Such a lame way to describe the professor too. “Reparations advocate” is a position on a political hot topic not their field of study. Classic one-dimensional view of people.
I mean, VA governor Ralph Northam probably did blackface (? idk that story is confusing) and used to vote Republican but after getting a trifecta has now signed like [1300 bills](https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/local/virginia/new-virginia-laws-go-into-effect-july-1/291-535bd5a9-402b-41b3-b21b-06f7de7c0483) put before him last year including hate crimes laws, some police reform, insulin price caps, marijuana decriminalization and is pushing for a [marijuana legalization bill along with mass pardons/record sealing and community equity licences.](https://wset.com/news/local/will-previous-marijuana-convictions-be-cleared-if-legal-weed-moves-forward-in-virginia)
Dirtbag politicians (like FDR, LBJ etc) tend to achieve more goals than idealists since they get bills passed however while idealists get bogged down in process. Biden could be that too?
(Not reparations though, no politician can get reparations passed, the implementation is unworkable)
I don't know what you mean by dirtbag versus idealist—and suspect it's bullshit—but that's not the issue. The issue is Joe has had a long and racist career of passing racist policy. So of course I don't expect him to suddenly pass radically anti-racist policy at the twilight of his career.
Bro Biden is barely going to understand that he's president; closest he might get to LBJ's tactics is pulling his dick out in front of a secret service agent thinking he's at the doctor's office.
> pulling his dick out in front of a secret service agent
Nah, [that's what he already did as VP](https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2014/08/01/biden-swims-naked-upsetting-female-secret-service-agents-book-claims)
Submission statement: Regular /r/TheMotte poster, not a fan of this
place, but slowly getting annoyed with “charitable” readings of Trump’s
recent antics.
However, /r/CultureWarRoundup seems to be basically everything you
accuse /r/TheMotte of being.
And isn’t this comment … an explicit call for violence? Not some kind
of debatable dog-whistle, but exactly the kind of thing that gets
subreddits banned.
Welcome to SneerClub! It's OK to feel some ambivalence about sneering.
For me, the takeaway from the proliferation of rationalist-adjacent breakaway subreddits (slatestarcodex, TheMotte, CultureWarRoundup, TheSchism) is not that some of these places are bad and some are good (although some are certainly worse than others). Rather, the reason these groups keep splitting is that the underlying concept is wrong: the whole idea of a neutral marketplace of ideas with no Overton Window, where any viewpoint can be advanced as long as basic norms of civility are upheld, is fatally flawed.
I mean, Scott called it: ["we can no longer have a national conversation."](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/)
I wrote a thread [touching on this](https://twitter.com/budgetplayer/status/1275850494003511296).
It's not _just_ that it doesn't work and has never been how discourse has ever worked (let alone on fucking _reddit_, which very efficiently shows how popular a particular viewpoint is within the community). It's that it has clear modes of failure built in that are easily exploited by bad actors, and hey, would you look at all those _fucking nazis_ hanging out in the Bailey.
>where any viewpoint can be advanced
This didn't happen, otherwise I would not be banned from every Rationalist space for simply talking about Marxism.
This is an outright lie. MarxBro, you were banned from SlateStarCodex for repeatedly insulting people and taking Scott's quotes out of context. CitizenCokane holds similar Marxist views and he was never banned. Multiheaded is an outspoken Communist and Scott [promoted her personal fundraiser](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/27/ot13-thread-the-blood-of-angry-men/) on his front page. The idea that Marxism or Communism represent some unique taboo among rationalist circles is demonstrably false.
Which quote did I take out of context? Insulting people is not against the rules, I just have to meet two of the criteria "true, kind or necessary". Often it is both true and necessary to describe people in ways that they find "insulting".
>Rather, the reason these groups keep splitting is that the underlying concept is wrong: the whole idea of a neutral marketplace of ideas with no Overton Window, where any viewpoint can be advanced as long as basic norms of civility are upheld, is fatally flawed.
Yes, it's impossible, because humans aren't perfectly rational and objective beings. It's likewise impossible to ever have a perfectly representative democracy with literally zero corruption and literally zero disenfranchisement, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. There is value in striving for an ideal and coming as close to it as you reasonably can, even if that ideal is unreachable.
