Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
No bio...
User ID: 297
I'm going to add to what @cjet79 said because starting a thread on this topic would have been fine, but what made this low-effort was not merely its shortness but that you made absolutely no effort to contextualize or explain what you were talking about.
You may have assumed, because it's all over Twitter, that everyone would know what you were talking about. But as several commenters below have demonstrated, there are people who do not actually spend any time on Twitter and had no idea what this is about. There are people who barely know who Sydney Sweeney is. There are people who don't know anything about her jeans ad that caused this controversy. There are people who do not know about the interview with GQ journalist Katherine Stoeffel that has become what you refer to as a "scissors" moment.
If you want to start a top-level thread:
(1) Provide context. Do not assume that everyone else is an Online as you. Do not assume that everyone else is going to know what events and people you are referring to. Not everyone has seen the latest Trump news. Not everyone knows what WotC announced about D&D (some people, believe or or not, even in this nerdy space, barely know what WotC or D&D is). And definitely not everyone knows who a C-list actress known for having "great genes/jeans" is or why she's controversial for fifteen minutes.
(2) Provide something of a conversation starter besides "Hey guys, what do you think of this?" The bare minimum of effort, besides providing some context, would be offering your own opinion on the subject. Or why you think it's gone viral. Or why you think it's a Shiri's scissors. Something.
Here is my contribution: the tldr, for those still ignorant, is that Sydney Sweeney is a hot blue-eyed blonde actress/model who did an American Eagle jeans ad very obviously capitalizing on her great titslooks and making a genes/jeans pun. This triggered a lot of predictable nattering in leftist spaces that Sweeney and American Eagle were Darkly Hinting about white supremacy. Sweeney was then interviewed by GQ features director Katherine Stoeffel, in which Stoeffel asked her about the ad and the reaction to it. Her question was read by many as a passive-aggressive demand for Sweeney to essentially apologize and assure everyone she's not a racist; Sweeney responded with essentially "no comment." What made it go viral, besides the feminine-coded passive-aggressive language of Stoeffel and Sweeney's directness in response, is the contrast in their appearances and facial expressions. Stoeffel is a mid-looking woman in the presence of a woman infinitely hotter than her, and her facial expressions radiate hesitancy and lack of confidence, while Sweeney fixes her with a direct and assertive stare in return. This has been micro-analyzed to death by many, many people. Some have called Sweeney's look a "death stare" and said she is "smirking" or indicating contempt with the slightly upturned corner of her mouth, others have defended Stoeffel and argued that she was actually trying to be kind to Sweeney and let her defuse the charge. If you watch the whole interview, it's not nearly as confrontational or unfriendly as you might think from just watching those most-captured few seconds. Sweeney's obviously a professional who knew that question was going to be thrown at her, and Stoeffel probably was not trying to "gotcha" her. I am always skeptical of the sort of micro-analysis that assumes you can mind-read and infer everything someone is really thinking from their facial expressions and tone of voice. But certainly the visual effect combined with the cultural moment had all the ingredients to make this go viral and become a CW "scissors."
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2d ago
This has driven a lot of the growth in the OSR scene... which is interesting because now you can watch in real time as outsiders and entryists accuse the OSR community of being full of fascists, while inside the community it's roughly divided between "I just want Old School orcs" and "We must make it clear that the OSR community is a welcoming and inclusive space."
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2d ago
You and @HereAndGone both - stop taking personal shots at people however annoying you may find them.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2d ago
You are, actually. Burdensome has a different pattern (and iirc is Pakistani, not Indian).
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2d ago
On the one hand, yes, but on other hand, no?
See, you read it "That was gross, why would you do that, Stephen King? Why, why have an underage teen gangbang in the sewers? Ewww, what were you thinking?"
That is how I see a lot of people react to that scene. And I can't really blame them. I attribute a lot of that, like I said, to King's being high at the time (most of his books written since he got sober lack the kind of raw, deranged energy you see in his earlier books), and also, honestly, King has some squirming eels in his head that he has been trying to exorcise for half a century with his writing.
But--
Yes, Becky's father is abusive, and is probably going to start sexually abusing her soon (which he may have done even without the influence of Pennywise), and as an adult she follows that sad predictable pattern of partnering with a man who reminds her of daddy. She's been traumatized and abused (like all the kids were) by her fucked up childhood. Pennywise was a metaphor for the rot in Derry, and more generally, in good old small town American society. This is a theme that is evident in most of King's books. Especially his horror books. Sure, they're about space aliens and ancient eldritch spider-demons and vampires and psychics and other weird shit, but basically they're about how fucked up some people are, and how a little pressure will really twist the insanity dial.
So Becky and her friends face Pennywise the monster who basically turns everything terrible about their childhoods and makes it explicit and violent and feeds on the blood and pain.
They are kids who were forced to grow up too early, both by their mundane life experiences and by facing Pennywise. They can't handle it. Some of them break because of it.
