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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28327 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.

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.

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 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?

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.

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.

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?

Why do you hate fun?

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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?

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.

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 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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.)

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

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.

BLR was interesting because it spurred conversation.

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.

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.

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

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.

“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'

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

... 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.

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

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.

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'

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.

"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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of the reach of common understanding — symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power.

-Frank Herbert

Though this is a quote, I believe that it is so precisely said that it is worth posting on the top level.

  • -12

Which book is this from?

From Children of Dune. It's one of the chapter-leading quotes, this one labeled "Lecture to the Arrakeen War College by, The Princess Irulan".

Absolutely: art, religion, and culture are all simply different implementations of symbol-secrecy used to define the "local interpretation of sanity". It's not just handy for "bamboozling the peasants", it creates the frame of reference for and coordinates the behavior of elites. Does this sound like James Bond to you?

The Bible, Marvel Comics, Hollywood, Christianity, LGBT advocacy, anti-Hate advocacy, James Bond, basically our entire frame of reference for our political and moral universe is described by Herbert here.

Edit: Dune hot take: the Bene Gesserit did nothing wrong, if only we had a shadow-elite with such an agenda.

Dune hot take: the Bene Gesserit did nothing wrong, if only we had a shadow-elite with such an agenda.

For once we agree. The Bene Gesserit were badass, and they stuck to their guns when it counted. Plus in the end, they... kind of won? Guess it depends on your perspective. I count Leto and the scattering winning though.

This could be fine with some commentary. As Incanto said below it would be good to enumerate some examples that occur to you, and ideally offer some additional insight beyond the quote itself.

Personally I think there's some truth to it. Arcane language certainly is handy for bamboozling the peasants. It even works on the managerial class, since they're often a particular combination of embarrassed to call the speaker out, thus admitting that they're ignorant of the subject, and unwilling or unable to go to the effort of educating themselves on the particulars. C.f. how few people have any idea regarding the basics of how the financial system works. It's just something for the professionals to handle, I guess. Hope they're competent, honest, selfless public servants!

One of my favorite words to hear in normie discourse is "the economy". It's fascinating to imagine what internal understandings people are referencing when they say that. Got particularly interesting during the covid crisis, which imo revealed some of the enormous gaps in popular understanding of such matters. Particularly frustrating to me was the notion that we need to prioritize "lives" over "the economy". One wonders what they imagine is responsible for producing things like modern healthcare.

So I guess the insight I want to add here is that higher-ups will throw such words around to keep their inferiors convinced that smart people are in control, sure, but also that those inferiors will do their best to bluff by mimicking what they've heard so as to bolster their arguments, all the while swallowing the fear that someone will call them out and force them to explain precisely what those words mean.

Try asking someone who complains about 'capitalism' exactly what that is, sometime.

Probably a much earlier antecedent would be religions, which were often founded on a model where the people in charge had access to special knowledge which justified their position and which would explicitly not be shared with the followers. Many exceptions, of course.

(EDIT to continue) Occurs to me that this dynamic is particularly troublesome in the sort of democracy-ish model most modern nations seem to be pursuing. How can an electorate be expected to make good decisions when the key to securing votes is a confident smile and the ability to plausibly throw out a bunch of power-words in pleasant-sounding ways?

Occurs to me that this dynamic is particularly troublesome in the sort of democracy-ish model most modern nations seem to be pursuing. How can an electorate be expected to make good decisions when the key to securing votes is a confident smile and the ability to plausibly throw out a bunch of power-words in pleasant-sounding ways?

Yeah this is the frustrating part, due to the polarizing nature of democratic societies these words inevitably lose their meaning, or their meaning becomes fragmented based on the tribe you happen to belong to. In my opinion this is why democracy works best when it is restricted to an educated elite, although there are lots of issues with inequality and representation etc there. At least people can know what they're talking about.

Your point on 'the economy' is well taken. I'd imagine if you take 10 people off the street they all have wildly different ideas of what that is, exactly. Makes having an intelligent and reasonable national conversation basically impossible.

I think one of the big disillusionments that almost everyone eventually experiences is just how poorly the average person models the world outside of his own personal experience. I’ve read a fair amount of political theories, and it’s absolutely nothing like what most people imagine the system to be like. Most people assume that the president has power over inflation. He doesn’t really have the power to do much about it.

One wonders what they imagine is responsible for producing things like modern healthcare.

Doctors and nurses, mostly. With a few scientists doing science to invent the medicine (this science may involve mixing brightly colored, bubbling things in beakers). And paid for by the economy, which is a blob of money which can be moved around to pay for whatever, but is mostly stolen by greedy people in finance and politics.

I don't think "the nanny who watches the kids of the banker who approved the financing for the construction of the hospital is an important part of the system which produces healthcare" is really a natural thought.

What are some examples where your see this in action on the real world?

Here's a recent one. "Diversity", "woman", "racism", "privilege"... are all examples of power-words used to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe.

Though this is a quote, I believe that it is so precisely said that it is worth posting on the top level.

Incorrect. Don't do this.

Jordan Peterson deserved it.

You may be aware that an Ontario court recently ruled that Jordan Peterson is required to undergo social media training. This was discussed in a previous CWR, and the general vibe from that discussion was that this was a political attempt to silence or punish Peterson for unpopular political opinions, but I disagree. Instead, I think Peterson genuinely crossed the line with regard to the professional conduct required of him.

First, this argument rests on the belief that it's ethical for certain professions to impose limits on practitioners' freedom of speech. We've decided that certain professions require some degree of public trust and accountability. We expect lawyers to provide correct legal advice, auditors and adjustors to provide unbiased reviews of the facts, and physicians to treat any patient equally, regardless of their personal beliefs. However, we establish limits on this, generally agreeing that these professionals are individuals and are free to express their opinions when it does not cause direct harm to their profession, their clients, or the public at large.

Accepting this, the College of Psychologists of Ontario, of which Peterson is a member, is responsible and obligated to investigate and act on complaints against its members when acting as a clinical psychologist. Now the question is whether or not Peterson made these statements as a clinical psychologist, and whether or not his statements violated professional standards. Specifically:

34. Engaging in conduct or performing an act, in the course of practicing the profession, that, having regard to all the circumstances, would reasonably be regarded by members as disgraceful, dishonorable or unprofessional.

The Complaints

From the court's decision, which I highly recommend you read yourself, these are the complaints against Peterson:

a. A tweet on January 2, 2022, in which Dr. Peterson responded to an individual who expressed concern about overpopulation by stating: “You’re free to leave at any point.”

b. Various comments Dr. Peterson made on January 25, 2022, appearance on the podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience”. Dr. Peterson is identified as a clinical psychologist and spoke about a “vindictive” client whose complaint about him was a “pack of lies.”

c. Speaking about air pollution and child deaths, Dr. Peterson said: “It’s just poor children, and the world has too many people on it anyways.”

d. A tweet on February 7, 2022, in which Dr. Peterson referred to Gerald Butts as a “prik”.

e. A tweet on February 19, 2022, in which Dr. Peterson commented that Catherine McKenney, an Ottawa City Councillor who uses they/them pronouns, was an “appalling self-righteous moralizing thing”.

f. In response to a tweet about actor Elliot Page being “proud” to introduce a trans character on a TV show, Dr. Peterson tweeted on June 22, 2022: “Remember when pride was a sin? And Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician.” A further complaint about Dr. Peterson’s January 2, 2022 tweet, in which Dr. Peterson responded to an individual who expressed concern about overpopulation by stating: “You’re free to leave at any point.” The further complaint provided a link to a 2018 GQ interview in which Dr. Peterson made a similar comment about suicide.

g. Peterson’s tweet posted in May 2022, in which he commented on a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover with a plus-sized model, tweeting: “Sorry. Not Beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.”

The Inquiries, Complaints, and Reports Committee ("ICRC"), in their investigation, determined that some of these complaints were valid, and others were not. Specifically, they determined that statements a and c, while provocative and inflammatory, could be interpreted as innuendo, a joke, or parody, and did not rise to the level of "disgraceful, dishonorable or unprofessional" conduct.

They argue that the remaining statements do, but this is where I disagree.

The most relevant complaints are b. and f, and including the other statements in their decision cheapens their reasoning. By focusing on the more subjective criteria of "disgraceful" and "dishonorable", they miss the low-hanging fruit of "unprofessional".

Between statement B and F, Peterson disparages a former client as "vindictive", dismisses their complaints as a "pack of lies", and refers to a fellow practicing physician as "criminal" for performing an otherwise legal surgery.

Regardless of his political opinions, these statements seem to easily pass the standard of "unprofessional" conduct you would expect of a psychologist.

Past Complaints, and Aggravating Factors.

Peterson has been registered with the college since 1999, and he's no stranger to complaints. To date, this coaching is the first action taken by the ICRC against Peterson with the most recent investigation closing in 2020 with no action taken. 2020 was arguably a "hotter" year for the culture war and the college likely would have had more political cover for any sanctions. So what materially changed?

Peterson's counsel describes him as "a prolific author, podcaster, and YouTube content producer who maintains an active social media presence. In his social and political commentary, Dr. Peterson is often colorful and controversial.” Arguing in effect, that Peterson the social and political commentator is not Peterson the clinical psychologist. And I think this is a fair point because in the conclusion from the 2020 investigation that resulted in no action, the ICRC noted:

"[the] importance for a psychologist to conduct themself in a respectful manner”, whether Dr. Peterson identifies himself as a psychologist or not.

