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1yr ago
I'm not saying I agree with Nybbler. Someone behaving poorly does not excuse behaving poorly yourself. That edit's purpose is to be a petty insult, if it wasn't there'd be no reason to mention the person you're insulting. You could have easily just left the name out, but you wanted it to be insulting. I was asked to review the original post before I went into the thread and I thought it needed a warning because of the way it just called out another user seemingly for no reason. But after reading your post in response, the edit of that, and then the edit of the original post. It's just pure insult and pretending to be otherwise. I can understand banter and swipes and barbs to people with whom we disagree. But you go out of your way to humiliate and troll other users and get away with it because they made a mistake and were wrong and you are right. It's an aggressive and uncharitable trend you make a habit of and it disappoints me immensely that you can just get away with it because you do it with a smile and a bunch of links.
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1yr ago
You should get a couple days ban for being so antagonistic. That edit to the original post is a shameful act for someone that's supposed to be a mod.
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1yr ago
In the context of the show Don spent all day thinking about the guy he told he didn't think about at all. He even went out of his way to sabotage him by leaving behind Ginsberg's ad pitch so he could only do his own because he knew that his was inferior.
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1yr ago
Yeah, I just left the page because I didn't really know what to do for that. I felt like giving a neutral to a bad comment would be seen as poor meta-modding and I have no idea if they can still see deleted comments or if they can see the time that I rated the comment in relation to when it was deleted and I'd rather earn my bad meta-mod reputation honestly.
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1yr ago
So, there was a recent movie that came out on Paramount plus called Honor Society. It's about a girl in high school who is obsessed with academic success to the point where she is plotting to derail the academic careers of her competition. She manipulates several people into getting academically distracted and then her real competition is a schlubby nerd that she decides to distract/derail by getting him to fall in love with her because he only cares about schoolwork, has no friends and is ugly. So, basic plot so far (apart from the ugly). She actually falls for him instead, who could see it coming. But she basically gives away the special recommendation letter they were all struggling to get to him because he's apparently poor.
But it's all revealed to be a lie. He was manipulating her in the same way. I'm not sure how effective this would be since he's the "ugly one" from the Stranger Things cast but okay. So, he pretended to be poor and fall for her so he could get that recommendation by getting her to give it to him.
Of course, that climactic reveal is shown to not matter once she stops moping for the allotted five minutes because she blackmails the guy writing the recommendation to give it to a more deserving minority because that counselor tried to proposition her earlier. Everyone forgives her because even though she reveals what she did she did it in a nice way by distracting them with love or a hobby they liked or something. Everyone lives happily ever after. Except the schlubby nerd boy who had no real emotions except wanting to personally succeed and has to stew in his failure and friendlessness at the end. It could basically be lifted out of any high school romcom from the past thirty years except there is no lesson for the villain, there's no redemption, there's nothing.
So, no, I don't think the movie was trying to make a point but I do think it's reflective of the times. The secret villain is a friendless, rich, and ugly nerd. And there is no path for redemption. They don't have the moment where it's revealed he cared back or at all. There's not even a moment of consideration by the main character that it was possible that he could have cared at all but was hiding it. They don't show him to have a tragic backstory or even being generally a bad person overall. He was just this weird schlubby benignly evil "genius" that was capable of manipulating literally everyone around them into doing what he wanted through means that after the fact seem inexplicable.
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1yr ago
Not gonna talk about NCFOM since everyone else has it covered but I'd say Cabin in the Woods doesn't subvert tropes it contextualizes them or simply points them out. Nothing about the movie really subverted what you expected to see. I think anytime something is meta at all people just say it's subverting expectations for no reason. I didn't particularly like it but it's not criticizing tropes it's just trying to fit them all into the movie so they can all be explained by the movie itself. It's generic by design because it needs to be as trope-filled as possible while also giving those tropes a reason to exist beyond "they were stupid, serial killer is evil, monster was hungry." The entire movie reminds me of a scene in Community where Annie tells a joke but it's not 100% factual so somebody corrects her. Great. Thanks for making my horror tropes have contextual reasons to exist, now they're terrifying.
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2yr ago
It was definitely before it started airing, but it was after they had done the previews with the diverse casting, so it's possibly related, dunno.
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2yr ago
In one of the recent episodes of South Park they reveal that Token's name was actually Tolkien the whole time (because his parents loved Lord of the Rings) and Stan was the only person who actually thought it was Token.
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2yr ago
I was trying to imply you didn't do that but what it would be like if you did.
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2yr ago
There's no reason to talk about Jan 6 on themotte. The topic exists for one person and they hold it hostage as a one man army. It's pretty remarkable but I don't have the wherewithal in me to withstand the scrutiny.
