is completely borked. Trying to right click an incorrecrly spelled word for example will grey out the entire box module. I replicated these error on brave (chrome) and edge

rather than helping people like you get their latest CW fix.

That seems like a really uncharitable way to describe having previously enjoyed this spot as central source of important developments

I found adding :

.comment-anchor {

padding-left:25px

}

To the custom CSS in setting to help a lot if the issue you're talking about is the same I ran into before. The text is so close to the left side of the comment box that you can easily click and drag from outside of the text field and grab the whole comment hierarchy.

Long effort posts are often just meandering posts filled with unnecessary asides. We shouldn’t encourage length but quality. Sometimes length and quality go hand and hand. Sometimes brevity and quality go together.

The problem is we have this idea that short equals low effort (and therefore perhaps subject to moderation) whereas long equals high effort. I’d rather we judge based on “is this thoughtful.”

Top level comments don't have to be an effort post. I've made quite a few over the years that are just a link, a quote and a couple of paragraphs of my thoughts and the mods don't seem to mind.

The problem is we have this idea that short equals low effort

I think people making this argument are way too dramatic. Yeah, some posters have this problem, but such is life, some people are better writers than others. But as someone who prefers to keep things brief, I haven't noticed you have to put in all that much work for a top level comment. I'm pretty sure 1-2 paragraphs is all you need.

Some posters use 7-8 paragraphs to communicate an idea that might take two sentences. It is annoying.

Some posters use 7-8 paragraphs to communicate an idea that might take two sentences. It is annoying.

Yes, some people are too verbose and could use editors, but we aren't a publication and we aren't going to mod people because "You're a bad writer." Your claim that we require verbosity is false. If you think someone goes on at too much length, you can either offer constructive criticism or ignore it. If you think they are going on at too much length because they think they have to to pass scrutiny here, you will have to give me an example of someone doing this.

There's nothing wrong with telling someone they're being unnecessarily verbose, especially if you can provide the two sentences that you think can replace the 7-8 paragraphs.

Go back to reddit if you want short thoughtless gotchas. This is the only haven I've found for long form posting, and I actually tend to prefer it, thanks. The rest of the internet has perfected the shortform. I don't see why you're so set on attacking the one place that rejects it.

Reddit is often pretty long-winded without good reason, to be honest. Smarter subreddits are positively infested with eloquent streams of consciousness in support of some pedestrian preconceived notion.

That's a fair point. I was a bit fired up when arguing with @zeke5123, I should probably tone it down a bit.

That being said, I'm more worried about the shift towards short form, mindless content than long form mindless content.

But (and maybe we agree here) the problem isn’t long or short form but the mindlessness.

You go back. I’m not rejecting it per se. Sometimes it takes time to lay out evidence or thoughts. But taking 100 words to say something that can be said in 10 words isn’t quality. It is bad writing.

My point isn’t that short form or long form is better. My point is that short form or long form can both be good or bad and choosing which one is dependent on what needs to be communicated.

My point is that short form or long form can both be good or bad and choosing which one is dependent on what needs to be communicated.

My point is that I agree with you, but because long form writing is an endangered species I'm more than happy keeping it alive here.

"This is the best place there is, so we should never critique it" is terrible advice. I'm sorry for cheaply paraphrasing what you said but it's how it read to me. This is the best place there is, you're right. It's worth trying to protect and cherish.

Honestly I can't recall a single mod action against things that are just short. I think top level CW posts should be a certain length to encourage discussion and prevent the strong pull of just having the Motte become a place where the news cycle is repeated.

Like the length of your comment is fine, and I see the vast majority of the comments on here around that length. Am I living in a bizzaro world where y'all are seeing all these comments modded and I'm not??? I am genuinely confused about these arguments.

Or is this just about the top level posts?

Just about top level posts.

Interesting. I'd say just put in the effort to add a couple paragraphs. The bar really is not that high.

FWIW, I listened and thought it was a good song. It feels authentic because the singer isn’t really produced at all and the topics are real. It has a classic American “fuck the central government” ethos. And honestly, post covid it still (to me) feels like something isn’t quite right (which the song messages — not covid specifically but that things aren’t right).

So it’s obvious to me why this song could and did hit it big.

It’s the bizarre (tacitly, selectively enforced) rule the mods have about post length. Effort posts are great, but a lot what is happening here is becoming the sort of illusion of effort by making things 10x longer than they need to be.

Certain mods don’t even make an effort to hide their desire to enforce ideological or social adherence and use the implied thread of banning as a way of quenching discussion about things then don’t like.

It’s very sad to me. SSC CW roundup threads were good, and I understood why they were eventually moved to TheMotte. I also understand why themotte moved offsite. At this point it seems like the experiment has failed, though. There just doesn’t seem to be the sort of rich discussions here that used to happen, and I really do think it’s the mods putting out the sparks of those conversations because they either disagree with them, or because the poster hasn’t written some pointless chatGPT style fluffed up 8th grade level essay on the topic.

My suggestions

  • Stop metaphorically resting your hand on your ban hammer because a post is “low effort”, when it is in fact just short.

  • Mods looking out for their pet topics of internet friends should be a bannable offense.

  • Bring back the BLR, or do a second weekly CWR thread that is for people who like more discussion; allow bare links there.

At this point it seems like the experiment has failed, though. There just doesn’t seem to be the sort of rich discussions here that used to happen

I think the root problem is the nature of the domain, not the nature of the place.

What is there left to discuss?