What we see in the sewers is, yes, a big "friendship affirmation ritual" to counter the influence of Pennywise and it would have been a lot more palatable as a group hug. But these are kids who don't exactly have healthy role models or good examples, and... they're also all horny pubescents. So this is what comes to their minds.
I'm not going to say there was no other way King could have written it, and it's fair to say "Really, Stevie, what were you thinking?"
But a heartwarming little "friendship is magic" moment just wouldn't have had the same effect. There was both a bonding and denial effect amongst the kids, a "We really did that?" that among other things ensured that when they were called back to Derry years later, they'd come. And it was symbolically the end of their childhood (something a hug would not have accomplished).
King himself has kind of made this point. From anyone else, I'd roll at my eyes at "I wasn't really thinking about the sexual aspect of it" but from Stephen King, yeah, I believe it. Especially from 1978 to 1986...
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2d ago
Eh, I hated it because it felt like it was just taking a spite-filled dump on the source material. The sequel makes it even worse when he takes an even more spite-filled dump on CS Lewis.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2d ago
to "uh yeah no Stephen I didn't really need a pre-teen orgy in the middle of a good scary horror novel").
Point of order: it happens at the very end.
And while it was a very, um, off-putting scene, I still find myself defending it inasmuch as I understand what King was trying to convey there. In his very unfiltered and probably-written-on-a-coke-bender way. I mean, the entire book was full of really unpleasant things happening to children - that was the point.
Now if you want skeevy, let's talk Piers Anthony (or not).
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2d ago
You spent time on DLP, didn't you?
But seriously, it's amazing how much that series resonates with basically everyone who read it, across generations. People can hate on Rowling all they like, but I think Voldemort and Umbridge references are going to be as durable as Shakespeare quotes.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
2d ago
Why are you reviving a week-old thread?
Okay, I'll play:
All your answers are straw men, and they begin with the word "entitled."
Children are entitled to be cared for by their parents. Citizens are entitled to certain rights.
Beyond that, nobody is entitled to much of anything. You have to earn what you want in life. That is the human condition. You have to earn food. You have to earn shelter. You have to earn sex.
Nobody is entitled to a wife, a husband, a relationship. Because entitled implies someone else is obligated to give it to you.
Saying you are entitled to a "mid" as you put it implies that somewhere out there is a woman who is obligated to fuck you, and you exclusively. Who is she? How are we to locate her? By what means do you propose this involuntary fuckable be provided to you?
Patriarchy, you say? But even under patriarchy, you'd have to impress some girl's father enough to be willing to give her to you. Even if you want to DreadJimmax and say women are property, you are just transferring the obligation upwards: somewhere out there is a man who's obligated to give you his daughter to fuck.
Also note that under most real-world patriarchies, fathers still tended to have some affection for their daughters and would not give them to a man who truly repulsed her and seemed likely to make her miserable. And those patriarchies that do treat women as literal commodity goods in that fashion are pretty fucking miserable places to live for everyone!
What do you have to offer that would convince any decent father who cares for his daughter's well-being to give her to you?
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3d ago
Post a link, you don't need to post an entire wall of text.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
5d ago
Read some political biographies. There are politicians (and staffers to politicians) who do in fact have a comprehensive and wonkish understanding of policies and regulations. No, they aren't going to produce witty unrehearsed speeches about them like the dialog on West Wing and they probably aren't writing blogs. They are doing boring unglorious work in some DC office. But such policy nerds exist. If you had as much interest in housing policy as some people have in 4X games, you'd be writing posts about it.
We may not have that quality of posting here (though I have seen some really good posts about housing policy, for example) but it's simply not true that policy nerds don't exist.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
5d ago
This is as bad as the OP. "My enemies are incapable of producing real arguments."
You're on a roll lately, and not in a good direction. That probably applies to the Motte in general, but if you cannot even conceive of having worthwhile discussions with people whose politics are different from yours, you are in the wrong place.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
5d ago
Everything you say is also true of novelists. As with musicians, a publisher traditionally was more likely to make money on someone they cultivated and deemed to a potential bestseller than just giving publishing contracts to everyone in the slush pile. And while I'm not sure AI poses an existential threat to publishing, it's certainly a hell of a nuisance, and it's overrunning some genres (most of those litrpg and harem fantasies and monster-fucker books were AI-written or AI-assisted) and it's probably just a matter of time before an AI writes a bestseller.
The AI art discussion is old news at this point, but commercial illustrators and graphic designers are definitely being impacted. "Good enough" is definitely good enough for most companies. Pretty much the only thing preventing unrestricted use of AI at this point is the outrage unleashed on any publisher or other company caught using it, and that's not going to hold back the future forever.
I don't know about "dystopian" but I do think artisanal human-made music, writing, and art will become something of a niche.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
5d ago
There's no content here but culture warring and "boo leftists."
Even some rightists are noticing that the Motte is converging into a rightoid hivemind. Maybe that is inevitable, and posting rightist opinions is fine, but you're a newly-rolled account with a grand total of two comments that amount to nothing more than "Boo hiss leftoids." I don't even care which permabanned returnee you are. Write something more interesting.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
6d ago
"50% of the forum loves them and 50% hates their guts" is practically the definition of an interesting poster.
