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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   34277 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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Alright, out with it: Which one of you motherfuckers is J.D. Vance? It’s pretty strange to know that the future Vice President of the United States of America may have personally read my shitposts.

Live footage of TheMotte rn.

Is JD Vance here? Maybe, maybe not.

But if he was here, I don’t imagine he would be a prolific poster. Very busy guy, you see.

He’d most likely be a lurker that posts in inspired bursts and then slinks back into lurker mode for days, or weeks, or even months. He might have even got an AAQC or two.

He’d have been lurking around since SSC and the split with the subreddit, so he’d have some intermittent poasting history over at /r/themotte but probably not before.

I imagine he checks TheMotte regularly between his busy work life that doesn’t allow him much screen time.

He’d also be mega-based, undoubtedly.

Anyways, I’d look out for a guy like that.

Live footage of TheMotte rn.

I don't have too much else to add, but this is my favorite edit and it's too good of an opportunity not to post it

Even if he ultimately shilled for China (or something; I never paid too close attention), I still find the original prank calls hilarious

I am Spartacus J.D. Vance.

As weird as this demented chimera of a forum is, I'm reasonably certain that we really don't have any major movers and shakers in the national political realm.

Reasonably certain.

...then again, on the off chance that I'm wrong, can we, make a wish list, or something? I've got a particular bone to grind with the EPA in regards to emission standards, and as it stands, purchasing a reasonably priced Toyota Hilux is about as likely as winning the lottery by this point...

I dont know what bar you're setting for "major movers and shakers" but David Friedman Peter Thiel and Glenn Reynolds, were all regular commentors on SSC prior to the community moving to reddit.

Either Thiel or Reynolds already establishes a maximum of 2 degrees of Kevin Bacon from Scott Alexander to JD Vance (and amusingly enough) Trump.

Thiel commented on SSC? I read the comments section pretty religiously and completely missed that one.

Not under his real name, but yes. He was the infamous "outlier" who kept skewing the income/net worth results of yearly SSC User Survey.

I'm reasonably certain that we really don't have any major movers and shakers in the national political realm.

Eh, I'm pretty sure we don't have national level politicians here. But it would surprise me if we didn't have at least a few uber-influential high level staffers or the writer for a top pundit or something.

and as it stands, purchasing a reasonably priced Toyota Hilux is about as likely as winning the lottery by this point...

Play your cards right and the CIA will provide you and your friends an entire fleet of Hiluxes for free, with bed-mounted full-auto 50 BMGs included.

"Jesus, I see what you’ve done for the Taliban, and I want that for me."

I don't think anyone here wouldn't be able to remember Scott's name.

The head canon is that, being a Mottizen, he didn't want to directly attract the eye of Sauron. The article in question is also from July 2019, so unless Thiel-aligned people are dredging Scott's backlog, it's possible he read it at the time of publishing, prior to the injection of Trump and Thiel's connections, which suggests rat-adjacency.

The fact that he’s into Moldbug also suggests Rat adjacent. I mean I’m not surprised at all that someone reading Moldbug also reads Slatestar.

I think there is a very real chance that he knew very well who wrote the article but he didn't mention the name on purpose so as to not bring unwanted focus on Scott who he knew wouldn't want it.

Yeah, that was my thought. Either that, or he didn't want to get too associated with Scott for his own reasons. But the way he made a point of saying he didn't know who wrote it then deliberately fumbling over the title struck me as slightly affected.

Or he just doesn’t want the point to turn on a referendum on Scott.

Vance follows moldbug, and I believe also BAP on twitter, just for reference.

I remember moldbug saying he will not come on Twitter, did he change his mind?

Everyone probably knows this but he's got a substack: Gray Mirror

There is a long-running fake Curtis Yarvin account, which may be what Stellula is referring to. I believe it only posts links to Yarvin's writings as they're published.

Yarvin joined twitter about a month ago, using his Urbit handle, after he rejoined the Urbit foundation - it's basically a work account where he posts near-exclusively on matters of Urbit design.

Maybe it was like he had said he read moldbug then or something?

It was a long time ago when he was announced that this was being talked about. It was surprising how much overlap he had with the sort of people poasters here like.

It's flattering to think that he's involved in the community, but I expect most of these guys read articles that go viral among the VC set. Think this is how most of Scott's famous articles came to be widely known, rather than through dedicated fans.

I don't care if it's not real though because it would be fucking hilarious if it was.

Gay Rites Are Civil Rites is not anywhere near one of his most viral or famous articles, though, is it? That's what makes me think the most like he might not just have found the article in passing.

Not many of his post-2014 articles went really viral, and I think (hard to judge as a regular reader) that Gay Rites ranks pretty high on the Best After 2014 list. I remember seeing "New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed" linked more often though.

I've seen it reference on here more than once, have not seen it anywhere else.