In 2020, Peterson's Twitter bio made no mention of his being a clinical psychologist. Peterson, in addressing this at the time, stated he "opted not to advertise this title on his Twitter". However, in 2022, this changed, he added "Clinical psychologist" to his Twitter bio.

Since Peterson effectively stopped practicing in 2016, this was a position of contention by the ICRC. Peterson, in responding to concerns that he continued to publicly identify as a clinical psychologist stated:

"I remain a clinical psychologist and am functioning in the broad public space as both. Given that I am still licensed, and still practicing in that more diffuse and broader manner, I think it is appropriate for me to identify myself as a psychologist".

If we accept Peterson's reasoning that he continues to practice in a broad and diffuse manner in public - it stands to reason that his primary interactions with the public via his Twitter and podcast appearances should be examined under the lens of the standards expected of a clinical psychologist. And even if you don't agree with this argument, Peterson himself seems to agree based on his rejection of the board's recommendation

Peterson's Counter Proposal

In rejecting the board's recommendation for social media training due to the recurrence risk of unprofessional tone and language, Peterson argues that any social media coaching would be redundant - as he had already taken steps to address these concerns.

I'll quote the relevant section from the decision:

In a lengthy letter to the College, Dr. Peterson acknowledged that the various social media platforms he utilizes “requires careful attention and care to be used appropriately” and that he had “already implemented a solution” to respond to the College’s concerns, which included “modification of the tone of my approach.” Dr. Peterson stated that he had “surrounded” himself with people to help him monitor his public communications and to provide him with “continual feedback as to the appropriateness of the tone and content of what I am purveying.” These people included, Dr. Peterson said, his “expert editorial teams at Penguin Random House” which publishes his books, members of his immediate family “who work professionally with me” and “a very wide network of expert thinkers from the world of theology, psychology, politics and business.” He concluded: I would say, then, in my defense, that I have already undertaken the remediation of my actions in a manner very much akin to what has been suggested by the ICRC and have done so in an exceptionally thorough and equally exceptionally public and transparent manner

The ICRC, to little surprise, found that his business associates, close family members, and "various professionals", many of whom would have a financial incentive not to restrict Peterson's brand of controversy, were not capable of being independent, and would not examine his behavior through the lens of his obligations as a member of the College.

The Conclusion, and Why You Should Care.

At this point, I've laid out why I think Peterson's statements crossed the line of professional behavior, and why the board was fully justified in taking action against him. Along with outlining his counter-proposal which feels particularly poor.

I'm under no illusion that "social media coaching" is anything but laughably ineffective. Peterson's brand is controversy, and he's unlikely to take any serious advice to heart. In my opinion, the College is already providing Peterson with incredible leeway that would not be granted to less inflammatory members, and his framing of this dispute as a suppression of free speech instead of a professional dispute is incredibly hypocritical for someone who spends so much time pointing this out in others.

But the true nefarious reason I spent time on this write-up, whether you agree with my conclusion or not, is because I didn't see -any- of this discussed previously. As someone whose opinion differs strongly from the average expressed here, I've grown spoiled by the high-effort discussion this community normally generates. It was disheartening to see a culture war topic engaged with so heavily without a cursory discussion of the opposing view.

There is a finite amount of time and energy in any given lifetime but there are virtually infinite ways to spend them - choose wisely

In general, I like Peterson, though he's been going a bit too far into right wing punditry for my tastes, and I'm not fond of the Daily Wire, which he has recently allied himself with. He mentioned going to the training and recording all of it, which does sound mildly entertaining.

It makes some sense for the College of Psychologists of Ontario to want to distance themselves from him, and he really does seem to have turned into more of a pundit or preacher lately, which is probably somewhat at odds with being a psychologist. In that vein, maybe public money shouldn't be going to psychology, and the courts should tell them to handle the situation themselves. Go ahead and excommunicate the heretic, that's their own business, but they shouldn't receive public funds from the state run healthcare or university system.

Whether B is a problem or not depends on whether or not the person in question was in fact vindictively spreading a pack of lies. If they are, I would rather they were called on it than that it was politely obfuscated behind a wall of disclaimers. If they aren't or it's uncertain, then yes, that's bad on his part.

On F, Peterson phrased that poorly, he should have been more careful (as he likes to say he usually tries to be) and said that what the doctor did should have been criminal. Maybe he should have said evil instead? But I doubt the exact phrasing is really why the College of Psychologists was upset about it.

Ultimately it's probably fine if Peterson goes all in on his transformation to being a secular pastor. Evidently the demand is there, and he's hardly able to engage in professional psychologist duties already. He was talking with Jonathan Pageau the other day about working on fairy tales. I just hope he doesn't go too all in on constantly complaining about #CurrentThing, which tends to ruin that kind of work, even if from the conservative side.

I mean I can understand them having pull if he were doing this stuff in his practice and telling an environmentalist patient under his care that “there are too many poor kids and F the poor kids there are too many of them anyway” or anything else on the list. I could even see there being a blanket rule of not becoming a public celebrity while being a practicing psychologist. If what he’s doing is clearly harming his ability to care for his patients, they’re right to step in. On the other hand this is not only not things he’d done in his practice, but they’re plainly his personal political opinions and not even said in the vein of “as a psychologist, I think that doctor is a criminal,” or something along those lines.

I don’t think professional organizations should have the power to police every private statement you make.

To be clear, he was mocking the attitude of “they are just poor kids so who cares.” That is, the complaint missed the obvious satire.

But all the licensing board has to do is pretend they missed it too, and since they're the ones in charge that everyone else defers to, the complaint stands.

Yet it does show how the board isn’t making a principled decision but a political one. Once you’ve established that it should really make you question whether JP “deserves” it.

It doesn't, though. People just defer to the board's decision. They will accept that it was unacceptable to say even as they realize it was saracastic. The idea that a final authority might have decided wrongly is something most people will do extreme mental gymnastics to avoid.

Is that true? See Dobbs

Abortion is more or less the one exception, the one place where the right wing normies will not accept authority and will not accept a "victory" in name but a defeat in practice (like Bruen and SFFA v Harvard and a million others).

Of course it is man, it's part of the foundation of the 'pretending to be retarded' political strategy that dominates modern discourse.

Well thank him and move on with your life. This fetish around purity codes and whether people are 'good' or 'sinful' is very tiring. It must be latent Protestantism. Take what you like, for my mind he's been extraordinarily prescient in gender issues and wokism broadly, introduced elements of religion, myth and psychology to me and been burned up in the culture war, though seems to be quietly recovering.

It’s normal to have some affection for people when they have a big impact on their lives, and their engaging in stupid, immoral or otherwise damaging behavior (to themselves, their family or to others) is disappointing.

Fair enough. I suppose I never felt a personal connection, so while it was weird over that time, I wasn't disappointed with him or inclined to judge him particularly. He seems to be doing ok these days.

He does seem to be doing better these days. He did go through quite an ordeal. You wonder if he is just now really gaining back full control.

I can see stupid with Peterson but immoral?

Well perhaps I took the wrong meaning from your text. I projected a shame aspect, as Jung or Jordan Peterson might say.

I like my text though and think it could apply generally.

As a member of a professional association, there is a sense where I can see where they are coming from. I also feel like there is no way if he was using the same invective against say, Nazis or Donald Trump (like calling him an odious thing, or saying "Not Beautiful!" About him), that he would be in this situation. In fact, I've seen him say pretty rude things about anons on twitter (much to the consternation of them) but that didn't make it into the complaints...

However, it comes with the territory. If you want to be a member of the College you gotta pay the jizya, which is to say, cool it. I do enjoy the irony in complaint a, which could likely become an official government recommendation (under MAID) when/if they extend it to mentally ill people. It may literally become a College practice to tell patients that "they are welcome to leave at any time"

Quack doctor accused by quack doctors' association of engaging in wrong form of quackery.

Why is this in civil court? Why does Peterson care about being associated with these hacks? Does he think having "clinical psychologist" in his bio helps his credibility?

I suppose if we accept the premises that you've laid out then you have a valid argument. Criticism of The Lancet Letter surely caused "direct harm" to the professions of virology and public health, but I would certainly say that rank-and-file members of professional organizations have the right, if not the obligation, to speak out if they feel the leadership is wrong. The tail is wagging the dog here. The organizations obtain credibility from having members who are professionals, professionals don't obtain their credibility from being members of the organization.

Loved the first part and is my view of psychologists.

And for a public intellectual actually having the clinical thing helps him. Or maybe I’ve spent too much time on Reddit and seen the show me your experts arguments. Without the clinical thing he’s just some podcaster with a bigger following.

He’d still have a phd in psychology and have been professor at several universities.

I don't agree with the ruling. I believe the board has taken the idea of acting professionally while undertaking the duties of a clinical psychologist (eg when dealing with clients) and selectively applied it as a requirement to act professional at all times in the public sphere. This would effectively restrict the opinions and personalities of psychologists outside of their work if it was applied broadly (which of course it won't be). As Barron2024 has said, this is lawfare.

Peterson isn't helping himself by being a firebrand which will continue to attract these kind of attacks, but that doesn't mean that this type of takedown is fair or just.

Edit:

If we accept Peterson's reasoning that he continues to practice in a broad and diffuse manner in public - it stands to reason that his primary interactions with the public via his Twitter and podcast appearances should be examined under the lens of the standards expected of a clinical psychologist. And even if you don't agree with this argument, Peterson himself seems to agree based on his rejection of the board's recommendation

I don't agree with this either. I think Peterson was trying to negotiate a resolution and you've taken this as a sign of acknowledgment of guilt.

