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As of this time @HlynkaCG has been permabanned. I'm posting this message at the top of the thread, because its not really for Hlynka, its for the community to know. There were a few different posts I could have chosen in the modqueue, and many of them were too buried to be visible. The mod team has given him repeated warnings and bans. And I personally reached out to him last ban to warn him that a permaban was likely coming if this behavior continued.
I mostly do not feel this is a good thing, but it is a necessary thing. Hlynka had quite a few quality contributions, and I don't think I was alone in appreciating his often unique (for themotte) perspective. But he repeatedly did it in a way that just wasn't acceptable for the rules around here.
I would like people to have a few takeaways:
Please keep any discussion civil.
Hlynka was, in my opinion, one of the best posters this community has ever seen. I had an argument with him once that abruptly and very significantly changed my mind, my values and my entire perspective on a whole host of issues, all in a single sentence. What he had to offer, this community needed quite badly, whether the members recognize it or not. I'm quite sure he was right about most things, and of the few I'm less sure of, I'd still rather bet with him than against him.
That being said, I am pretty sure he knew the ban was coming, and was in no particular hurry to forestall it. My impression is that he just got tired of the bullshit, a situation with which I sympathize even if it doesn't change the outcome. We ask questions to find answers, and having found them, the purpose of a space designed to facilitate question-asking falls rapidly to zero, and it is time to move on. Godspeed, good sir.
What was the argument about? Could you link it?
Several people have asked, Reddit's search functions are trash so I don't have a link, but I'm working on a writeup. the short version was that I was super-black-pilled and 100% committed to what I perceived to be Red-Tribe Accelerationism, went in hard asking what the alternative was supposed to be, and left convinced that I had, in fact, been thinking like a Blue, should stop doing that immediately, and should endeavor to actually think like a Red instead. People who've talked to me long-term often mention that I've mellowed out a lot since then; that conversation is what did it.
A lot of people dump on him for his theory that blues and the "radical" right are actually the same thing, but I know for a fact he is correct, because I have observed the divide between the two in my own thinking. I was raised Red, and went deep blue for more than a decade before drifting back. What I thought of as moving back to the "right", though, was only surface detail, and my core ideological and philosophical commitments were still intrinsically Blue. His response clearly communicated the difference, and I have endeavored to emulate his good example ever since.
Was it the one gattsuru cited somewhere in this thread?
I can't find a post by gattsuru citing Hlynka in this thread. got a link?
....Still working on the writeup.
https://www.themotte.org/post/900/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/193321?context=8#context
Ah, thanks much. None of those are the actual exchange, but they are part of the lead-up to it, as he and I started poking at each other more and more. This and this are close preludes, and probably contain most of the information, but it took an actual head-on argument about it to drive the point home.
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