Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
5d ago
I would ban someone for calling people "stupid paranoid hicks." I would not ban them for claiming "No one is trying to take your guns," even if I think they're wrong and even if I think they're being disingenuous. Which I do not think is the case here - but even if I agreed with you that "People who say vat grown meat isn't an attempt to ban real meat are lying," you're still going to have to argue the issues, not demand that mods ban people who make arguments that cause you emotional distress.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
5d ago
Feel free to post quotes and argue about what you think they mean, what they say about some group's intentions.
Other people may choose to engage and express a different view. They may think those same quotes do not say what you think they do.
Discuss. Civilly.
If you just start talking about how you want to throw things because people with different reads are lying gaslighters, yes, eventually that will result in you being banned if you can't control yourself and can't cope with dissenting views.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
5d ago
This is just a pathological level of oversocialization, to have even had these thoughts occur in your mind... Jesus Christ. I wish I knew you, so I could take advantage of you.
This is unnecessary. I'm sure you're a shark among seals, but don't do this.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
5d ago
Calm down, and stop ranting at people and accusing them of lying and making bad faith arguments when there is no evidence of this. (The quote you cite as evidence does not say what you claim, and while you can legitimately argue that that's the actual intent, you cannot legitimately claim that anyone who disagrees is gaslighting you).
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
5d ago
But gosh golly gee whiz, I thought he was impartially banned not for the content of his existing posts but for failing to post upon a wide enough variety of subjects
That is correct. He was told to occasionally do something other than Joo-post. You thinking it's some gotcha that @self_made_human likes colorful mod notes is in character, since last time this came up, you made quite a deal out of it.
Because I figure we're about halfway to the point where "just post a youtube video about goat noises or something" suddenly becomes "ackshually we have to feel like they're good posts with sufficient effort" or whatever.
Yes, if we tell you to stop single-issue posting and you take @somedude's advice to spam threads with ChatGPT posts and YouTube videos about goat noises, you will get banned. When we ask people to do something or not do something, the intent is to improve discourse. The rules are not a legal contract where you can "get away" with shitting on their intent as long as you argue that you teeeeechnically (insert nasal whine here) followed the letter of them.
Also, keep golly-gee-whizzing me because you cannot contain your animosity if you would like to further test our catch-all "Being egregiously obnoxious" rule. You have a track record already of basically telling people that you think the rules are meant to be shat upon because you don't like the moderation here. You created this account just because you had a hate-boner for Hlynka. You're clearly a long-time member/alt with a grudge, and you only have been given this much latitude because we are so tolerant, even of haters who want nothing more than to shit on us. But that tolerance is not unlimited.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
5d ago
Funny, dude. We see what you're doing. At least don't use ChatGPT.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
6d ago
@FCfromSSC was too nice to mod you (and to be clear, did not ask anyone else to either). But calling people liars is about as directly antagonistic as it gets. Even if you think someone is lying (and you may be right, people do sometimes lie about what they actually believe or what their intentions are or even about stated facts), you need to stop at "I don't believe you, for such-and-such reason." Emphatically and repeatedly calling someone a lying liar because you see the world through different lenses (and fwiw, if I were forced to adjudicate who's factually correct here, I'd be more inclined to side with you than FC) is not okay.
You have 4 AAQCs and no prior warnings. But I'm still giving you a 1-day ban to emphasize this point. For someone who spams reports on every other poster in the Motte who ever expresses an arch sentiment like you were watering your lawn, you really should know better, or at least act like you do.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
9d ago
Basically what @madeofmeat said. If a mod is in a discussion thread as a participant and someone says something rude/antagonistic to the mod, we generally will recuse ourselves and let another mod adjudicate. (This is not a "blanket policy." If you reply to me by saying "go fuck yourself" - something that has actually happened - I don't feel a need to recuse myself in handing out a ban.) But if a mod modhats you and you reply to the modhat comment with antagonism, you're escalating and that mod is entitled to decide message you're sending is "I will not follow the rules and need more serious consequences."
Note also that no one ever gets banned for responding to a modhat comment by saying "I think your moderation is bad and I didn't deserve to be modded." We probably won't agree with you, but we don't ban people just for arguing or disagreeing with us. What @FarNearEverywhere did was flat-out say "No, I will not follow the rules." If she's just omitted the "No," I'd probably have told her (again) to regulate herself and stop using her feelings as an excuse. If she'd wanted to debate why her post was too condescending but the one she was responding to (which she claims started it) was not, I might or might not have indulged her, but I wouldn't have banned her.
But if a mod says "Stop doing this" and you say "I will not stop doing this," well, what kind of response are you expecting?
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
10d ago
You can object all you want. Just make sure you don't do so by saying "I don't intend to follow the rules."
