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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   36940 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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I agree with Scott that persecuting people won't teach them anything useful. I recommend a leaf from Ozy's book: separate them from their children, raise the kids in your own culture, use violence only when necessary to eliminate expressions of their culture that might contaminate the succeeding generations.

It's a long-term project, but historical precedent says it can be effective if you're organized and consistent about it.

Is Ozy really that bad? Can you link me to the blog post?

In many ways it's worse: the meaning of that document rather changes connotations when you find out Ozy's significant other 'contributed' a bunch of e-mails with Scott just after the NYTimes article, all of which Scott had asked him to keep in confidence, and one of Ozy's first examples of compassionate, integrated feminism argued that all that open-minded tolerance from Excluded only applied to "perspectives/experiences of marginalized groups", ie her side specifically to bash Scott.

Maybe Ozy has all the strength of principles about not prosecuting people, but without the ability to present anyone who won't on their side, it's little more than standing on laurels and calling on an army to do the dirty work.

I don’t exactly remember the timeline, but was this after their relationship ended? Can we separate this cleanly from Ozy’s partner simply being a jerk to a flame’s ex-boyfriend?

Come to think of it, this is a good reason to avoid polyamory. Limit your exposure. Works for the clap, too.

They've not made the timeline too clear, but yeah. You could even use the same excuse for Frantz themself.

But I think that's an exception that swallows the rule. A lot of cancel culture involves people with petty disagreements getting blown out into public spaces; dismissing a cancellation because it's driven by a flame's drama turns quickly into throwing out major cases.

I wasn't excusing it or disagreeing with you. In fact my point was to emphasize how petty and personal these incidents end up being, and how little they often have to do with the serious issues theoretically presented rather than interpersonal drama.

It's very old drama, and one of the several things that moved me from "grew up in fandom and thinks freedom of expression is very important" to "many progressives successfully dedicated themselves to changing my mind."

I'll have to go look for the link.

Edit: here it is.

I do not understand what you wrote.

"one of the several things that moved me from "grew up in fandom and thinks freedom of expression is very important" to "many progressives successfully dedicated themselves to changing my mind.""

This is confusingly written to me

I think what Tinted meant is that, like me and others, they grew up with online fandom (think forums and early social media), steeped in the tits-n'-beer-liberalism milieu, and then watched with horror as GamerGate transpired and revealed just how many people operated on Conflict Theory.

More books, less online. Some anime fandom around the edges. And I was never much of a gamer, unless you count Myst. But none of that mattered. You have the principle.

It's one of the foundational texts of the culture-war canon, in my view.

Back when this was written, Ozy was well-known as a reasonable, thoughtful pro-SJ blogger, someone who could put some real weight behind "okay, maybe some of these people are crazy, but there's a point here worth considering". I don't read it as proof that they're an especially terrible person. All they do in that essay is play out the necessary implications of liberal Progressivism. The values conflict is in fact real, and there is not in fact anything that can really stop it within a population.

I don't think that Ozy is making a good point in this essay. I don't think that "progressives" and "conservatives" are moral mutants to each other. Mostly my counter-argument would follow similar lines to Scott's essay:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/18/fundamental-value-differences-are-not-that-fundamental/

Also I think that "progressive" and "conservative" are silly, mostly illusory categories. It's more complicated than that, but I do basically think it's a mistake to treat them like elves and dwarves or whatever.

I'd say that we're witnessing in real time how effective this strategy can be if those before/after college videos are any indication.

got a link? I have no idea which videos you're referring to.

https://tiktok.com/@truth24hr/video/7215886406835572010

This is just an example, and there's absolutely no indication that these captions are real. Also, the poster is obviously a warrior, so make of it what you will.

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