Bona fide right-wingers, to be honest, have been subsumed by Trumpism (or worse, Pitinism simping), and summarily discredited – in the eyes of most everyone else; their inveterate support of an abject, morally bankrupt failure is just no longer interesting to challenge (I wonder how @ymeskhout still bothers). Stuff like anti-HBD is likewise discredited in the eyes of anyone who could be interested to engage in good faith. (I suppose the inverse has never been credible to staunch opponents). Further inferences have been ruled out either by administrative fiat or just by disinterest in achieving more than proving to oneself that the other side sucks. The SSC-era culture war has died down somewhat. The ongoing culture wars, tracing the important tectonic shifts within the [American] Logos in its intellectual dimensions, calling to non-jaded vision of a change, are substantially different; but the extant population of posters is set in their ways and will mostly try to shoehorn them into the old topics. Should I war with Hlynka again about whether the recognition of LLM intelligence makes me akin to a wordcel Berkeley Marxist who's blind to the truth of Christian God? Pls no. I have things to write on the important stuff directly, without justifying it to a yet another opinionated committee, and I do so now elsewhere.

Where can I read your writing elsewhere?

and I do so now elsewhere.

Would it be possible to be given a clue as to where that might be? Some of us consider ourselves fans of your writing.

I don't really want to entangle those but might respond to a DM.

It’s the bizarre (tacitly, selectively enforced) rule the mods have about post length. Effort posts are great, but a lot what is happening here is becoming the sort of illusion of effort by making things 10x longer than they need to be.

Always the same complaints from the same people. No, we don't require people to arbitrarily use more words. But if you want to write a post about how much the people you hate are the Worst People Ever, yes, we will require you to put some effort into it to make it worth reading, whereas the people constantly accusing us of bias are the ones who just want to drop a link and sneer.

Certain mods don’t even make an effort to hide their desire to enforce ideological or social adherence and use the implied thread of banning as a way of quenching discussion about things then don’t like.

If this is true, then you should be able to point at an example of me doing this and not even hiding it.

Stop metaphorically resting your hand on your ban hammer because a post is “low effort”, when it is in fact just short.

Most short posts (even one-liners) are not modded because we do not have a rule against short posts. We have a rule against dropping one-line snarls.

Mods looking out for their pet topics of internet friends should be a bannable offense.

This sentence needs editing, but give me a concrete example of what you're talking about.

Bring back the BLR, or do a second weekly CWR thread that is for people who like more discussion; allow bare links there.

You know what place is dying? /u/CWR. You know why? Because even they get bored of linkspam about how much the people they hate are just the Worst People Ever.

I’m talking specifically about you getting all ass blasted and white knightey when I called a literal actual in real life whore who actually takes real money from real humans in exchange for her business of whoring a whore.

I’m not going to go dig up a link since it seems like you already do know what I’m talking about, and it seems there are other people who are critical of you for the same thing. Hey maybe we’re all experiencing some mass psychosis where we all hallucinate the exact same thing about the exact same person.

/r/cwr has been dying for like 3 years. You’re right links about the same people being not very cool is boring. Is that what you think people keep asking for over and over and over and over when they ask for a return of the BLR every couple of weeks for the last several years?

Here’s the thing: maybe YOU are so immersed in the culture war that this is all boring to you, but my suspicion is that for a large contingent of people, talking about this stuff is still interesting. Our society is at war with itself and yea the battles do keep happening. Sure you’re bored of it, but plenty of people aren’t and want to talk about it and are annoyed that you enforce poor writing skills in order to do so.

Sorry if this post is blunt, but it’s getting annoying having to retread these exaxt same things over and over where the community complains about poor modding and then you pretend you just have No IdEa what they could be talking about.

I’m talking specifically about you getting all ass blasted and white knightey when I called a literal actual in real life whore who actually takes real money from real humans in exchange for her business of whoring a whore.

Not remotely an accurate description of my motives or our modding policies.

/r/cwr has been dying for like 3 years. You’re right links about the same people being not very cool is boring. Is that what you think people keep asking for over and over and over and over when they ask for a return of the BLR every couple of weeks for the last several years?

Pretty much, yes. That and the lazy ability to drop Twitter-level hot takes.

Here’s the thing: maybe YOU are so immersed in the culture war that this is all boring to you, but my suspicion is that for a large contingent of people, talking about this stuff is still interesting.

On the contrary: I do still find it interesting, and sometimes even informative. That's why I resist those who would like to degrade the quality of discussion.

but plenty of people aren’t and are annoyed that you enforce poor writing skills in order to do so.

Plenty of people are annoyed that I won't just let them shit on their enemies.

As rhetorical practice: can you steelman the case people keep making to you? What are people asking for? What are their motivations?

They want to drop bare links to something they think is interesting enough to discuss but for which they lack the time or desire to contextualize or comment on. Their motive is a desire to create more discussion threads and get reactions from other posters, with less effort required on their part.

That's the steelman. And it probably is true for some BLR aficionados.

There’s plenty of lurkers and occasional posters that would be more likely to participate with a BLR. People are intimidated a lot of the time especially with top level posts.

Good! If people are intimidated then it filters for people who are serious and willing to grow in their opinions, take criticism, and continue posting. Those are the type of people we want.

If you are so emotionally fragile and/or lazy you can stomach writing a few paragraphs of your thoughts about a link, maybe you aren't the right person to make a top level post.

I don't mean to be a jerk here, but years ago I felt the same way before I started posting my writing online. I ended up just doing it, and realized that my fear was pointless and holding me back. Since then I've been in a much better place mentally, and I think many others would benefit from facing their fears and doing the same.

Agreed re BLR. Could be a separate thread. Sometimes would find interesting stories and sometimes interesting responses.

I get why they won’t. Then this thread would become manifestos. But there are a lot of things I’d like to discuss that I think have already well developed frameworks and posting them would just be repetitive. Not having a blr though makes me think on a topic for a day or two to see if I can develop it in a way that would make for interesting conversation. Twitter legitimately sucks for basically any convos. Since there’s no blr a topic I want to discuss I’m debating whether I can turn it into a npc discussion since I feel like my opponents successfully turned me into a npc. And maybe that’s an interesting discussion when the news itself is well understood here.