It feels like what would happen if ChrisPrattAlphaRaptor showed up any time you mentioned COVID to disprove you or interrogate you as if you were a collegial equal. And it's not even solely about that kind of engagement, the obvious amount that this matters to ymehskhout is so large that I'd feel uncomfortable with any engagement at all because without full agreement I'd be immediately be dealing with a hostile adversary who knows far more about this than I do and is schooled in the subject much more than I am as well.
It feels like that guy who posts about Ivermectin and Scott. He probably knows what he's talking about more than me, but it's obvious from the persistence on a specific topic alone that something altogether alien to me is happening for them that's not happening for me and I'd rather just skip and move on to the next topic than engage.
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2yr ago
I don't see any of that in the modhat reply. I think you should separate a person from their posting patterns outside of when they make mod decisions because it's not fair otherwise. You seem to be making an assumption about what they mean when they say groomers and then ignoring the clarification and saying they're lying. That's just wildly uncharitable. If you will just say that someone's opinion is not what they say it is and it's only what you think they actually mean then there's nothing to be done about meeting a level of discourse you apparently want which I guess is not meeting expectations and definitions that you've made up that they don't agree with.
I mean sometimes it's clearly apparent to me that the rules are not enforced equally, especially to those who are mods but in general it's mostly people who are known. I'd prefer the rules to be far more laissez faire. The post you linked to I wouldn't ban you for but I do think it makes a particularly uncharitable argument that's clearly done in bad faith and with a style that's teetering toward unhinged. nara said you might be suicide by modding there and this post certainly doesn't help that case. Especially when your responses to people asking you questions about that post is simply to do that extremely obvious bad faith argument dance where you just ask an extended series of questions in multiquotes and then disregard or ignore the responses. And it all seems to come back to you making an assumption about what another person is actually saying. I mean if you're going to approach every response or criticism as someone doing a dogwhistle that they say they're not doing then you may as well get banned and only talk in a forum with yourself because clearly that's the only person that can wade through that expectation with clarity.
It's possible, they usually specify if that's the case. I don't care that they were banned or even the lengths they chose I just think the discrepancy is too disproportionate all else being equal. To be honest this just seems like playful banter being interpreted as much harsher than either user meant it to be but maybe I'm wrong. nara's little poke with a stick to the user after the ban reminded me of what Hlynka would do with bans and why they bothered me so much (though I think they're both excellent contributors in general).
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2yr ago
Can't say I agree with the discrepancy in time between the two posters ban lengths. It gives the impression that being antagonistic first is less against the rules than being antagonistic toward someone being antagonistic. Also, your flippant antagonism toward the person you're banning should get you banned as well if we were all playing on the same field.
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2yr ago
I'm sure a lot of people knew this but the bottom left picture instantly made it obvious to me that Jeffrey Donovan's character in Sicario and Soldado is based on Mike Vining.
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2yr ago
In my recollection it's been discussed on the Motte before but not nearly as much as I've seen in it in /r/all. Literally any post with a penis or even mentioning foreskin would devolve into male circumcision debate and I remember it at least ten separate times in random threads. The people invested in caring about it care about it is so much that I would never want my kid to be circumcised. I remember watching a Penn and Teller Bullshit episode about circumcision and there was this guy who was so obsessed with getting his lost foreskin back that he attached weights around his penis to create new foreskin. If it is affecting people that much from the trauma or loss of potential sensation or just becoming obsessed with wanting that part of their body back I'd never do it to my kid because I would not want him on Reddit going into a /r/funny post showing two different mushrooms and comparing them to uncircumcised/circumcised penises and feeling the need to lay out seven paragraphs with ten citations about how evil circumcision is. Whatever health benefits the WHO gives or even the prevention of a future mentioned below is not worth my kid growing up to make a post like that on /r/funny.
But the best argument in favor that I have is this: I used to listen to Loveline and the amounts of calls they would get from men who had Phimosis or tearing during sex of their foreskin and had to have an adult circumcision were at least biweekly. I also remember the kid in Nip/Tuck who was uncircumcised and girls made fun of him and his parents wouldn't let him get circumcised, so he tried to circumcise himself in the bathroom with his dad's scalpel. Though that one probably is vanishingly rare in real life.
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2yr ago
A lot of this, not saying all, is just related to the internet and its relative anonymity. In real life I think we all calibrate ourselves to be more ingratiating to those we're dealing with and even if we're comfortable enough to have an argument with someone it's often a much less appealing proposition than being able to downvote and move on or close the tab or block because of the oft-mentioned skin in the game. Even online I think if you consider someone a friend you're going to be less hostile, less likely to argue, more likely to calibrate your opinion toward theirs if you value them as a friend. Mistake theory is how we mostly code disagreements in these conditions and I think it's much more likely to be true if only for these conditions. Someone around me starts laying into the Democrats and I can nod and agree with the rest of them because I do. Someone around me starts laying into the Republicans and I can also nod and agree because I do. These are somewhat reflective of my opinion but they're also me agreeing with them because it's easier to agree and I'd rather have a conversation with someone than an argument.
