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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25577 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024

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Like, James Damore was unsuccessful, but he did sincerely try to counter wokeness at Google where he worked.

I don't think this is an accurate description of what he did when he wrote and distributed his infamous memo. I'd characterize it more as him sincerely trying to help wokeness, under the belief that the woke (or rather, the equivalents at the time, since I don't think "woke" was nearly as commonly used back then) genuinely wanted to accomplish the things they said they did.

You know, I'd never actually sat down to read it. Reading it now... oof. You're right, he did seem to be sincerely trying to help Google accomplish their woke goals, like giving some very practical suggestions on how to attract more women into tech. The whole thing comes across as very apologetic, not a rebellion at all.

I absolutely hate the fact that I think of it in terms of cliches about sex differences, but at the time, the whole thing reminded me of the whole phenomenon of "She told me her problems, I suggested some ways to solve them, and all she did was get mad at me" and "I told him my problems, and instead of comforting me, all he did was provide me with solutions." IIRC Damore is on the autism spectrum, which is obviously associated with being "extremely male," whereas the ideology in question tend to be known for attracting lots of women, which doesn't help matters.

I'd characterize it more as him sincerely trying to help wokeness

Back then that was the sincere anti-woke position, though. I'm only speaking for myself, but 7 more years of black pills made me reconsider all that talk about "equality", but at the time I was all on board for closing gender gaps (I suppose even now, I'm not against "women in tech", but I'd say just do what we did in sports, and have some degree of sex segregation).

The biggest blackpill with Damore is that there were two camps

  1. Damore should be fired because he said bad things about women

and

  1. Damore should be fired because he brought politics to the workplace

Just underscored how anyone against this stuff has no allies anywhere.

In the end didn’t Damore win, he settled for a presumably large sum out of court because of California state law prohibiting firing for political opinions, didn’t he?

He settled, but because it was undisclosed he might have settled for Larry Page having to forgo giving him a swift kick in the butt.

And re: might, I’ll point out that the man who bought a fired for truth domain name has managed to go four years without any noteworthy stories about how he’s spending his massive settlement.

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