Reading the complaints, most of them are him giving personal opinions. As far as I can tell, none of it is advice given in a professional capacity (as a clinical psychologist do this or don’t do that) with the exception of him talking about a client and calling a doctor criminal.

The statement in response to the overpopulation guy is simply pointing out the hypocrisy of the position. If you’re convinced there are too many people on earth, you’re perfectly able to reduce the population by one (yourself) rather than advocate that others shouldn’t be born. Taken with Peterson’s other statements about climate change policy, the “it’s just poor kids” line is almost certainly sarcastic. Peterson’s positions on climate policy are generally that the needs of the climate are being taken from the poor both locally and globally in the form of increased poverty and decreased options. In short the rest are political opinions, and obviously ones the cathedral doesn’t like. So the question then becomes are professionals allowed to have opinions and express them publicly?

So the question then becomes are professionals allowed to have opinions and express them publicly?

Certainly, provided they are consonant with the opinions of the regulating body. As I've said before, once you get a license that you need, in general the licensor owns you; they can do anything they want to you by threatening to pull your license, and there's not a damn thing you can do because the license is a privilege and not a right, and the licensing authority generally gets to interpret its own regulations freely even if that interpretation is contrary to the plain words of the regulations. The main exception in the US is non-commercial drivers licenses, and that's because the courts generally have given them a quasi-right status, so they can only be pulled for things mentioned in legislation.

Peterson disparages a former client as "vindictive", dismisses their complaints as a "pack of lies"

I don't see the problem here? There's a good chance that the client was vindictive, and their complaints were based on lies. As long as he doesn't reveal any of his clients' personal information, there's no issue with him expressing his views on these matters.

and refers to a fellow practicing physician as "criminal" for performing an otherwise legal surgery.

Obviously he's using "criminal" in this case to pass moral judgment on the physician's conduct, rather than making an accusation about actual illegalities. Censuring Peterson for this statement comes off as an attempt to establish this physician's conduct, and the medical establishment's treatment of gender issues more broadly, as being beyond ethical scrutiny - which is something that I certainly cannot accept.

For the most part I disagree with the OP's post, but I do basically agree with the idea that describing someone as "criminal" is defamatory in a way that describing them as "evil" isn't.

On the other hand, this standard is probably applied inconsistently (hard to imagine a psychologist getting into trouble for describing Trump as a criminal, even if Trump had never been convicted of any crimes).

I don't think this is a desirable standard.

Imagine if a psychologist in the 1960s was disciplined for describing another psychologist who performed lobotomies as a "criminal."

I'm reading N.S. Lyon's magnificent piece, The China Convergence, and I'm reminded of one of the distinctions he makes. Rule by law versus rule of law. In the latter the law itself is the arbiter of justice. It has no biases not contained in its words, neutral parties merely apply the law to the facts and a result nearly produces itself.

In the former, rule by law, the law is a tool for the ruling class to enforce its will. Exceptions in both directions are expected. It's the ruling class that gave the law its power, and they can take it away or modify it as they see fit.

Concerning C:

"The same complainant took issue with this statement of Peterson’s: “Well, it’s just poor children and the world has too many people on it anyways.” Rogan had replied, “You’re being facetious.”

In his communications to the college, Peterson referred to this comment. “I respectfully submit that anyone truly listening to that podcast and not merely focusing for a moment on that statement out of context (and who has bothered to familiarize themselves at all with anything else I have ever said before leveling such an accusation) would note instantly that I do not for a second believe and never have that ‘it’s just poor children’ or ‘that the world has too many people on it.’

“The comment was aimed ironically exactly at those who make such claims and I am frankly rather amazed that the ICRC [the college’s Inquiries, Complaints, and Reports Committee] would make such an error in accusing me of propagating those views.”"

From https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/jordan-peterson-reveals-details-of-regulatory-colleges-complaints-against-him-4967732?saved=0?welcomeuser=1

in the course of practising the profession

A tweet

appearance on the podcast

A tweet

A tweet

A tweet

Peterson’s tweet

That's your argument refuting itself.

Just Google “psychology white people” or something and see that these sorts of rules are never applied fairly. This is just more lawfare against non-progressive people/causes and you don’t need to read the particulars of the case to realize it.

This is the correct takeaway. The best response is not to hope that Jordan Peterson wins his case against the board. The best response is to realize that the entire profession is corrupt and based on pseudoscience. We should strive to disengage from it and fight to defund it wherever possible.

Quite right.

“He has failed to advocate for the autonomy and dignity of transgendered persons,” the complaint said.

Defining autonomy and dignity in this case is 90% of the battle. We could imagine the chad Peterson thundering back 'No YOU'RE the one who's sabotaging the autonomy and dignity of men and women, creating and encouraging transgenderism, irreversible mutilations, inflicting wretched half-lives upon children by deception and manipulation. I'VE defined the words, now you are to pay homage to ME, paying for your own re-education and attending hearings where you will show homage to MY beliefs." Yet in reality they'd probably get him for a hate crime of some sort if he said that, because of the balance of power.

I think he would've been wiser to defy the ruling and counterattack, calling them politically motivated. He has plenty of money, no need to practise psychology.

[EDIT: At 24 hrs after my initial post I'll collect all the responses and decide what I want to do with them]

This is a poll question. The idea is to get and understand the people reading this, their takes.

In the optimal scenario, answers wouldn't contaminate the others' responses or reference others' definitions and understanding.

The question: In sociopolitical contexts, what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC? Again, I'm not looking for any other thinker's or pundit's definitions of the term, but you, the commenter who responds to me. I already know the concept has already been discussed and mentioned, at length, elsewhere.

If you've never heard the term before, give me a guess of what you would think the term means and what information you pull from. Ideally, answers would be spoilered using the double-pipe notation, IE wrapping the answer with a pair of: || around their responses, without referring to anyone else's response.

To avoid contamination, I'll post my own definition as a response to this comment later.

Another failed attempt by largely reactionaries and people close to reactionaries in their 954th attempt to be the cool countercultural group fighting The Man, but then will be surprised again when the only people using the wording are online weirdos.

A bit boo-outgroup and antagonistic. Less of this please.

what happened in 2016 which saw every major platform weaponized in order to ban or heavily restrict those failed online reactionaries?

online reactionary weirdos meme a president into the white house and Principled Republicans will never forgive them for it

So failed Twitter literally had to ban back in the day.

Someone whom the speaker believes subhuman - in particular in the moral sense of "if you harm or kill this person, it is less bad than normal".

"if you harm or kill this person, it is less bad than normal".

This is true for people who don't have to even be NPCs. Killing David Reich is a crime against humanity in a way that even killing one of his graduate students would not be. I wouldn't consider Reich or anyone good enough to work in his lab to be an NPC.

Where did you get that definition?!

NPCs in video games aren't real people and you can kill them for fun.

Yeah, but who used it this way in relation to real people?

I mean, if I ever call someone an NPC in earnest, that is an intended connotation. I don't think I've ever done so, though I have made the "do not give rights to this thing" argument in the case of misaligned AI.

I'll admit that reading the bit after the dash into other people's use is uncharitable, but given the original meaning is literally "a character in a game that's not controlled by a real human" I don't think "subhuman" is at all a reach.

I'll admit that reading the bit after the dash into other people's use is uncharitable, but given the original meaning is literally "a character in a game that's not controlled by a real human" I don't think "subhuman" is at all a reach.

Given that when someone labels someone else as an NPC, it's generally to contrast them with others - such as themselves in their eyes - who are Playable Characters (PCs), I don't think this really tracks. PCs are just as subhuman as NPCs, in that they're both equally electronic fictions concocted by humans for entertainment, they're just subhuman arrangements of pixels/bits/whatever abstraction of computer code you want to go with being controlled by humans, in contrast to NPCs that follow programmed routines.

but given the original meaning is literally "a character in a game that's not controlled by a real human" I don't think "subhuman" is at all a reach.

Sure it is. There's no reason to assume this meaning over the alternatives, and given how extreme that position would be, it is quite a reach.

It's a figure of speech. They're NPCs, I don't respect them.

That's a decade old now, so predating the NPC label, but expressing a similar sentiment as the OR.

The impression I get is less that users of the term want to machine gun people they call NPCs and more that they feel if someone else did so nothing of value would be lost.

As opposed to words like “orks”, “scum”, and “vermin” where I 100% believe the speaker would rampage if they had an opportunity.

Mmm, "would rampage if he/she had an opportunity and no better options existed" would be much closer to correct. Checking back through some of the various times I've earnestly called people scum, most of them fall into "plan A is removing these people from power, plan B for things that don't need power is throwing them in jail, but if I only have the options of killing them or letting them keep ruining everything then killing them is the less-bad option".

It's what you'd expect -- people who don't like the term or its users define it in a way that throws shade on those who use it rather than those who are referred to by it.

We've had some excellent responses, and most everyone seems to have gravitated toward a similar definition!

At 24 hrs from the time of my post or so depending on how buys I am, I'll post a more full examination of my comment and from where I picked up my definition. Obviously, I had far more time to think about my answer before I made this comment.

My Definition: when I think of the term NPC, I think of a person who explicitly has no (or low) moral worth. It is a pejorative, if perhaps, one of the strongest-grade pejoratives I can sling. NPCs are to be used for benefit of the player character, otherwise able to be ignored.

