Ademonera
3d ago
Returning to the “right-wing violence is more common than left-wing violence” topic, I’ve been paying attention to how it’s covered in mainstream tech-adjacent media. I’ve been reading Ars Technica for years — I loved John Siracusa’s old macOS deep dives — but the tone of their reporting has shifted. A lot of it feels like “heckin science!” coverage: snarky debunkings of RFK Jr., endless FCC drama framed as “look at the dumb Republicans.” Earlier this year, they had weeks of coverage about a Texas measles outbreak, written with the same undertone. I visit Ars because I love technology and will always have a bone to pick with vox-owned The Verge becoming yet another HuffPost 10 years ago (I remember when it was called This is My Next, a blog run by Engadget editors who left after a Verizon takeover).
What surprised me was their decision to wade into the Charlie Kirk assassination. While it’s syndicated from another publication, it is not a technology story. The study they cited was already making the rounds, but the comment section is so obnoxiously hard-left. According to media bias trackers, Ars is still rated “highly credible” and “nonpartisan.”
Yet the style itself has gotten more sneering. I’d really urge you to look at the comment section of this article. Very, very ingroupy, more so than Reddit even. https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/09/right-wing-political-violence-is-more-frequent-deadly-than-left-wing-violence/
With the Kirk shooting, the unwillingness to look inward is striking. No one on the left seems interested in the object-level reading of what happened. There’s some truth to the idea that some were more upset about Jimmy Kimmel being fired than about a historic political assassination.
Also the implication behind saying right wing violence is more frequent than left wing violence is that the right wing needs to get its house in order too. But I’m sure not seeing many on the left besides Gavin Newsom (cynically, probably) try to tell lefties that real fascism isn’t imminent (which, if it were true, would justify resistance, partisan violence). Joe Biden famously ramped up scrutiny of far right extremists based on the Charlottesville march. Would you not expect some authoritarianism if the shoe was on the other foot?
Trump’s been pretty tepid, especially considering he had an attempt on his life and less than a year later, a supporter of his is gunned down. If violence escalates (and based on the violence only over the last year, that is likely to happen), what do they expect him to do? What would a democrat president do? Would it be any less ‘fascistic’? We’re literally dealing with high profile, public murders and assassinations. Pretty scary and there are much more authoritarian ways Trump could have taken this.
We’ve had pretty authoritarian presidents before. Not a huge deal and not historic. Nobody is going to cross the rubicon. We’ve had presidents in living memory round up ethnicities and put them into camps for monitoring. Trump is, in reality, a lib that gets spooked and backs off on anything whenever the market looks bad. He probably does have some tyrant tendencies but he’s still an elected official who won his way into office. Ultimately the left needs to come to terms with their rhetoric blowing things out of proportion.
Do you remember the net neutrality war of the 2010s? Ajit Pai got bomb threats because people were so convinced it was the end of the world to deregulate isps or something stupid like that. Thats why suddenly jumping to free speech arguments and this right wing violence study feels more like an attempt to rile people up than earnest reporting on the context around the violence that just happened.
Psychologically, it feels like the left is struggling with wanting to be the side “on the right side of history,” and at the same time, knowing their rhetoric and zealotry may be feeding into radicalism.
Ademonera
11d ago
When will media stop being Trump-brained? There’s going to be a solid 10 years of media tainted by this need to relate everything to the current moment. I’m sure that people in the arts feel they’re speaking their truth to the masses by making overt and illusion-breaking analogies and references to real life, but it’s a turn off for me. I think the public moving more conservative will solve for this since movies and tv shows do have to be sold, after all. But still.
I’m sure there a good lessons to learn from putting Trump-like figures (or your caricature of him) in your media, but I’ll probably get more compelling things out of watching him. We’re gonna have 50 years of people recalling the Trump era and the history of his time. Why be so hasty? Just make the thing without it
Ademonera
11d ago
There is tons of evidence of premeditation and careful planning put into this. No post hoc justification for Charlie mentioning the issue for which he was apparently killed. Maybe the person heard it and timed it I guess, but this comes some two weeks after a similar belief system mass shooting in recent memory (and a third a few months ago). I agree that transgender rights are centered around the issue - but it’s become clear that there is some loose association between transgender supportive online groups and radical left politics. Doesn’t really matter how he talked about the issue either - the implication is that people against this issue are putting themselves in danger of future violence by speaking their minds.
This forum has a certain leaning to it - moving off reddit naturally attracts more dissident and people here lean relatively rightward (ignoring lineage of SSC first etc).