The funniest answer would be someone like Deisach or Hlynka from the old site.

Or maybe @FiveHourMarathon here, come to think of it, has anyone heard from @JTarrou recently?

Hlynka

Not a chance. He was so salty about the whole cuckservative putdown it was hilarious.

Deiseach is still active in the ACX comment section. Reading between the lines I get the impression he lives they live in Ireland.

…you know she was active on this board, right?

Nope, complete news to me.

To be fair, I didn’t see it at first.

So Deiseach is posting here under another name?

he? I thought that Deiseach is a woman.

Shows how little I know.

Deiseach is definitely an older, Irish woman.

It actually makes TequilaMockingbird's comment all the funnier as it would in fact be the funniest answer.

Deiseach is definitely an older, Irish woman.

...and Hlynka definitely didn't go to Yale.

I was just trying to think of long-standing users who would both annoy the most mottizens, and plausibly write Hillbilly Elegy ;-)

Hlynka

Oh shit wasn't Hlynka a southerner and former military member?

My headcannon is now officially that Vance is Hlynka. Too bad he's banned so won't be able to tell me otherwise.

Hlynka banned? Wasn't he one of the main mods? I missed a lot of lore apparently.

Yes. He was unmodded on reddit. (I was never on reddit myself) He was banned here a couple months ago for deficits in etiquette, despite being warned. (And I think I remember something about him not accepting that people can recognize racial differences in the aggregate without being white nationalists.) It was something of a shame, in my book, since having additional perspectives is nice.

Hlynka had some Slavic (Ukrainian?) blood in him, so much as I'd like it to be otherwise, I'm afraid it's unlikely.

Slovak.

J.D. Vance isn’t a Southerner, though…

Also, as far as I’m aware neither is Hlynka. I believe Hlynka’s originally from Pennsylvania.

Fuck, and he ended up outside fucking Baton Rouge? We should have given him more slack.

All the best people are. Go birds.

Jason and Kylie Kelce are the superior Kelce couple, change my view ;-)

Which one of you motherfuckers

Found JD Vance's grandma.

The motte is the more extreme version of slatestarcodex/astralcodexten. Vance is not based enough to hang out here. He probably hangs out with the normies in the slatestarcodex comments or that other weird vbulletin forum. What you would really hope is Vance is that guy that keeps posting on the reddit split off asking where everyone else is.

By "weird vbulletin forum" do you mean DSL, or...?

I mean, it doesn't actually use vBulletin (it uses Simple Machines Forum), and I wouldn't say it's "less extreme" than theMotte (it's higher-brow and does retain a couple of SJer regulars, but there're still plenty of witches there), but it's the only BBS I'm aware of in the SSC diaspora, so I'm a bit confused.

The reddit split off?

I mean, we do have our token progressives. Darwin/guesswho was active as recently as April, and I had a spirited and productive debate with @TokenTransGirl more recently than that.

Vance is pretty based, and you don’t have to be that based to post here, anyways. I’m convinced that the progressive freak out about him is an instinctive reaction to him hiding his power level.

If you had to be based to post here, I would never have managed to register!

If Vance really does read Curtis Yarvin and Bronze Age Pervert, as has been reported he does, then nothing here on The Motte would bother him much.

I can't help but ask: why the real name for Moldbug but pseudonym for BAP? I'm not trying to claim that either choice is evil or anything, it just looks weird to see both styles juxtaposed.

Moldbug only used a blogging pseudonymn when he worked in tech and could get cancelled. Now he's part of the respectable gentlemen with unusual names club.
BAP still wants the pseudonymn because his real name makes a portion of his audience do an Early Life check.

I'm not sure, it just kind of came out that way. I think maybe it's because as far as I know, Curtis Yarvin is perfectly happy using his birth name in public, whereas as far as I know BAP until recently has tried to maintain anonymity and his birth name of Costin Alamariu only became known because he was doxxed. Also, Curtis Yarvin seems to have long preferred using his own birth name and does not seem to have any attachment to his pseudonym, whereas BAP seems to prefer using his pseudonym over his birth name. But I'm not sure really.

Yarvin writes under his own name now, and has for years. BAP’s identity was leaked fairly recently, but he still does not use that name in the context of being a public figure.

BAP has published a book under his real name, and has a twitter account for it, but they're very different personas. The book is a revised version of his PhD thesis, which is an excellent read in itself but not really of wider interest beyond BAP fans or people interested in Straussian Classical philosophy scholarship, the account is mostly cryptic posting about the great food he's eating.

I think plenty of people know who Moldbug/Yarvin is under both identities. Until now, I didn’t realize anyone knew BAP’s real identity. I definitely wouldn’t have recognized the name if Goodguy had used it.

It's still a pretty big jump from "has read some posts by Scott" to "reads the Motte", right?

Think we just found Mr Vance

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