For the Richmond song I just don’t think there was an interesting angle to the story. About the only thing I saw was that republicans are now crying little babies.

That’s honestly the best way to do it, IMO. I don’t object to links, but I think it should be limited to one thread outside of CWR simply because I like the deeper discussion that CWR provides.

Could also have the redheaded stepchild of a /r/cwr weekly thread on the motte that allows low effort. On the bright side it would attract all the witches. On the downside it would drain effort from this thread.

The draining effort is the main problem. Once the main CW thread is regularly getting 3k+ comments a week again I'd be down for a BLR. Before that, it's a distraction.

The main thread isn't getting a lot of comments because making a good moderator-acceptable top-level thread is difficult and too many people who posted moderator-unacceptable ones have eaten bans.

I think they could be different things. This thread should be about developing new ideas and thinking in new ways. A blr could be about things that have been discussed and here’s another example of that.

Is the engagement here going up? Steadily? And what medium are we using to monitor that?

Strongly agree about there not being enough toplevels and post length not being an ideal filter, strongly disagree about 'ideological adherence' (they let the holocaust deniers and white nationalists keep posting.)

I think the reason post length is a filter is that it's a strong filter for post quality. Someone who's willing to write 500-1k words about their topic is less likely to write about 'wtf demoncrats in randomtown randomstate are transing the kids!!!!', and even if they do write about that they'll have to give sufficient context and detail that it might be interesting to discuss.

My suggestion (I don't think it'll be taken, as it's against the content-neutral ethos, also might be too much modlabor) is to allow a BLR and just aggressively delete 'bad posts'. If it's a median post in /r/CWR, just delete it it, don't bother justifying it or getting community input.

Strongly agree about there not being enough toplevels and post length not being an ideal filter, strongly disagree about 'ideological adherence' (they let the holocaust deniers and white nationalists keep posting.)

If you are a moderator and you want to wage the culture war while pretending not to, letting the holocaust deniers and white nationalists through is useful, because they have no chance of convincing anyone--but if you let through an ordinary conservative, they might actually convince people.

As a bonus, you get to associate normal non-leftist views with Holocaust deniers and white nationalists because those groups disproportionally are permitted to post such views.

If you are a moderator and you want to wage the culture war while pretending not to, letting the holocaust deniers and white nationalists through is useful, because they have no chance of convincing anyone--but if you let through an ordinary conservative, they might actually convince people.

That's awfully devious of us! We couldn't possibly be allowing the few right-wingers who actually gore your personal ox to speak because we genuinely believe in the principles of the Motte. No, it must be because we are secretly trying to filter out "ordinary conservatives" who might "actually convince people."

As a bonus, you get to associate normal non-leftist views with Holocaust deniers and white nationalists because those groups disproportionally are permitted to post such views.

You seem to be making a case that we should ban Holocaust deniers and white nationalists.

Is that what you are proposing?

We should treat everyone equally. Banning either everyone or nobody at a particular badness level is better than doing it selectively.

That is, more or less, what we try to do. If you would like to argue that we let Holocaust deniers get away with more than we let other soapboxers get away with, make that argument. But it is hard to treat such arguments as being made in good faith when accompanied by accusations that we do this on purpose as part of a hidden agenda to drive away "normal conservatives."

letting the holocaust deniers and white nationalists through is useful, because they have no chance of convincing anyone--but if you let through an ordinary conservative, they might actually convince people.

Why are you discounting the impact of holocaust deniers and white nationalists on convincing people? It doesn't even need to be total, one tactic that people on the mainstream Holocaust "side" is JAQing off. That is, asking questions that don't come from a place of desire to learn, but to simply sow doubt.

Moreover, how many people are even familiar with the Holocaust and the evidence behind it to the point that they could refute the deniers, even to themselves? Every time I see a post by SecureSignals about Jews and the Holocaust, I have to admit I have no way of refuting the points being made, because I don't know enough. I'm not swayed, ultimately, but I don't find it inconceivable that someone may come here and think that SS makes a good enough point to cast doubt on the entirety of the mainstream narrative.

What you say is literally true, that is an effective tactic.

I don't think the mods are doing that though. When do they moderate ordinary conservative posts? I see a lot of them.

Indeed. The labor theory of value is wrong. It is wrong in economics, it is wrong in commenting, and the ability to crank out drivel to soak up pages is not a virtue.

Certain mods don’t even make an effort to hide their desire to enforce ideological or social adherence and use the implied thread of banning as a way of quenching discussion about things then don’t like.

What are some examples here? People keep bringing this up but every time I see mod action, I generally agree with it. Even though I'm ideologically opposed to some of the more active ones.

It wasn't using a modhat, but how about this? (The part I was involved in)

What exactly are you accusing me of doing there, besides not banning SecureSignals?

You were hinting that I am a racist because I speak in favor of Jews too much.

Then you misunderstood me. I was hinting that your complaints are unprincipled because you think that shitting on your ingroup should be modded but shitting on your outgroup should not.

No mod hat, no bans? What's the problem?

Hell the mods are doing a public service they should get to argue all they want imo.

But it's the biggest song on the planet.

It's actually the second biggest song on the planet. The biggest song on the planet is a shitty K-pop song.

Clearly the important issue that we should all be discussing is how Jung Kook is going to be loving you right seven days a week.

Wait until OP finds out about “Old Town Road.”

Jung Kook is going to be loving you right seven days a week.

I mean come on, if so many people care about it, it must be important right?