NPCs are not just predictable. Adding randomness to an npc doesn't make it any more interesting or agentic. They pick up an exact script- not just regurgitating the arguments given to them by others/the gods/more agentic, but the very conversations you can have with an NPC are limited to what the script allows. The things they say, the way they say them, and the things the NPC does are all limited to what the script allows the NPC to talk about. You may talk to them, and they may only have the same things to talk about as anyone else or it might be unique. But come back in a month and they'll still be talking about the same things. Therefore, people who cannot escape NPC-hood are people who get magnetized on to certain topics, and can only talk about things within the script's allowed overton window.

I think you’re spending too many words to say it, but I agree that one of the key ones is pejorative. The main reason to use the term is to convey that the subject is Bad; the specifics are secondary.

After the 2nd sentence of my definition, the rest is just additional flavor and contextualizing details, yeah.

Mindless drone, though updated with the latest algorithm to parrot the right ideas

With apologies to Christopher Lasch's Angry Ghost, who said it better than I ever could:

Cultural and linguistic changes rolled out seamlessly and ubiquitously, like overnight operating system updates. No memory or recognition of previous states. Synchronised, technologically enabled cultural obsolescence.

Describing the process describes the people.

When someone calls a real person an "NPC" it usually means that they don't think for themselves. Their opinions on issues are told to them from outside sources, and they don't know how to adjust them when they are exposed to new information.

They are like an NPC in the sense that they behave as though they don't have any agency over their own beliefs.

Motte: someone who does not have the ability or interest to analyze a political issue for themselves, and instead repeats whatever arguments or slogans they have received from their 'side' and cannot make much of a considered argument past this.

Bailey: Someone who disagrees with me and doesn't immediately change their mind when I offer my one stunning comeback that should demolish their position.

An NPC is somebody who makes statements or has beliefs but doesn’t have the basis to derive those beliefs on their own.

For instance somebody might say that we should support Ukraine in the war, it wouldn’t be able to reach this conclusion on their own from first principles.

Or they might say something about coming climate catastrophe, but be unable to articulate why, or how, or what that means, or why it’s bad.

An NPC’s worldview is entirely made up of received opinions. A great example I think most people here are familiar with are internet atheists. These are people who will make very strong claims about morality or philosophy, but generally refuse to detail why they think these things or what these things might mean. Another example (although I think it’s basically the same group) is the “I fucking love science” crowd.

I recommend using the double pipes (||) at the start and end of each paragraph, as requested by the OP.

I don’t understand the point of that.

So that a person's knee jerk response doesn't get contaminated by reading other people's first.

I made the change but I just responded before reading anything else

Is there a single person reading the motte that hasn’t heard the term NPC?

You can just read the text by clicking on it. Hiding it all behind “spoiler” blocks breaks the purpose of a forum and seems pointless and honestly just seems like OP being cheeky in asking people to do something pointless and counterproductive, on a post about NPCs, without explaining why.

“Hey guys explain what an NPC is and also do this completely pointless thing which is detrimental to the function of this place and also I won’t explain why. Have fun.”

I can't say I've ever heard it. That being said, I have no basis for responding because, as far as I know, it could be anything.

Do what you like, it was only a suggestion.

someone who has put little to no thought into their political opinions, and can only parrot talking points that they saw on Reddit or twitter or TV or their friend group. When challenged they will >:^l as per the meme because they are incapable of arguing the point because they don't even really understand their own points.

A person lacking free will in the broadest sense. Which I guess could be all of us at some philosophical level.

In the online version a person incapable of molding the world around then into their own vision. Musks being the ultimate playable character. He gets a vision and it becomes a thing in the world.

Something about it also seems to have a moral component. Can you have a correct balanced version of the world and work to the moral good? I think grifters fail this test like on the left I think people like Kendi etc; I have a lot of difficulty thinking their message is actually in their beliefs as a benefit to society; therefore not a playable character. Though now neolib AOC (from college girl liberal AOC) seems to be growing as a person and getting a broader view therefore a playable character. So something about being capable of evolving.

How do you distinguish the ultimate playable character from a DMPC, a vehicle with no real personality that only exists to put the plot on whatever rails the owner of the game wants at the moment?

I guess I don’t believe there’s a DM.

Then who's puppeting the NPCs?

A person who reacts to a political provocation by mindlessly repeating "party line" statements, usually shibboleths for their side, seemingly without understanding how they are inherently self-contradictory, or without really thinking about their implications at all. See also "sheeple".

I'm just gonna jump on this one, but something like 90% of the replies echoed a similar sentiment.

IMHO, NPCs are not just "normies" or "sheeple" and partisans or run of the mill ideologically captured. These are people you are having a conversation with, which has such a schizoid discontinuity dropped right in the middle, it's like their cognition straight up glitched out. Not "Why does group X vote against (what I think) is their best interest?" pseudo hypocrisy. Not people with different ethical valuations of when the overriding interest of society outweigh a person's right to bodily autonomy. Just a massive, gaping, cognitive glitch. The NPC meme isn't about people repeating the same lines. It's about the jank most NPCs in open world games display.

Like, for example, early on in the pandemic, there was memorial day, a week later BLM riots, and then a week later a massive uptick in COVID. And my local news tried to claim that all the new covid cases a week after massive BLM riots were actually caused by a new variant that spread during memorial day which took an extra week to show symptoms. They, however, are not the NPCs. They are bold faced evil liars.

The NPC is my father in law who digested this whole sale. Who one evening was ranting and raving about all these evil fucking conservatives not quarantining at home (despite the fact that neither he nor his wife meaningfully changed how often they travelled, had family gatherings, went out to eat, saw shows, etc), wanting to go to gyms, or church, or grill outside, or have social gatherings. When I pulled up a photo of a BLM protest, people just piled on top of each other in front of a barricade, his response was that he saw nothing at all wrong with that.

what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

NPC. Noun. Internet slang derived from the term non-player character. Usually, though non-exclusively, used by right-wing extremely online types to deride political opponents as having the critical thinking capabilities of a non-player character from a video game, that is, none. Often used to describe those who post on social media about a current event, with the implication being that the individual poster is simply uncritically regurgitating talking points brought to their attention by the mainstream media.

Example sentence: "This guy just started tweeting about Ukraine, I bet he couldn't find it on a map before yesterday. What an NPC."

I think the term is basically just a sneer word, akin to "chud," "normie," "incel," etc. So in that sense the definition is flexible. But I think the intended meaning is "a person who uncritically follows consensus (especially PMC consensus) and avoids thinking independently."

An NPC is someone who doesn't form their own opinions, who reads off a script or recites rote platitudes as if designed by a central developer. This is most common in cases where there are thought-terminating cliches to rely on (trans women are women, my body my choice, expand the franchise, believe women).

Someone who regurgitates a script written by someone else, implying a lack of ability or inclinaison to think for themselves. Instead they will typically repeat what they heard on TV or read in a book (NPCs can be well read too) and resort to fully general counterarguments if pushed outside of their script.

A person for whom having political opinions and “being informed” are the same thing, when they come across novel opinions, their primary emotional reaction is one of a tattle tale in a classroom “but that’s not what the rules say”

Before looking at anything else my definition of NPC:

A human being who mostly uncritically accepts what his social environment tell him and comes to believe it without much skepticism. Someone who is able to do their job which they were trained for, but if you put them in an even slightly novel situation would end up "overloading". Someone not really able to think on the spot. Someone who scores lower than stuff like GPT-4 on tests which are proxies of IQ and thinks this is not an issue with themselves. Someone for whom "you are the average of the 6 people you spend the most time with" is true.

Someone who repeats the same lines over and over without thinking.

Someone who does not reflect and critically examine their beliefs. It seems like they just parrot the views of the people around them. They didn't arrive at their views through reason, so reason is ineffective in changing their minds. Maybe this is just borne of my frustration talking to people IRL, and why I don't do it anymore.

An NPC is someone whose opinions are simply received and retransmitted, regardless of political valence or source. Put another way, they are the equivalent of robots executing a speech program thought up and written down by someone else.

Someone whose opinions and actions are purely formed in response to their informational environment; who toes the line about anything from COVID origins to which movie to watch. They are thus merely reactive to the world around them, like an NPC from a videogame.

NPC: A person who acts in the manner of an automaton. One where their actions and communications fail to show individual agency.

Since I read the Comments feed by default instead of the posting hierarchy, I got contaminated by one other reply initially, but I think I course-corrected back to my own internal definition. (If you’re doing the same when you see this, read the context first. It’s a sort of game/poll.)

An NPC is someone predictable who goes through life behaving as if they don’t have agency except over specific things they’re allowed to change. They may feel they’re the main character in their own lives, but to everyone around them, and more importantly, to the government and to major corporations, they’re as predictable as a scripted townsfolk character in a video game. Even their contrariness ends up expressed in predictable ways; they go for a predictably rebellious attitude against the wrongs they perceive from the government, corporations, and others with power. When someone acts as if their worldview isn’t the only and true world, or makes a choice that’s off-script, or calls out the NPC’s predictability, they get confused and possibly upset. I’m a libertarian and Objectivist, in case that aids in the data collection.

After reading other replies, I’ll add the key is memetic thinking and memetic believing. I’ve made a conscious effort, ever since reading Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie, to examine my thoughts for memes and, when found, deconstruct them into their logical and emotional components. This is how I can loudly declare myself both a libertarian and a Trump supporter, for instance; they’re memetically incompatible due to emotional dissonance, but I find these stances logically compatible.

I wouldn’t mind hearing more about that compatibility.

Trump has a couple standout policies (especially regarding the border) that don’t seem to fit. His foreign policy was a mixed bag. Everything else on his platform is non-unique, and basically just imports the RNC planks. Paternalistic on social issues, libertarian on regulatory issues.

