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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32893 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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Just so you know, this is under discussion by the mods. There is a serious argument for permabanning you. Not so much for this post alone (which is clearly intended to be provocative but "I am one of the Elect and fully in favor of crushing the white peasants" is not a forbidden opinion), but because your record is terrible, you've been skirting a permaban for a while now, and the fact that you clearly play this card whenever you want to see how much indignation you can stir up is something that rhymes with rolling.

This post is mostly so the 14(!) people who have reported it so far (granted a couple were AAQCs) know that we're not ignoring it. But since the post in itself is sort of borderline and you've been a 50/50 good contributor/absolute shitheel until now, no one wants to pull the trigger unless/until we have a quorum.

Keep him. He's unique.

My opinion as well. With apologies to the mods, who no doubt have more work because of him. But it makes the site better to have the variety.

For what it's worth, I don't think there should be moderator action against him. The ideal of policing on tone and not content we had once upon a time served us well, and there is nothing wrong with the tone here; most people also seem to believe that he is speaking from the heart.

I can't help but notice that the people shouting for a ban the loudest are those that I would predict are offended by the content the most, and many of them have proven amply that they have zero reservations about proudly proclaiming their own controversial viewpoints in a way that is bound to cause aneurysms in those who disagree (and often with much less attention to tone). Especially as we never see any moderator action for the umpteenth "women pretend that abortion is an important right" or "yes, one Israeli is worth more than a hundred Palestinians" posts, doing anything here (and even merely engaging in the sort of modhat stop-and-search that this post is) sends the wrong signal.

I mean, I reported him. I don’t think the content is necessarily ban-worthy, he just seems to be writing intentionally to troll/flame bait one of our resident white nationalists.

Fortunately they’re a calm bunch.

I am one of the Elect and fully in favor of crushing the white peasants" is not a forbidden opinion

Honestly saying "I am one of the Elect and fully in favor of crushing the white peasants" may be stupid, but it isn't a forbidden opinion.

Dishonestly saying it to deliberately provoke backlash in favor of the white peasants (or to just provoke reactions, period) violates several rules, including the one about speaking plainly.

I don't think it is, nor should be, against the rules to merely argue in favor of an opinion one does not sincerely hold. If the poster breaks the rules in other ways, that's a different story, but I think it's fine and even valuable for people to be allowed to play devil's advocate.

If he wants to play devil's advocate, he could say he's playing devil's advocate, not pretend he actually believes what he's saying.

What difference does it make? We should be evaluating the argument, not the person making it. The sincerity of the person making the argument doesn't change the validity of the argument.

First of all, this is only true if the argument includes no personal observations or other claims that might be false. Second, this is only true if you're an ideal perfect arguer who notices BS 100% of the time and can never be fooled by it. If you're an actual human, you don't want to bother with someone who's likely to make a lot of invalid arguments, because you might fail to notice some of them because you're an actual human.

this is only true if the argument includes no personal observations or other claims that might be false.

A person arguing for a claim they genuinely believe in is at least equally capable of (if not more capable of) making up false anecdotes, or exaggerating true ones. In general, personal anecdotes should get very little weight as evidence of anything.

If you're an actual human, you don't want to bother with someone who's likely to make a lot of invalid arguments

A person arguing for a position they truly believe is at least equally (if not more) likely to make invalid arguments, due to blind spots or confirmation bias or a simple desire to win the argument.

My experience is that humans don't behave that way.

Humans don't behave what way? They don't make false statements and/or invalid arguments in support of positions they sincerely hold?

More comments

He is certainly not trying to provoke a reaction in favor of the white peasants. He genuinely is a Muslim chauvinist who disdains white normies. Is he trying to state things in an inflammatory manner and trigger people and provoke a reaction? Yes. He both favors hating on the white "peasants" in favor of muslims, and is willing to distort the facts of the performance of both groups to promote this idea that natives suck, migrants are superior that he obviously likes.

The idea that the ideology of "natives suck, migrants superior" can not be sincere, doesn't make sense at all. Examples of this ideology among migrants isn't rare and it exists even among a component of native elites who push above their weight due to appeasement and toleration by others.

The post is structured as a politically-flipped parody of an argument from an immigration critic, with some asserted (by the parody) racism. In that way BurdensomeCount opens the discussion by mocking those who disagree with him.

As the post goes on it begins to seem that the poster also asserts the parody's claims as true, which he may indeed believe. This gives him cover (I am expressing my sincere opinion!) and baits his interlocutors into answering the parody they'd have otherwise ignored at the moment they are angriest. As a probably unintended side effect it sucks all the oxygen out of the room, preventing a more patient and interesting subthread from arising.

