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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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This discussion and the “hyper online right wing guys are weird” being a few post from each other is great comedy.

If this guy didn’t want to be called a rapist for the rest of his life he shouldn’t have had sex with a 12 year old. This isn’t hard folks

Yes, yes, there's always condescending well-poisoning as a classic shaming tactic to attempt shutting down discussions you don't like. I'm unironically glad of the reminder of such a tactic. This isn't a hard tactic, folks.

This isn’t a tactic. Defending a 19 year old raping a pre teen is legitimately very weird behavior.

  • -10

Just because he committed a crime doesn't give us carte blanche to commit the worst argument in the world.

I'm certainly glad to see that a case of a guy actually fucking a 12 year old has brought out such principled precision in the forum that is generally absent when discussing sex ed in schools.

  • -13

I don't think I've ever commented on here about sex ed in schools.

'The forum' isn't a person. You can't act as if it is and then claim hypocrisy when the comments of one user don't apply the same inferred values of a completely different user.

Don't take my comment as criticizing you personally, then.

  • -15

Definitely not weird behavior to give a full throated defense of the terms used to describe a 19 year preying on a 12 year old.

  • -16

You seem to think we care about malicious sneering consensus enforcement fresh from from the latest progGPT firmware update.
If anything that's going to make people here double down on saying things that piss you off and filter the normies, because they are weird and proud of it.

Okay, the queue is just full of your comments. You are consistently picking fights with other users, other mods, and the general concept of things you don’t like. In this particular example, you’re doing so while also speaking for a number of people who may or may be on board.

Take another week off to cool down. Quit trying to rally the troops.

This is just pointless. Why is someone getting banned for doing the exact same thing that a poster did above them but the above poster doesn't even get a warning?

The mod queue being how we decide if someone gets banned is just dumb. I check the user/janitor thing every time I'm here and it's like half of the reported comments (which I assume is how they get there) is because someone disagreed with them and they're using the report as an extra downvote. And it's obvious that is skews in one political direction as well, maybe because they're a smaller portion of the people here or maybe it's just their way because it certainly is on places like reddit. But using that as an excuse is surely just going to end up with people deciding the only way to decide what is acceptable on the site is just mass reporting everything they disagree with.

I still don't understand why the mods here can't ever ban people for the things they do that are bad but instead keep a secret tally of bad things that they don't disclose and then ban them for all those things when they do something less egregious. And almost always in a baited argument where the person doing the baiting does not even get a warning.

Because he was very consistent.

He has been warned. Banned once, to no apparent effect. This is all public record.

So when I check the queue and see exhibits A, B, C, I don’t think there’s been a mistake. Dude just really hates his political enemies. If he can’t keep that in check when he’s posting, then I’m going to ban him.

It is disappointing, because he’s obviously a smart guy who asks reasonable questions. He just also does this.

So exhibits a, b, c, are warnings that were not warned or bans that didn't happen? How is it consistent to hold those posts against him if they apparently didn't break the rules? Is it not exactly like I said that those posts are part of a debt that leads to a ban that neither he nor anyone else is aware of?

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The mod queue being how we decide if someone gets banned is just dumb.

The mod queue is not how "we" decide if someone gets banned. It is one of several things that the mods consider. It is never the sole consideration, but if you have a whole bunch of comments in the mod queue because you're on a rage-posting spree, we are more likely to say "This guy needs a time out." @SteveKirk's post above was bad enough to earn a ban (because of his growing record of tantrums, which incidentally precede this account, because I know exactly which previous permabanned account he used), but the fact that he was posting many comments like this certainly warranted mention.

I check the user/janitor thing every time I'm here and it's like half of the reported comments (which I assume is how they get there) is because someone disagreed with them and they're using the report as an extra downvote.

This is true, unfortunately.

And it's obvious that is skews in one political direction as well, maybe because they're a smaller portion of the people here or maybe it's just their way because it certainly is on places like reddit.

This is absolutely not true. You see the volunteer queue; we see the actual reports and who made them. The majority of reports are indeed from individuals who use the report tool as a super-downvote button or to express their dislike of the poster. (Waves to all my haters.) I can assure you there are plenty of rightists who do this. In fact, I think you have the numbers reversed; leftists are a smaller portion of posters here, hence the majority of reports come from right-leaning people, and rightists are definitely not less prone to reporting posts because someone disagreed with them. There are a number of people who seem to reflexively report anyone arguing with them as "antagonistic." (You know who you are. Yes, we notice.) Most of them are not lefties.

