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No reason to burn this bridge. I enjoy the new freer X as well, but the ground has not even settled yet. That is a land ruled by a mad an capricious man that any day may change his stance and wipe us from existence. That and, while I understand why the current obsessives might sour your experience, there is still magic here. I think before this election is done we'll need to rely on it again.
There is every reason to burn this bridge. I'm not interested in politely ignoring the angry drunk ranting on the edges of my conversation every time I go to the local pub to chat with my friends. There are plenty of good people here, but at this point, most have either built accompanying presences elsewhere or can do so, and I think they should. I'm sure there is still magic here for others, but others don't have the angry drunk ranting on the edges of every conversation they have in the pub, and I have enough places without that that I no longer need to cling to what I once had here.
Well, if things change I'd welcome you back.
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I would encourage you to stay, but it’s your choice.
I've already been gone except to cross-post my articles here, more or less. I miss our conversations, but I don't miss them enough to have them in front of the loud, bitter minority here. Yassine and everyone before him had the right idea; on the scale of things, I've been hanging on much longer than most. It's time to amputate the limb.
You really think Twitter is better for friendly, long form discussion? People’s individual substack comment sections? Where else is there? I can’t really find anywhere to go.
I really do. Substack comment sections, Twitter with the character limit removed, starting a Substack and having Substack post to Substack post conversations like the guys around Walt Right have been doing, Discord, theschism.
I know Twitter has a bad reputation here but the rationalist-adjacent subculture there is massively healthier than the local one, and even though longposters are a bit of an invasive species, half a dozen high-quality motteposters with large accounts at least are keeping the longform spirit alive there. Happy to show the ropes to anyone who wants to dip their toes in over there.
I don't think any of them have consistently higher-quality + higher-output conversations than the Motte at its peak, but it has not been at its peak for a very, very long time. These days, those are the spaces in which I have my longform conversations, and Twitter in specific is where the mandate of heaven has landed.
Substack always feels a bit elitist to me; far more so than here. Which, I suppose, isn't really a problem when you're one of the elites.
Twitter does seem like it could be good for some purposes, but I don't need the additional way to lose that much more time out of my life at this point in time. (Same reason I've never bothered interacting with theschism—I can probably exercise more self-control if I don't have a reddit account.) Maybe I'll take you up on your show-the-ropes offer someday.
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Yeah, I'm a noob of a few years here and I enjoyed the article on Gerard (not least because it was well-written and must have taken ages to compile) but when you start talking about the "mandate of heaven" I really think you might be taking things over-seriously.
The Motte has always had plenty of assholes. Sometimes they go away, sometimes they blow themselves up with their own egregious assholery. But there are many people worth reading and interacting with here, as well.
It’s tongue in cheek with a hint of seriousness. There were always better and worse discussion spots, interesting people will always gravitate towards some or others of them, and it’s worth noting where things are happening when. Other places are just a lot more exciting than here these days.
You’re right that there are many worth reading and interacting with here, but to be frank, there is precisely one place online where I have to play nice with people as unpleasant as the worst people here. Rdrama creates a more functional environment around this stuff, for heaven’s sake. Twitter creates a more functional environment around it.
These days, I have more reasonable and good people to interact with than I know what to do with. The ones here mean more to me than most places, because I’ve been around here a long while, but many of my favorite people have moved on, many driven off by the same malcontents who now try to enforce twisted purity tests here, and there is nowhere else among my regular haunts online that feels as dysfunctional and unfun as here. It’s very simply not worth it to put up with them any more, and this forum is no longer the only place I can fill the need that caused me to post here.
See you on the other side.
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Yeah this has the flavor of "ox goring is good, but now that my ox is gored I feel uncomfortable." That's normal. And feels shitty. But it happens, and then you get through it and keep going.
You don't flee. Fleeing makes the critics right.
Same as it ever was. I started really noticing with the discourse around doxxing/hacking. I didn't completely get into it in my recent post about Assange, but that was a very solid undercurrent. Whenever there was a new hack, a new release, a new doxx, it seemed like no one was asking, "Is this type of hacking/releasing/doxxing okay or bad in general?" Instead, it was always, "Who was hacked/doxxed/had their business released? Are they 'good' or 'bad'? Then, I can decide whether this is sunlight being a disinfectant or a grave crime against the right to privacy and security." The flip-flopping was obvious going back to the Ashley Madison hack. "Serves those cheaters right," was met with, "...but there are good reasons why a regular person would want to use Ashley Madison," which was met with, "...and there were scary government email addresses in the hack, so screw those guys." Basically no one had any sort of consistency, right on down the line. The complete polar valence switch on Wikileaks when they hit the DNC was just too insanely high-profile for anyone to not notice.
Even today, I just fired up reddit this morning to be informed that "gay furry hackers" hit the Heritage Foundation, with claims of it having something to do with Project 2025. The vast vast vast majority of people will simply dutifully line up on their side of this one, as well. I'm sure this phenomenon has been going on for centuries before I was cognizant enough to see it, but damn if it isn't sad. Especially because the most common reaction to feeling shitty about your own ox being gored seems to be, "Well, now I'm going to go off intently trying to make them feel this shitty, too." Revenge is a much more fundamental human emotion than principle.
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