>I mean, Scott called it: ["we can no longer have a national conversation."](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/)
And this doesn't seem like a massive problem to you? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious, do you see the current level of extreme political polarization in the Western world as a problem? Because as someone who studies and works in politics, I certainly do.
To be clear, the problem isn't that an Overton Window exists. The problem is that there are now two separate Overton Windows for two separate groups of the population, and each one encompasses increasingly more extreme positions on one side of the political spectrum, while cutting off even moderate positions on the other side.
> And this doesn't seem like a massive problem to you? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious, do you see the current level of extreme political polarization in the Western world as a problem? Because as someone who studies and works in politics, I certainly do.
It's very bad and all the rationalist subreddits in the world will do absolutely nothing to fix it! One can take issue with the methodology of the [Bail et al. study](https://www.pnas.org/content/115/37/9216) but it *absolutely* describes my experience of reading the CW thread: there's always that one post that either fills me with skin-crawling disgust or makes me want to punch the wall. If I want to feel less angry at conservatives I'll go read [French Press](https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/) or something.
This is an edgy take for SneerClub but I think the only solution for Western democracy is to go back to "smoke-filled rooms", i.e., have *less* public engagement with the political process and political ideas, and more professional politicians engaging in backroom compromises. ["Our intricate, informal system of political intermediation, which took many decades to build, did not commit suicide or die of old age; we reformed it to death."](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/)
I mean, I'm not really sure what you mean here. I think most of us here pretty much think r/TheMotte and r/CultureWarRoundup are the exact same when it comes to being sneering targets.
I think there's a view here that /r/TheMotte is dominated by alt-rightists, and there are some, but I think this perspective is exaggerated by cherry-picking.
Whereas in /r/CultureWarRoundup you don't need to cherry-pick, it really does seem to be the case for a large majority of posters.
I got into the habit after my Dominic Cummings posts, and now I’m under a 7pm to 5am curfew every day so I don’t have a huge amount to do other than read, and sometimes actually good books get boring because they don’t include enough fascinating insanity
Or they’re too well written for me to enjoy the terrible prose of a real vintage /r/TheMotte comment
I will say that as bad as /r/TheMotte is, /r/CultureWarRoundup actually is worse. The former at least sometimes pretends to be intellectually neutral (while actually being The_Donald for nerds), but the later is completely open about being The_Donald for nerds. You can get banned from /r/TheMotte for being too aggressively mask-off, but not from CWR.
Sure, I haven’t followed the latter for a while and based on when I DID I can see the same difference - I’m not in the business of not giving credit where its due...
But the credit either has would - metaphorically - have each denied the same bank loan outright, rather than the former getting at least a better price
My own impression (plus polls et al, showing it 50/50 Trump/Biden) is that while there's a fair amount of quite right-wing content, and a common antipathy for the perceived excesses of social justice, that impression is not accurate.
At least if you're evaluating the subreddit from an American mainstream perspective, and not relative to centre-left or hard-left Reddit communities, in which you have a skewed political compass where Bernie Sanders is centrist at best. That's my main hypothesis for why some people think TheMotte is hard-right.
Polling on that subreddit is self-evidently utter nonsense of no epistemic significance whatsoever: if you believe that the polls they run are representative and admit to it you are showing yourself up as a rube
Sorry to be blunt but it’s a straightforward fact that historically every poll of political views there has been hysterically designed and dishonestly answered
Furthermore, Bernie Sanders is not considered “centrist at best” in Reddit communities of that sort - it’s your compass that’s skewed, probably from spending too much time on reddit - whereas, speaking from my perspective as politically active and left-wing in the UK amongst other places, I can confidently tell you that from the outside world /r/TheMotte is shockingly and consistently right wing and bigoted.
How is the polling skewed? Presidential preferences, for one, seem hard to "hysterically design".
Or you've got things like what [Scott says in "RIP Culture War Thread"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/):
>During the last few years of Culture War thread, a consensus grew up that it was heavily right-wing. This isn’t what these data show, and on the few times I looked at it myself, it wasn’t what I saw either. After being challenged to back this up, I analyzed ten randomly chosen comments on the thread; four seemed neutral, three left/liberal, and three conservative. When someone else objected that it was a more specific “blatant” anti-transgender bias, I counted up all the mentions of transgender on three weeks worth of Culture War threads: of five references, two were celebrating how exciting/historic a transgender person recently winning an election was, a third was neutrally referring to the election, a fourth was a trans person talking about their experiences, and a fifth was someone else neutrally mentioning that they were transgender. This sort of thing happened enough times that I stopped being interested in arguing the point.