But using that as an excuse is surely just going to end up with people deciding the only way to decide what is acceptable on the site is just mass reporting everything they disagree with.

There are people who do this. We are not stupid and we see the reports.

I still don't understand why the mods here can't ever ban people for the things they do that are bad but instead keep a secret tally of bad things that they don't disclose and then ban them for all those things when they do something less egregious.

Again, untrue. Contra @The_Nybbler's usual ankle-biting (he's been singing this same song for years even though he's been very patiently walked through the errors in his thinking multiple times), it's not an "authority tactic." Our moderation is about as transparent as it can be; we post warnings and bans publicly. Our tally is not "secret" except in the sense that only mods can see your mod log (in which we record all past infractions so that we have them to refer to and know if we've seen this behavior before). We tell you when you are accumulating a record that's likely to result in increased consequences. We usually point to those past infractions when we start applying them.

When someone gets banned for something "less egregious" it's because they've been a persistent bad actor and told to stop doing that. There is such a thing as "the last straw." If you call me a jerk once, you'll probably get a warning. If you've been namecalling for months and getting repeatedly warned and banned for it, then the next time you call me a jerk, you might get a permaban. Anyone who claims this comes as a surprise is not being honest.

We are not secret police collecting dossiers on people we don't like; we tell you what you're doing and why you're being modded (and ask you to stop). Almost always, the people who get permabanned are the people who tell us (implicitly or explicitly) "Fuck you and your rules."

And almost always in a baited argument where the person doing the baiting does not even get a warning.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of moderation occurs in the context of a heated argument, and equally unsurprisingly, the person modded (and his supporters) almost always think the other guy started it. Sometimes we agree and warn both participants; sometimes we don't.

Waves to all my haters

What level of evidence would be required to convince you that there are good-faith concerns about your recurring behavior instead of just flippantly dismissing the topic whenever it comes up?

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I'll have to take your word for it as it's all I have, but, like a certain New York City rental bike situation, I know that you and I see the world in different colors.

Anyway, if you want users to not post in a certain way then warning them privately is a pretty bad way of getting other users to know what's okay to post. I've never gotten a private warning but I've read many posts from SteveKirk in the past weeks and months and I'm sure there are some that got warnings I didn't see but this ban is the only one that points out to others that it's not an okay way to post. "Accumulating a record" that no one can see, and only the person who has the record knows that and only then they get to know only by accumulation doesn't seem transparent at all. Not for others or even the person with the record. Especially because "having a record" is the A.#1 reason why anyone gets banned on this site.

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I still don't understand why the mods here can't ever ban people for the things they do that are bad but instead keep a secret tally of bad things that they don't disclose and then ban them for all those things when they do something less egregious.

It's a standard authority tactic. It means there's no argument that whatever you did didn't deserve the punishment.

I’m frankly amazed that me calling someone who preyed on a 12 year old a rapist has generated this reaction. He legit is a convicted rapist.

  • -13

The pushback that you’re receiving is likely coming from people who are skeptical and scared regarding a general broadening of the definition of rape. Speaking personally, I’ve been pretty spooked by high-profile reports of women regretting sex the next morning and calling it rape, of drunk men being charged with rape for having sex with equally-drunk women (cf. that one infamous subway poster PSA that goes something like “Joe was drunk. Jane was drunk. Joe and Jane slept together. Joe committed rape.”), et cetera.

I, who respond viscerally and emotionally to these instances of the expansion of the definition of rape (these horror stories teamed up with my natural cowardice to ensure that I did not enjoy my youth while I had the chance), am thus inclined to instantly oppose the usage of the same word “rape” to describe non-central examples of the crime. Your argument that “he legit is a convicted rapist” doesn’t quite resonate with me when Joe from the PSA above is equally a convicted rapist. Others with similar viewpoints as mine would likely feel the same.

I hope that this explains why you might be facing opposition from people who nevertheless think that a nineteen-year-old guy having sex with a twelve-year-old girl is still a very bad thing.

that is generally absent when discussing sex ed in schools.

On the contrary, calling what I believe you are referring to "sex ed in schools" is ALSO the non-central fallacy.

This discussion and the “hyper online right wing guys are weird” being a few post from each other is great comedy.

It's beyond parody. Sloots post reads like something someone taking the piss would write. Supporting a Child Predator to own the Redditors is deranged.