But you don’t need Trump to do that. I think a block of wood could do an equivalent job, so long as you nailed a list of Federalist Society judges to it. It’d probably spend less money on golf, too.

There are three main aspects to every successful enterprises: production, logistics, and marketing. Trump is the loudest marketer of Republican policies and paleo-libertarian and republican ideals since Reagan and Limbaugh; his great accomplishment has been awakening the Republicans, conservatives, blue-dog Democrats, independents, class-conscious freedom-conscious liberals, and right-libertarians to the depth of the deep state and the breadth of its control.

The Republican Party has marketed itself to its voter base as “We’ve got clear perceptions of the world and the best policies. Vote us into power and we’ll fix everything.” But at the top levels of state and national politics, they’re all centrist blue tribers who read WaPo and watch CNN, and get their ideas of Republicanism from The Atlantic.

The Libertarian Party is a perpetual joke except when the progressives need a spoiler against the conservatives. Online, the anarchists have taken over from the lassaiz-faire advocates.

Trumpism as a movement is about trying to reinstall the republic as the power center of America, the constitution instead of the cathedral. His speeches and his foreign policy are about America as the last bastion of freedom from tyrannical governance, and tyrannical governments react to him and his as if this is true.

He succeeded at tax cuts toward the Laffer Curve until 2025, keeping America out of new wars during his term, and a historic shift in Supreme Court judgeships including keeping Merrick Garland out of office. He also exposed the suspicious voting irregularities and surprisingly legal election strategies which resulted in more votes being counted for Biden. He made it clear just how big the fight against communism-in-all-but-name is.

He’s done more publicly for marketing the cause of liberty (the purpose of America) through memes than most people with power over policy. That’s why I voted for him the second time.

He also perfectly embodies self-interest as a virtue, something libertarians have gotten away from since Ayn Rand. I trust him to work for his own best interests far more than any public-minded politicians, which is the primary reason I voted for him the first time.

An NPC is someone who takes their opinions from their local friends circle and the media. They generally believe what TV, social media and mass media tell them to. They tend to have entirely crafted their hobbies and interests around the most popular things in their social circles and social media spaces. They don’t have any eclectic tastes, no indie music or media, no offbeat fashions, no weird hobbies, no unconventional sports or activities.

The reason I think this happens is partially that we exist in a media-saturated world in which simply turning on any media will soak the viewers in the opinions of professional tase and opinion makers. The popular stuff is easy to find on TV and radio (thus, even for self-confessed nerds, the fandom of the big two sci-fi franchises is orders of magnitude larger than the rest, and the same happens with Anime and fantasy series), the top 40 hits are easily found on streaming services and the radio, and the top books of any genre are available just about anywhere. The other reason is that most people have never really been taught critical reasoning skills unless they major in a subject that requires them to use it. K-12 schools like to talk about how they “teach critical thinking”, but they actually don’t. What they teach is canonical fallacy lists, trust of cathedral approved sources, and to belief whatever the consensus opinions on science are at the moment.

Someone who talks about issues only on terms of memorized talking points, and who lacks either the ability or willingness to express any kind of original thought.

I was about to say that an NPC is an ideological basic bitch, but there are also NPCs whose memorized talking points come from non-mainstream sources.

NPC: An npc is an extreme conformist. An evolution of the sheep brought about by today's rapidly changing information space. Whereas a sheep may blindly follow a specific ideology an npc's beliefs can be updated, or patched, on the fly as new information is released. This gives them an incoherence that their ancestors such as the religious sheep lack, "Hey Wei remember how Dave went off on you last week for buying up those N95 masks and then tried to give you a hug despite covid spreading? I saw him at the grocery store today, he was double masking and had a disinfecting wipes holster on his belt. What an NPC."

Someone doing that today wouldn't be a conformist, certainly. Even at the height of Covid, double-masking, carrying disinfectant wipes etc. was not something I remember actually seeing anyone doing and would have marked the person doing it as not conforming to the social mores, which would have perhaps meant wearing one of those flimsy blue or white masks for a time and then dropping it when everyone else dropped it. Current zero covidians - whom I disagree with and have argued with repeatedly - are anything but conformist in the sense of conforming to current actual social norms, but I still keep seeing those gray NPC wojak memes about them implicating that they're what is meant by NPC.

I seem to recall you are in Finland? Is that right?

In the NY area, it was very common to see people double masking, masking by themselves in a car, masking and have a face shield, etc.

Sure, it might have been different in the blue areas in United States (probably the genuine epicenter of this sort of a reaction anywhere), but even then the point is that the clear majority of people, even in those areas, is not doing those things now. People who continue doing those things aren't doing it to be conformist, quite the contrary.

That's true, they seem to specifically conform to authority figure narratives. It seems like more of a very online American thing, maybe they're still functionally conformists in the 'good neighbor', or religious sheep sense, but due to America's decaying social fabric lack any sort of social group to conform to and so tend to adhere mostly to w/e the prevalent authority narratives are.

The prevalent authority narrative has not told them to do this at least quite for some time, either.

But they so loved that time they want to bring it back.

But, again, that's not NPC behavior by the common definition within the spoilered answers. Wanting to bring some specific era specifically clashes with the idea of just unthinkingly going with the flow and always adopting the currently fashionable views (indeed, by that definition most everyone on the right side of the political spectrum would be a NPC...)

I just intended it as a "use the word in a sentence example" way. Not saying it's specific to covid. I do think there are changes to the way information is disseminated in current times that make NPC different from earlier flavors of conformists. It's mostly the mindlessly following beliefs that rapidly change and are often contradictory though.

That was mostly the True Believer Zero Covidians, not the NPCs. Back in 2021 most Zero Covidians were NPCs, now the NPCs have moved on so you just have the true believers left. As such you'd expect the average behaviour of the group to change.

I thought the hug an asian part made the time period of the quote pretty clear. There weren't many other time periods where we went from hugging Chinese people (Trumps china travel ban), to shaming people for buying up PPE (even trained professional don't always wear it properly!), to shaming people for not following strict PPE guidelines.

Current zero covidians are not NPCs, the NPC's have had their beliefs patched since 2022 and now don't mask.

A broken NPC in a town who regurgitates antiquated lines because they didn't accept their new Current Thing update is still an NPC who adopted their previous positions because they at least were an NPC.

Their understanding of the issues or the evidence didn't get better since; they're just stuck like a broken record.

Someone who only ever expresses the dominant opinion of a particular social group. A proper NPC has to also genuinely believe these opinions and not have any controversial ones they self censor.

Late to the party but responding before reading other replies.

An NPC is someone who doesn't meaningfully engage with thought on political topics and simply parrots what their peers believe in order to fit in. If tasked with writing anything on their political stance the entire corpus would consistent entirely of empty slogans. Despite having no real political thoughts they still might actively fight the culture war in a kind of zombie state where they're very sure of the correctness of their slogans because they've grasped their shallow message but cannot actually handle any pushback because of how trivial is it so inflict cognitive dissonance on them with just a handful of pointed questions.

They're probably not inherently bad people, they trust their peers are good people and the slogans they're given seem pro social enough that they must come to the conclusion that their opponents are simply evil but they're none the less destructive because it makes most of politics about herding thoughtless voters rather than hashing out substantive disagreements.

The NPC bit is the most fitting in describing the degree to which, once you've identified someone as an NPC, you can almost perfectly assume all of their positions on all topics. Just like NPCs in games these qualities can be abused easily and is the source of many time tested content formats like man of the street being tricked by content creator to make silly statements.

An NPC is someone who does not question their own beliefs or make any effort to be less biased than they are by default. Below a certain IQ threshold, this is because they can't think at that level, but above that threshold, it's because they're too prideful to risk being wrong or too cowardly to risk having a socially unacceptable opinion. This is why I feel far greater animosity towards college-educated wokescolds more than I do ghetto blacks and latinos. Ghetto minorities are told they're a victim, and they don't know how to question it, so they don't. But triple digit IQ leftists of all races should know better. (I'd at least say the black ones were motivated by self-interest if Fox News and Turning Point weren't chomping at the bit to hire Based Blacks.)

Upon reading my above explanation, I realize that the ghetto archetype does fall under my definition of NPC, but I wish to emphasize that it is unethical to use NPC as a pejorative unless you're referring to those who are smart enough to think and choose not to. And to be clear, nobody is obligated to educate themselves. Ignorance is fine. The problem is stubbornly insisting that a popular explanation is the correct one and that people who disagree with it are ignorant or malicious without understanding the thing yourself!

A self-aware person wouldn't be an NPC by definition, no? They're just a PC who isn't roleplaying.

Then there'd be no reason to use it as a pejorative. They wouldn't be guilty of any moral failing, and so criticizing them would be unfair.

That's not how I think of blame. You can't accuse an NPC of anything by definition, they're not in control of themselves (by definition). If that results in the pejorative use collapsing... I guess think of another pejorative? We have pejoratives for players who don't play in the way one considers "correct" or "true".

You're taking the term more literally than I do. I guess I could call these people sheep, then? Maybe lemmings?

Without reading other comments: It's mostly just a snarl word like 'sheeple' that gets thrown at people with a high degree of social conformity, specifically conformity to the rules a tribe that the snarl-er doesn't particularly like. 'Our partisans are loyal and incorruptible, their partisans are brainwashed and radicalized', etc. If there's something useful to the term, its that some tribes and ideologies really do put outsized importance on loyalty and ideological purity, with cults being at the far end of the spectrum and generally recognized as a bad thing. But calling someone an NPC (or a cultist) only turns up the heat, which is seldom useful but particularly bad here as everyone's close-minded and defensive while participating in a flame war, which gives the actual zealots cover.