I've never seen a SneerClubber counter this, maybe by evaluating random comments of their own. It's always just "confidently tell[ing] you" how *obviously* right-wing the CW thread is.
What exactly is there to counter beyond the vague feelings of a guy I don’t trust in the first place? This is gaming the conversation (again). I don’t have to answer to Scott Alexander’s feelings because I don’t care about the vague feelings of Scott Alexander, a man whose vague feelings I am mistrustful of.
I also didn’t say that the polling was, quote, “skewed”, I said it was hysterically designed and that people lied in the responses: that it is bullshit. Why did you make up this word “skewed” that I didn’t use?
The point is that *in the first place* there’s no reason to trust the self-reports of people who have proven themselves bullshitters in the first place.
Well this starts with Scott Alexander Donttelllastnamehereitsagainsttherules being some variety of alt right with all the "trump isn't racist" posting and updating in the middle of muslim travel ban rhetoric and then implementation (all while knowing about other "non racist" things like ads for the execution of the central park five, and so on.)
It's not like he lives in the middle of nowhere, either, where one would be susceptible to not knowing any immigrants from the middle east. He lives in San Francisco and hangs around tech circles. It isn't as benign as your usual case of a Trump loving uncle from the middle of nowhere arguing at the dinner table that Trump isn't racist, and for said uncle you would very correctly infer his political opinions from that; Scott deserves far less benefit of the doubt.
Consequently his fanboy communities are the way they are, weak sauce disowning nonwitstanding.
He talked enough about "fabian strategy" and "pockets of survivability" (edit: sorry, "bubbles of livability") and various other re-euphemised variations of "hide your power level" to where his explicit proclamations on whether he's alt right or not are being ignored by both fanboys and detractors alike. Both his fanboys and his detractors assume he's alt-right.
Edit: one could point out how much of what he blogs about isn’t Trump or misogynistic. Well maybe the hypothetical uncle talks mostly about fishin’. So what.
Let's be *charitable* I don't think SA is alt-right - he posts his ballots and most of the stuff he votes for is fairly liberal. He does, however, have repugnant beliefs about IQ and black people.
Now if you were not charitable you'd argue it just means he *is* alt-right but too limp-wristed to even vote according to his convictions.
I don't think he deserves more charity than an uncle from Louisiana who at length expounded how not racist Trump is, pre election, and then in 2017 after all the muslim ban, how he was right. Less, the country guy watches fox news and is more misinformed about everything. You'd assume in the heartbeat that the guy is a Trump supporter.
And of course with Scott always dropping his "hide your power level folks" nuggets of wisdom in comments, less.
Here's my guess. Scott has always been rather horribly misogynistic. ([Early example](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example)). Here we have Trump being Trump, the grab them by the pussy tape and all. Scott liked that. A lot of people like him did. Didn't need to be any more complex than that. Has to write something positive about Trump.
Just because he got a thesaurus and suffers from logorrhoea does not mean we need to treat him as fundamentally different from regular people.
And after all the "hide your power level folks" stuff (variations of which he also been doing going for a very long time, including back when it was just some idiots on lesswrong self radicalizing against semiconductor fabs rather than against minorities), he's the last person to take on the face value.
>Well, I'm afraid I kind of trust the seduction people. They've put a lot of work into their "art" and at least according to their self-report are pretty successful.
lol
Also if you look through comments in more recent discussions (where hes more on point) or his (historically bullshit) posts about Kolmogorov etc... very "don't you see how clever and wise I am for hiding my power level" vibe, for sure.
edit: anyhow my point is that it's not surprising that he originated alt right communities that talk about violence, because he comes off as alt right to a lot of people (most of those people like him for it but that would change in a heartbeat if his site was visited by a large number of "normal" people who'd make same conclusions as his fans do but have a bit of a value disagreement).