As a pseudonymous internet commenter you're willing to disagree and let your inhibitions go. The interaction is not really about getting along anymore it's about winning and getting the praise and esteem that goes along with that. You'll sandbag a win because it's in your best interests to appeal as an underdog. You're more likely to tell the truth that you've kept secret from friends and relatives but you're also more likely to lie. Everything is amped up and so much of it is about getting attention/respect that Conflict theory is not only easier it makes sense because the goal is to win and you already know you're right. Progressives control the narrative, it's obvious because of reasons A,B, and C. These are all true. I also know that none of my friends or relatives agree with this but that's D and why would I include something that undermines my idea when I have data that agrees with it? I think there's a certain level of disingenuous rhetoric that everyone engages in when presenting an argument because they're trying to "win" and often that comes off as a disconnection or inferential step away from your reality but I think a good portion of it is never really turning off the war part of the culture war. In a way it's kind of a mistake theory for conflict theory, I guess but I believe people engage in this behavior, even unknowingly, much more than they'd ever admit. This is all me probably typical-minding but it's how I explain almost everyone ever sandbagging their own position/politics to appear as a more appealing underdog for some reason.
I think you're right and the more steps removed you are from someone and their knowledge the more likely you are to look at it and think that they're smoking bath salts. Society seems to be built more towards atomization and it's a hell of an easy way to create hundreds and thousands and millions more inferential steps between each other and our trust or acceptance of one another's knowledge. I also think that it's fair to call that disconnect reaction a natural heuristic toward not being fooled. And I think that heuristic instinct gets stronger the more it's proven correct and it's often easy to prove it correct with whatever data you want that supports your disconnected feeling. It might be right or wrong but I think it's safe to say that we mostly find it wrong even if most of the time it actually is wrong because most of the time the heuristic works and that disconnection from others is often a much stronger weight toward our eventual conclusion of accepting that information than piles of links to studies/articles even if the media and academia have done themselves no favors here.
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2yr ago
I wonder how much having the votes at the bottom of a post is having an effect on longer posts simply getting much less voting engagement. I doubt weird voting patterns are bots here just because it does seem trivial enough to to pull a Unidan and create however many alt accounts you want to upvote yourself if you need the self-esteem boost. I don't even think it would be against the written rules. It's possible no one is doing that but it's an easy way to explain specific comments being singled out for praise or disdain with votes and that happening in quick succession.
That wasn't my contention that was the judge's contention when he struck the suit. WaPo and CNN settled the case last year. The rest of his cases were struck down by a judge a few months ago, I assumed people here would've been aware of that. I saw it Deadline with all the comments celebrating that the racists lost. I guess if no one makes a top level post about it here it might as well never have happened.
Your line of reasoning also assumes that each media outlet had the exact same level of potential culpability which would be impossible unless they all posted the same articles and made the same tweets. It's possible CNN and WaPo settled because they thought the cases against them were strong and the other outlets didn't settle because the cases against them were weaker.
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2yr ago
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2yr ago
Smirkgate kid got all his cases dismissed for being "objectively unverifiable" so the media's response was just non-actionable opinions. Which means they're broad or vague enough that you can't objectively say they're false. Though he did settle with CNN and The Washington Post before the trial was dismissed so he got something.
Other kids at the school trying to file a suit pseudonymously had their case thrown out for being pseudonymous but it was also stated that it would have been dismissed anyway because of the same reason as above.
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2yr ago
It was actually interesting to me how Rings of Power is doing poorly relative to what I had expected its marketing to push. Nielson's minutes watched for the first two episodes came out last week and it was the top but not by what I expected. I think House of the Dragon had four episodes by then so that could confound a 1:1 comparison but I recall it only beating House of the Dragon by a kinda large margin (which should be expected for a premiere and one this heavily promoted) but House of the Dragon was still winning technically because the Nielson numbers for minutes watched didn't include live numbers for people who have cable/satellite for House of the Dragon. Though I wouldn't take into account people who talk about declining viewership, everything declines in viewership throughout a season, it might pick up near a finale but usually only up to the level of the premiere. Shows can increase viewers from season to season (this is very rare but usually happens when shows actually become hits like Game of Thrones or Stranger Things) but it never really happens while a show's running during a season.
The development path for Rings of Power started with Amazon buying the rights. I think that's the real problem. Well, the real problem is they bought the rights to something that they intended to use to make fanfiction about. It's like Amazon thought Lord of the Rings was a big IP because of its world and was something akin to Marvel or Star Wars where they were buying some broad spectrum IP they could make a bunch of stories out.