A frank summary of events and his opinion may have led to an interesting, if somewhat heated, discussion. I don't think that's what BurdensomeCount was looking for.

Well said. Hope he does not get banned.

You don't think he genuinely means this?

I think there’s a great benefit in having someone like that around. It’s like the various shades of anti-semites, or actual fascists or whatever other normie-repellent ideologues hang around here but you don’t get to meet elsewhere. It’s good to know what other people truly think, unburdened (ha!) by social stigma. Hell, it’s half the reason I’m here.

He's jerking our chain for sure. But also, this is a good post in terms of thoughtfulness and laying out an argument.

Intentionally provocative and well reasoned in equal measure. This is his best work in my opinion. If only the median troll put this much thought into his posts.

It is not so reasonable to declare lower class immigrants elects (the chutzpah!) to the dirty, lazy, good for nothing natives. I imagine this was for effect, which means it is effortful if intentionally provocative.

I did ask for a steelman for what I see as* the UK establishment position. This is far more culture warry than steelman-y. The most steelmanistic part is describing a need for migration, the rest of it is one half elitist scrutiny, one half deferential multiculturalism that I'm not sure anyone really holds as a true blue belief. Which could be read as satire if we did not believe the writer is attempting to rustle "our" jimmies. That's good writing even if unintentional.

This post is borderline too uncharitable/provocative. It is not exceptionally thoughtful, although I did report it as a based post. Which in my mind exists beyond an AAQC in another dimension. It's a different kind of post. Is it a shitpost? Yeah, kinda, but a tolerable and interesting one. One you get away with maybe a couple times a year if you're a prolific poster? I always appreciated lefty affirmative action in this space. I vote minor janny spanking, but I also do not deal with you weirdos all the time.

I vote minor janny spanking

I vote "make him smoke the whole pack". If he makes one of those "at least he started an interesting conversation" threads, he has to answer to every comment addressed to him, or get banned.

"to every commenter addressing him", maybe? Not being able to out-type the sum of 10 people trying to rebut you shouldn't be banworthy. But one reply to each of those 10 people is probably a fair requirement, and as a bonus it would create an incentive for the 10 to initially only post one comment with their best arguments, which would slightly reduce motte-and-baileying, troll feeding, and dogpiling.

Oh, that's potentially good discipline. Is the expectation that you have to give up the act and engage more candidly in replies? Otherwise you invite dedicated trolls and jannies try to prevent that.

Yeah, that's the idea, and that's the danger. Though the latter has a self-correcting mechanism in that non-rules-conforming responses lead to a ban anyway. Though yeah, it does lead to more work for the mods.

Dodging hard questions was my biggest issue with Hlynka so I'd like to see some sort of expectation in that regard.

I totally vote for a ‘smoke the whole pack’ rule for people like Hlynka, burdensome, etc.

I like this.

Not well reasoned, just somewhat well written. It relies heavily on the assumption that UK immigration policy is actually selective, and on average imports people of higher calibre than the natives, and furthermore that those who do not realize this are idiots.

So, the meat of the argument is just wrong, and the rest is just sneering. In terms of thoughtfulness and laying out an argument, it's not a good post.

Could we perhaps add an "I find this amusing" option to the Report menu? I feel like a little trolling and provocation should be forgiven when executed with sufficient panache.

I disagree with a ban for this.

Agree. It's a cogent and civil argument that doesn't come close to violating any rules. I don't even think it's trolling (in the traditional sense) because I think he genuinely thinks this way. Is he posting it because he knows people disagree and will engage? Yes, but who posts anything here and doesn't hope for engagement? I much prefer this to the umpteenth out group dunking that everyone joins in on.

It's a cogent and civil argument that doesn't come close to violating any rules.

I think that calling your political opponents "low human capital people" and "human parasites" could reasonably be interpreted as a violation of the boo outgroup/waging the culture war rules.

I certainly don't think that Count should be permabanned over this post. But even on a less inflammatory topic, I would expect a post like this to catch a tempban.

"human parasites" is a value judgement but "low human capital" is simply a factual claim about their education/skillset.

I don't even think it's trolling (in the traditional sense) because I think he genuinely thinks this way.

I am 80% sure he doesn't. I doubt even a devoted racist wouldn't notice he's getting the basic chronology backwards. Also bailing out of the conversation the moment someone brings up tangible facts to contradict the core thesis is classic troll behavior here. He's clearly just doing it for the reactions.