It's easy to be "interesting" (for some value of "interesting"). That's not the only criterion. The goal is not to be polarizing for its own sake. The guy going on about how having sex with your own prepubescent daughter should be legal was certainly interesting - and he wasn't even banned for expressing that opinion! He was banned for belligerently sneering at everyone who disagreed with him.
I don't expect that this suggestion will ever actually be implemented, but it is a possibility nonetheless.
I wouldn't be against it, per se, I just predict with high confidence that those who take advantage of the opportunity to return after a one-year ban will get banned again in short order.
Hlynka is the primary example of course, also fuckduck9000, AhhhTheFrench, AlexanderTurok.
As I told @The_Nybbler, fuckduck wasn't that interesting. AhhhTheFrench was a one-trick pony ("Hurr hurr religious people are so dumb!"). Hlynka and Turok I'll grant were interesting. However, see above. If you can convince Zorba to grant them an amnesty, I wouldn't oppose it, but I am also fairly certain they will not change their posting styles, which means in short order we'd be back to "Okay, are they so interesting that we let them keep just ignoring the rules?"
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
7d ago
That doesn't answer a single thing I asked.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
7d ago
I've already given you a warning for the OP. I'm not going to write a more effortful mod comment here about the direction this entire thread has gone. I already wrote many words to which you gleefully said "tldr lol." So: stop it. Stop doing the meme
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
7d ago
This comment is virtually devoid of substance, the very definition of "low effort." Make an actual point that doesn't waste our time reading it.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
7d ago
This is not a helpful contribution. Just because she's embarrassing herself and everyone is piling on does not mean it's open season to just throw rocks.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
7d ago
I only vaguely remember @fuckduck9000. The ban was a year ago and it was @naraburns who banned him and I'm not going to read the entire thread to see if I agree with your summary, since your summaries are almost always disingenuous.
But let's look at @fuckduck9000's "valuable contributions": he had eight warnings and/or tempbans before he got permabanned. All of them were basically for petty shit-stirring and condescension, often by starting a "call-out" thread obviously intended to start a fight. He had zero AAQCs, and my recollection of him was basically just another sneering culture warrior (which fits your defense of him, he usually sneered at the people you like to sneer at) but he never did so in an interesting or effortful way.
So your example of someone who was a loss to the forum was an uninteresting, unmemorable snarler who was given many, many chances to improve. Try again.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
7d ago
Okay buddy - you and @ABigGuy4U - I am calling your bluff. Who are the people we have permabanned who actually made the forum worse for their absence?
The only one I can think of is @HlynkaCG and he is extremely debatable - for every Hlynka-stan who misses him, there is someone who was screaming at us to ban him for years. And I've already written several times about how we did everything we could, short of just literally saying "The rules don't apply to Hlynka," to avoid having to permaban him.
Every other permaban I can think of might have been in some cases an "interesting" person, but they were interesting in the sense that they wrote high-effort screeds spitting high-effort venom, and the people upset that we banned them approved of the direction they were spitting.
Go on, tell me who on this list was a valuable contributor who you think should be granted amnesty?
We do not casually permaban people, and we let even the most belligerent and obnoxious people, if there is even a shred of redeeming quality in their posts, have multiple chances before we pull the trigger.
I personally don't find @BurdensomeCount's contributions very interesting, though I will say his trolling has gotten less blatant. I just skimmed the OP because it was the usual uninteresting BC sneering. He mostly gets away with it because he's toned down the celebratory triumphalism about enjoying the fruits of immigrating to the UK which he looks forward to being conquered by his people who will punish the white supremacist natives in good time. It was those kinds of posts that got him banned before.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
7d ago
I haven't seen anyone accusing you of hating men.
So trans people being offended are just crazy and can be ignored. Okay. But women being offended must be taken very seriously. What about Jews, blacks, and leftists? Just trying to figure out if there is any actual underlying principle to what you think should be modded other than "That which offends me personally is bad and that which doesn't offend me personally is fine."
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
8d ago
I modded her for sarcasm. That doesn't give you a pass to be just as sarcastic and patronizing back.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
8d ago
So, anything to say about the Joo-posters, the racists, the tranny-haters?
If a Jew started posting like you do with mockery and derision calling people Nazis (including some posters who can actually fairly be called Nazis), would you consider that appropriate for the Motte? If a trans person served some contempt back at you when you are expressing what you think of trans women, would you be cool with that?
These are not rhetorical questions. I really want to know what you think here.
Old School Renaissance/Revival. Basically, D&D going "back to its roots" (generally 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, depending on who you ask, but sometimes Basic or even Chainmail). There are a host of Old School "retroclones" which are all variations on the old "6 stats, class/level, d20" fantasy game, but the aesthetic is generally to appeal to 70s and 80s kids disenchanted with everything post-TSR and all the newer games. Unsurprisingly, there is a large overlap between OSR fans and gamers sick of "woke D&D," though it's by no means an entirely right-wing or anti-woke movement.
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