Yeah I definitely got that vibe as well. My opinion is that he shares a lot of the repugnant beliefs of the alt-right but stop shorts of voting for Trump and the like because he knows the alt-right would purge him in a heartbeat if they ever came to power (also it gives him plausible deniability about the nature of his beliefs). Many of them really hate him for being Jewish, dating trans people, etc. even if they all find common ground on the IQ of black people.
The 2009 PUA thing though - clearly this stretches very far, it's not the evil feminists who radicalized him or whatever the fuck
Here's an example of what I am talking about (in relation to Damore):
> And if you're reading this — sorry, huge respect for what you're trying, but it's pretty doomed. The best hope is a Fabian strategy of making sure enough there's enough of an underground of people who know what's up that they can quietly self-sort, form bubbles of liveability, and curb the worst excesses without forming a clear target for anybody. If you actually go riding in on a white horse waving a paper marked "ANTI-DIVERSITY MANIFESTO", you're just providing justification for the next round of purges.
I'm half way convinced that he's thinking to himself that he's extremely clever at doing some kind of "Fabian strategy" of, not directly proclaiming his support for Trump but instead going on (for example) on how not racist Trump is. Behind the enemy lines, attacking one specific target. (He also probably needs to re-read his history, I don't think he's using the namedrop correctly although it does convey the right idea to his readers).
And of course he can't let his cleverness go unnoticed hence on just about every opportunity he will suggest to his followers to do that kind of shit.
Hence my opinion that I should treat his beliefs as the grand mystery of the political orientation of some country guy that talks mostly about fishing but also about how not racist Trump is and how women are hoes and PUAs are right and a bunch of crap about false rape accusations just to keep things creepy. His living in SF if anything only makes such beliefs more *bad* rather than *ill informed*.
And this is also perfectly consistent with his fans forming most certainly alt-right online communities.
edit: and with regards to rightwing hating him for his ancestry, I think he's dumb enough and been hanging in the intellectual narcissism circles for long enough to where he believes that if only he can convince neonazis that his people aren't stupid, everything would be just peachy.
> Rooshv: "I'm so good I have a 33% success rate, one in three women I talk to is a 'succes'"
> Scott: "wow, that seems legit"
Lollll
(To be fair, scott is prob thinking of other secudtion people than that guy)
> Scott Alexander Donttelllastnamehereitsagainsttherules being some variety of alt right with all the "trump isn't racist" posting
I'm not a poster or a member here but I feel that I can offer a unique perspective on this that I ought to share.
At the time, when I read "You are still crying wolf", it felt self-evidently true to me. Of *course* racism is a position that you have to advertise, to own, for it to coherently mean anything. If you go around saying "I like blacks! I like Jews! I like everyone and want to make America great for everyone", what kind of racist even are you? That's not what it looks like when a person is a champion for racism! *Of course* we should take politicians at their word when they describe their own positions, because if we don't, then what are we even doing? How does politics even function then? Also the fringe groups that this racism would appeal to are so tiny compared to respectable people that you would attract by not being racist, so wouldn't Trump be insane to court them? All these were argued by Scott and I remember reading these arguments and thinking of course that's true, I already believe all of this but this guy just put it into words. I came to resent Scott's hard-line critics for reading alt-right sympathies into these positions and even treating those sympathies as self-evident. That seemed blatantly insane and mean-spirited to me.
After seeing a few years of Trump (and other Trumpoids around the world) I had a rude awakening. To my great horror I discovered that it is completely possible to stoke racist, fascist animus from behind a veneer of plausible deniability. You don't even have to be racist yourself to do so; you just have to know when to say the right words and when to reap the benefits. The "fringe group" analysis was all wrong, too. As it turns out, a vast monolith of people have these latent sentiments just waiting for someone to legitimize and feed them, and so by pushing the right buttons and rubbing salt on the right grievances again and again and again, as a crafty authority figure you can steer the mind of the nation away from the ideals of equality and solidarity and towards dark places, even as you craftily pay these ideals lip service.