Reddit is the most mainstream network and can get towards radical politics, but it’s usually attention seeking and inauthentic (North Korea stans etc). X pretty similar.
Discord, 4chan, probably telegram - these are places where small groups of people are communicating radical ideas in a more personal forum. It’s what the classified info poster used as well. I think it’s more inviting to total ideological capture and feeling ‘rewarded’ by those you know for dedicating yourself to the cause.
The ‘terminally online’ behavior others are mentioning here has been a reoccurrence with people that have committed mass violence this year (don’t forget that there have been HISTORIC level of political violence over the last year). I would bet that there is a significant effort going into threat assessments and online surveillance into continued violence from online communities with radical trans acceptance politics, among other groups
Ademonera
15d ago
I’m not so sure. I noticed that once the guy had walked off the train, people were moving a lot faster. One guy runs over and says oh my god. I’m reluctant to judge bystanders but it is sad that nobody jumped to her aid immediately. Clearly it took some time to set in exactly what he had done
Ademonera
15d ago
I saw that line too and I don’t deny it complicates things. It could point to racial animus, or it could just be the ravings of someone severely mentally ill who latched onto the most obvious descriptor in the moment. Either way it’s very distasteful to see people scoff this off like a manufactured right wing story when a refugee was brutally murdered on a train.
The full video is miserable to watch—this young woman grasping at her throat, terrified, and then collapsing into a pool of blood. It’s one of the most viscerally awful things I’ve seen online, and it should have been covered as such: a shocking act of violence against someone who came here seeking safety.
Ademonera
15d ago
That’s not what’s happening here, and framing it that way just muddies the waters. The New York Times isn’t openly cheering murder or calling for race war. What they are doing is applying style guide rules (pronouns, capitalization) without reflection, in ways that overshadow the violence itself.
When they ideological signal while reporting on tragedies, they hand critics easy ammunition. That’s how we end up with Musk’s tweet going viral. It validates the narrative of media bias and feeds this weird anachronism that’s emerged.
If you actually want to stop the slide into complete culture war, the solution isn’t imagining the NYT as genocidal propagandists. You should instead demand they show restraint and focus on the victims (and leave their signaling to op eds and trump bad stories).
Ademonera
15d ago
Last week I wrote about the NYT’s coverage of the Minneapolis school shooting, where the headline and article repeatedly used “Ms.” and “her” for the shooter, Robin Westman. That may follow their style guide, but in the context of a mass killing, it reads less like neutral reporting and more like ideological signaling. The pronouns end up being the story, while two murdered children fade into the background.
Now there’s the coverage of the truly awful video released of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee stabbed to death on a Charlotte train. There are familiar editorial fingerprints from the ‘style guide’. The NYT capitalizes “Black” but leaves “white” lowercase. Elon Musk pointed this out and it’s getting traction. This is a policy shift the NYT, AP, and others made in 2020 after George Floyd’s killing, with the reasoning that “Black” marks shared cultural identity, while capitalizing “White” risks feeding white-identity politics.
That may be defensible as a policy, but applied in a case where a Black suspect kills a white victim, it lands as bias whether intended or not. The style guide twice now ends up louder than the tragedy itself.
When editorial rules like these are applied without reflection, they pull focus from the human story. It truly makes me upset because these were horrific events. There’s no reason to show off your liberal bona fides at all. Just show compassion for the victims and don’t preemptively build up scaffolding for when it will be used as culture war fuel.
Frankly, I think that articles like this make race relations in America worse. I don’t think that the killing has anything to do with race, at all. It’s about violence in America, which is so insanely out of control. I think cloaking it in platitudes about decreasing crime rate stats also shows how scared of second-order effects news organizations are.
I read a book recently about the history of imprisonment in Texas. It talks about restorative justice and prison labor etc. I don’t know what else you’re supposed to do besides reassure the public that this man (or anyone inflicting evil on others) will never see the light of day again
Ademonera
24d ago
Hey admins it’d be cool if you fixed ’The Motte needs you!’ Banner to respond to dark mode. Also profile views access to Patreon supporters is broken
Ademonera
27d ago
The New York Times seems to have gone out of their way to have affirmed the shooter’s pronouns with the title “Suspect Knew Her Target” and calling the suspect Ms. throughout.
I feel like an odd component of the culture war on trans issues is a tacit agreement (Chris Chan, etc) that respecting someone’s gender identity goes out the window once they have done something bad. I’ve seen this in some left-wing spaces, which kinda shows that people are aware that they’re making an active choice to use pronouns - to be nice to the person using them. It seems like the New York Times position is that pronouns are sacrosanct, obviously.
