Amadan
I will be here longer than you
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User ID: 297
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Ya know, you're not wrong, but this is a thing that happens constantly, and it's not because of a dumb woke conspiracy to force humiliation rituals on us.
My comparison is the government: why do government officials and politicians make so many empirically bad decisions? Why do many of them seem to be very bad at their jobs? Most of them are not stupid, and at least some of them actually want to be successful in managing the government and the economy. You can say some of them really are ideologues and just want to hurt their enemies (probably more true in government than in Hollywood), but most don't actually set out to be villains or incompetent.
The simple answer is that there are no adults in charge, and most people are just... not good at what they do. Ego and ideology do get in the way, but I believe in both Hanlon's Razor and Clark's Law.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Sure. The odd bit is that what's happening now is that Hollywood is incredibly IP-heavy compared to the past and even IPs with a track record are suddenly bombing despite us knowing they can appeal to their audience.
Actually, let me push back on that: the MCU was not destined to print money forever if only the writers could keep from going off the rails. Every trend, no matter how hot and moneymaking, fades eventually. There is a parallel in their source material: comics in the late 80s and 90s were extremely hot for a hot minute, and everyone was opening a comic book shop, every publisher was printing sixteen variant Collector's Item #1 covers of each new Spiderman/Superman/Spawn reboot, and Wolverine was guest-starring in cross-over stories in every damn title in the Marvel Universe.
That ended. It ended partly because of burnout, partly because of boring economic reasons, and partly because you just can't keep people excited about Wolverine forever.
Hollywood is of course a deeply and ironically uncreative industry (but then so are comic books, and book publishers, and gaming). When they see a cash cow, they will try to milk it until it's dead and they are trying to squeeze milk out of leather.
Your mention of Coppola actually speaks to my point: people think Joker 2 failed because it is an anti-profit go-woke-go-broke studio project to insult white men. If Megalopolis failed because Coppola is a megalomaniac who made a bad movie, presumably they don't think Coppola knew it was bad and didn't care, or never wanted to make money from it (though he probably would have been willing to make it anyway even if he knew it would lose money, because this was a passion project). But Coppola used his own money. I guess a very woke Coppola might have made a passion project to say fuck you to white men, but most people are not that crazy. I think it's much more likely the studios thought Joker 2 would be successful, and if it pissed off a few incels that would be an added bonus.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Sure, but that's a miscalculation and a bad bet, not a nefarious scheme to deliberately lose money just to piss off people you hate.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
If you're going to say that there are (at least) two primary motivations, I don't think you should get to act like people claiming one of the has greater primacy than the other are being ridiculous.
I think money is the greater motivator, and when I say status, I mean the status that comes from producing a moneymaker and award winner. If you think the "status" they seek is the status of winning the approval of their woke friends who think it's great that they produced a massively expensive disaster just to raised a middle finger to their enemies, yes, I will act like the people claiming that are being ridiculous.
I'd expect far more people figuratively flying out office windows, if that was the case.
A lot of actors, directors, and producers have had their careers crippled with a massive failure. Comebacks happen, but so does being consigned to the wilderness of low budget direct-to-video releases.
Is it ok if I just read the ones explicitly advertised as "this movie wasn't made for chuds like you!" as it? (Not sure if Joker 2 would qualify, since I checked out from Hollyeood a while ago).
Yes, but an actor or writer throwing a fit on Twitter over criticism and saying things like that is not the same as explicitly advertising a movie as "Not for you."
A lot of people point at things like Amandla Stenberg saying "White people crying was the goal." Obviously a bad look and a shitty thing to say, and Amandla Stenberg probably would be happy to burn millions of dollars of (someone else's) money to make white people cry. But she's just an actress whose career will probably last five minutes after Star Wars, and she was being snarky on the Daily Show. She is not a studio spokeswoman and I am very confident that the producers of The Acolyte did not have "Make white people cry (and lose money)" as their goal.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Given the plot summary, anyone could have predicted it would be a box office failure.
See, I know people say this all the time about movies that should have been obvious bombs in retrospect. And yet it has always happened, throughout the history of Hollywood. "How could anyone have thought this piece of crap wasn't going to bomb?"
People just overestimate how good studios are at predicting winners, and underestimate the egos of the people involved. Also, projects often sound very different on paper from the finished product, and the development process, especially nowadays, can radically transform a movie into something unlike what the money originally expected.
Does it really make sense to you that someone says "Yes, let's waste hundreds of millions of dollars just to say fuck you to incels"? And that everyone involved in writing that check nods their heads?
