I'm going to be blunt: I don't actually need to understand the various foibles people have ,anymore than they need to understand my own particular...weirdness (though I grant that it's harder to tell at a glance). I just need them to create a social structure where I can tolerate them with minimal cost to myself and the things I consider important, then I'll happily do so. Part of that is minimizing the burden I/they make of myself/themselves.
I was all aboard the acceptance train because I assumed this would be incredibly easy for transpeople (and it probably still is for the man who is merely in the dress - that bit has always been easier for me to manage). Insofar as some of us have changed our minds it's a direct result of us being told every which way that this is impossible.
Empathy (which has been utterly ruined, much like "tolerance", by activists) really has nothing to do with it. Look at the McBride situation: "empathy" doesn't really change anything about the fundamental difference of opinion about who belongs where that continually brings this small population to the front of the culture war. It's just a disagreement that we need to hammer out.
The only reason I know anything about "AGPs" is because I was looking for an explanation for absolutely deranging policies and some strange behavior. What needs to happen is that the salience of this stuff needs to be taken down and that has to be done via message discipline and realistic asks on the other side.
The less the average person has to think about this issue beyond "you do you" the kinder the discourse will be.
Do you think he has a ghostwriter, er, ghostplayer?
Knowing nothing about Diablo...yes, I'm very suspicious of a man who is already busy (and also shit posts half the day) also finding time to become the best in the world at any competitive video game.
At least a lot of the games I'm familiar with would need a lot of grinding and not just raw skill to climb up the rankings. Maybe Diablo is different.
Tanista
1d ago
Diablo 4 players, how likely do you think it is that Elon Musk is bullshitting about his global ranking? What time investment would you need to get into the top 20?
Tanista
2d ago
Schafer is closest probably but even she probably drops a point when the photo is candid and unstaged.
Then again, I do know she's trans so...
Now how do we codify that into law?
Take any provision that protects women's spaces and clarify that "woman" is, as intended by the authors, a sex term and not a claim about "gender identity". Whatever that is.
Tanista
2d ago
It's all strange. Trans activists themselves acknowledge that it is strange when they continue to insist that without transition they'd die. That's how strange it is, that's what it takes to make this palatable even when it's not affecting others.
Tanista
2d ago
I don't think the two situations are the same. Men are allowed to become policemen already because they provide obvious benefits if you aren't Leto Atreides.
The presumption is against men being in the women's toilet at all, presumably because there's no benefit that outweighs potential issues.
So the question is why an exception for this sort of man? I really don't care whether it's sexualized or not. I think we should maintain the original taboo
Tanista
2d ago
Pew seems to think it's just about even
CNN, citing Pew (I can't find that specific set of figures and can't dig in now*) it used to be heavily Democratic and now is more or less even
* Maybe it was a bad idea to shift to "X"
Tanista
2d ago
Elon infuriates a certain sort of blue. I don't know that it's worse than Trump but it's pretty strange to see seemingly smart people go rabid.
I think it's just that we don't notice anymore when people claim they're superior to Trump and would do better with his daddy's money. It's been said for so long.
People who harp on about this with Elon come across like Thunderf00t; just pathetic and bitter. He presses all sorts of ideological buttons too what with being a billionaire who influences politics (filling the Koch bros. niche for leftists) and constantly signal boosting DR stuff with "!!" but, like Trump, I think it's impossible to psychologically digest that this juvenile-posting piece of shit is actually influencing the country.
Yes, it's possible. Some socialists are absolutely against strengthening ethnonationalist impulses. FdB wrote an insipid piece on it not too long ago.
You can say, as a matter of principle, that no ethnostate should exist.
The problem is that it practically seems to end up as "Israel in particular should dissolve itself first". People find that suspicious.
Tanista
5d ago
Where it gets complicated is that at least some of these things could theoretically be achieved by other Republicans like DeSantis who wouldn't have Trump's ability to make unforced errors (with an idiot-savant ability to tell how much his party is willing to tolerate).
And yet, Trump blew them all out in the primary.
There is a leftist school of thought that boils down to it being okay to harass SCOTUS judges and Trump officials while they're ordering burritos because they made "bad" decisions but I took this more as just general ranting too.
If one side hadn't equated speech with violence and thus demanded employers (like Disney) take action, maybe we wouldn't have to be so autistic about this stuff.
Tanista
7d ago
Also her trying to girlboss snow white is much bigger "crime" than a passionate sincere disappointment over an election.
She's not even the worst offender here. Peter Dinklage's complaints about dwarves being sidekicks leading to seven dwarven actors losing their jobs has to take the crown.
At least Zegler only talked about wrecking the movie on a story level. Millionaire dwarf actor literally taking roles out of his fellows' hands in the name of "representation"...amazing.
can increase its appeal to young men.
A nickname like "Momala" attached to AOC will take on a whole different sheen with Zoomer men, that's for sure.
Being hot worked for Trudeau.
Ezra Klein actually brought up Obama's lie to the Pod Save America guys who worked for him. No one contested that it was a lie btw.
He identified a different reason the trans stuff sunk Harris: both Harris and the ACLU are fucking stupid.
That sounds harsh but that was the tone. He was as angry as Klein gets, furious that the ACLU would even send out an exam (a paper trail!) on a policy that was almost designed to be maximally offensive and that Harris was dumb enough to say she supported and actioned it on tape instead of ignoring it or simply handing it in.
In essence, they didn't lie as good or as smart as Obama did.
I think the trans thing legitimately is a heavier lift but I think he has a point.
