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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4003 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 23, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I may be overgeneralizing my own experience, but IMHO it's at least in part because while many people came together to discuss their apparently irreconcilable differences over the last 10-15 years, ultimately they found that their differences were indeed irreconcilable, and left disappointed and/or righteously angry. Most Mottizens, and I'd argue truth-seeking netizens in general, are now very familiar with the basic shapes of both sides' arguments, and so when CW issue de jour #2567 pops up they can usually predict with some accuracy what each side will say. The conversation is therefore mostly no longer interesting. Battle lines have been drawn in the wider culture, and now we're all just waiting for (or actively working towards) one of the factions to emerge victorious.

ultimately they found that their differences were indeed irreconcilable, and left disappointed and/or righteously angry

I mean if someone asserts (insert your demographic) here should be marginalized and stripped of rights for the good of society(read to advance my political agenda) There isn't really to much of a practical point in responding to that in anyway other that "May thy knife chip & shatter"

Well, occasionally, arguments have been known to work, if you think they're wrong. If you agree that they are in that person's interests, though, there isn't all that much to be said.

Yes?

I was voicing my support for your opinion and offering what I thought was a practical example of something like that playing out. Sorry If I was being obtuse.

No worries, maybe I misread. All good.

Yes, we’ve been in the unceasing trench warfare phase of the culture war for at least a couple years now. I think COVID / George Floyd was the last straw for a critical mass of people and the whole thing just became absolutely calcified.

2012-2016 was a war of maneuver, 2017-2020 was a war of position, now it’s just an endless knife fight. I’m not complaining, as I consider myself a part time culture warrior. That’s just how it shook out, and those still interested in the culture war like myself find it more useful to just knife our opponents in between the ribs, rhetorically speaking of course.

I’ve never felt the culture war is more important than now, but it’s also more boring than ever.

Honestly the whole period felt like nerds who didn't quite get it saying "what exactly do you mean by declaring all of us Moral Mutants to be Exterminated by Progress?"

I still hope something more productive things can be discussed now that everyone's finally realized. There's lots to talk about beyond litigating Current Thing attack #6836865 as if there's any questions about intent.

Good example: that Guardian journalist we talked about last week who was posting "hanging Mussolini" threats at people. Nobody said "oh wow you'd better not do that, people might think you're advocating violence", they just posted dead Che Guevara and Rosa Luxembourg's rotting corpse back at him, suggesting he'd enjoy the bottom of a canal so much he'd never want to leave.

There's a bracing level of mask-off bloodthirsty hatred that wasn't there even in 2020. Feels like living in the first chapter of a William Luther Pierce novel.

From my perspective, the bloodthirsty hatred is well earned. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a long time, I feel the siren song of a genuine FedPoasttm calling me.

I know a lot of digital ink has been spilled in this place accusing large amounts of people using civil war coded language as “LARPing”, or puffing their chest as keyboard warriors, but it seems to me something really has turned.

For me personally, I find myself relishing in the suffering of those who hold me and people like me in genuine disdain and act maliciously toward us. This is new, and it’s not just the product of some tweaked algorithm or exotic status game; I’ve never truly felt like this before, it feels true and I really gain nothing from it, in fact I’d be deeply penalized if I broadcast it widely.

Something interesting has happened in the few times I’ve expressed my genuine, undiluted desire for serious misfortune to befall members of the PMC that I blame for our current decadent state; at first, people are slightly alarmed. Then, utter relief that they aren’t crazy and someone else feels the same way as them.

rly makes u think

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, if you can express them without breaking the rules. I think you've identified a real thing shared by an increasingly large number of people. I think about the issue frequently, but am not sure I have a full post worth of thoughts.

I think you can use <sup></sup> to make the text suprescript. Like this: tm

Thanks, big dog.

Honestly the whole period felt like nerds who didn't quite get it saying "what exactly do you mean by declaring all of us Moral Mutants to be Exterminated by Progress?"

I don't think it's really accurate to analyze the Culture War as just "nerds and aspies who didn't get the memo". (At the very least, we can always ask, why this particular memo, with this particular content?)

I was around 20 when all this got started. That's really young! I was naive and I didn't know shit back then. (I still don't, but I hope that I've learned at least a few things since then). So I believed a lot of false/stupid things and I had to figure things out through trial and error.

People aren't born with an innate knowledge of history, politics, and philosophy. It has to be acquired - both on an individual level and a social collective level. Memes propagate through society and help people avoid the mistakes of the past. Social phenomena always happen for a reason - it's a mistake to think "well if people just did X Y Z then we could have avoided all that mess".

I don't think it's really accurate to analyze the Culture War as just "nerds and aspies who didn't get the memo.

There's something to it, but I agree ultimately it's a mischaracterization.

It's wrong because we didn't "not get the memo". Nerds and and aspies were the first to notice the changes in political discourse and culture. Normies were the ones insisting that nothing is happening, and if it is it's overblown, etc., etc. If anyone didn't get the memo, it was them, and all the old liberals getting canceled for not jumping on the train fast enough are proof of that.

It's correct in the sense that we obviously overanalyzed the whole phenomenon. Normies just assessed who is on which side, and stayed loyal to their tribe. We spent entire years debating if all this really means what we think it means, did we miss something, are we not being uncharitable, etc., etc., etc. With the end result being us just following in the steps of the normies, even though we realized first that something is changing.

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