Individuals involved in the project, maybe. Though even there, I think that is pretty rare. Do you think Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix knew as they were making this movie that it would bomb? Or knew as soon as they read the script? And they were okay with it? Actors will sometimes sign onto a crap project just to collect a paycheck, but usually they don't want to be associated with a bomb.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
We would prefer such accusations be made in reports rather than in public, though strictly speaking it's not against the rules to say "This looks like it was written by ChatGPT." Note that we won't necessarily mod someone for using an LLM, depending on the context and how certain we are that it was written by an LLM. We don't want people spamming the board with bot text. We also don't want people spamming the board with accusations of being a bot. Nor do we want to waste our effort judging whether someone used a bot.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
There is absolutely no way Hollywood looks the way it looks like right now, if their primary motivation is profit.
Their primary motivation is profit and status, and for the money people behind the scenes, it's profit. They care a lot less about culture war than you do.
Hollywood looks the way it does because Hollywood has always been full of both "creatives" and studio execs who are actually very bad at their jobs and make bombs regularly. (And, in fairness, sometimes they just genuinely mistime or miscalculate the appeal of a film.) It's a very Current Year thing for you to read every box office failure as an intentional devious scheme by the studios to set money on fire just because they hate you.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
I can believe the writers thought the audience "didn't get the point" the first time and wanted to write a new movie with the "correct" message.
I think the more sinister conspiratorial nonsense - that the studios literally don't care about making a profit (!!) and deliberately did this as a "humiliation ritual" just to punish the audience, whom they hate - is ridiculous and a sign of how far down a rabbithole this sort of "THEY are out to get you" thinking can take you. Maybe there is a screenwriter somewhere chortling as xe/xir thinks "This will show those white incel losers!" but I am pretty sure there is no studio that will deliberately put out a money-loser because all the money-men are on board with a "punish incels" program.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Yeah, uh, dude, this is like saying "let me Google that for you."
Presumably if the OP wanted a Copilot or ChatGPT summary he could have gotten one himself.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
That's not an entirely fair standard to hold someone to, because extreme politics is a niche hobbyist interest rather than a general interest.
Sure, but when someone says "I know leftists in my life who admire Lenin and Trotsky," I can't help wondering where all these literal Bolveshiks are hanging out.
Concerns about LLMs notwithstanding, everyone who is present online is present in real life too.
Yes, but we are all familiar with the phenomenon of fringe, niche freaks who'd be all alone in their community gravitating towards each other online and thus presenting an online presence that dramatically exaggerates the impression of how many of them there actually are. A lot of rightists who are convinced that every leftist is a literal Bolshevik are quick to scoff that the actual number of real Nazis is miniscule, and vice versa.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Skepticism isn't the same as "pointing and sputtering." Of course I am speaking for myself; I don't know if you mean me or if you have seen other people "pointing and sputtering." (I haven't, at least not here.)
The thing is, you can make inferences about someone's health and genetic gifts based on their appearance, sure. A tall, well-proportioned man with a strong jaw probably is a more fit physical specimen. So I, at least, am not claiming that you can determine nothing from appearance.
My skepticism encompasses the following points:
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Being a handsome strong-jawed chad may have some statistical correlation to also being smart and possessing natural leadership qualities, but the two don't automatically go hand in hand, so picking a "leader" because someone looks like Captain America in a headshot is probably at best a flawed heuristic. Yeah, given no other info, I'd pick Captain America over soy-face too. I would not agree that you can, as a general rule, pick people for their leadership qualities and competence based on their photos.
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A lot of what you see in photographs is superficial presentation. Any stylist, photographer, or couturier can tell you that you can make a strong man look weak or a weak man look strong with the right outfit and angle and lighting. (Same with women; turning a 4 into a 8 or a 8 into a 4 is not hard.)
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Going back to the OP, there wasn't even any discussion of specific characteristics of the people in question, just vague hinting that they aren't white men and therefore are inferior.
Which is why I am pushing back, because I'm totally interested in well-presented arguments about how you can correlate specific physical characteristics to positive traits (and anyone who's been around for a while knows I am not afraid of HBD arguments), but the OP's post was lazy. If all you have to say is "Look at all those women and blacks, obviously incompetent garbage!" what are you expecting, sober head nods and clapping at your well-reasoned argument?
