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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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The random mention of "goyslop" makes what would otherwise be a reasonable article to reference elsewhere impossible to use in "polite company". Why did you find it necessary?

To begin with, why would the Jewish/non-Jewish dimension even be relevant here? There may have been some case the JQ-posters could have made in the case of TV where I believe the term was originally coined, but Genshin Impact may be the biggest extreme spoonfeeding quest marker open world game out there at the moment, and it almost certainly has a higher fraction of Jewish players than Jewish developers.

Can we please have a moratorium on word policing? Especially if it's literally all you have to say? There is nothing more obnoxious, low effort, and uncharitable that picking a single word out of a 10,000 word essay and harping on it for a lazy paragraph.

Can we please have a moratorium on word policing?

No. It's entirely appropriate to tell people that dropping random slurs into an otherwise okay post is derailing and serves no purpose except to let everyone know who you want to boo, however irrelevant.

Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

There are other forums without this rule.

This is a silly rule, and you should feel silly for citing it. I've over the years seen members melt down and rage quit over topics they wanted completely censored being allowed here. Like HBD. By even allowing anyone to mention HBD, they felt like they were not being included in the discussion. So all that rule really boils down to is the caprice of whoever receives it in the mod queue.

There's a distinction between censoring manner (what the rule is referencing) and censoring topics (what people flamed out about).

I mean the issue is over-policing of a rule about the manner in which something is written as a gotcha. If the post had included a statement that even implied that Jews or Judaism were even part of the discussion, then I would see the point. None of that appears in the post. It’s not even about who controls the games. So the point of bringing up “goyslop” as a word — in what amounts to a substack length post — not only derails the conversation with an isolated need for rigor, but reads a bit like an accusation of dog whistling. If you think he’s trying to be back door antisemitic, fair enough, say so plainly and have at least some evidence beyond a fairly common slang term for “bland and boring”.

a fairly common slang term for “bland and boring”.

No. People are noticing it because it's not common. Using it is a sideswipe attack on Jews. And there's no backdoor or dogwhistle; it's blatant.

If the post had included a statement that even implied that Jews or Judaism were even part of the discussion, then I would see the point.

Ironically, that would make the choice of words less bizarre.

not only derails the conversation with an isolated need for rigor,

What is isolated about this demand? For that matter, what does it have to do with rigor?

but reads a bit like an accusation of dog whistling. If you think he’s trying to be back door antisemitic, fair enough, say so plainly and have at least some evidence beyond a fairly common slang term for “bland and boring”.

Is the claim that 4bpp was... Dog whistling about dog whistles? I think he spoke pretty plainly. It's really only common in forums where antisemitism (ironic or otherwise) is common.

Maybe rigor is the wrong word. But I think it’s a case where people are simply taking a word in a post of several thousand words, and assuming with no context that even implies antisemitism that 4bpp was clearly trying to imply that Jews were somehow involved in making games easier and thus more bland, boring and so on. And this without anything else that points in that direction.

And the thing I observe about most dog whistles is that they’re rarely one off events. I’ve never known anyone who could keep a clean profile online and only have one incident. I wouldn’t say it’s never ever happened, but it’s extremely rare for someone to sincerely hold an opinion and never say so in the open.

goyslop

Low-quality, unhealthy food, seen in antisemitic circles as being promoted by Jews for consumption by gentiles for malicious purposes .

Yes one word can ruin a comment, however long. Try it out! You can literally ruin any normal discourse with a single turn of phrase.

Given the views that are sometimes expressed here, I don’t think you should be sharing any links to this forum at all with “polite company”.

And if you just want to share the essay without showing where it came from you can just edit that word out.

The word was in the longer substack post linked at the bottom.

Mostly because I find the word very funny. But you are right, I shortened it to just "slop".