I just imagine how good the writers room felt about themselves doing this - they probably feel like they’re fighting for civil rights in the 60s or throwing bricks or something in the face of public discontent with trans issues.
Ademonera
1mo ago
Thank you for the thoughtful response. Agreed that arguing from the perspective of what you would find compelling makes sense, as it's the only way to find the real weak points.
On Point 1, your proposed solution is interesting. That idea of a negotiated peace is pragmatic. It frames the problem as a failure of mutually assured destruction and suggests restoring it. If people saw that bad behavior was being addressed universally instead of just selectively, they might actually buy into the system again. However, I think the cat is out of the bag now. The decadent 2010s seem to have ruined any chance of this working. The 90s feel like the last time there was a real effort towards a color-blind society where character matters most. Things are too tribal for that to work nowadays. There are literally advanced degrees for studying how persecuted X group is. We get worked up over unfair treatment of our own group and are convinced other groups are getting away with it / getting a better deal, generally speaking.
On point 2, it seems we’re in agreement. These ideas have moved from the comment section to the core of the debate. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I feel it’s harder to make progress when the ‘real’ arguments are more antagonistic than Ken Bone saying we can all get along.
On point three, I completely agree that America has/had a unique "secret sauce" for getting things done. My contention is that it's part of a feedback loop. Our culture of ambition creates opportunities, which attracts the world's top talent. That talent reinforces and evolves the culture, starting new companies, creating new norms, and building towards the next thing.
I’m sure it’s been talked to death here but I had a professor in college who talked about how Japan will likely never have a magnificent growth period again because their reluctance to accept immigrants, combined with their demographic cliff, means they're stuck on the sidelines (in terms of real growth at least). They have a productive culture, but they're starved of new talent.
I visited Guangzhou about 10 years ago and saw the opposite problem. Their immigrant population comes largely from very poor areas in Africa. They're treated like second-class citizens, are watched constantly, and frankly, fit Trump’s language about immigrants more than the hard-working people in America. There’s no real chance for them to work hard, integrate, and have their kids become strong citizens.
That's why I think our system is so special and powerful. We have the culture that Japan lacks the people for and we offer the opportunity that China denies to its immigrants. We have the ability to give people a chance to join our hard-working culture and succeed. When we send signals that they're no longer welcome, I feel we're choosing to break the most powerful engine for prosperity the world has ever known
Ademonera
1mo ago
I've been chewing on an idea and wanted to try a steel-manning exercise.
The premise is this: If we grant that the cultural right is "winning" right now, what's the strongest possible argument that this is leading to some genuinely bad outcomes for the country?
I have a few specific angles in mind. How would you build the strongest case for these ideas?
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A more "gloves-off" approach to online speech is a win for free expression, but its most visible result has been the normalization of unapologetic racism. The core of this argument isn't just that it's unpleasant, but that it's actively corroding social trust and making it harder to have a unified country. Not sure if you’ve seen this too, but I see tons of ‘black fatigue’ and explicitly white nationalist people in my feed and there’s not much I or anybody else can do about it. What does the most persuasive version of this argument look like?
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It seems pretty clear that rhetoric from the top, especially from Trump, has pushed nativist ideas into the open. The strong version of this argument is that this has moved beyond simple policy disagreements (like border security) and has become a real cultural attitude of exclusion. How would you build the case that this isn't just a fringe phenomenon anymore, but a significant and growing force in American life?
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This flows from the last point. For decades, our biggest strategic advantage has been that the smartest, most ambitious people from all over the world wanted to come here. The argument to be steel-manned is that we're actively squandering that. Between the nativist vibe and a chaotic immigration system, we're sending a signal that the best and brightest should maybe look elsewhere. What's the most solid case that we're causing a real "brain drain" that will kneecap us economically and technologically for years to come?
What makes me think about this point is all of the talk about Indian people online. Like them or not, they are STRONG contributors in the workplace. If the rhetoric gets to a point where legal immigrants and contributors to our society feel unwelcome, there could be real brain drain effects that we’ve never experienced before. The Vivek backlash a few months ago also is probably related.
Again, knowing that ideas like these are losing right now, how you would argue them to the best of your ability? I’ll admit I kind of want to hear them outside a setting like X where communities are isolated and you’re mostly preaching to the choir / your ingroup
Ademonera
1mo ago
I appreciate the 'why worry about it' perspective, but being an adult means you have to be honest with yourself, especially when you're at a point where you're making choices that will define your future and affect other people.
