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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28496 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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I think accusations of being cringe and a grifter do code your original post as a bit like something that could come out of online left dogma.

I hate to tone police of all things, but you know as well as I do that if you want people to do things they don't like to do (such as holding their brethren accountable) you need to speak their language, not that of their enemy.

No, this is absurd. First off, I’ve been posting here for years now, so the idea that the second I use the same (accurate, appropriate) words as you think a leftist would use, it’s now reasonable to pattern-match me to a leftist and consequently dismiss my argument, is utter self-serving garbage.

I don’t play pathetic tribal language games, trying to coat my argument in the shibboleths of my supposed “ingroup” just to get them to not immediately reject the substance of the point I’m making. If rightists have become so mindkilled that they will instinctively lash out at even the most blatantly correct criticism of their favorite Substack grifters, then why should I take any of them seriously anymore?

I don’t play pathetic tribal language games, trying to coat my argument in the shibboleths of my supposed “ingroup”

Yoda: and that is why you fail.

Communication is fundementally a multiplayer game. If your online persona is screaming LGTBQ+ Adjacent Zoomer people are naturally going to read you in that light. If you want a cishet crowd to take your words seriously you need to account for that bias in your presentation.

If your online persona is screaming LGTBQ+ Adjacent Zoomer people are naturally going to read you in that light. If you want a cishet crowd to take your words seriously you need to account for that bias in your presentation.

This may or may not be true in a general context, but this forum has a higher standard. People are expected to communicate with charity here, whether or not they are cishet or their opposite sounds like an LGBTQ+ Adjacent Zoomer.

First off, I’ve been posting here for years now

You keep making this argument. Why would anyone care how long you've been here for? They're commenting on the merits of your argument...

No, they’re not. I criticized right-wing Twitter accounts, @crushedoranges replied with “splinter in my eye, log in yours”. Which I interpreted as an accusation that I am not criticizing progressive media figures for doing the same thing, or at least not to the same extent. So I think it’s appropriate and worthwhile to point out that I have leveled the exact same criticism against the left-aligned media vociferously and frequently for the same behavior. I hate it when progressive Twitter starts making wild knee-jerk accusations against, for example, police officers who used deadly force against a black person; that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t also hate it when right-wing Twitter starts making similarly wild and knee-jerk accusations. Both are bad! “The left is more powerful than me, so their bad behavior matters more than mine” is left-wing logic.

I don’t play pathetic tribal language games

But other people do. And so you have to account for that if you want to be an effective communicator. I'm sorry, humans are terrible like this, but you can't dispense with rethoric.

If rightists have become so mindkilled that they will instinctively lash out at even the most blatantly correct criticism of their favorite Substack grifters, then why should I take any of them seriously anymore?

Because you're a reasonable person that understands that effectively communicating ideas requires extinguishing the biases that we all, including any potential reader, you or myself, have.

This is why bloodsports style debates never achieve anything, and why this place has a commitment to civility even though we contain some pretty serious disagreements. I tend to get carried away and be too acrimonious myself, but it's not a good thing. And it's not a particular stain on the people who don't take it well.

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