I will say that I think the song is worthy of discussion, but agree that popularity as a proxy for importance is a poor metric by any standard of the imagination.

The reason it is important is because it resonates with people and is culture warish. The question is why does it resonate? Is it the song, the politics, the singer, or a combo of the three?

"It went viral, therefore I was right and you were wrong" is a silly argument, and just reads as a complaint that people are talking about the things they want to talk about instead of the things you want to talk about. What news do you think is being "missed" here? Rich Men North of Richmond was talked about here for its culture war angle. What is your grievance, that no one liked it?

To everyone who thinks we talk about the wrong things, the response is the same: start a thread and prove you have something more interesting to say. This ain't it.

"It went viral, therefore I was right and you were wrong" is a silly argument

Why 'paraphrase' (read: make something up) rather than respond to what I actually said? I asserted that it might have legs. Turns out I was right. How is that an argument at all, much less a silly one?

Dude you did basically the same thing by 'paraphrasing' (read distilling his post down to the core issue without using any of the same words) him. It's an effective rhetorical technique because it tells your opponent how you read their comment - what you got from it - while lowering the chance of confusion by eliding any other elements which might get in the way, and generally tells readers what the focus of your post will be.

Like any rhetorical technique it can be abused or used poorly. If I took your op -

It's getting unavoidable - the quality of news and novel information obtained from time here is crashing. I used to hear things here first - now I usually don't hear them here at all.

Recently I brought up Rich Men North of Richmond - only because no one else did - and pretty well everyone shit on it for one reason or another. 'Should've sang about this instead,' 'this song is better,' 'why'd he bring this up' etc. But it's the biggest song on the planet. You were all wrong and I was right to bring it to your attention. How can we raise the quality of posts back to be worthy of attention, so readers are informed about developments in the culture war?

And decided that because you said the words 'shit' and 'here' and 'everyone ' and 'is' I should reply with -

Whoa buddy, this is the motte, you can't roll in and tell people "everyone here is shit"!

Then I would obviously just be making something up because my ego wouldn't let me admit you have a point. But 'It went viral, therefore I was right and you were wrong' is what I thought you were going for too - and by focusing on that we have discovered the point of contention - you weren't making an argument at all, you were using the conversation about the song to illustrate the dip in quality you had seen.

We need the Bare Links Repository back. There are tons of things I would have liked to post here which I never did because I don't have time or energy to write an effortpost.

"Beware Trivial Inconveniences".

Absolutely not. The BLR lets people engage in the worst impulses the culture warrior within creates. It is not helpful to anyone to constantly engage with "Boo Outgroup" articles.

If the choice is between ignorant boredom and culture-warring engagement, I will very much advocate for the ignorant boredom side.

The BLR was full of outrage bait the last time we had it. There's Twitter for that.

The BLR was excellent for interesting information that did not warrant its own post. Not every interesting link requires its own post.

The line has been repeated many times that we don't want to suck oxygen out of the main CW thread. Some weeks we barely get a thousand comments, and it hasn't been increasing. Although mainly staying stable.

If we add a BLR do you think it will increase the activity here? Or just pull a lot of people over there and further deplete the CW thread?

Why is there such a great need to crack 1000 comments? I’d much prefer quality over quantity here, and if I got 200 high quality posts and a few high quality responses on a given topic, that’s much more informative than 500 middling posts and another 20-30 inane responses.

To answer the other part of the equation, I’m Not talking about lengthy posts necessarily, but high quality posts that deal in facts, evidence, and use well founded arguments to argue for a position. I’m talking about giving links that directly support the positions taken, logic that follows. If you can do so in a couple of lines, great.

Why is there such a great need to crack 1000 comments? I’d much prefer quality over quantity here, and if I got 200 high quality posts and a few high quality responses on a given topic, that’s much more informative than 500 middling posts and another 20-30 inane responses.

There's a great need because we pretty recently did a move off of Reddit, and many of the communities that move off of Reddit die a slow death of a thousand cuts. Less than six months ago the majority of posts on here were about how the site is doomed and we'll be dead in a year.

I think the mods correctly still see that as a potential problem, and are doing a good job navigating the threats to the long term health of the forum.

Maybe it’s a me thing but I’ve left more communities over stupid content than over a lack of content. Shitposts ruin sites because they prevent useful conversations.

That's by design and working as intended. A daily Dread Jim linkdrop isn't interesting.

Would you be open to a poll on the matter? Let the demos decide?

It's not my call, but for my part, no.

No. The people who don't make effortposts shouldn't have the same voice as the lurkers who never comment or just hop in for short retorts. Lurkers are everywhere, having a crop of people who are willing to take time out and write high quality posts about contentious issues are hard to find.

Except frequently it isn’t quality. It is meandering, not very novel, and navel gazing.

Let a hundred flowers bloom :^)

(Seriously, the BLR mainly seemed to nurse people's basest CW instincts when it existed, polluting the culture of the whole community. It's like saying you want a civil workplace but then add one notice board on which people are allowed to post smut and insult their colleagues without repercussion, and then expecting the rest of the workplace will stay civil.)

How low does activity here need to drop before things aren't working as intended anymore? Will you be happy with one post per week as long as it's four times longer than it needed to be?

Agree, which is why I'd suggest having a BLR, but just admin-delete posts like that with no appeal.

BLR was interesting because it spurred conversation.

If letting the motte die is the intention then sure.

The Motte isn't dying, but if the alternative is becoming a more verbose and unfiltered CWR, then yes, I think letting it die would be preferable.

So what, just because the song got popular the people here were wrong to dislike it?