The indulgent, careless thing to do would be to just 'roll with it,' get married, and pretend this part of my history doesn't exist. That's the path that ends with me hurting a family someday because I decided to indulge in something hidden, something I refused to honestly confront beforehand.
It's about doing the difficult, private work of self-assessment now so that I don't live with regret, and more importantly, so that I don't betray the trust of a person I promise my life to.
Frankly, I see this process as the absolute opposite of indulgence. I see it as a prerequisite to being a decent husband and man.
Ademonera
1mo ago
Fair enough. I guess I wrongly assumed that there was a pretty big intersection between people who’ve listened and forum readers here, especially since it was so transgressive during its early run.
Ademonera
1mo ago
Yeah, but people that have listened to cum town will know exactly where it comes from. I genuinely think listening to that podcast helps me contextualize how non-serious this stuff is
Ademonera
1mo ago
It’s a cumtown reference, whose gay jokes made me more comfortable with my identity
Ademonera
1mo ago
I find this pretty interesting. I have kind of a retrograde idea of sexuality. When I was young, I was very pretty. Something of a Twink I guess you could say. Looking like this colors your psychology. I used to be called Angelina behind my back as a kid because I had big lips. And as I got older, I realize that there was some small part of me that was interested in men. But it wasn’t the same way that I would obsess over a girl. It was the idea, always in general terms. It was never romantic either. But I never ever took the effort to come out in any way - because functionally I never did anything that was gay. Of course people around you have a ‘gaydar’ but to this day, I’ve never explicitly and publicly mentioned it. I would even say out of principle I’ve decided not to publicly describe my sexuality at all. As a side note, It’s pretty infuriating that historians get to decide some dead person’s sexuality. It’s very, very complicated. I still don’t like calling myself bisexual (even if objectively true) because I feel i am more nuanced. it feels like when people anthromorphize animals to make some point about human behavior. Yes there is real world evidence I did these things, but can’t I choose how I define it?
To a significant other I might mention my experimentation in my teen years - and while that goes over pretty well with liberal women, it’s an eye opener. I never thought about it as the primary motivating factor behind hiding it, but it is real that women think of bisexual men as less than (especially if you are passive). I think women are off-put by the idea of man acting in the feminine role - and have a hard time really processing that, especially when it involves the person you find attractive.
But all that said, I always acted ‘closeted’ - and that’s the way I liked it. I’d get horny in bed, get my fantasy over with, and go back to normal. It was just this little part of myself that I indulged every once in a great while. I did wind up having gay sex a few times and I enjoyed it. I had a tryst in Milan with a guy with a boat.
But that was when I was 19 and now I’m 28. I’m a man with a job and a 401k. I’m not smooth and beautiful anymore - and the whole thing felt like a facsimile for the feminine.
It’s awful but some part of me wishes for community around this. I am at a point where I can build a life and get married, but this old part of me still exists - disconnected from what I am now. Protestant conversation therapy shouldn’t exist probably, but why not have programs to assist me in choosing to live my life as if this didn’t happen? Why tell people this essentialist idea that they are something forever and always - when, at least when you have two genders you are interested in, you can always neglect one? There’s always a chance that I wake up like Phillip morris, but I don’t think I will. I want to actively choose to never indulge in it as I grow old. Can my gay experiences not be a fun teenage experience à la the summer of love? Doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for that in the culture that’s been cultivated over last 15 years ish.
This is a podcast about being gay with your dad
Ademonera
4mo ago
You might be surprised how well formed an idea can be if you work on it together with an AI. Feeding it data, having it search, etc. Obviously you can’t just copy paste but it’s an art form. >How I learned to love slop.
