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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3793 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 14, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Does anyone feel that the motte is becoming more soapboxy?

Scrolling the CW thread, I feel like the #parent:#child ratio is much lower than it used to be. During the reddit times, there were threads that that had 50+ responses. That seems to be a relic of the past.

It feels off now. I scroll through the main thread, see yet another >1000 word post with barely any engagement, scroll past it, same thing again, and again.

I think the lurker and casual poster counts are decreasing, we are left with more and more soap boxers who do feel the need to produce endless walls of text, but not engage with other peoples walls of texts..

I'm mostly a reply guy, but it frustrates me that some of the best top level posts get zero engagement.

Maybe people don't have much to say other than officially discouraged low effort agreement.

What's left to say?

We had a really good post on the legacy of BLM two weeks ago. I've been meaning to write a similar post for a year or so now, but what would the point be? Most of the people I'd want to argue with about it aren't here any more, and of the few who remain, I suspect that they would not engage with it much. Further, I suspect that the better I wrote it, the lower the chance of their engagement in the future, as I doubt they would find the conversation a net-positive experience.

It's been ten years since 2014, which is the consensus date I've seen for when the current culture war kicked into high gear. Ten years ago, all of us on either side had lots of questions and few answers. It seems to me that we now have lots of answers and few questions, at least across the divide. There's just not that much left to say, and for me at least conversations tend to result in a marked sense of diminishment, as though one can feel what common ground remains fading away. We discourage low-effort agreement because that just makes the process happen faster, but it still happens slowly, and that's just as fatal.

The amount of disagreement has decreased, maybe?

That's probably part of it. Time was you said something edgy and normies would get mad, now either there are no normies to offend, or the normie takes I have aren't interesting to talk about anymore.

Yes. I've noticed this for awhile. Im mostly a lurker, and an occasional commenter. I've found the top level threads dreadfully uninteresting and way too long, for awhile now, maybe a year? You can tell when the post gives itself it's own b bold little title as if it'll get a place in the vault.

Lately I've found the small question thread and fun thread to be more, well, fun.

Do you mean higher than it used to be?

Discussion requires polemics. Almost all political discussion on Twitter is polemic, for instance. The last polemic post in main thread, on Ukraine, is at -3 for some reason.

It doesn't look like you've made any posts in the CW thread this week (top level or reply).

You are the forum. Any criticism of the forum is a criticism of yourself. If you don't like what's being posted in the CW thread, make the kinds of posts that you do want to read.

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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.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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