So, having myself been so wrong about all of that, I sympathize with Scott who was also wrong in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons. Based on my own lived experience I suspect he's not alt-right, I'm not alt-right, we just came into this subject armed with all our rationalist beisutsukai katas and we fucked up majorly, and got the wrong answer, which Sneerclub got right somehow while employing zero beisutsukai katas. Worst of all, if I were to *now* come across such an article arguing for Trump's good record on race issues, I would consider the author an apologist, a wolf in sheep's clothing, in exactly the "insane and mean-spirited" way that I abhorred before; I must only give Scott a pass because I was literally in his shoes and thought all these exact same things, so I *know* how the worldview he laid out in that article can form due to naivete and underestimating the art of politics, rather than secret QAnon sympathies. I still hope that Scott comes out and says all of this outright, but the least I can do is come out and say it myself. I'm not a big shot blogger and I don't have a community or a brand to think about, so I can just tell it how it is.
Well from my perspective...
Firstly there was the attack on Obama's birth certificate. Trump was promoting it left and right. This is an obviously overt, conscious racist act that he had been doing prior to 2016. There was a plenty of other very racist things he done, worse things too.
I don't see how you can possibly say that birtherism was not racist. I just don't see it. I can see just being ignorant of it somehow, but that's about it.
Even worse, taking ads for the execution of central park five. Actually fucking paying to (try to) do a lynching mob! How fucked up is that?
There's also certain experts in being racist who weighted in. Did KKK drop their support for Trump after he said all those PC things? No, of course not. They just don't think that saying a bit of PC bullshit undoes years of racist actions. Their hailed (and heil-ed) Trump as a racist.
When it comes to rationalists, the thing is the sole purpose of "rationalism" was to get people from being intellectually gullible about concepts to actually wiring money to a scammer (there is a significant gulf between those two things). That is all it ever was. That's all those "katas" were for: enhancing gullibility.
I'm not quite sure how this gullibility trick works, to be entirely honest, but basically you have someone whose actions and history makes them a fairly bad choice of a person to give money to; worse than e.g. choose-random-person-on-the-whole-planet. But what they are *saying* is supposed to change your mind and you wire them money.
So I guess there's a common thread of gullibility; in the sense of being unduly persuaded by the statements of the person that may just be saying what ever it takes to persuade you. You see someone who's going to say certain things due to the fleeting pressure of circumstances, and you listen to it, and think, ohh they are very convincing, it's very strong evidence, I must update my priors, or what ever it is.
But to normal people... Trump didn't even ever say the kind of words that ought to move the needle in any way! He could have apologized for the ads, apologized for birtherism, say he was wrong for it, and so on. We'd still view him with suspicion, but he would've at least convinced some of the KKK that he might not be 100% racist.
edit: also with regards to Scott, he's been alluding to various Machiavellian machinations since forever.
I'll add to the pile here and say that almost every time I have clicked on someone's comment history and found out they were a r/themotte poster, it was after they made some vomit-inducing comment unapologetically defending far-right positions.
I won't deny that some warping of perception may be happening because of echo-chambering, it's undeniable that themotte is absolutely filled to the brim with far righters.
Look at /u/Impossible_Campaign 's post history. Multiple open calls for violence in multiple comments. In fact it's so blatant that it makes me suspect it's an undercover agent provocateur.
I dunno dude. We live in a post-Poe's Law world. The internet is a big place, and there is no limit to the amount of crazy you are allowed to be. There are actual, unironic monarchists running around. People who genuinely believe that returning to the Divine Right of Kings is the only way to fix society. I don't think anything is too crazy anymore.
I suppose they didn't get the memo that the state has always ruled by force.
It's kind of what states *do*. You might as well expect water not to be wet.
> However, /r/CultureWarRoundup seems to be basically everything you accuse /r/TheMotte of being.
> And isn't this comment ... an explicit call for violence?
So you missed out on [this whole thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/io1iih/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_september_07/g4e5l20) in /r/TheMotte from two months ago, or just glossed over it?
Fortunately the mods did eventually delete the comments that were explicitly calling for violence but, nevertheless, the calls were made on /r/TheMotte.
[Also the mods explicitly encourage this behavior.](https://www.reddit.com/r/CultureWarRoundup/comments/jv168e/offtopic_and_loweffort_cw_thread_for_the_week_of/gcwcip5?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
[It isn't just Trump's recent antics, they've been doing overly "charitable" readings of some of Trump's most ridiculous antics](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/j4axqs/flashback_to_when_trump_suggested_building_an/) for years now.