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
I am very skeptical of this kind of phenotyping, which is often little better than phrenology. "You can just tell by looking at the strong-jawed white chad that he's a superior New Soviet Manalpha male." A lot of people claim they can detect "soy face" when it's just a guy making a goofy expression. Really, do you think you could pick Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower out of that West Point photo without being told who they are?
In this instance, it seems pretty clear to me that the judgment is purely based on the fact that the OP saw a lot of women and blacks.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
As it happens, I just finished reading a biography of Ulysses S. Grant. He certainly respected Lee, but as @HaroldWilson says below, he thought Lee was overrated. Early in the war the Confederacy had notoriously better generals, and Lee was pretty much walking all over them, leading to a general sense of dread and doom whenever Lee acted that Grant lost patience with.
It should be noted that Lee also came under criticism from his own side, when they felt he was too slow and passive in his responses; some Southern newspapers took to calling him "Granny Lee."
There is also a sort of myth that has grown up around Lee that he was the most brilliant general in the war, and that Grant was plodding and mediocre and only beat Lee because of the North's superior numbers and equipment. This also isn't really born out by history.
In summary, Lee was certainly capable, but the South has turned him into a sort of Alexander or Napoleon, and not only overrated his military prowess but his honorable and humanitarian nature. In fact Lee was no worse than most Southerners, but he was no better; like most of them, he might have told himself that slavery was a benevolent institution and that he didn't personally hate black people, but he clearly did not like black people or consider them worthy of civil rights. He was also not a gracious loser; Grant was always hospitable and gracious when he met with Lee to discuss surrender, and afterwards when Lee petitioned him in the White House. Lee could barely manage to keep his resentment and contempt in check to be minimally civil.
He wasn't a terrible man or general, but he wasn't the Great Man that Lost Causers have made him out to be.
I also really want to know what leftists you have met, other than on social media, who adulate Lenin or Trotsky. I am pretty sure my circle is considerably leftier than yours, and I don't know anyone who admires the Bolsheviks. I know genuine tankies exist, but I think they are much more present online than in real life.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
They look like bureaucrats. They look like people that have spent their entire professional lives pushing paper around and playing office politics.
They look like every person I see with a professional headshot on LinkedIn, from sales managers to software engineers.
I can only imagine what skillset it takes to advance to leadership in the federal government, but it seems unlikely that they’ve been selected for competence at responding to emergency situations.
Actually, being an adept bureaucrat is very important for people in charge of managing and funding a disaster response. These are not the people who will actually be wading through floodwaters to bring emergency supplies, which is of course an entirely different skillset.
People should ask themselves, does this group look like the type of people that would prioritize Ukraine, “migrants”, or rural Americans.
I would ask myself that about the politicians who determine policy, not try to divine someone's innermost loyalties based on a picture that reveals only sex and race.
There is a well known trope that coastal elites seem to hold rural people in contempt.
"Well known trope" = "Thing that lots of people are happy to believe because it fits their culture war priors." In fact most civil servants (and these people, while fairly high up in FEMA, are pretty low on the fed food chain) are no more or less diligent about their duties and responsibilities than the average corp wageslave, and I would argue generally moreso. You don't join FEMA because you have a seething hatred of "rural people" and think this is your best avenue to hurt them.
I’m willing to make the leap that the people on that leadership page are part of that group.
Again, I am asking why you think you can be so confident about this based solely on their photographs? If you just assume that anyone in a government agency leadership position is a "coastal elite" who holds rural people in contempt, then it wouldn't really matter what they look like. You could have just said "I'll bet FEMA hates rural people." I think you have a very unsophisticated inductive reasoning chain.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
How exactly are you judging them as "an embarrassment"? Those look like ordinary professional photos and they look Iike normal people. Without knowing anything else about them, should I assume it's just the fact that many of them are black and/or women that's causing the curled upper lip?
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Come on now. What do I have to do to convince you that I genuinely mean it?
I thought you're complaining about no BLR. I don't associate you with the group constantly bitching about moderation in general. I believe you mean it about wanting a BLR and thinking it would be an improvement. I don't agree, and most of the mods don't agree, but I guess you could try to convince us that everyone else on the Motte wants a BLR.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Okay but can you see how this doesn’t inspire confidence? It’s great that you think that the minimum level of effort required is X, but your opinion (presumably) doesn’t carry any more clout than @netstack’s does, and if the modding is going to be inconsistent, with some mods being more overzealous than others, than I think it’s pretty understandable that users (especially those without the post history and reputation that provides some armor) might feel very apprehensive about posting anything less than a maximally-effortful essay about something they find interesting.