It's beyond parody.

Pot attempting to call a (supposed) kettle...

Millions of people (mostly men) in many countries across the world spend hundreds to thousands of USD each year on tickets, subscriptions, and merchandise to root for laundry or individuals (such as in combat sports), dozens to hundreds of manhours watching games and matches, dozens to hundreds of manhours arguing with people in person or online about their favoured laundry, and occasionally fighting and (perhaps accidentally) killing (or getting killed) by fans of the opposing laundry. Double this for years where there are international events, such as the World Cup, WBC, Summer or Winter Olympics.

It's not uncommon for such popular sportsball individuals or wearers of laundry to be with some degree of disreputation, including rape, even statutory rape, even statutory rape that leads to pregnancy (for better or worse, the Mailman, apparently, did in fact deliver to a 12- or 13-year-old).

I'm spending 0 dollars, 0 manhours watching games/matches (from an entertainment standpoint, I prefer men's indoor to beach volleyball if I had to choose, and have no interest in neither women's indoor nor beach), maybe an hour or two shooting the shit with my Besties on the Motte, just otherwise mostly peacefully rooting from a distance such that the outcome displeases people who, on average, advocate for trends and policies that are net-negative to me, my family, and my future descendants. Sounds pretty ranged.

Just paying the guys in that Kamala ad to read a random selection of themotte.org comments out loud with no alterations would have been much more viscerally repulsive normie-scaring than what they actually did.

Just paying the guys in that Kamala ad to read a random selection of themotte.org comments out loud

No man go the whole hog and pay them to read the Jim's blog comment section.

Dude, I already had to explain to my mom what Fox News meant when they called Kamala a hawk tuah girl. Don't make me explain the pill colors.

With regard to modern dating and relationships, I'd much, much rather explain the main pill colors to my mother (or father, for that matter) than the Hawk Tuah girl or Harris's history.

Thankfully, "dog" is not a color to my knowledge. The main color pills can be explained in a fairly non-graphic way:

Blue-pill: The mainstream opinion that Women are Wonderful, and all you have to do as a man is to be yourself and Be a Decent Person.

Red-pill: Women are not Wonderful, but there are a multitude of ways by which you can turn Women's non-Wonderfulness to your benefit.

Black-pill: Women are not Wonderful, and unless you're already taking advantage of it, you're already and permanently screwed.

Both my parents would already intuitively understand such a three-way split, and would find the Blue-pill view silly.

In contrast, I'd hate to explain the Hawk Tuah meme to my parents; I'd hate to explain Kamala's alleged Casting Couching. Much less the two combined. I recoil and cringe at the thought.

I can't imagine having to explain any of that to my mom. I would never admit to even knowing who Jim or 90% of the internet intellectuals are under any circumstance. I think Destiny and Sam Sedar is as far as I would go in terms of admitting I know who they are.

From the comments on themotte.org (comment quoted in its entirety):

From the comments of "The wonderful clarity of white genocide":

The nation is the hand of the race, the family is the finger of the nation, the individual is the fingernail. If your vocation is to fight, tell your cow whatever it needs to hear while you avoid seeding its’ fallopian tubes and instead mine more minerals and prepare to fight. Otherwise, tell your cow whatever it needs to hear while spawning more overlords.

Don’t talk politics with your cow. At best, it confuses it, at worst, it makes it difficult for your cow to chew cud with the other cows, and cows need to be part of a herd.

The level of politics to talk with your cow is, America is good, we are an American family, nice things are good, criminals are bad because they ruin nice things, having nice things is the only valid virtue signal, tasteful religious displays on nice things are great, ugly religious and political displays on ugly things are stupid evil heresy, ignore any advice from the news and entertainment media because it’s a bunch of pedophiles raping each other.

I guess this would be a bad political hit ad because it's not even funny in the "look at the creep" way.

Not strictly related, but that middle part reminds me of the funny Heinlein quote,

Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

This one made me laugh.

My daughter is 4. I imagine her twenty years later being disgusted by the betahood of Western whites, somehow avoiding the trap of burning coal, and marrying a based Eastern European, Russian, or Chinese dude and living in those kinds of countries happily ever after.

I guess no one told him that having a daughter is the ultimate cuck.

That phrase underlines one of the weirder points of agreement between feminists and traditionalist conservatives -- that sex with men is disgusting.

Come on, you're not that bad!

Love you too.