Are you ready to charitably read my criticism of David Friedman? Previously you had claimed that:
>He did use ellipses, which are a valid method of indicating an omitted quotation.
However, my argument was not *just* that he didn't use ellipses (although he didn't in 2 out of the 5 places he made cuts). My argument was that he cut out information that modified the meaning of Marx's argument. If you're using ellipses you should not do so in a way that alters the original meaning of the passage. That is, my contention was that David Friedman manufactured *misleading* quotes, not simply that he forgot to use ellipses.
I have already posted all the evidence, and the evidence points to Friedman wilfully misrepresenting Marx. Not a single person has ever presented any counter-evidence besides something that amounts to 'I don't *feel* Friedman would do that'. However, I'm not interested in feelings, I'm interested in the facts of the case.
I can repost the rest of my evidence if you're ready to have an actual conversation now.
For outsiders: MarxBro is talking about when he was banned from the SSC blog comments, over a year ago. He PMed me one day to talk about it, and in my maximally charitable "let's hear out everyone" mood, I decided I'd engage him and read through the context of his complaint. I decided I didn't agree with his interpretation and explained why, but he didn't budge. I didn't care enough to keep arguing, so I stopped.
That's not my concern, it's that he *kept PMing me* about it even when I was obviously uninterested. After three consecutive unanswered PMs of his, I told him I was no longer interested, but then he still subsequently sent *seven more unanswered PMs*. And now this again!
I'm not interested in the question, I'm more worried that he seems *so obsessed about it*.
It was a ban from a blog! That no longer regularly publishes! Over a year ago! Why is it so important to badger an unrelated person about it after I'm *clearly* no longer interested? It's borderline stalkerish.
Having an open and honest conversation with you is not "stalker-ish". I'm having a conversation with you because you exhibit the exact same denial of reality and refusal to *read sources* as many others in the Rationalist community.
>I decided I didn't agree with his interpretation and explained why, but he didn't budge.
Can you give any rational reasons as to why you don't agree with my "interpretation"?
>I was obviously uninterested.
If you're "uninterested" in the matter then one does wonder why you said plainly incorrect things such as "He did use ellipses, which are a valid method of indicating an omitted quotation." Indeed, desperately finding excuses for fraudulent behavior does not tend to show that a person is "uninterested".
>I'm more worried that he seems so obsessed about it.
Haha I casually read Marx and sometimes discuss it with people online. Hardly an obsession.
>Over a year ago!
There's not a time limit here. Do you see a clock that we have to obey like players on a football field?
>>I'm more worried that he seems so obsessed about it.
>Haha I casually read Marx and sometimes discuss it with people online. Hardly an obsession.
Sending *seven unanswered PMs in a row* to someone after they said they weren't interested in continuing a conversation is not normal. It's like the guy who keeps sending unanswered messages on a dating site. No, I'm not interested, no I'm not obligated to debate you.
This isn't a dating site so your analogy doesn't hold up. This is reddit, a site where people discuss things with each other. Seven PMs is barely anything, it usually only takes me a minute or less to write a post.
>I'm not obligated to debate you.
Of course not, instead you can simply declare that you're unmoved by facts and logic and cannot be bothered to read simple texts about political economy.
It seems to me that you're the one with an *obsession*, an obsession with never admitting that you were 100% wrong about something. Almost any person could have read the case I made against David Friedman and concluded that he was dishonestly manipulating quotes. Only a select few people *refused* to look at evidence and then retreated to their online bubbles where they *refuse* to discuss simple political matters with others. You're one such person, and the difference between yourself and others who post on themotte and culturewarroundup is marginal.
> This isn't a dating site so your analogy doesn't hold up. This is reddit, a site where people discuss things with each other. Seven PMs is barely anything, it only takes me a minute or less to write a post.
It's not about the time it takes you. It's about *basic social graces*. If someone doesn't want to talk with you, you accept it and move on. You don't keep messaging them *again and again*, no matter how right you think you are.