I just wrapped up a deep dive into Taylor Lorenz’s Wikipedia page, and what I found feels like a live case study in the kind of media bias and institutional trust issues we often unpack here. Taylor Lorenz is once again making waves for her controversial praise for Luigi Mangione. She first expressed “joy” over the murder in a December 2024 Piers Morgan interview, saying it tied to her belief in the “sanctity of life” amid healthcare frustrations, though she later backtracked to “not empathy.” Then, she doubled down on CNN, calling Mangione “handsome,” “smart,” and—most shockingly—“morally good,” framing him as a revolutionary figure that women admire. This sparked immediate backlash, with figures like Stephen Miller, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee slamming her on X, and outlets like Fox News and The Independent covering the uproar extensively. Yet, when I checked her Wikipedia page today, April 16, 2025, there’s not a single mention of this controversy (or any others!). I found this isn’t the first time her page has skipped major controversies. There are other omissions we’ve discussed here before, like her 2020 amplification of Claudia Conway’s anti-Trump TikToks—criticized for exploiting a minor, as reported by Daily Mail—and her 2021 false claim that Marc Andreessen used a slur on Clubhouse, later corrected but not without backlash, as noted by Fox News. Both incidents were widely covered but are absent from her page, suggesting a pattern of selective editing. The Mangione comments feel especially egregious given their recency and impact. Fox News ran pieces on both her Piers Morgan and CNN remarks, with headlines like “Taylor Lorenz’s ‘heinous’ defense of Luigi Mangione as a ‘morally good man’ disgusts X users,” while The Independent highlighted her CNN interview, noting she’s a “regular target of attacks from the right online” but also pointing to the “disingenuous outrage culture” her comments feed. National Review and OutKick also weighed in, with the latter accusing her of backtracking after initially denying the “morally good” claim—despite video evidence. This level of coverage screams notability, so why the silence on Wikipedia? The Wikipedia Talk page for Lorenz’s article offers some clues. Just yesterday a user named The lorax argued that the Mangione comments have gained “lasting impact” due to ongoing media attention, citing The Independent’s recent article as a reliable source. Marquardtika agreed, pushing for inclusion, but others pushed back, claiming the coverage might be biased or not “DUE” enough, referencing Wikipedia’s Reliable Sources Policy. Notwally, in a detailed post, dissected The Independent’s reporting, noting it mischaracterized Lorenz’s CNN remarks—her actual quote framed Mangione’s appeal as a public sentiment rather than her personal view—but still argued the controversy might not be significant enough, especially since the latest article didn’t reference her earlier “joy” comment.
This debate mirrors earlier ones on the Talk page about Lorenz’s harassment experiences, where editors have been battling since March 2025 over whether to call attacks against her “coordinated.” Some pointed to sources showing coordination (e.g., Lorenz’s claim that Tucker Carlson mobilized followers against her), while others argued there’s no proof, leading to the section being renamed simply “Harassment.”
What strikes me most about the Talk page is the tension between editors trying to maintain neutrality and those who seem overly cautious about including anything too controversial.
In the harassment debate, Delectopierre accused another editor of downplaying Lorenz’s experiences, warning that such edits “mimic some of the disgusting tactics used in Gamergate” by denying her reality. The editor countered that they were trying to expand the section neutrally, focusing on secondary sources over Lorenz’s tweets to avoid bias, but the back-and-forth shows how contentious this page is. The Mangione discussion feels like a continuation of this struggle: even with reliable sources, some editors are hesitant to touch polarizing content. But Wikipedia’s NPOV policy demands that all significant views be represented, and Lorenz’s comments—praising an accused killer and drawing condemnation from high-profile figures—clearly meet that bar. Excluding them isn’t neutrality; it’s selective storytelling.
This isn’t just about Lorenz; it’s about Wikipedia’s credibility. If her page can skip over statements this explosive, especially when they’re so fresh and widely covered, what does that say about Wikipedia’s ability to handle divisive figures? The pattern of omission suggests a bias toward downplaying Lorenz’s most polarizing moments, which risks presenting a sanitized version of her public image.
I was considering jumping into the Talk page debate myself, arguing that the Mangione comments deserve inclusion under NPOV given the breadth of coverage and their impact. But as it turns out my IP is banned from editing even though I’ve never tried.
I’m curious if any of you have noticed similar patterns on other Wikipedia pages for controversial figures. Is this a systemic issue? Do we need a new Wikipedia built by uncompassionate LLMs?
Ademonera
6mo ago
Russia's historical claims on Ukraine don't justify invasion. Territorial sovereignty isn't negated by shared cultural history. This principle has been foundational to post-WW2 order.
The Cuban Missile Crisis comparison falls apart because Ukraine wasn't pursuing offensive capabilities against Russia. NATO membership is defensive.
While Western interventions have questionable legality, Russia's annexation of territory represents a different category of violation. Iraq wasn't annexed, whatever other flaws that campaign had.
I 100% agree. Just thinking the connection is there for left wing extremists to cling onto in the same way some right wing lunatic might justify their actions through X belief system.
In popular movies, anticolonialist writing, and Hasan streams, progressives are told violence against an oppressor is de facto justified and moral. And it’s easier to think of someone like Charlie Kirk as an oppressor if you think he’s spreading ‘hate’.
That’s the key part of this I think. Crazy people on the left think they’re on the right side of history and that ends justify the means. I think it is a good basic explanation for why the Charlie Kirk shooting happened, most likely.
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