Tanista
9d ago
How well that plays in four years will depend on how badly Trump's border policy is carried out over his second term, but since the worst case for her is "Trump's Executive Orders don't make any big photogenic mistakes and the civil service who has to carry out his orders also don't make any big photogenic mistakes", I'm betting she still ends up with some swing-voter-friendly territory to stake out.
No. The worst case is that the left makes mistakes and punches itself out trying to stop deportations of the wrong sorts (they love a lost cause) and blow all their powder.
Then Trump's deportations proceed and go even further, the numbers drop compared to Biden and the Overton Window is shifted because people feel deportation wasn't so bad. Maybe let little Elio stay but still.
There's always someone complaining about dating. Both males and females. Of all races.
White men , unlike Indians and Asians, don't complain about racial barriers specifically. The other groups have all of the standard grievances plus the feeling that their race is disfavored by the majority.
So they're probably the winners, as a race.
Tanista
9d ago
I'm biased against progressives on certain issues so I'm inclined to think that the reason the trans thing is such a red line is precisely because it's just not true and is the most obviously ridiculous stance Democrats take. So you have to suppress any hostile discussion of it or basically go with DARVO. If you can't discuss trans stuff besides "it isn't happening" or "you're the weird one for caring" then you need to be able to control the tempo of the discussion because that is just bullshitting. At this point I think progressive takes on crime have also worn out their welcome so it can happen on multiple issues.
Another answer that doesn't depend on people we disagree with being secretly doubtful of their most cherished beliefs is that Democrats thought they had cultural hegemony so they had less to gain from going on to other sites. Twitter is only a couple of years out from being a left-wing stronghold that was more dangerous than Reddit given how it allowed the cool kids to set up cancellations. Rogan was attacked precisely because he felt like an oasis - and he wasn't even right wing! They legit thought they could have closed off all meaningful alternatives. At least for people not hooked on Fox News.
In that sort of environment it may feel like the incumbent has more to lose from stretching themselves than they have to gain. Meanwhile Trumpists have to take any platform offered.
As for liberals putting up signs: you have seen it, everywhere. It's the rainbow flag.
Tanista
9d ago
It's weird because a lot of the manosphere is black. Especially in the post-Kevin Samuels era.
They have zero interest in HBD on race (though they are quite fine with male-female differences and questions that could be considered racist if asked of them like "name 10 female inventors").
In some cases these black redpillers have larger platforms than people like Fuentes they're platforming. Fresh and Fit was making a ludicrous amount of money bashing Miami women and lost it to platform antisemites whose beef with the Jews is that they let in black migrants as "biological weapons" as they put it.
Tanista
9d ago
It's easy to get volunteers to try to take over mostly-left spaces. Things get harder in other spaces, not just because they can be out of touch with those people but because their defense mechanism is avoiding unfriendly (aka not explicitly left-wing) spaces for being impure. Or attacking other leftists for going into them.
This is how they decided a normie-bro like Rogan with many left-friendly views was somehow unreachable and radioactive.
Tanista
9d ago
Yes, a lot of it is structural but reddit policy made it infinitely worse. They banned basically most conservative subs that could have created a less progressive set of mods. Beyond that, they seem to have aided mod takeovers by exactly the sorts of obsessed supermods who never should have been given power (I recall at least one story of a mod being told to get new mods ASAP by admins and this acting as a way for these people to get in)
Mods of heterodox subs have to stress over some random stuff nuking the entire sub while supermods don't have it so hard. Of course one side loses in this environment.
The dirtbag and socialist left on places like /r/stupidpol and /r/redscarepod is still being tolerated but again, I do not know for how much longer given that they criticize mainstream Democrats almost as much as Republicans do.
Even those subs have inherently skewed discussion because of the threat of the Eye of Sauron. You could see it in terms like 'regard', how gingerly certain progressive sacred cows like trans are dealt with. Sister subs have already been banned. They're inherently unstable and fearful.
Reddit has a huge problem with a set of activist supermods. I was going to say that was the main problem and could be mitigated by some method to force mods to only mod a few subs but even if that worked (and it won't; these are the sorts of people who can get around that) there's still the admins who not only have had their own scandals but actively destroyed some of the most popular subs like thedonald.
It just rots from the head down. Which is why Twitter isn't a left wing bubble. Elon is not only not banning entire communities he's actively signal boosting the other side.
The Democrats tried that, insofar as they are capable. It doesn't work cause people were already pissed and Democrats seem out of touch (crypto for black men somehow fizzled ).
Truth is, on certain issues , Trump simply is the most credible person in the room. His wildness is useful: it's easy to believe he really will deport people. He's built up that credibility. No amount of talk after Biden called for a surge to the border and Kamala wanted to "rethink ICE" will make Harris' campaign more credible.
Tanista
10d ago
There's a simpler problem here: who cares what a himbo like Dan Bilzerian thinks? He got big playing Hugh Hefner without the articles. This is the guy we're going to for geopolitics or a discussion of the mechanics of cremating millions of people?
I tried to listen to it and realized that I was just tired. Israel-Palestine is tiring enough when it's someone whose opinion we're supposed to take seriously. How many people that were previously reachable by Dan Bilzerian care now that he's flirting with Islam and Holocaust denial (I think the Muslim fanbase is an underrated explanation for the derangement of certain figures)?
There's a sort of weird overlap between "manosphere" figures and antisemites like Fuentes but I don't see how anything will come of it given they don't have that much in common, any sort of stable ideological core and inevitably fly too close to the sun with some bullshit and end up getting burned a la Fresh and Fit.
If he doesn't have a ghostplayer maybe he has a ghostposter. It can't take much effort to just repost all of the DR stuff he's signal boosting with a "!!"
That'd free up a couple of hours.
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