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ZorbaTHut  3yr ago (text post)   36977 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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So I’ve now been banned on all of Reddit’s neutral subs. This might not belong here but perhaps we should go back to Reddit? It seems as though anyone whose center right or maybe I’m just Maga eventually gets banned. My concern with this sub leaving Reddit is we will become like them. As Reddit subs are isolating themselves from the right they become just talking points to the left. Off Reddit this subs only going to be recruiting people from the right and the conversations will become equally dull. I actually like discussing things with adversaries. And on net I think people need to hear how other people think.

It feels to me more and more communities are feeling like they need to pick a side. I remember years ago I could post on neoliberal as a Reagan Republican. Then I was banned. And a year or two later they have post about how can I talk to a Republican. Infantile stuff. And while I see the need to get off Reddit because well I get banned constantly - being off Reddit is a fear of becoming a dull GOP talking points sub. Because I’ve seen enough subs go from lively debate to we talk about Dem talking points now.

More of a thought piece than saying we should go back to Reddit. But without having some attachment to slatestar it seems like it will be tough to get more than red tribe let’s bash dumb blue tribe convos.

My concern with this sub leaving Reddit is we will become like them. As Reddit subs are isolating themselves from the right they become just talking points to the left.

Besides the practical reasons like the fact that this community was slotted for inevitable destruction, by implication you're also saying that we could attract and retain a critical mass of intelligent leftist posters.

The fight is already lost on reddit. You've even in your post pointed out that the side-wide culture is infantile and censorious. Even the good posters we DID have ended up leaving when they would find a topic they believed should be banned from discussion.

There's nothing left for us [there]. Let's go.

Weird post. You've not addressed the reason we've left reddit, or if you had it was in an example that goes against your suggestion. We left reddit because the management there was hostile to our continued existence. The amount of time we had left on the site was probably no longer than another year and it would have been a year of gradual degradation in our ability to have the very conversation this place is meant to protect.

And as far as all the concern that we're going to somehow become an echo chamber because we have a conspicuous lack of the one perspective I can turn on nearly any mainstream platform and have vomited at me from every direction. I find the concern silly. I'd enjoy if more woke people coming around and engaging in good faith but I'm not surprised they don't, their arguments, if tempered to survive this place, don't very closely resemble mainstream advocacy because the bailey to motte ratio of mainstream progressivism is massive. Debating progressives feels like looking at an valley entirely filled with bailey and wondering what handful of mottes they're going to claim(because there are different mutually contradictory sets of mottes that protect the same bailey valley). They've found a way to protect their bailey by controlling the institutions, they don't need to and seem pretty uninterested in hearing criticism.

Unfortunately, in order to go back to Reddit, this place will have to become 'talking points to the left'. Or didn't you know why Zorba etc. decided to move? Because they were already getting interference by Reddit admins and the Eye of Sauron.

Moving back as-is will only incur more "down with this sort of thing" and eventually banning, unless anything right of centre or even centrist gets dumped. Which means "fifty Stalins!" on all Culture War issues and no more conversations or arguments with dissenting viewpoints. Orange Man Bad forever and ever, and you had better recite that morning, noon and night.

Perhaps.

The risks though being off Reddit is we become just another conservative group that throws shade on all the stupid things leftist do. Maybe the point is in order to grow we need to recruit center left more than any other group.

I also thing we need to expand off culture war and add in geopolitics and economics.

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i got banned from at least 2 bitcoin/crypto ones, if it's any consolation

So I’ve now been banned on all of Reddit’s neutral subs. This might not belong here but perhaps we should go back to Reddit?

Why are you LARPing as a beaten wife?

So this is a fair criticism.

So if you were banned for unknown reason that wasn't in the public rules then congratulations, you have found out more of the secret rules. Or you are running afoul with one of the rules constantly because none of the mods are telling you what you are doing wrong, because they are supposed to be secret.