More that they were wrong to dismiss it - but rereading my op I'm understanding why people took it as a personal attack. Brevity may be the soul of wit but y'all love the limbs and outer flourishes

I noticed this as well. My guess - after Elon broke twitter stranglehold couple of processes started developing - some people give their wrongthink directly there and the place moved towards just a little bit more moderate place. So it is easier to get your CW porn fix there.

And personally for me - there just isn't something new - another butch ex men crushing a women competition - seen it. Railroading a teen into mutilating themselves - seen it. Tearjerking article about woman denied abortion - seen it. Hot takes about ukraine being on the verge of victory for one of the sides - seen it. Excessive police force - seen it. San Francisco and other liberal bastions covered in shit, crime and shoplifting - seen it. Disney ruining beloved property - seen it. Brining diversity in media where it is not needed or uncalled for with bad results - seen it. EU being EU - seen it. Demi Lovato being even fatter and changing her pronouns again - seen it. Another outrage of LGBT in schools - seen it.

And conservatives seem to be gaining ground back lately in the low hanging fruits of the war - so it just gives a bit more breathing room

I feel all that Hard and I'm still inclined to say I'm still surprised by the depths of their depravity sometimes. The autistic teenaged girl in England being manhandled and thrown in a cage for telling the lesbian-nana-looking cop she looked like her lesbian nana surprised me

Twitter is a lot more crass than this place, it's like putting your mouth right on the tap.

I know the answer is always to curate one's feed, but it's hard to stop the low content creeping in on twitter

Keith woods says it better than me

Conservatism as Anti-Ideology

There was much debate online recently over the political beliefs of country music singer Oliver Anthony. Anthony captured the hearts of conservatives with his “Rich Men North of Richmond”, which took aim at out of touch fatcat Yankees who have abandoned people like him. At first there was no question to conservatives, Anthony was definitely one of them. After all, he railed against welfare queens, taxes, and complained about elites not relating to regular folk. Anthony did alienate some of his newfound following when an interview of him appeared where he affirmed the “diversity is our strength” mantra. Then the first question at the first of this years Republican Party primary debates was the hosts asking the field for their interpretation of Athony’s masterpiece, to which an indignant Mr. Anthony then responded with derision for the entire field, reminding Republican partisans that these politicians were actually part of the elite he was singing about.

Still, most conservatives are not in any doubt that Oliver Anthony is one of them, and I think they’re correct. The fact that he is almost indistinguishable in his rhetoric from a Berniebro Democrat is a feature, not a bug. Neither is it a problem that the message in his song seemed inconsistent - targeting rich capitalists as the source of his problems in the same song that he complained about taxation and welfare spending. Conservatism in recent years has lost any positive content, it is now best understood as an anti-ideology, a vague, paranoid and inconsistent critique of a nebulous “elite”, the only point of which is to spread a general mistrust in whoever happens to be in power. ... Modern conservatism in the English speaking world developed out of the cadre of conservatives who formed the National Review in 1955, led by William F. Buckley. Buckley believed he had found a program to unite the two camps who dominated the right, but had been up to that point adversarial: the Burkean conservatives, led by figureheads like Russell Kirk, and the increasingly expanding camp of libertarians, who had been influenced by works like Friedrich Hayeks The Road to Serfdom. The program that would unite them was the “fusionism” of Frank Meyer, a German-Jewish immigrant to the United States who himself abandoned communism after reading Hayek’s work while serving in the US Army. Frank S. Meyer: The Fusionist as Libertarian | Mises Institute .... Since at least the 2000s, the conservatism of Reagan and Thatcher has been in retreat, while it found a resurgence with the Tea Party program during the Obama administration, this trend was swept aside by the muscular populism of Donald Trump. Since then, conservatism has lost any vestiges of whatever positive content it had remaining. Free market economics are still central to the establishment GOP politicians, but many conservatives now sound like economic populists, seeing rich capitalists as part of the same elite class as liberal politicians. While many conservatives still stand firm on abortion, there is little else in the way of the social conservatism that used to define the right: Trump was the most pro-gay US President in history, and modern conservatives are all too happy to embrace their own, based versions of “trans women” like Blair White if they affirm them back. Alex Jones asks Blaire White if "the chemicals" made her trans | Media Matters for America -... So what’s left? Well, there’s definitely a strong belief that the elites are evil - ridiculously, cartoonishly evil, to the point that they poison the water and the skies, intentionally derail trains, and start wars just to make common people suffer. There is also a strong cynicism about politics and idealism generally, not only is the conservative anti-ideological, but they are convinced everyone else is too, and that people that profess to believe in leftist ideals like egalitarianism are just cynics who don’t really believe it. As saimleuch, conservatives will often critique leftists for being inconsistent anti-racists or say things like their affirmation of trans rights is rooted in a hatred of women. Oliver Anthony engaged in some of this on his recent appearance on Joe Rogan. Rogan pointed out that Democrats in the early 90s “sounded like Nazis”, Oliver Anthony recognised the argument and immediately pointed out that Democrats like Hillary and Obama didn’t even support gay marriage in the 2000s! .. It is of course an eternal source of frustration to people on the radical right that conservatives attack the left by holding them to the moral standard the left itself has established, thus enforcing the leftist moral framework on the whole political spectrum. This seems obviously counter-productive, until you realise there is no alternative program the conservatives are advancing anyway - all that matters is getting people to share the same sense of cynicism and mistrust of power, so an accusation of racism or homophobia works as well as anything else.

https://keithwoodspub.substack.com/p/conservatism-as-anti-ideology

Conservatism lacks ideology, vision and a moral compass. At this point it is just angry ranting against cartoon vilians who are satanically evil. There is little systemic analysis instead there is an over emphasis of conspiracies. If the populist conservatives took power, they would be incapable of wielding it since their policies lack depth beyond SJWs bad but trans people with MAGA hats good. Conservatives are too negative, their entire focus is on what they dislike. Rich people bad, welfare queens bad, Klaus Schwab bad but what is good?