+1. While there's an obvious element of trolling for reactions from the crowd, a lot of stuff would slide right by if it didn't get reactions from the crowd. Target this level of vitriol at a group that isn't here or that the denizens don't identify with and it's a normal day ((though most of those posters don't hang around))

If you think he's worth keeping around, do you think you can actually defend his argument? Your comment makes it sound more like you know he's a troll, and you want him to keep trolling people you don't like.

If you think he's worth keeping around, do you think you can actually defend his argument?

I could steelman it, but I don't particularly agree with it so I'm not sure I particularly want to at length. It's a meaner variant of the Great Sort hypothesis offered by a Murray or a Lee Kuan Yew in the past. That first worlders have been "sorted" successfully into the smart and the dumb by various mechanisms, such that those "still" poor are the absolute worst, the hard cases, the genetic dregs. LKY talks about this when discussing the professionalization of union organizers in Singapore: in the early days there were many smart workers in the union, but today any intelligent Singaporeans end up in white collar jobs, so if you continued to draw union chiefs from the shop floor you would get people too dumb to function as good union chiefs.

My problem with banning him has less to do with people I like vs people I dislike as with wanting to avoid calcifying the userbase of the motte. Near as I can tell, this is being banned for jimmy-rustling, rather than for any content problems. Certainly we see similar posts about groups that are primarily out-groups to mottizens, the "bioleninists." A similarly structured argument about Palestinians, negroes, women, gays, illegal immigrants, etc would be skated by. ((Though I will note again that those posters who get obsessed with that kind of posting do tend to eventually catch bans anyway)) I'm positing that if we label it banworthy to offend the userbase of the motte, then at that moment we set the userbase in stone and preclude any changes in the future, because anyone who wants to join will find offensive material targeted at them to be common, and that turnabout is not fair play. That is akin to announcing official forum positions: one can, but is not required, to believe that blacks or arabs are inferior; one cannot believe that working class whites are inferior.

Those whose jimmies have been rustled can simply choose not to participate.

I should note that I recently complained about the Count in another comment, for his use of a minced oath, which I find to be annoying behavior.

I could steelman it,

That's the thing though, I didn't mean "come up with a defensible version of what he said" I meant "defend what he actually said". I don't mind someone having and promoting his point of view, I'd love to have a conversation with someone who actually believes it, and I'd have a hundred questions for them that I'd love to ask. The thing is it's the kind of questions that quickly point out various issues with the worldview, and so, from past experience, they tend to go unanswered. Which in turn leads me to believe he doesn't actually hold any of these views, and is not willing to debate them, he's just looking for a reaction from the resident chuds.

That's what rustles my jimmies, not his views. Yeah, people shouldn't take the bait, but it will always be easier for a single troll to throw a granade and delight in the ensuing chaos, than it will be for a group of people to maintain discipline and not respond.

I've personally got a long history of banning people for sarcasm/satire. Back on the old forum I pulled the trigger on a long ish term ban on user lazygradstudent(?) for writing a long satire post that imitated the form of the most famous satire "the Irish should eat their babies".

I'm not currently involved in the mod discussions with @Amadan and others, because I'm on vacation. I feel like a routinely see the worst crap on this forum popping up when I'm on vacation. Or maybe it's just when I read here more often.

I think I recently spoke against giving burdensome a permanent ban because I thought he had been better lately. Not even a week later he responds to one of my comments with obvious culture war race war stuff and I give him a two day ban on the spot.

@BurdensomeCount comes back and his takeaway is that I just wanted him to spend more effort on his culture/race war posts.

So fucking frustrating. No dude, wtf is your problem? My whole point is don't just write stuff to kick off the culture/race war on this forum.

I don't do enough modding these days to be all that helpful. Other mods are way better in most ways. But it's moments like these that make me think I should step away completely.

I have a three year old and a five year old. The five year old seemingly has a better ability to behave and understand rules than some people on this forum. The three year old is worse behaved. So this seems like a skill that is learned between 4 and 5 years old.

I'm pretty sure I remember being more patient with misbehaving forum participants before I had toddlers to compare them against.

Two week ban is my recommendation. Which is basically my cutoff point where I start thinking of you as a toddler with the inability or aggressive unwillingness to control your behavior.

The whole Internet is available for trolling, and waging the race/culture war. Start a sub stack, post on Twitter, post on Facebook, go crazy. Just stop bringing it here.

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