Reddit has managed to neuter the discussions in subs like KotakuInAction where it was a reliable place to find stuff around topics like coordinated journalistic efforts of pushing narratives. It was KiA raison d'etre that has devolved into "oh god, they gender- and/or race-swapped this character in franchise X". The one simple trick that did that was that they have secret rules on that the submods aren't allow to tell anyone. One of those rules are "indentity invalidation" and the solution is that KiA employ without telling exactly what is forbidden is banning trans discussions alltogether. It resulted in that when KiwiFarms discussion needed to be moderated away because KiwiFarms made fun of trans people and the removal of KF of cloudflare is a campaign by a trans person. Of course the shitposters on KiA are going to try to "invalidate" Keffals "identity" and risk to the existence of the whole subreddit.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/28/reddit-bans-popular-anti-woke-subreddit-for-sharing-gender-critical-posts/

I just removed my 16 year old reddit account. I removed all the posts and comments that I've written over the years before doing it and before I went and deleted without hesitation. This I didn't do lightly because I've invested in some of personality into that account. The reason I did it was three things in a short period of time. I saw thing that was removed by reddit admins with the appropriate marker left behind, a canary removed that stated that reddit admins have been in contact with the submoderators and also a so called modsummit where a subreddit mod wasn't invited to. Great more secret rules to push the narrative....

FWIW the larger subreddits are all controlled by a relatively small cabal of uberjannies who use automated banlists. For posting a nonzero number of times on LockdownSkepticism and CoronavirusCirclejerk I got banned silently from posting in places I'd never even been on or heard of.

So I’ve now been banned on all of Reddit’s neutral subs. This might not belong here but perhaps we should go back to Reddit?

Sounds akin to spousal abuse.

Then I was banned.

Why?

I never see naked adversarial outgroup bashing amongst our cohort and first and foremost this is a court of ideas. You're welcome to present anything and if you can defend your findings with evidence then it doesn't matter what colour tribe your ideas come from. The reason it appears to be left bashing is because mainstream leftist discourse is easily picked apart. I'm not 100% certain but I imagine there's a leftist version of the motte out there with equally as rigourous standards for their stances. Moreover, most of us are surely grey tribe in here with no cultural affiliation with true red tribe at all. I know Scott wrote this 8 years ago now but it still seems at least relevant-ish:

The Red Tribe is most classically typified by conservative political beliefs, strong evangelical religious beliefs, creationism, opposing gay marriage, owning guns, eating steak, drinking Coca-Cola, driving SUVs, watching lots of TV, enjoying American football, getting conspicuously upset about terrorists and commies, marrying early, divorcing early, shouting “USA IS NUMBER ONE!!!”, and listening to country music.

The Blue Tribe is most classically typified by liberal political beliefs, vague agnosticism, supporting gay rights, thinking guns are barbaric, eating arugula, drinking fancy bottled water, driving Priuses, reading lots of books, being highly educated, mocking American football, feeling vaguely like they should like soccer but never really being able to get into it, getting conspicuously upset about sexists and bigots, marrying later, constantly pointing out how much more civilized European countries are than America, and listening to “everything except country”.

You can replace some of the talking points (i.e. swap out "opposing gay marriage" with "opposing transitioning children" and "supporting gay rights" with "supporting trans rights") but the crux of it still stands. I'd wager 9/10 mottizens fit far more firmly into the blue tribe culturally even if some of their ideas lean red.

Besides which, where else is there for cultural leftists to explore and discover blasphemous, forbidden thoughts? Certainly not reddit, not for a long time.

So, Scott's original post that you quoted included "Catholic" vs. "Protestant" in the respective lists...with Catholic as Red, and Protestant as Blue.... This was edited out not long afterwards, possibly due to some well-deserved mockery.

(For anyone else unfamiliar with American Christianity, Catholic/Protestant maps very poorly to the Red/Blue divide, but if you had to force the association, it would be the opposite of what Scott said.)

I would actually be interested in a mottewide survey to evaluate how the red/blue split here is- I'll wager that although we probably don't have very many plumbers driving leased F-250's, we are probably more red tribe than you think.

We're probably mostly grey tribe, aren't we?

Probably more grey tribe than blue or red, but I don't know if we'd have a clear majority for any of the five I've heard described(the three from SSC plus black[self explanatory] and violet[conservative, religious, well educated]), even if you exclude the non US posters.

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I'm not 100% certain but I imagine there's a leftist version of the motte out there with equally as rigourous standards for their stances.

That would probably be TheSchism, which has much less commenting but if OP can conduct themselves in a reasonable, civilised manner, would be a good place to discuss things with adversaries.

Getting banned off everywhere does invite "maybe it's not them, it's you" consideration, though.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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