I just don't think Lord of the Rings works that way. In the same way it doesn't work for A Song of Ice and Fire. The minute Game of Thrones ran out of dialogue written by Martin it was apparent and depressing. They bought the rights to the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and they're not even using them. They just wanted a name for a show and some of the characters. I don't understand Bezos. He loves The Expanse, revives it from cancellation, and then just lets it die. By the end it was just heads talking in black rooms with obviously half a season of content missing. And, he loves Lord of the Rings and wants to buy the rights for a massive amount of money with no plan other than to not make Lord of the Rings. Maybe it's not even about the prestige of making a good show, or celebrity clout, but just that he just wanted the prestige of owning those stories.
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2yr ago
That's what Netflix was doing. They were paying Cogent to take the traffic and it was being delivered to Verizon but because Cogent was handling Netflix it was using more bandwidth than Verizon felt was fair so they let their ports fill up with Cogent and it slowed all Netflix content to Verizon. Netflix subsequently entered paid peering agreements with Comcast and Verizon after this to make sure their interconnections weren't disrupted. That just seems like a scam to me and not just toward Netflix. If I'm paying Verizon to provide me with internet and they don't provide Netflix simply because they're unhappy with their peering agreement with Cogent then that seems like something that shouldn't affect the customer and if it does it seems like they're not providing the thing they're supposed to be selling.
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2yr ago
I'd bet it has something to do with the fact that small businesses and individuals aren't really a big enough fiscal presence on the internet to matter. Everything is big websites of big companies anyway. I remember reading/talking about how without Net Neutrality we'd just be a few giant websites and that's how it happened out anyway even with Net Neutrality in place.
Related to this, I was reading about Netflix peering deals because I was wondering how Net Neutrality dealt with that and apparently ISPs can effectively throttle large companies if they feel like it because refusing connections from another network and/or not delivering it in a timely fashion is not a violation of Net Neutrality. It only becomes about Net Neutrality when it's on their network. So, they can essentially extort money from Netflix to keep its connections to their network from being refused or connected slowly.
I think people just assumed Net Neutrality meant more than it actually does because to my tiny mind the above seems like just the kind of thing that Net Neutrality should protect against.
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2yr ago
I mean you're right, it's just signalling. I'd bet those people who said they'd never eat at Chik-fil-A are lying or simply don't like it and happen to be telling the truth for that reason. I've seen numerous woke people just give up caring when it comes to boycotting anything they like. Sure, Chick-fil-A and In & Out* are "piece of shit" companies but they still order it anyway they just make sure to let you know that it's wrong to do it. It's also possible there are people taking a principled stand that just don't talk about it but every single person I've met, or seen online, who's talked about this issue (and recently, too) has admitted that Chick-fil-A is a bad or piece of shit company and then still bought Chick-fil-A.
People I've seen, for the most part, have no idea about the object-level reasons why someone or something is bad. It's the same for anything political, really. They get given a vague idea by someone else who summed it up and their mind is made up. JK Rowling might be a perfect example of most of these people being the most informed about the reason why they're supposed to hate, but I bet none of them know what she's actually said. They just know that she's anti-trans. But they'll still see the next Fantastic Beasts movie and buy the next Harry Potter game.
I will admit this is stronger on the left side of things. The not knowing part, but I wonder if that's partly because of their cultural dominance and maybe the fact that right side people maybe feel like they need to look everything up several times to verify it because they don't trust a left source which would be most of them. And part of the cultural dominance is keeping the signals straight and in line with each other. On Reddit right now there were about four or five coordinated stories about Jordan Peterson crying about being called an incel by Olivia Wilde. But actually he cried for incels in general but nobody read the actual article or the video it was about. Most people repeated things about him that were patently false to signal to everyone that they know he's bad news. I bet they believe it. Once it's about politics/culture war information becomes useless. It's shocking to me how cavalier people are with their hatred.
*I'm not sure that In & Out has even done the getting sullied with a game of telephone thing, but simply being openly Christian is mostly enough and the rest is filled in with whatever their head made up, incidentally this is why Chris Pratt is a "piece of shit". I've heard this about him several times. But I bet you they still see the next Chris Pratt movie and then make a big point to complain about him when they don't even know what he's bad for except that he's Christian and/or Republican.
Focusing on a single person for no reason to expose them as a bad faith actor is trolling. People are not ants in an antfarm. Not giving a person any time to respond at all before you make a top-level post detailing how wrong they are and pointing them out by name over and over is not the act of a person engaging in a debate. It's rude, tactless and unnecessarily aggressive. But it's clear to me that you are either unable to understand how your actions can affect other people or simply don't care. You wrap it all up in nice-seeming language but it's not. These are things you do to people you see as enemies. We're supposed to be having discussions and arguments with people that we may disagree with but they're still people. You are not treating people who disagree with you as people, you're treating them like they're enemies that need to be dissuaded or dismantled. Charity: from where I'm sitting you give it to no one.
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