My life sucks, boo out group isn't really lyrics that inspire or offer novel insights. It isn't surprising that the anglosphere right has greater problems attracting young people than the right in the rest of the west. AfD, Sweden democrats and national rally do fairly well among young voters. The rather aimless right in the anglosphere fails at attracting young people and successful people. A young highly educated person is simply going to find the aesthetics and the values of mainstream conservatism boring and unappealing. It isn't a uniting message, it is a message with no vision that is anti PMC. I simply struggle to see a well travelled, highly educated person fitting in to the conservative movement at all. The right is making itself culturally toxic defenders of boomer rights.

This is a low effort post.

You posted a very long 'boo out-group' copy/paste, the said

Conservatism lacks ideology, vision and a moral compass

and patted yourself on the back.

You didn't contribute anything and used a especially weak strawman. There's even a section about joe rogan...

Do you think it's fair to strawman the left? There's plenty of material there.

Do you think copy/pasting someone you think is smart, makes you smart, have vision, and a moral compass?

I think it's because culture war issues are cheap issues, it's politicised tribalism where it costs almost no time or effort for politicians . It means that they can free significant political capital to spend on their own personal in-group interests and the interests of their key supporters. If all you have to do is take any reactionary/annoying/grumpy talking point and amplify it, and say 'other side bad', then you have a quick and dirty means to bolster cheap support. I think we need to look deeper than the specific talking points of the culture war to the underlying structure of the game that is being played underneath. The culture war excites our limbic system, but I feel that it acts as a distraction as its straight up buying the kayfabe and talking about the game under the assumption that it's being played straight.

If the populist conservatives took power, they would be incapable of wielding it since their policies lack depth beyond SJWs bad but trans people with MAGA hats good.

Here are three policy positions that virtually every populist conservative would cream their pants at. You can think they're retarded or wrong, but they are actual positions

  1. Deport anyone here illegally
  2. Start paying down the national debt
  3. No more foreign wars

If you choose to believe that your enemies are all clowns without depth that's your choice. 'Nazi' is a derogatory nickname for 'Ignatius' - a common Bavarian peasant name.

The rather aimless right in the anglosphere fails at attracting young people and successful people. A young highly educated person is simply going to find the aesthetics and the values of mainstream conservatism boring and unappealing. It isn't a uniting message, it is a message with no vision that is anti PMC. I simply struggle to see a well travelled, highly educated person fitting in to the conservative movement at all.

Morality is defined by wherever elite human capital is trending, and the sooner you make your peace with that, the happier you will be.

I think history is defined by elite human capital, and moral fashions are thusly defined. But a lot of historical movements have turned out to be wrong, misguided, or anti-human. Morality is not completely subjective, and some moralities are quite simply wrong. It would wrong to impoverish people to meet climate change goals. It would be wrong to silence dissent. Whether or not the PMC like those things, they are still wrong.

I do think that the movement of populist social conservatives and even somewhat reactionary populism is in its infancy, and that it will gain more momentum as it becomes obvious that the Globalist Hegemony is not delivering the kind of life the elites want to live, or the kinds of societies that humans want to live in. Look around the places where globalism is most in force, and ask yourself if you would want to raise a family there. Does any sane person aspire to live in Los Angeles among druggies, shoplifters, and have to leave their cars unlocked lest their windows get smashed? Does anyone dream of perma-renting and job hopping hoping to stay ahead of rolling layoffs? Do you want to send your kids to schools more interested in propaganda and indoctrination than reading, writing and mathematical skills? Just because the mainstream of the conservative and populist movements can’t articulate a vision doesn’t mean that the status quo is anything people want. In fact, the zoomer generation are already doomers, they don’t see the point in participating in society or trying to fix things, or even trying to build a life for themselves.

Also it is funny to juxtapose this discussion of PMC and the NPC discussion. Yes, conservatism is abhorrent to the PMC because it isn’t fashionable and a key tenet of belonging to the PMC is don’t be gauche.

Trying to win the aspiring PMC is trying to win people whose goal isn’t belief in something but belief in someone.

Yeah, but, again, it’s relatively easy to show that these ideas not only do not work, but often do the most harm to those it’s intended to help. Teach poor black kids to read and do math, and they can possibly make something of themselves. Waste time on ideology and they remain wards of the state.

I don’t think conservatism is anti math or anti reading. Quite the opposite. But there is a difference between learning and being a PMC.

My point is just showing people the results, especially where the results harm those the globalist ideology is trying to help, and how much harm it does generally would eventually move the needle here on what the PMC wants. They can’t deny that civilization has gotten worse since the project began in the late 1960s. They can’t ignore businesses leaving their cities, or homeless encampments in every open space, or drug users shambling about looking like zombies. They also can’t ignore just how ignorant most Americans are. That’s what more or less disabused me of a lot of those ideas — seeing the results of those ideas in ways that even an ideologue would find hard to ignore.

The song isn’t inconsistent at all. The song isn’t complaining about the rich generally; it is complaining about DC (ie the government types) rich people specifically. One can believe DC is oppressive, steals resources to make themselves rich, and therefore one can desire tax cuts without a hint of cognitive dissonance (indeed trying to cut off the spigot is consistent with believing the first two).

Just keep posting about what you think is worthy of discussion.

It doesn't have to be 5 paragraphs on new housing developments in bolivia or me halfheartedly throwing out something actually important - there is a happy middle ground we used to tread

Recently I brought up Rich Men North of Richmond - only because no one else did - and pretty well everyone shit on it for one reason or another.

Everyone shits on it because it is shitty. It is not working clas song, it is loser song.

Working class songs sound like this.

