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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26689 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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I thought this was just another generic bad faith poster, but now that you pointed out the actual meaning of the name, I'm realizing this very well could be Darwin just having some fun with his username. It's been a long time since I've read his posts with any sort of regularity, but this definitely fits the pattern of obviously bad faith strawmanning that I remember.

It is, in fact, very obviously Darwin.

Nothing is less obvious. What’s your evidence? He’s a progressive…. who strawmans. Which is another way of saying he does not hold the average opinion of the sub in high regard, which is normal for a progressive. So your only piece of evidence is that he’s a progressive.

Just wanted to say, I agree with you here in that it's not obviously him, and it behooves us not to jump to conclusions, but for whatever reason, Guesswho himself decided that FCfromSSC was correct that it was, in fact, obvious. There's always the chance that Guesswho is a liar and copycat, but I think the most likely explanation is that it's indeed him. Again, I don't think it was obviously so, but at least more likely than not before this comment, but now I'm sure with a high level of confidence.

I think it's sarcasm. Would you have accepted a no?

I see you're going to force me to do the comparative analysis. The style is different. He does not relate to you or anyone else as if he knew you, personally. Arguments-wise as well, he talks as if he just came from reddit and shows no familiarity with our way of thinking ("Sorry, I can't even parse this" "Like, literally, what are you talking about?"), his attitude is naively pedagogic. Darwin had long lost that innocence and was more into point-scoring.

I think it's sarcasm. Would you have accepted a no?

It didn't look like sarcasm to me, but either way, obviously I would have accepted a no. It'd have been surprising, but I wouldn't see any reason for guesswho to lie about that, other than just trolling, I guess. Which could be what's happening with that comment, to be sure.

In terms of comparative analysis, I don't really think there's much of a way to do such a thing with anything approaching objectivity. Maybe ChatGPT, though then the question of validity arises. Again, from my own subjective analysis, the specific bad faith style looks very similar to Darwin and also quite different from the typical ways that a typical person with SJW leanings would make bad faith arguments. I suppose the only way to truly confirm would be to ask Darwin2500 on Reddit and if he says Yes, that'd be beyond a reasonable doubt at that point in my view. If he said No, then clearly there'd be some lying going on somewhere, and I'd probably lean towards it being different people, since Darwin2500, for all his bad faith, tried to stay away from blatant lies in that style and also his trolling tended to be content- and argument-based.

Edit: Also he did refer to me as if he knew me from Reddit, when he accused me of attacking his character on Reddit. Again, this could be a lie, especially since I don't remember attacking his character on Reddit but his belief about what conatitutes an attack on character seems to be different from mine.

I did talk to him by the time of the first discussion, and he denied omnipresence.

And there it is. Thanks for mentioning it, I missed that post completely.

You've already had a big discussion on the subject, if you're not convinced, that's your right, but come on, you're the one sniffing out galaxy-brained alt-righters who pretend to criticize antisemitism in order to spread it! How do you get off on demanding concrete evidence here?

Well yeah, because I had evidence. As I recall, you and other doubting commenters ended up admitting the behaviour I denounced was, at the very least, quite suspect.

That's not evidence, that's other people agreeing with you. A lot of people also agree with FC on this.

I had stuff like the new account popping up one day after the last alt, numerous deleted comments that were copypasted antisemitic ramblings in contrast with naive denunciations of antisemitism, turns of phrase that could only be uttered by an alt-righter, etc.

And for each of those you can come up with some mundane explanation, so hardly a smoking gun.

Darwin had a very distinct style, and I doubt we'll run into a random progressive that will be able to reproduce it.

As I pointed out the last time we went around on this, there has been no shortage of progressive posters in the various iterations of this forum. None but Darwin employ this highly recognizable blend of faux-naivety and assumptive closure. The point is not that the post presents arguments for progressivism. The point is that the post is written to portray the progressive position as obviously common-sense, and any disagreement in the most uncharitable terms possible.

It is in fact very common for progressives outside of this space. I’m not going to do a deep comparative behavioural analysis because it’s not worth it, I’d just caution you and others against the “assumptive closure” of assigning this identity “as obviously common-sense “.

I'm tempted to get scientific with this, and try setting up a random trial. Selected paragraphs, with the author names scrubbed off?

Eh. I'm not going to stop pointing out that it's Darwin; as some of the replies here seem to indicate, some people get it, and getting it is useful to them, in much the way I think it's useful to me. If you want to chime in that we're wrong every time, I'm okay with that.

As Arjin argued, you yourself find it useful to recognize alts. If I recall, your last spotlighted account was JewDefender, correct? I thought at first that they were genuine, but your comments helped highlight their method, and a couple more posts flipped me 180 to being positive they were a WN alt. At least in principle, we should be able to agree that calling out shenanigans is a good idea when they crop up.

Do you think the post above is a good one, and that us labelling it this way will discourage similar good posts from being made?

What really bothered me about thenether/jewdefender/foreverlurker/cake/motteposter is that he pretended to be left when he was in fact far right. In this case, if true, it’s just a progressive pretending to be another progressive. That’s not really bad faith, it doesn’t distort every discussion, so I'm less motivated to call it out.

In the original thread on darwin, I already told you that I considered your accusations of strawmanning and bad faith towards him to be light, if not baseless. And my opinion has not been changed after you nearly accused me of similar behaviour.

What really bothered me about thenether/jewdefender/foreverlurker/cake/motteposter is that he pretended to be left when he was in fact far right.

What bothers me about GuessWho/Darwin is that they pretend to be reasonable when they are not.

In the original thread on darwin, I already told you that I considered your accusations of strawmanning and bad faith towards him to be light, if not baseless.

Indeed. I made my case, other people agreed, you didn't. I'm okay with that result. Do you expect me to stop stating my opinion because you disagreed with it?

And my opinion has not been changed after you nearly accused me of similar behaviour.

I didn't "nearly accuse you of similar behavior". I said I thought you broke the rules. I've broken the rules a number of times before, so have most posters here. Avoiding doing so is difficult, but you don't like being accused, so I won't point it out in future. Darwin almost never explicitly broke the rules, which was a considerable portion of the problem.

There's things about the way you argue that I'm don't like much; we'll probably argue about them for a while. For all those objections, though, I think you argue in good faith, and I hope you hang around. Discussion with you seems productive. I don't know why you can't recognize the problem with the post above, or why you don't recognize the pattern, but I didn't recognize JewDefender's schtick either for a while, and I haven't recognized previous alts other people were sure of at all. If you get it you get it, and a lot of the people who spent a considerable amount of time talking to Darwin get it. If you or others don't, well, it is what it is. What else is there to do?

Do you expect me to stop stating my opinion because you disagreed with it?

No. I just don't want themotte as a whole to declare that guesswho is obviously darwin by popular consensus. ie, register my disagreement.

And JD was false flagging,copypasting, deleting his comments the day after making them. His violations were imo far more damaging to the discourse here than guesswho's. There's nothing really wrong with guesswho's comment, aside that he's wrong. Just let people argue against him without bringing the rules into it.

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