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
10d ago
You have a history of objecting to mods telling you or other people to stop being antagonistic, so once again telling me that it's bad to tell people to stop doing that does not register with me as meaningful feedback.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
10d ago
Yes. We allow some latitude for sarcastic or snippy responses, but we discourage it, and if you go out of your way to be condescending and sarcastic, you're going to get told to knock it off. And @FarNearEverywhere has been told many times.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
10d ago
"Stop doing this." "No."
That is always going to get you a ban, and this is not new.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
11d ago
No one is telling you how to feel your feelings. You know that having feelings and how you express them are two different things.
You get cut more slack than you know because people (including me) actually like you quite a lot, despite your inability to control your feelings and your tendency to respond to even the least little bit of poking with explosions. So be assured that the contempt you are showing me now and have shown me in the past is not taken personally.
That said: replying to a mod telling you directly to stop doing something with a foot-stamping "No, not gonna, you can't make me, you're not the boss of me" temper tantrum is an escalation with a response that you clearly chose. So yes, banned.
I don't need or want to deal with this nonsense right now, so I will let the other mods decide when or if to end your ban.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
11d ago
My dears, my darling, my honey, my sweetie-pie:
Stop this.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
13d ago
Getting bogged down in the details of what Scientology, as an organization, is capable of today is totally beside the point that they prove a conspiracy of the type I outline is possible, and easier than ever. Maybe not for them, as they aren't what they used to be. But for someone sufficiently motivated.
The details are relevant because you're claiming that "Scientology once succeeded in conspiracy shit" is evidence that someone else could do the same thing today, and I don't think that sort of conspiracy (a literal cult trying to destroy an individual with social engineering) is so easy to do today, especially in the dispersed online way you are proposing.
Who knows, maybe in 20 years people will be leaving the Current Year cult, spilling the secrets of the things they were "forced" to do at the time.
There is no Current Year cult. There's trans activism, BLM, Free Palestine, whatever else you want to categorize under the broad umbrella of "wokeism," but I am fundamentally disagreeing with you that these things are engineered by shadowy cabals somewhere or being manufactured by a bunch of Silicon Valley nerds doing A/B testing on memes. You don't need to wait for anyone to "spill secrets" - we already know how it happens, through social pressure and conformity and agreeableness, not because someone did some Ludovico conditioning on them or inserted fnords into their social media. There are plenty of people who have "escaped the Woke cult" and talked about how and why they bought into it in the first place.
People like Crowder have been declared "fair game" by the successor ideology.
Basically anyone has been declared "fair game" by the successor ideology. The result is Twitter pileons, sometimes deplatforming, but
Imagine some "rogue employee" at Facebook deciding "LOL, I'm going to manually add Crowder and Mrs Crowder's accounts to the 'hate algorithm' list."
You seem pretty invested in a very science fictional notion for someone saying you don't really believe this. "Facebook can plug you into a hate algorithm and pretty soon you and your wife are heading for divorce" is kind of like Shiri's Scissor - it's a great concept, works for a short story, but I've seen too many people (including here) take this kind of dystopian brain hacking far too seriously and literally.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
13d ago
As it happens, I've read several books about Scientology also (including the one by David Miscavige's niece), and the problem Scientology has today is the same one a lot of your hypothetical conspiracies would have: yes, in theory the technology exists to do all these nefarious things, but the pulling it off secretly and without opposition is a lot harder. Scientology nowadays has a real recruiting problem and almost all growth is via next generation members raised in the cult, because anyone can get on the Internet and look up "Xenu," and for every dirty trick Scientologists try to pull online, there are thousands of motivated opponents ready to fight back in kind.
Scientology used to run these operations against reporters and succeeded in bullying the IRS into giving them tax exempt status, but it's not likely such tactics would work as well today (if you've seen their attempts to discredit ex-Scientologist critics like Leah Remini, they just look lame and desperate).
Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion by Janet Reitman, is very critical, and yet the church was actually pretty cooperative with her (and to my knowledge, never attempted to intimidate or harass her).
People like conspiracy theories because they have a pleasant explanatory power: things I hate are engineered by shadowy, evil cabals acting in secret. If only they could be exposed or fought! Clearly these things cannot happen organically, or because thousands of factions often acting at cross-purposes bring about a lot of the things I don't like. But people just aren't that organized, they aren't that efficient, they aren't that secretive. The same reason you should be afraid of the state of the world (because there are no "grown ups" in charge somewhere, who have the will and the means to pull a few levers of power and keep shit from getting out of control, the economy and global politics are all basically running on daily ad hoc decisions far more than long-term planning) is the reason you should not get too wrapped up in the idea of Illuminati conspiring to make your life worse.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
13d ago
Conspiracies require conspirators. There cannot be conspiracy in SV to bring down a leftist media outlet, since leftists control it at every level. If one guy does have this goal, he is acting as a lone wolf.