No, I don't think that that is included in "basic social graces". If you're wrong on a public internet site I reserve the right to point it out constantly. Neither do I think that this is a social club for people to gladhand each other and spout claptrap without anyone to contend with. Remember that you were defending someone who manipulated quotes fraudulently; that's a real degradation of public debate. I do not think people should be able to get away with this so easily for the sake of "social graces". What you really mean is that you want to be able to talk nonsense and lies in an unchallenged way. I do not think that's healthy for a society.
I suggest that you admit you were wrong, then you can "move on" and start taking academic malpractice seriously.
u/honeypuppy: Fellow r/TheMotte poster here and I've been getting tired of the abundance of right-wing posts there too, especially with regard to the election. I have conservative relatives who've voted Republican in every election since 1972 and even *they* can see that what Trump's doing right now isn't normal, so it gets frustrating when people who make a pretense of being neutral and objective keep acting like Trump is just another run-of-the-mill politician and any claim to the contrary is simply TDS. I keep hearing how he's "no different than what Biden" or "no different than Bush," but that's bullshit. It's actually pretty fucking different, and in some very worrying ways.
That said, I wouldn't expect to find much comfort on this subreddit. I've only been here for a few minutes and I already find this place horribly grating in both style and content. It really is like the embodiment of the worst "Gray Tribe" stereotypes about the Blue Tribe: Bad faith arguments, gross stereotyping, taking statements out of context, booing the outgroup simply for being the outgroup, using the pretense of egalitarianism as a cudgel to bash ideological enemies. I literally thought all that stuff was just a horrible exaggeration by the Reddish-Grays to make *their* outgroup look bad, until I came here and saw that some people really are like that. Maybe we Blueish-Grays just need to go build our own space somewhere. (Yes, I know there's r/TheSchism but that seems to closely tied to TheMotte to really be viable as its own thing.)
IMO SneerClub isn't a community space at all, so it's not fit for purpose as your (our?) community space.
That said, I think SneerClub needs to be read "charitably", or perhaps "seriously but not literally". [My small attempt](https://old.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/j1zpdk/nsfw_towards_an_eigenbasis_of_the_sneer_space/)
“Yes. Between lockdowns, election shenanigans, and brazen woke-driven
racial persecution of white people, the state has lost its last bit of
legitimacy. It rules by force. Nobody should feel obligation to follow
the laws of the state. Unless Trump somehow prevails, then at noon on
January 20, the United States will be under hostile occupation. Don’t be
a collaborator.”
Holy shit this guy is going to shxxt up some venue
Twitter has some very mild words for what you just said!
Which makes me wonder, after trump wins the coup, would twitter update their 'this is disputed by some sources' messaging.
>they would rather fight a civil war then let Black people get their fair share
Anyone who thinks this is exaggerated hyperbole and that no one could *really* support that, should remind themselves of the events of the United States circa 1860.
Is the /r/themotte like the asylum we are supposed to pity? Because
pity is the only feeling I can muster after reading that thread. Failed
worthless men, who know they are failures IRL writing long masturbatory
fantasies on Reddit.
Imagine thinking Joe fucking Biden is gonna do reparations
Submission statement: Regular /r/TheMotte poster, not a fan of this place, but slowly getting annoyed with “charitable” readings of Trump’s recent antics.
However, /r/CultureWarRoundup seems to be basically everything you accuse /r/TheMotte of being.
And isn’t this comment … an explicit call for violence? Not some kind of debatable dog-whistle, but exactly the kind of thing that gets subreddits banned.
“Yes. Between lockdowns, election shenanigans, and brazen woke-driven racial persecution of white people, the state has lost its last bit of legitimacy. It rules by force. Nobody should feel obligation to follow the laws of the state. Unless Trump somehow prevails, then at noon on January 20, the United States will be under hostile occupation. Don’t be a collaborator.”
Holy shit this guy is going to shxxt up some venue
*moves the hand one minute closer to midnight on the r/the_mottald shooter countdown clock
they would rather fight a civil war then let Black people get their fair share. real rational, civil discourse hours
Is the /r/themotte like the asylum we are supposed to pity? Because pity is the only feeling I can muster after reading that thread. Failed worthless men, who know they are failures IRL writing long masturbatory fantasies on Reddit.
wheezing laughing mustache man dot gif
these fucking cowards won’t even shoot their mom, let alone the local african american studies department
How is that ‘true/necessary/kind pick 2’?
(Rethorical question).