Not "Ouch, our lives suck so much", but "Our lives suck, we must organize and fight"

You do not have to be "leftist" or "communist" to see it, hard core Tsarist like Mystery Grove with zero sympathy for the left tells it even harder.

Gingergate

My issue isn’t with the singer, but rather the song and the response to it. Personal music tastes aside, I cannot think of a worse message for conservatives to rally around than “My life sucks. The world has passed me by.” It’s understandable why this song resonates with so many people. These are not problems that he’s just making up. Everything really is getting worse. However, the song is just a lament. We don’t need any more laments.

The Yellowstoning of Oliver Anthony

I just don’t see the point of relishing in how bad things are today. In fact, dwelling on this situation, without anything more, lulls people into inaction. You see a similar phenomenon with burgeoning conspiracy culture on the Right. Even when the conspiracies are true, it doesn’t spur people to greater action. Instead, it turns into a joke. “Epstein didn’t kill himself” is a meme, not something that any elected official, even in the deepest Red state, is substantively engaging with.

...

But it's the biggest song on the planet.

For now, next month something else would be the biggest hit and this whole thing will be forgotten.

Remember another working class hero, Joe the Plumber? He had his five minutes of fame and then nothing. He just died and few people noticed.

edit: link fixed

I didn't know Joe the Plumber died but I absolutely remember him being a cultural touchstone for years. That culture is also dead. Fortunately someone wrote a good song about it for once

PS @Zorba is it just me? Trying to navigate in the response box is just miserable. Everytime I try to select something the box greys out instead

Okay, boo hoo, i was wrong, everything was shit. My bad. on me. It's still bigger than the indians landing on the moon. Even the fact you're bitching about it now is part of it being the biggest story in the world. It should have been brought up here by someone else than me going 'uh guys maybe take a look' and you being so dismissive of it is part of the story

  • -16

If you want to count everything as part of the story, you're free to. Doesn't make it an important story. Certainly not "bigger than the Indians landing on the moon".

The cultural impact in the West of indians landing on the moon is as near to zero as makes no difference. Especially compared to this song

Okay, boo hoo, i was wrong, everything was shit. My bad. on me. It's still bigger than the indians landing on the moon.

No, it is not.

It could be, if the red beard guy used his popularity and stepped up to be a leader of new movement. If he told his fans to do something.

For example, demand full Congressional investigation of Epstein case HUAC style.

Full means full investigation of whole Epstein's life, not only his untimely demise, and following all rabbit holes whenever they lead.

This would be concrete, comprehensible political demand that would be widely popular among bot red and blue voters, demand whose failure to deliver would both red and blue elected representatives have to explain.

No. He tells his fans to go home and hug their loved ones.

Nothing wrong with it, but nothing world changing either.

edit: link fixed

If you want to learn about the latest happenings at breakneck speed with reasonably high confidence that it's not a hoax, rdrama.net is probably the best place for it at the moment.

I see exactly 0 'latest happenings' on the frontpage, and instead "groomercord-chan", "ongoing sharty adventures thread", do any other women feel like men are kind of gay now", "ukraine tells critics to Shut Up".

Actually, there's one happening - "sourcegraph: incident involving unauthorized admin access", but that was on hacker news a day or two ago.

You forgot the starfield (game) being cracked before it even got prereleased, that's news to me. But yeah, 80% of the stuff is not "latest happenings" but rather assorted drama. Still any big happenings get posted there real fast, e.g. we already have an inbuilt emoji for the Rich men north of richmond singer.

(also technically "ukraine tells critics to Shut Up" is a "latest happening").

I see exactly 0 'latest happenings' on the frontpage

I would call this a happening.

Ai-generated books are already trying to get people killed

Link leads to panic filled reddit thread that leads here.

Life or Death:’ AI-Generated Mushroom Foraging Books Are All Over Amazon

A genre of AI-generated books on Amazon is scaring foragers and mycologists: cookbooks and identification guides for mushrooms aimed at beginners.

Amazon has an AI-generated books problem that’s been documented by journalists for months. Many of these books are obviously gibberish designed to make money. But experts say that AI-generated foraging books, specifically, could actually kill people if they eat the wrong mushroom because a guidebook written by an AI prompt said it was safe.

Not terminators, not killer drones, but mushrooms are the method chosen by AI to exterminate mankind.

Unstoppable move, except that Skynet forgot one little detail. Mushroom hunting is cornerstone of Slavic culture, Slavs are taught how to pick mushrooms since childhood and do not fall for this trick. If the rest of humanity perishes, Slavs will survive.

edit: link fixed

I mean didn't Russia's top rocket scientist just die from eating a poisonous mushroom he picked in the woods?

One of my favourite anecdotes is about an elderly Russian PMC couple that vacationed in a boutique hotel in the Swiss Alps. They were walking down a terrainkur when they saw it: a perfectly shaped and very edible mushroom growing under a nearby tree. They had no choice, they couldn't have left it unpicked. Then they saw another one. And another. Then their hands were full and they found a plastic bag in one of their pockets. Soon the bag was full and they turned their windjackets into makeshift sacks.

They came to only in their hotel room, with more mushrooms than they could reasonably expect to process and no kitchen in which to clean and cook them. Undeterred by that minor hurdle, they filled the bathtub with water, dumped the mushrooms in there to soak and went for a pre-dinner, this time mushroom-free, stroll.

The maid had seen some weird shit in her line of work, but she was not expecting to see a bathtub full of mushrooms when she entered the room for turndown service.

Indeed, The guardian just published an article on this in the last hour: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/01/mushroom-pickers-urged-to-avoid-foraging-books-on-amazon-that-appear-to-be-written-by-ai

Literal empirical confirmation we get newsworthy stuff before the big sites.