Are you saying Peter Thiel was a lone wolf, or are you claiming Gawker was not a leftist media outlet?
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
13d ago
The subtext here seems to be that women specifically can be socially influenced to dump their husbands because they see other women dumping their husbands. Am I wrong?
I think as a "jk... unless?" theory, this is about as plausible as any conspiracy theory. Could "Silicon Valley" theoretically target some individual and try to destroy his marriage? Yeah, I guess there are enough people with the social engineering and technical skills, and the money, to engineer some sort of anti-Crowder campaign. But, uh, who, exactly? And why? Crowder might have been targeted on social media; we know this doesn't take a whole lot of coordination, just a few activists in the right places at Facebook and Twitter. But deliberately trying to destroy his marriage? With this level of deep psychological warfare? What boardrooms and labs was this plan cooked up in, and is Stephen Crowder really the lowest-hanging (or most hated) fruit for them to target?
It doesn't add up, on so many levels.
Let me recommend another book to you: Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, by Ryan Holiday.
It's actually really good, and interesting. As you may recall, Peter Thiel set out to destroy Gawker, for a variety of reasons (not "because they outed him" - that is covered in more detail in the book), and he did so by secretly funding a lawsuit against them brought by Terry Bollea, aka Hulk Hogan. The details are fascinating, but the point I am making in recommending this book is that Peter Thiel, an actual Silicon Valley billionaire with the money to fund James Bond villain schemes, engaged in an actual conspiracy to destroy an enemy, and even his "conspiracy" was fundamentally just mundane lawfare with an extra layer of intrigue. Now, maybe some other billionaires are in fact funding secret projects to sow divorce amongst their enemies via social contagion, but when you look at what we can see real people actually doing, it seems very difficult and very unlikely (even for billionaires!) to pull off these sorts of shower thought Illuminati schemes.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
13d ago
I haven't read the Prince of Nothing series, but surely you've read Neal Stephensen? "We used to be p-zombies until (some of us) actually became sentient (maybe)" is the premise of a couple of his books.
While I sympathize with your take in general (I too know people who will just swallow The Latest Thing uncritically and there's no point talking to them about it), it's not stupidity and it's not new. People are largely group-thinkers and want to go along to get along and also lack the necessary time or energy to dig deeply into the particulars of whether a particular claim is true. Even here on the Motte we see people sometimes show up and plaster a laundry list of highly risible deepity-sounding assertions in a wall of text, and they rarely get much more than vibes-based pushback because who wants to hunt down each and every bullet point to dispute it? And on the rare occasions when someone does that, the deepity-poster disappears and returns after a while to do the same thing.
Jesse Singhal is slowly driving himself mad on Twitter because he keeps doing this with trans activists: "No, look at these fifteen studies I have carefully analyzed which show that what you are saying is not actually true!" he says for the fifteenth time, thinking that this time, Facts and Logic will make them stop calling him a transphobic Nazi.
There isn't some "elite" class of human capable of actually thinking. What we have are agreeable people who don't think most battles are worth fighting (especially at the cost of career and reputation and friendships) and a few highly disagreeable people (often on the autistic spectrum) who absolutely will fight over these things. I hesitate to say that the latter actually have much to do with building bridges and advancing civilization, even if we probably do need a few of them around.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
18d ago
Don't be a dick.
When we (mods) read comments on the main page, and not by looking in the comments filter, it's not always obvious that a comment we're replying to is currently in the new-user filter and thus not visible to anyone else.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
19d ago
More like permabanned for being naughty over and over and over again arguing with everyone.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
19d ago
Tone-policing and telling people not to be antagonistic has always been a thing here. If you can't call out the witches civilly, don't spin up a new alt just so you can do it uncivilly.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
20d ago
Your enemies are never going to concede that calling Elon Musk (with 10 kids by 3 attractive women) an incel is at all wrong.
No, they aren't, because they are also bad-faith conflict theorists.
Calling Elon Musk an incel is obviously ridiculous, but it has nothing to do with whether incels and incel culture does in fact exist. And if you take your position, which is that you can never admit your opponents might even accidentally be right about something because that would be giving them a "win," then you are no longer able to actually distinguish between what's true and what's not, only between what helps your cause and what doesn't.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
20d ago
I'm approving this comment despite it being your first and only one so far. It's a bad comment, it's nothing but "You suck," and if you just spun up an alt to attack someone you don't like, congratulations, you got your dig in, but if you post more in this vein this account will be banned.
You're clearly here for rdrama-style shitposting, and this is not rdrama. You've filled the mod queue with these shitposts, and you've been banned before for this.
Go away.
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