I basically take it to mean uncritical consumers of mainstream media, they'll see something on CNN, and let it form their opinions without thinking 'is this something I should believe?' (obviously this is very common behavior, and by no means particularly confined to mainstream media, plenty of people treat Fox News or whatever else is their favorite input similarly, the terms specifically, is cultural war coded to mean consumers of mainstream media though, especially during the Trump era, hear a specific bad thing about Trump, accept it as truth without doing any filtering)

"NPC" is a slur that implies the person mindlessly parrots the consensus opinion on every matter, the opposite of "I do my own research by reading Facebook"

I dispute your use of the word "implies". I think the term "NPC" is literally saying that people do that, not "implying" it.

I don't think it's wholly equivalent to saying it directly (like saying "don't be a Jew" is not equivalent to "you should share this with me"), but I don't think we disagree enough to warrant a debate.

A person who is inherently unreflective of their own beliefs, i.e unwilling or unable to critically examine what they believe and why, thus usually adopting whatever beliefs and belief systems are in vogue in their social circles.

An NPC is someone whose beliefs are not deeply considered, who absorbs beliefs from others without critical thought. It's a caricature used to disparage the outgroup and avoid ceding legitimacy to opposing views.

In sociopolitical contexts, what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

Without reading any other replies: An NPC a person who has strong opinions about a given topic with very little understanding of why they have those opinions outside of a bumper-sticker or slogan worth of depth. This can be on either side of the political spectrum from "I support the current thing" to "I don't support the current thing".

i did read the other replies so consider me contaminated. But it’s remarkable to me that no one seems to have given the original meme meaning someone who does not possesses an inner monologue. I guess there is little cross polination here and the places where these memes generate.

I’ve never come across this idea. Isn’t that the definition of a P-zombie?

But it’s remarkable to me that no one seems to have given the original meme meaning someone who does not possesses an inner monologue.

I think that's implied in many of the definitions I've read.

That said, slurs have a gravitational pull towards incoherent raw disdain. Karen went from "Entitled middle-aged woman who abuses lowly customer service employees because she thinks she's important" to "Woman I don't like" in a couple months. NPC is well on its way.

NPC is well on its way.

It became that almost instantly, you mean.

The question: In sociopolitical contexts, what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

I'm not a huge fan of the meme, since it tends to be pretty dismissive in the same way that the Bingo Cards are, but I think there are a few different variants:

  1. A speaker is presented who has a shallow, simple political perspective, which they repeat often as a slogan, usually with the expectation that no one could reasonably disagree or even that a factual basis is relevant. The NPC meme here references the Welcome to Corneria problem in video game design.

  2. The speaker has a shallow political perspective which has been 'programmed' into them. This doesn't necessarily mean a sinister sort of way -- it can be a perspective that they already agreed with and the 'programming' is just a bunch of snappy slogans -- but it's usually meant to imply that the speaker at least hasn't really investigated the principles underlying that slogan. See here for a parody of the perspective. For a steelman, see the criticisms here of even counterculture speakers often reacting to whatever becomes the mainstream media focus de jour until it gets dropped for a new shiny.

  3. The speaker lacks agency or principles to want anything but whatever script is given to them. Cfe here for an explicit example, here or here for more typical usage.

In point #2, I think the second "here" is missing a hyperlink.

An NPC is someone who chooses their positions based on answering the question of "what would someone in my role/context believe" rather than "what do I personally think is best/true". Someone could be an NPC in the context of national politics while having strong opinions about how the local HOA is run, or vice versa.

Since we're now so low in the comment chain, no need to spoiler, but: this line of thought is something I had in mind while thinking about my own definition.

Obviously the term changes based on who uses it. If Peter Thiel or Elon Musk call a group of people NPC's, that has different connotations than if a fellow commenter on this forum use the term. "Everyone is the player character in their own story" and all that.

I think NPC-ness is characterized primarily as someone who contributes no cognitive work to a discussion or topic, and simply absorbs and regurgitates memorized lines that they heard from someone else. Not only can you not change their mind by talking to them, but you will not learn anything that you couldn't have learned by listening to pretty much any talking head on the same side of the issue. It's not so much that they're irrational or failing to be rational or even incapable of being rational: they're not even trying to be rational. They are not engaging the critical thinking part of their brain, at least with regard to the issue or set of issues at hand. X says Y, they trust X, therefore Y.

To me, the two first sentences are somewhat at odds, especially together with the last sentence. Using your definition, can't you gain their trust and then change their opinion?

The trusted people are often authority figures such as politicians, news anchors, or celebrities that they don't actually know in real life, and you are not and could never become. Though they can also be influenced by more close trusted people such as friends and family. Thus, if you befriend an NPC you can potentially change their mind on issues, but this is a package deal, you grind reputation which allows influence on all beliefs simultaneously, and requires an awful lot of effort if your goal was one particular idea. They aren't deciding on their beliefs based on the object level ideas of those beliefs, but on their relationships of the people espousing them.

I don't know that reputation copying is the only way an NPC can treat beliefs, The core characterization of the NPC is the ignoring of logic and object level facts about the beliefs because they're formed for completely unrelated reasons, so you could have different subclasses. And obviously pretty much no one in real life is literally a pure NPC to this extreme of a level, but the more similar someone comes to this archetype the more appropriate the label becomes.

"NPC" is a synonym for "sheeple" - a pejorative that exists largely to make the speaker feel morally and intellectually superior while excusing them from having to intellectually engage.

IMO these are very different. Sheeple passively accept the status quo, while NPCs actively recite a script, which may or may not be supportive of the status quo.

The comparison to "sheeple" is good, but the definition covers just about any insult in the book, and sheds no light on what "NPC" means.

the definition covers just about any insult in the book

Does it? If I call someone an asshole or a pussy or an idiot, I am impugning different aspects of their character, none of which are really covered by NPC or sheeple. Moreover, the aforementioned insults are more outwardly focused. The purpose of saying them is generally to inflict emotional harm on the object of the insult or make them look bad to others. NPC and sheeple are more inwardly directed (certainly not unique in this regard or others) - they're foremost about how they make the speaker feel.

Does it? If I call someone an asshole or a pussy or an idiot, I am impugning different aspects of their character, none of which are really covered by NPC or sheeple.

They're all "pejorative(s) that exists largely to make the speaker feel morally and intellectually superior while excusing them from having to intellectually engage". That they're different from "NPC" and "sheeple" is my entire point. Your definition does not show where that difference lies.

Someone whose political opinions are entirely derived from and dependent on "programming" by authorities or community leaders, rather than own deliberation. Accordingly, they get distraught or angry if confronted with an argument or asked to take a position on a topic that they have not received guidance on (i.e. don't know the safe/accepted response to), resulting in what's derided as "going off script".

Someone who gives the appearance of a human without being one. In other words, someone who gives the appearance of thought and reason, but is actually just outputting the latest script given to them by the Party, or else a weighted average of what they hear from other people. Because an NPC’s behaviour depends on scripting not thought, it can change at a moment’s notice in any required direction.

I should note that this kind of thing makes me very twitchy. The kind of people who talk about NPCs (including my friends) are generally smug jerks whose own opinions are far less impressive and well-justified than they think. However, I must admit that when I see the speed and inconsistency of people’s responses to Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, etc. I can’t help feeling that this does seem to be true for an awful lot of people an awful amount of the time.

There is an implication that the people using the term are not, themselves NPC's, however, even a cleverly written script that breaks the fourth wall doesn't mean the character is actually a complete agent.

The question: In sociopolitical contexts, what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

Nuclear Proliferation Concern.

In sociopolitical contexts, what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

That the person using it is a pain in the backside that thinks they're so deep and intelligent, unlike the sheeple. Contempt for the ordinary person. Loves to talk about 'low-information voters' and 'IQ 90' and 'normies'. Waste of my time reading whatever they have to say.

IQ 90 as an insult? True brainchads consider "IQ 130" to be an insult.

Sounds like that person has a script for political discussion, as if they were a “contrary”-type townsfolk programmed to give predictable dialogue. An NPC, as it were; after you’ve spoken with them once, you never need to again, as you know approximately what they’ll say as the culture war unfolds.

I've never been a fan of the word, and in particular I think the strong forms simply don't exist and are just pure insults. But if I were to offer a definition that describes a reasonable percentage of people (which nevertheless is still very negative):

Someone who's susceptible to peer-pressure to the degree that the majority of their social behaviour can be explained through it, and who has a strong tendency to backwards-reason their own behaviour (i.e. they first behave a certain way for one reason, and then later justify it, including to themselves, with another).

An individual who unthinkingly repeats views and ideas popularised by other sources without any alteration or introspection.

If you asked Thiel's interview question of 'what is the most unpopular thing you believe' they'd be stumped. All their beliefs are popular and mainstream. Or they'd be 60-40 matters that are subject to constant media attention.

Literally, it means a character in a video game who is not controlled by the player.

In memes, it means an unthinking conformist, a person who accepts propaganda as if being programmed by it.

In practice, 90% of the time when it is used, the person who is calling someone else an NPC is a right-wing conformist who disagrees with his target's left-wing conformism.

Someone whose views are the average of the media they consume or the friends they keep. They do not seriously evaluate a given topic or problem and come to their own conclusion on it, instead preferring to delegate to trusted figures of authority. Often, their views are wanting to be seen as on the "correct" side of history or to avoid judgement from peers.

