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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2111 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for May 22, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

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I notice something of a negative correlation between the quality of links I post and the reception they get. I posted the recent article about sex positivity vs purity culture, and while I had a higher opinion of it than most mottizens it seems, I still wouldn't consider it among the best essays ever written. Yet it's spawned over 200 comments. I feel similarly about my other links that got the most discussion, like The Media Very Rarely Lies and Is Wine Fake?

Meanwhile, links I have posted that I thought were amazing pieces of writing that were accurate deep dives into a topic that were some best in class writing, like Biological Determinants and Homosexuality that surveyed a wide body of well done research on a controversial topic, or Njall's Saga which was a hilarious and insightful look at medieval Icelandic literature and law, got barely any interaction.

Just Toxiplasma of Rage in action I suppose.

I have my own theory for why your post took off: to the side of it, unlike most posts, is an image. And that image isn't something abstract or ineffable, but the image of an attractive young woman.

I think your post took off for the same reason TikToks with young women take off, and YouTubers put cringey faces in their thumbnails: human faces attract attention, and women's faces especially so. I don't think it's anything more complicated than that. My eyes are still automatically drawn to this image and I'm desperate for your post to drop off the front page (sorry) so I can stop looking at her mug.

So what we've learned is, if you're going to make an effortpost, make sure you're actually linking to something that contains an image of a hot woman.

Very likely that's a portion of it.

Was it the same Njall's Saga essay as Scott posted during last year's ACX book review contest? If not, you should read that one, it's hilarious, but I don't think the comments were exactly a discussion either, mostly just a lot of people saying that they enjoyed it over and over again. Which is discouraged here.

This is the first I've heard of the homosexuality paper, and won't based off of this.

Everyone has an opinion on sex.

I mean no offense, but to be honest, I thought that femcel post was pure toxoplasma-bait for a place like the Motte.

Although I did like the meta-discussion of whether the author was intentionally using it to get attention, and about her lack of self-reflection, and whether she was preparing for a try at being a right-wing grifter.

I probably should've predicted it would've been total toxoplasma bait, but I definitely didn't forsee it being that extreme of toxoplasma bait or receiving that universal of condemnation by motteizans.

Not even the Motte is invulnerable to the neuron activation that accompanies anything about sex

The Homosexuality article notably you did not post with a submission statement, which might affect engagement. Your characterization of the camgirl/femcel post as "sex positivity vs. purity" is interesting to me, as although I see why you use those terms, that is not the classification I'd have used (I'd have been less charitable.) I just didn't/don't like her writing style. I don't like the writing style of many who nevertheless gain quite a bit of readers.

Also you've posted about 7 or so articles--I was going to say "only 7 or so" to make my point that that's not a large number to start making assumptions about people, but I don't want to discourage you from continuing to post these because I enjoy them and I think we need more people posting standalone threads in this way. Basically I wouldn't make much of this. The Motte does not seem to me to be made up of homogeneous minds, despite occasional comments about a hivemind or whatever.

Also you've posted about 7 or so articles--I was going to say "only 7 or so" to make my point that that's not a large number to start making assumptions about people,

Yeah it's hardly a large sample size, but I think it's a pattern that's common on pretty much all the internet. And I'm not discouraged by it, more just that I think it's a bit of a shame that lower quality but controversial posts get way more engagement than higher quality ones. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not just comments and that there are more unique readers of the controversial links than the high quality ones too. But of course I do the same, it can be very hard to tell from a link and maybe a short blurb if it'll actually lead somewhere high quality, versus when there's 100 comments on a link you know there's at least something there.

For what it’s worth, the Njal’s Saga post got me to actually read the Saga. By the time I had done so, the post was gone, though.

I didn’t catch Njall’s saga but I’m going to read it now. I think titles are key for eye-scanning and that probably made me think it was a fantasy book. Also I remember the dumbest thing I ever posted got lots of upvotes (how the MrBeast community responded to the transgender member coming out), although perhaps I’ve posted dumber, whereas one of my favorite thoughtposts sat at like -5.

I just read the post about Biological Determinants and Homosexuality and while it is very informative article, it is just this - a dry summary of the knowledge about homosexuality. Nothing new or controversial there, even for someone who is only mildly interested in the topics of gender identity and sexual preference there is not much new knowledge to be gained. I think I was aware at least 80% of the facts covered in the article. However it is convenient to have such a summary in one place.

I have many other questions regarding sexuality e.g. "What's the difference between transsexuals and homosexuals on the biological level?" and "Which advantages precisely homosexual and transsexuals tendencies give?" which would be probably more novel and interesting, but considerably more difficult to answer.

I think I was aware at least 80% of the facts covered in the article.

I don't think the degree to which gender and sexuality are largely, but not entirely, biological is common knowledge. Maybe most of themotte have already familiarized themselves with the science though, if any group's likely to have it's motteizens.

I think it's less about the absolute quality of the link and more about the specific topic at hand:

  • Medieval Icelandic literature - although this is something that I would personally be interested in, it's not a general interest topic, and you can't necessarily expect the forum at large to want to discuss this, no matter how good the writing itself actually is.

  • Biological determinants of homosexuality - closer to being a general interest topic, most people here probably at least have an opinion on it, but it's unlikely to be a particularly strongly held opinion, and the topic is unlikely to generate strong disagreements on this particular forum.

  • "Are women having too much casual sex?" - topic with very broad appeal for multiple reasons, everyone has a strongly held opinion on it, and there's also a lot of strong disagreement among the commentariat here on this particular issue. Controversy is the best way to generate discussion.

I also get disappointed when the forum doesn't want to discuss more specialty issues that I have a strong interest in. But, that's how it goes. The topics with the broadest general appeal will always generate the most discussion.

The Icelandic essay was also about historical legal practices and historical libterarianism. I think that's quite relevant to this forum.

But yeah I get the reasons why what I consider excellent pieces didn't generate much discussion. I'd just hope the motte would be a bit of a higher standard than twitter in what generates discussion

Not to be a dick, but surely you can see why Is Wine Fake is a more relatable topic for even the typical Mottizen than a hilarious and insightful look at medieval Icelandic literature and law!

Yeah, controversy creates engagement, much more so than raw quality. There's only so many ways I can say, "This is great and I really agree with everything it says."

Yeah, that's a limiting factor. I'm still really proud of this, and people did say variants of 'this is great', but the only real possible responses were to either get on a soap box or prove me wrong, and that limits engagement. This worked better in the sense that giving several different perspectives on a social problem means that there's something for everybody to disagree with, but it did so at the cost of wordswordswordsing.

I don't think engagement is the end-all be-all, but it does put a thumb of any measurement of the system here.

I posted a 500 page book about Medieval Italian poetry and no one commented! I'm starting to doubt whether they even read it.

Personally, I come here for discussion with other smart, clued-in people. Long form content, whether text or video, demands too much from other users. If the minimum price of engagement is spending an hour reading an essay, then that's just too high for me. Distill the points that matter into something that's interesting and accessible. Then we can have a discussion.

The world is full of amazing long-form content which I can read in book form without needing to visit this website.

Discussion offers a different sort of experience that has a different value.

You're not wrong, but it's kind if irrelevant. People are reading and commenting on the weaker essays I post because they're controversial, while ignoring the better essays I post. It'd be one thing if they aren't reading the controversial essays, just discussing, but they are reading.

If I read an essay, and there's no controversy, what am I supposed to say?

"Good job, I enjoyed reading it," is nice, but doesn't drive further engagement.

Also sex is an interesting topic.

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This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

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