Jesus, that place is a nightmare to look at. Is there a way to turn off the dumb cat animations following you around the screen?

Use custom CSS: #cursormarsey{display:none!important;}

Why do you hate fun?

Go to your settings in the site and look for "poor mode" IIRC, which gets rid of most of the animations.

It doesn't deal with the retarded fucking cat on mobile, but I manage to ignore it most of the time.

Her name is Marsey and you will respect her.

:marseyagree:

@orangecat

Block element with ublock origin is the way I get rid of the cat animation. Other people may have a different way. A lot of the site is designed to be hostile to outsiders to minimise risk of takeover by either extreme rightists or leftists (which is an actual problem btw). If you make an account you can change the theme to "coffee" which is a lot easier on the eyes. Also turn on poorcel mode to get rid of all the stupid award animations.

Wow, didn't know that. I glanced it over a couple of times and had that reaction, "what is this shit" but also read some confusing shitposting I didn't get. Isn't it most of it shitposting? I also remember checking out their repo and had the same comment style.

Yes, this site is built on rdrama code. You can tailor it exactly to your liking. The purpose of all that action is to scare off users who can't figure that out

The format is impenetrable - I am too old. Flying cats and bussy and sparkles and it's just too much. It's not for lack of trying. But still grateful for your advice

I'm pretty sure I've read about "Rich Men North of Richmond" on here at least 5 times. I know there's a lot to read on here - Main CWR thread is very long and needs multiple loads of more comments by halfway into the week, plus all of the alternate threads. I don't do a great job of keeping up myself. But you can't really complain about not getting enough info from here if you're missing it that many times. I don't think we're ever going to be the place to get a bunch of low-effort hot-takes on whatever the current thing is.

I suppose this place isn't necessarily the best way to get all news on everything. But the majority of what any news source reports is either useless garbage or intentionally biased and unrepresentative in order to manipulate your opinions. I think we do a pretty good job of covering everything actually important that happens eventually and providing fairly high-quality takes on it from multiple perspectives.

I don't think we're ever going to be the place to get a bunch of low-effort hot-takes on whatever the current thing is.

Please point to where I asked for this. Thanks in advance.

You've dropped a lot of low-effort snapping and complaining at people, but I find passive-aggressive faux-polite lines like "Thanks in advance" to be particularly obnoxious, so this is the post I'm going to drop a warning on and tell you that while you are allowed to complain that you would like us to talk about Current Thing and Episode 90 of The Board is Going to Shit, don't be obnoxious and antagonistic about it when not everyone shares your priorities.

Rephrasing someone in the least charitable way possible? Great. Sarcastically saying thanks in response? Warning.

I knew about it before you posted it here, I also knew the song was being shilled really hard. I don't trust the song nor its author. I'm expecting some real bullshit psy-op like the guy who sang it to loudly disavow Trump or the GOP or both.

Obligatory dead bird thread.

I knew about it before you posted it here, I also knew the song was being shilled really hard. I don't trust the song nor its author. I'm expecting some real bullshit psy-op like the guy who sang it to loudly disavow Trump or the GOP or both.

https://twitter.com/AintGottaDollar/status/1695244913208602880

I. Don't. Support. Either. Side. Politically. Not the left, not the right. Im about supporting people and restoring local communities.

Now, go breath some fresh air and relax. Please? :) I'm not worth obsessing over, I promise. Go spend time with your loved ones.

just because virtually everything is fake and gay doesn't necessitate that literally everything is. the guy went on joe rogan and spoke his mind. Much of it was retarded to be sure, but your claim is extraordinary and would benefit from evidence

Didn’t finish it but the guy seemed a bit like a regular folk with a general libertarian streak (even if not doctrinally) coupled with some localism / social conservative values.

“The driver hates the traffic…”

There are a lot of things which aren’t brought up on this board. I’m not really seeing the problem.

I used to feel like a guy being traffic among Mario Andretti's, now I'm the guy with the stick like 'c'mon, do something already'

You don't see the problem with the board caustically dismissing a song as huge as 'Rich men north of richmond' and I was the one that had to bring it up in the first place. Maybe that is a problem in and of itself

Yes, sure, the fact that you're the only one here who thinks it's Huge is a problem. Your problem.

It's an objectively huge stone dropped in the culture pond that's making ripples and the community kind of didn't give a shit. Not having our finger on the cultural pulse is everyone's problem

Why do you see it as such a problem that you of all people had to bring it up? Every topic on this board was initially brought up by someone. Why is it bad that, in this case, that person happened to be you?

Because I'm just a guy. I don't work at the world bank and have special insight into global financial markets or work at google and have personal knowledge of the tech world, etc. I'm just some guy. I have no insights or historical context or enlightened commentary to share. Someone who knows what they're talking about should've brought it up so I didn't have to 'wing it'

I really liked that you brought it up, it was the first time I heard of the song. (and unlike many others here, I also enjoyed the song) I felt like it blew up even more in the following week.

Reddit really started as a link conglomerator. And we have done a weird thing reddit-wise by trying to move away from that towards more of a forum. I think link congolmerators are great at sharing news. You scan through a bunch of headlines to find a thing that interests you and you click through to it if you want the link, or if you want the discussion about the link you can click on the comments.

We have gravitated just towards providing the discussion aspect of reddit. But it comes with very real tradeoffs. One of those tradeoffs is that it takes more effort to actually share a link, so fewer links and sources are shared. We know this, but it is a feature not a bug. Our goal is not for you to learn of news items here, it is to have a place to discuss them. Because we believe most of the web sucks for discussing things, and there are already lots of great places for finding news items. Even reddit is still a great place for finding news items, even as I feel that it has become a worse and worse place for discussing them.

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!

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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."

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