Example: I will briefly talk about a colleague I work with. At the start of 2020, when Covid was emerging on the scene, he was making fun of another colleague for looking at the Covid death toll. He dismissed concerns about China's handling of the virus as it being worthy of concern, saying that "China is always like that" Fast forward 6 months, he has become a staunch supporter of lockdown measures, demanding that the government keep schools closed and expressing scorn on the wishes of some people to perform outdoor activities like sports. This disdain was not extended to the BLM protests. It is nearly 2 years on from the end of Covid. He now jets out to other countries almost every weekend.

Someone whose views are the average of the media they consume or the friends they keep. They do not seriously evaluate a given topic or problem and come to their own conclusion on it, instead preferring to delegate to trusted figures of authority.

This definition is inadequate because it describes everyone. Do you think it's an accident that 99% of your objective beliefs and moral opinions are those of a 21st century educated westerner rather than, say, an 8th century BC Scythian herdsman? Did you personally validate your belief that Jupiter is a gas giant with several moons or did you trust an authority figure? Are you an NPC because you did?

IMO the litmus test of NPC is receiving "updated information" from trusted figures that contradicts previously received beliefs/values, and not experiencing any kind of cognitive discomfort. The 2020-2022 period was full of these sorts of War with Eastasia/Eurasia heel turns from the tastemakers, which is why the meme emerged then.

which is why the meme emerged then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) the term was first used in a political context in 2018, it predates Covid.

The 2020-2022 period was full of these sorts of War with Eastasia/Eurasia heel turns from the tastemakers, which is why the meme emerged then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) the term was first used in a political context in 2018, it predates Covid.

I checked the Google Trends data. "NPC" had a spike in 2018, returned to baseline, and then was revived in late February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, and has been double to triple baseline since.

It's a bit like how "gaslighting" originated from a 1938 play. The term was lying around dormant and picked up later. In the case of NPC, it was the mass fast turn of online progressives from talking about covid vaccines to talking about Ukraine.

I also see a small spike around May 2020. I wonder did this coincide with the "protests are bad because they'll spread Covid (unless they're pro-BLM, in which case they're fine)" flip-flopping from public health officials?

I also see a small spike around May 2020. I wonder did this coincide with the "protests are bad because they'll spread Covid (unless they're pro-BLM, in which case they're fine)" flip-flopping from public health officials?

This would be a good explanation if the spike didn't peak the week before George Floyd died. I think it must be general disdain for Covid conformism, or for democrats becoming the most strident proponents for NPIs after opposing anti-Covid measures as xenophobic up until February.

Objectivity does not factor in to whether someone is an NPC or not. NPCs are primarily concerned with morality over all else. Whether the Scythian Goat Herder goes along with the decisions of his clan in all cases or whether he can manage to question some of the poorer ones, that is what makes him an NPC, not questions about a planet he cannot adequately see with his primitive technology.

This definition is inadequate because it describes everyone.

I consume large mounts of progressive media. This media does not make me think like a progressive; mainly it makes me very angry a lot of the time.

Your point on trusting authority figures is well-taken; we all have to do that, but who you pick as an authority figure and why matters. People who uncritically default to assigning the media they consume as "authority figure" are doing it wrong, and such people are not hard to find.

NPC: A person who adopts and discards ideas based on social status rather than truth status in his/her own internal system of values.

Someone who is generally in line with the latest orthodoxy but doesn’t really have any convictions. The kind of person who could easily say “we’ve always been at war with East Asia” with zero cognitive dissonance. They don’t really care about politics from a policy perspective but do care from a signaling perspective.

Generally today “liberal.” There are NPCs though on the political right.

I recommend using the double pipes (||) at the start and end of each paragraph, as requested by the OP.

It's just a vague term to, ideally, refer to people who aren't smart or aren't engaging with politics with the care and subtlety it deserves. People who enthusiastically embrace whatever the party line is of their subculture without thinking too much about it. But in practice, in the current_year, it's mostly "the other team is bad and wrong and they believe everything for stupid reasons", and the people who use the term are as much "NPCs" in an objective sense as the targets.

An NPC is a person who can be relied on to adopt the opinion of their ingroup when there is one, that is, a person who mostly only has socially-acquired opinions.

The idea combines two distincts phenomena in a way I find unhelpful which is why I don't use the term.

The first one is ideological possession. The idea that people can be so devoted to a system of thought or so propagandized that they no longer have a will and have completely predictable behavior. You may have experienced talking to someone who just repeats talking points and thus has a set path for any conversation without thinking. Such conversation feel like talking to a NPC in a video game with predetermined branching patterns and, much like in a video game, if you start going off the predicted path, bugs happen and people will start to have erratic behavior because they're not used to actually having to reason.

The second one is the idea of the unthinking masses in general. The politically disinterested people that comprise most of the human population and are easily swayed by anyone's propaganda. They are not participants in politics in any way, despite whatever the propaganda would have you believe, and were the regime to change they would just support the new regime because ultimately they are not playing the game.

The problem here is that those two cohorts, while overlapping, especially in a democracy, are not the same.

I was going to make the same distinction, but disagree with you that people conflate NPC-dom with ideological possession.

Was just reading "Religious Nationalism and the Coronavirus Pandemic: Soul-Sucking Evangelicals and Branch Covidians Make America Sick Again," in which the author "addresses the wider implications of Christian nationalism on American politics, and capitalist ideology... (and) concludes that privatization, austerity capitalism, and ‘gig economy’ need to be replaced by socialist alternatives and seeks inspiration in theory and practice of Marxism and South American liberation theology."

This is a serious case of ideological brain-rot, but it's not "being an NPC." The author will completely predictably twist literally anything into advocating for maoist revolution, but will do so in creative and original ways despite much of the content being regurgitated stock phrases. And even more importantly he will never change his programming in response to outside input. He should be modeled as a limited AI: a paperclipper for leftism. And I don't think anyone would call him an NPC, despite recognizing him as a no-longer-human pile of brain cancer that exists only to single-mindedly carry out his programming.

The distinction is that NPCs are just making "mouth noises" they don't even understand to have meaning. They can't creatively use those noises to make arguments, even in a rote chinese-room manner, because they don't have a phrase dictionary. They often don't even notice that they're saying or doing mutually contradictory things, like a woman I know who talked about the need to ban gas stoves for the environment while a handyman was installing her new 50kBTU outdoor propane patio heater which feeds from the same tank as her removed gas stove.

So yeah, I think you're right that there are two very distinct patterns of behavior, but that people actually use "NPC" to refer to the correct one. We just need a new word for the other that isn't as niche as "paperclipper."

People use [cause]bot, I think.

like a woman I know who talked about the need to ban gas stoves for the environment while a handyman was installing her new 50kBTU outdoor propane patio heater which feeds from the same tank as her removed gas stove.

Some people are so lacking in understanding that they don't even know when they're using the wrong units.

Wrong unit? Her old gas stove did have the correct propane jets, if that's what you mean.

BTU is a unit of energy. The relevant parameter for engines or other energy-conversion devices is power, energy per unit time. Some quick googling indicates that the convention in the patio heater business is to quote BTU ratings with an implied "per hour", so a 50kBTU patio heater outputs 50,000 BTU per hour (for anyone still wondering what the hell that means, 50,000 BTU is about 2 liters of liquified propane).

This sounds pedantic, but this implied unit convention is far from universal. In some industries, the "BTU value" of something has implied units of energy-per-unit-volume or energy-per-unit-weight. I had enough context in your example to know that there was an implied "per unit time" involved, but I didn't know immediately if it was per second, per minute, per hour, or per day.

Hourly btu is a standard unit of measure everywhere. Air conditioners are always listed as some multiple of "12,000BTU" all over the world.

For reference, a gas range will also be about 50kBTU (per hour), if you turn all the burners on including the oven burners.

Using "BTU" to mean "BTU per hour" is the accepted terminology for natural-gas- and propane-powered appliances in the US.

Stupid, but industry-standard.

I take 'NPC' to mean someone who can talk to you using canned dialogue, but can't understand what you say or meaningfully respond. They can respond with a set of canned clapbacks if you use one of the 2-5 lines they have a prepared response to, and they can be reprogrammed with new canned dialogue, but they can never have a true conversation because they can't (or won't) seriously engage with a discussion and come up with novel responses of their own. Hence, NPC, because it's like talking to a video game character.

If I was asked to explain it to someone unfamiliar, like my grandmother:

It’s calling someone predictable to the point of mockery. The idea is that they’re regurgitating phrases from the media instead of thinking. Basically an updated version of “sheep,” and like that term, really just a pejorative.

I think that’s a good enough definition for someone who only heard the term because, I don’t know, MSNBC called it racist.

An NPC is someone who can be modelled well enough (like most useful ordinary English words, it isn't binary) as a "stock character" of some type or another. If you can describe them to a friend in ten words or less, and the friend can use those ten words plus standard stereotypes to predict their behaviour well enough, then they are a central example of NPCdom. For example, people who fit the stereotypes of "fat socially awkward programmer" or "MAGA Facebook Boomer" or "Person of Hair Colour" is a good description of someone.

The opposite of an NPC is someone who requires a bespoke model to predict their behaviour.

While people are answering the poll question, I've seen little commentary on the history. As I remember, NPC first became a term from a tweet that went viral in certain dissident right spaces (at least that's how I heard it).