Netstack did give his reasoning. He didn't mod it because it wasn't effortful enough, he modded it because he thought it was nothing but "boo outgroup."
Like I said, I probably wouldn't have modded it myself, but I can also see why he would.
We have never claimed 100% consistency. There are days when I might be more strict than others. That's why the vast majority of modposts are just warnings, and if people took those with more grace instead of flipping out and deciding they need to litigate them like they have been issued a traffic fine, there would be less angst about it.
I am sorry (but not very) that some people feel "intimidated" into not making more posts, but being perfectly honest with you again, the people who complain most frequently about how we're too strict and too capricious are not complaining in good faith. They just don't like the rules and don't want to be restricted as to what they can say. Can you see why that makes us less inclined to consider it a problem that allegedly there are all these posters afraid of being told to do better?
So, for all of a bare links repository’s potential flaws, at the very least it would not foster any doubt or require people to discern the intentions of all of the various mods.
Even if we did bring the BLR back, it would not be a "mod free" zone where people can just post things that are nothing but boo outgroup and sneering. Some BLR posts would still get modded, and the complaints about our decisions wouldn't change much.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't have modded that post, though it is a bit borderline, being not much more than "Boo outgroup" with MOAR WORDS. The mods are not a hivemind. I stand by my point that you don't have to put a lot of effort into your post, not everything has to be an effortpost, and the BLR would be a net negative. Will the other mods sometimes have a different opinion than me of what constitutes "enough" effort? Yes.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
This discussion would really benefit from some more charity towards my position. I am not arguing for The Motte to become Twitter, that is a strawman. Neither am I arguing for the roundup to be flooded with "low effort shit".
Yes, I know that's not what you want. I am saying that IMO that is what your proposal would result in.
And a BLR wouldn't clutter up anything because it would be one click away from being minimized. No wading required.
Here is my prediction of what would happen (because it's what happened when we had the BLR back on reddit):
- Most posts to the BLR would be very much "Can you believe what those fucking wokes did now?!" Most people would nod and agree, yeah, those fucking wokes are the worst.
- Now and then someone would post a link to an article about why Trump is a fascist or DEI is good, actually, and it would get mass-reported.
- Very rarely would the resulting discussion be anything approaching "good" or "interesting." It would mostly be circle jerks of people agreeing with the premise.
- It would encourage laziness. People who can't be bothered to contribute meaningfully to a discussion or write an effortful post but really want to talk about how much they hate their enemies would have a convenient dumping ground for this.
I just have zero sympathy for people who want to post bare links, because our requirements to add something meaningful are not that stringent. Every person who claims we require MOAR WORDS or meaningless verbiage or a ChatGPT sensitivity pass is lying. All you have to do is add something like "Why is this interesting? What is your take? Why do you care? Why should we care? Why do you think it is worth bringing to our attention?" Add some commentary (doesn't have to be very much, does not have to be particularly insightful or long), just more than "Hey, look at what those fucking wokes did now!" It's not a high bar. It just fucking isn't. I am tired of people pretending that we put barriers in the way of their very interesting conversations that we do not.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
If you look at Twitter, it has a vastly greater amount of content. The vast majority of it is low effort shit. Sometimes a low effort shitpost does produce a high quality discussion. Just like here.
What you are arguing is that since some percentage of shitty, low quality posts will produce good posts, if we allowed more shitty, low quality posts, the result would more good posts. In raw numbers, this is probably true. The price would be that you'd have to wade through a dramatically greater number of shitty, low quality posts.
That is the difference between what we want and what you want.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
If you insist. Both of you are being jerks. (And @The_Nybbler, as usual, is being dishonest, claiming that we prohibit "wordplay." Like all our other anklebiters, you know where the line is and you pretend not to when you petulantly insist on crossing it.)
Knock it off, both of you.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Bring back the link repository!
No.
There is a genuine conflict of interest here between moderators and users of the forum.
No, there is a conflict of interest here between the moderators and what some users of the forum would like.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1mo ago
And thus we import cheap Chinese goods instead of supporting American manufacturing, and outsource millions of cubicle jobs to India and the Philippines.
I have no strong feelings on longshoremen or automation in general, but optimizing for the lowest cost of goods and services for the greatest number of people is only maximally beneficial in an actual global economy where everyone from India to the US is fungible. In the world we are in now, it's not just a choice between "Should longshoreman be overpaid or should Americans pay more for a toaster?" Eliminating American jobs eats away at American prosperity also.
Please tell me what non-dysfunctional ecosystem I can go live in where this happens.
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