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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27711 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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I've seen people expressing bafflement that the average midwit on Reddit might think they could run Musk's assets better than Musk if they had the same luck/unscrupulousness to have the same resources. I ask, after seeing Musk apparently fail to understand Wikipedia costs money to provide, who wouldn't?

The most charitable read here is that Musk thinks Wikipedia deserves less money, not no money, and, like, ok Elon, I think you deserve less money and if you don't care about that opinion, why should they?

  • -24

The vast majority of the Wikipedia Foundation's money goes to supporting political causes, not runnign Wikipedia. Wikipedia is relatively cheap to run for a major global site. Musk is correct, and the critics nipping at his heals are midwits.

"Midwit" is exceedingly generous for the people piling on this specific Musk criticism. It takes about 2 minutes of internet research to check how much Wikimedia Foundation spending actually goes towards providing Wikipedia.

Some serious stones and glass houses imo. By those standards 99% of the Internet is dumber than “midwit”.

Can we just say “they don’t seem to know much about Wikipedia’s finances”?

It's not "don't seem to know much"; that's fine for everybody not joining the pile-on. It's "joining the pile-on without bothering to find out". Nescience vs ignorance.

If not midtwit than what?

My guess would be people wanting to culture war that don’t care much about the facts. It’s prefereble to hate on Elon (plays for wrong team) than figure out he’s factually correct quickly.

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