It was a study about self-reported internal monologues, and how a surprising (to some) fraction of people report "not having an internal monologue." I think this tweet went viral among people with a certain personality trait, I would guess: unusually introspective, high verbal IQ people who have some sort of emotional baggage that make them feel scorn for their more ape-like peers.

The term NPC as opposed to sheeple or anything else probably resonated with this audience because it is a videogame term and lets the group bond. If a more general term was used then the meme would not have been as viral to this audience.

You still see viral tweets really similar to these ones, for example, one involving a survey and glass of water rotated, and something else i can't remember. These tweets usually have un-PC results, like clear differences between how men and women answer the questions.

This audience is anti-woke so naturally NPC would become applied to more partisan politics, especially with how the modern information landscape quickly changes mainstream narratives about COVID, protests, etc.

Considering the point of the comment was a poll where I asked for off-the cuff, personal definitions, it would seem natural that people who wanted to participate in the conversation would avoid going unspoiled and meta in their initial response comments.

As requested I came up with an answer before scrolling down.

An NPC is someone who gets their opinion directly from the top. The platonic form of an NPC would go from hating Eurasia to hating Eastasia the moment they got the signal from the Party organs. An IRL example of people pretty close to that platonic form are people who believed Blasey Ford was credible, but Tara Reade was not. On the otherhand, Zero Covidians are not NPCs. As much as I disagree with them, currently they are definitely going against the grain.

Funny enough I also used a reference to Orwell. Perhaps we are both NPCs?

Joking (hopefully) aside, Zero Covidians were NPCs in 2021. They are not now. To give a timeline:

  1. They had a Twitter profile with a mask in it.

  2. They added a Ukrainian flag after the Russian invasion.

A lot of people (apparently independently) made the Eastasia/Eurasia comparison, but I think I'm the only person in the thread to date to refer to a different Orwell term, "duckspeaker".

Indeed, I could almost believe you're actually read the book.

1984 is the Harry Potter and MCU of the dissident right.

I used to prefer Brave New World as I thought it more realistic — no need to exert external control; you can control people by frying their will with simple hedonistic pleasure.

The last five years has made me think “why not both” is the choice made by people desiring power.

My impression is that Orwell never aimed to realistically describe a totalitarian political system, but the psychology of people living in one, and I think he got that spot on.

Well I think he described the psychology of both the people living in it and some of the methods that can be used by the ruling class.

Amusingly, it's the book Brits are most likely to claim to have read when they haven't.

I think the term has value, but I also think most people who would unironically use it are in fact NPCs.

The useful Motte version of the term is someone who thinks not at all about issues and just regurgitates whatever talking points they have gotten from their side, such that they seem to be saying the same canned dialogue as everyone else in town, ala an NPC from a video game. This is a real phenomenon, and it is annoying to see. Even when people are not literally saying the same thing it is a ton of people saying basically the same thing. And it is particularly vexing that the things that tend to become NPC dialogue are the pithiest and least interesting things, and never the interesting content I wouldn't mind becoming widely talked about. Most commonly this is an insult which can be thoughtlessly deployed to explain why you don't need to actually engage with anything someone on the other side has said.

However, people who use the term have basically just received an insulting pithy meme about the left which they deploy as a thoughtless way to dismiss left wingers who disagree with them. Again, I think the Motte of this term is useful, and once it is explained you will see it in the wild, and it has explanatory power, and thinking about how to address the issue would be valuable. But I don't think I have ever seen it used except in the most blatant Baily fashion imaginable.

Other people with mainstream opinions that I disagree with.

what is your personal, off-the-cuff definition or interpretation of the term NPC?

I think of that one Paul Graham piece.

If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think what you're told.

So my definition would be: "The NPC is fundamentally incurious and only holds socially approved opinions."

They are not capable of understanding that some people can look at all the same issues and facts as them and genuinely come to a different conclusion to theirs. They frequently tell dissenting interlocutors to "educate yourself", under the mistaken assumption that everyone educated agrees with them, and so only uneducated people can disagree with them. Their responses to debate are frequently disjointed and not-quite-relevant, because they're mostly only repeating canned arguments that they were given to respond to dissenters with.

I am assuming you are not asking what I think others mean when they use the term NPC but rather what kind of person I think would be somewhat fairly described by it. You asked for an off-the-cuff definition rather than an exercise in conceptual analysis, so here goes:

Being an NPC describes a particular mode of relating to hot-button cultural or political issues. An NPC is someone that does not only go with the flow of popular opinion but feels the need to uncritically regurgitate it, almost as a social reflex. NPCs do not think about the principles behind their opinions, they simply download the newest set of socially approved talking points from twitter or acquire them through social osmosis. Notably, this leads to a lot of internal contradictions in their thinking that they do not seem to care about at all. NPCs hold their opinions to gain social approval or to signal their membership in the tribe of good people, not because they arrived at them via critical examination.

This makes it extremely frustrating to talk to them because they will not respond to reasoning. And if they temporarily do, they will have reverted to their original position the next time you talk to them. This is because you, the autistic rationalist, and him, the NPC, speak two different languages. It is a bit like someone saying "What a beautiful day today" to cheer people up and signal their good spirits and you start with "ackshually, we are below the historical mean for sun hours this season". He will get mad because you entirely missed his point. It's not about the weather, it's about making nice and being a good person (TM). The tragedy is that he has to pretend (and sometimes believe) that he's really making a point about the weather.

An NPC is a person essentially lacking in higher reasoning abilities who blindly accepts whatever propaganda they are expected to swallow and unquestioningly follows the herd on any political issue, fashion trend or aesthetic question. If they have ever had an independent thought, it was a long time ago, and the experience was so frightening that they are determined it shall never happen again.

They are rarely actively stupid, but have a paralysing fear of being seen to be nonconformist or being exposed as more stupid or uninformed than they present themselves to be (you will rarely encounter an NPC pleading ignorance on a political question), and hence are very keen to "read the room" and determine what the "consensus" is on any given issue as quickly as possible. Being seen to be "correct" and "one of the good ones" is far more important than determining the truth of a given issue. Indeed, it's not obvious that NPCs can even understand the distinction between "the truth" and "the (local/expert) consensus".

Because they acquired the opinions they hold through osmosis and social conformity, they have only a surface-level understanding of any given political issue. Hence, arguing with them is usually pointless, as attempting to push or challenge them on any position they claim to hold will quickly devolve into accusations of bad faith or attempts to shame or dismiss the interlocutor (as the NPC would rather accuse others of being racist or similar than risk being exposed as an intellectual lightweight or confront the possibility that the "expert" "consensus" on some issue might be mistaken or even knowingly deceptive). The only way they can be persuaded to change their minds is to change the minds of the people around them and/or to change the narrative being promoted by the powers that be. This also makes it extremely easy for them to adapt to sudden changes in the prevailing narrative: unlike a person who arrives at their opinions through debate, reasoning and reflection, they don't feel the sting of cognitive dissonance or hypocrisy when they change their tune. They can move smoothly from war with Eurasia to war with Eastasia without a second thought.

Their surface-level understanding of politics and middling intelligence leads them to be very heavily dependent on political slogans, thought-terminating clichés and deepities to shore up the deficiencies and cognitive dissonance inherent in their worldview. In this and several other regards, the term is functionally interchangeable with "duckspeaker", coined by Orwell in 1984, meaning a person who quacks like a duck, reciting political orthodoxy mechanically without any intervention from the higher brain functions: "it was not the man's brain that was speaking, it was his larynx."

This is probably the best answer so far.

The "off-the-cuff" remark by the OP implied to me some concern for brevity.

Brevity has never been my specialty, I'll admit.

Thank you. Certainly the most long-winded, at any rate. I was a little embarrassed after posting my answer to scroll down and see everyone else had answered the prompt in two or three sentences.

In short, someone whose opinions and tastes are memetically absorbed, and who thinks in memes instead of reason?

I hadn't really thought of it that way, but that's certainly one way of looking at it.

Let me give an example that I think really highlights NPCism.

If you've played any Bethesda role playing game, you've seen it. These games have hoards of NPCs, with a generic pool of NPC phrases. You'll hear dozens of random NPCs echoing the same 6 phrases in a given location over and over and over again. But we aren't to true NPCism just yet.

There will be a quest giver in this town. He is the specific NPC that tells you to act on one of the 6 or so "rumors" you've heard all the other NPCs repeat ad nauseum. Like maybe you've heard over and over again "I hope the princess is ok" muttered as you pass by various NPCs. You walk up to this guy, and he confides in you that the princess is dead, however for the stability of the kingdom, a lookalike has been found. You must escort her, secretly, into the castle. This must be done because an impending marriage/alliance requires a living princess. You close the dialog, about to partake on this important quest, and then the NPC mutters "I hope the princess is ok".

MOTHER FUCKER! WE JUST HAD A 5 MINUTE CONVERSATION THAT THE PRINCESS IS FUCKING DEAD!

This is true NPCism. And the number of times I have no shit had that happen to me in real ass life has black pilled me so fucking hard I'm beyond recovery.

…are there any elder scrolls games that actually have a princess?

CHECKMATE, MONARCHISTS.

I think Daggerfall certainly had. That game was a true gem, also the only game in the series as far as I know that had prostitution (without mods).

Daggerfall didn't have prostitution in the final release. At one point it was meant to but this was removed to lower the age rating. The assets themselves were kept, hence why whenever you walked into a temple half the characters therein were dressed in a priestly fashion and the other half weren't wearing any clothes.

I think princess Elysana of Barenziah fame.

Sir, this is an Empire.


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