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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2666 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 22, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Anyone know the story I'm thinking of? It was a world where every wall is dominated by porn, and people know nothing but that. People have fleeting memories of life beforehand (just dreams IIRC) but other than that this is all they've ever known.

Hard to google for obvious reasons.

The idea was that some civilization really liked porn, so they'd send somulated versions of themselves in to experience hundreds of years of it, not aware they were basically creating hell.

On a slight tangent. Is anyone else annoyed by conservatives' vilification of porn and video games?

It's not that I don't see the harm of those things. But they are the effect, not the cause. People turn to porn and video games as an escape from a shitty boring life. They can bring forth a shitty boring life in sufficient quantities, but criticizing the effect seems like pure laziness (and borderline grifting). The real cause is an order of magnitude more difficult to address.

At this point, porn has become an applause light for a subset of the online right. Which they extend to many other forms of technology as well (like AI???).

This is a longstanding problem on the American right, Moldbug discussed it back in the day (and he was far from the first). American conservatism (since 1776) is essentially saying “👉👈what if we just stopped liberalism right here?”, where ‘here’ is Current Year Minus 10/20/50/100. Admitting that 1776 leads pretty inexorably to 2023 is beyond the pale for the American right (even the far right) outside of hardcore tradcaths and NrX types like Yarvin.

Because of this, it’s always about the symptom rather than the cause. Soyfacing about abolishing Drag Queen Story Hour makes them feel good, even though to a child raised in modern American culture its presence or absence will make exactly 0 difference to their own political or cultural (or sexual/gender) identity when everything else is saying the same message, even on the right (“be who you want to be”, individualism, freedom, personal liberty prioritized above community and society). As perhaps the English-speaking world’s most famous late 20th century conservative said, “there is no such thing as society”. US ‘conservatives’ take this to heart and so are incapable of diagnosing the root causes you describe.

And while hypocrisy is universal, it’s very important to remember that the young men cheering on porn band or whatever are usually current or former hardcore gooners themselves and so are really talking about themselves and their issues with self control more than the grand arc of liberal modernity.

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