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It's more personal here, because this place used to mean a lot to me and it's tough to come to terms with it now being the only place on the internet I interact regularly with people who hold long-standing, deep grudges against me and want me to remember that every time I post. I'm not interested in shaking it off or in displaying a thick skin here. Anyone who nods along with their behavior here is not someone I want to share a community with, and I am more interested in loudly signalling that than in presenting in a stoic way.
As far as insecurity and things following me—look, I participate in a lot of online communities, and only one has a large sub-population of bitter grudge-holders who want to drag their conflicts with me into every interaction. Yes, that group has successfully ruined my perception of this community, but that has happened while I've been in the most successful part of my online career by far. You're not seeing insecurity here, you're seeing frustration at what's become of a place I once loved.
From behind a screen, I have plenty of time to consider my words and my self-presentation. When I want to be calm, I am, and my online history backs that up. What I wanted there was, for once in my time on the Motte, to tell the people who have delighted in making it a petty, vindictive space that clings to grudges to go screw themselves for contributing to the destruction of something beautiful.
The Motte that I loved is dead, and although good people still continue to interact atop its corpse, I would like those good people to know in no uncertain terms that the people who killed that Motte remain, while the posters they loved have mostly moved on to greener pastures. I've been returning here to maintain a point of contact with those who have not yet joined the motte diaspora, but now I want those people to understand that as far as I'm concerned, this community is no longer worth coming to and they should work alongside me to build elsewhere.
You should start your own subreddit. With how much everyone deeply cares about your opinion, I bet it would be a huge hit and not at all a stillborn laughingstock monument to your own unwarranted sense of importance.
We've been pretty lenient with people who want to pile on Trace - he kind of invited it with his own evident willingness to wade in for one last hurrah.
However, this is over the line, just pure sneering with no point to it other than that. And given your record of making it clear you are just here to sneer, you can go away for four days.
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As a pretty much uninvolved person (I appreciated your reporting on the FAA hiring scandal and recognize you semi-vaguely as a notable figure around here, am aware of David Gerard as a leading anti-crypto crank being a heavy Bitcoin investor myself, and check Libs of TikTok occasionally a couple of times a year when I remember it exists, think "I should check this more often because I love seeing left-wingers looking dumb.", and then forget to.):
If David Gerard has spread falsehoods, that's bad.
If Libs of TikTok has spread falsehoods, that's bad.
If you've corrected falsehoods, that's good.
...
And if you've spread falsehoods, that's also still bad.
Where in the rules of honest conduct does it say that even 10,000 truths elucidated gives you an excuse for a single lie? If you intentionally attract autists obsessed with truth-seeking to your online presence by writing thousands of words screeds about exposing the truth of various matters, of course they are naturally going to do the same to you as what you do to others like Gerard: nitpick your record of honesty.
Losing your shit like this doesn't make you seem righteous; it just makes you seem mad that the same eye of scrutiny you cast upon others applies to you too. (Incidentally this is the same thing that happened to Scott vis-a-vis Alexandros Marinos. If even he can get got, so can you. You've got to learn to handle it better than by just trying to play the victim.)
Some of the most obnoxious moments here are when someone dredges up a historical feud and the peanut gallery thinks it’s productive to opine at length on the object level of that feud.
The people still beating this drum hated me before that moment and see it as simply the most convenient attack vector. You’re welcome to play along, but I’m not going to validate it. Enjoy your site.
Okay, conceive of everyone as part of the "conspiracy" (as useful idiots or not) and run away to carve out your own little slice of besieged territory online where presumably it's only a matter of time before any dissent is ruthlessly purged. You think that's intellectually productive?
Do tell, does this prohibition on not litigating the object level ("at length" apparently in four sentences) of various potential offenses because of alleged persecution against the offender only apply to you, or do you extend it to others too? Do you avoid opining on what, say, for example Donald Trump may or may not have done lately because there are obviously so many people who are just out to get him anyway, who have always already hated him before whatever his most recent offense was, and who obviously only care about "the most convenient attack vector" to take him down? Do you chastise your left-wing fellows for "play[ing] along" with this?
Honestly, you're just coming off here like a pussy who isn't fit for public discourse despite clearly wanting to be involved with it. And the Internet smells pussy like sharks smell blood, which means that if you don't toughen up, soon whatever good you could do will just end up being buried by your own paranoia and insistence on taking a Chris-chan "fighting da dang dirty trolls" attitude towards things. That's the posture you're clearly careening towards. (Keep coming off this weak and you will eventually attract people who want to troll you not even because of any actual grudge but rather out of a sense of pure entertainment and seeing if they can elicit the next meltdown.)
You used a tactical nuke against Gerard (and it really is a good article) but then you're also still complaining about getting the occasional pistol pulled on you. Man up and get over it. You think you have it bad? Imagine being Kyle Rittenhouse who legitimately did nothing wrong (at least initially) and was only trying to help his community as a 17 year old but now has probably at least 10% of "low-information voters" thinking he is a confirmed Nazi mass shooter who killed at least 20 black people but was just let go by the fascist police with free Burger King for life after because racism. That's actual persecution, grudge-holding, being the victim of a campaign of propaganda, etc.
A few people thinking a prank you did was dishonest by comparison is small peanuts. Without a thicker skin than this, you've reached your ceiling other than in a carefully-cultivated hugbox.
Okay, I know you really want to call him a pussy, and you did your best to do that without saying "You're a pussy," but you didn't do a good enough job. This is too antagonistic and you know it.
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People are welcome to pull pistols on me. If someone wants to write an in-depth expose on all of my online activity, be my guest. I leave it open for the world to see. I encourage it, in fact: write your hit piece on me. Write a magnum opus detailing my crimes to the world. I throw plenty of punches and am prepared to receive them in return. But dragging it into unrelated conversations, such that every conversation becomes a referendum on those topics, deserves no respect and serves to do nothing but degrade this forum as a place for conversation.
As for carving out my own little space online where dissent is purged, everyone from Steve Sailer to Zero HP Lovecraft to BAP follows me on Twitter, where I openly and emphatically argue against them. If I'm trying to dodge the online right, I'm doing a terrible job of it.
Anyway, you seem charming. I'll leave you to it.
Does Kulak? Did the two of you talk about never mentioning this place, or did you both come to the same conclusion separately?
Not everyone is trying to have an online career, like you are, and Kulak is. I suppose it's natural that the people making the best content are going to don't ways to benefit from it. Whatever this place is, it isn't a place to have a career.
I wish you success, but I'm still one of the grudge holders, and for me it was theschism that I'm holding a grudge about. I don't want to being it up every time, but that was offensive to me, and it is offensive to me to hear your complain about people killing themotte when you tried to schism it a few years ago. Leaving for Twitter is a better way, and if that scratches the itch that made you make theschism, then I only wish Elon had bought Twitter sooner.
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Again, if you think your record of honesty (even if people may be exaggerating it in the dishonest direction) isn't relevant to your own takedown of somebody else for dishonesty, then you're just wanting a special exception from the rules you seek to enforce on others. That is what "deserves no respect and serves to do nothing but degrade this forum as a place for conversation". Sorry, but if you've really been around on the Internet this long, you should know that nobody gets a special pass. Good luck seeking otherwise.
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The whole David Gerard post was about a historical feud. You did it first.
Enjoy your feud, Jiro. You, like Nybbler, have mostly damaged this website, and you remain the same as ever. Take care.
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