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PaperclipPerfector  25d ago (text post)   32073 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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I mean I'm not impressed with Musk, Rubio or Vance on Twitter, and all of them seem a bit deranged on it - they're suffering from brainrot from the medium it seems to me. Though I did include some other points which are more not liking their priorities and policies, some of that also seems to be them playing to the social media crowd - maybe I'm wrong there however.

I mean I'm not impressed with Musk, Rubio or Vance on Twitter, and all of them seem a bit deranged on it - they're suffering from brainrot from the medium it seems to me

OP's baseline for "brainrot" is "making a factual statement on how much money you saved the government, and being off by a couple of orders of magnitude", yours is "they're maximizing for heat rather than light". I don't think it's correct to lump these together, and it might even be an instance of generating more heat than light itself.

I think a common sense approach is best here. Rubio , while less then the others , is indeed showing signs of 'brainrot'. https://x.com/marcorubio/status/1898755922492588082 , this is not a serious answer to another politician who is correcting musk's nonsense, this would be considered a bad answer here on the motte , so you can't tell me it's an appropriate response for this level of communication. The US goverment is clearly confused, fanatic and out of control and the evidence is right there , no reason to trip over ourselves with analysis. There are literally hundreds of examples of this. I literally just yesterday saw a goverment official say something like ' trump is the only person in the universe that can solve the ukraine war' , yes he did say ' in the universe' , what the hell is going on? I am not even going to talk about Homan and his insane antics.

The whole thing is more performative then substantial, seems like everyone is trying to show off , with some of them being legitimately insane/incapable.

yes he did say ' in the universe' , what the hell is going on?

Unless he's claiming there are aliens, "in the universe" is the same as "in the world". It's just a rhetorical flourish, it doesn't actually mean anything different.

I am aware , that doesn't make it any better though .It is a cartoonishly ridiculous level of ass-licking. I could barely believe what I was hearing , rhetoric like that obviously has no place in a serious discussion. Children speak like that.

Take to task the Polish asshole who turned something clearly not a threat into a threat.

Musk's constant antagonizing of europeans is not in question. So it's not that one tweet that's problematic , but his whole stance getting involved in shit he knows nothing about and shouldnt be involved in. The only asshole is Musk , in fact I personally believe most people are way too lenient on him. I like the way the french politician put it ,' the ketamine addicted buffoon' i believe he said.

EDIT: Also did you read the tweet , musk says verbatim ' Their entire front line would collapse if it turned off' . Very well could be a threat. And considering how much of a demented asshole elon musk has been that's certainly how I would take it too.

Context. Musk was saying “I’m not a Putin stooge—I challenged Putin to single combat and I’m basically the person most responsible for keeping the Ukraine army in the fight so don’t call me a Putin stooge.”

It was only a threat if someone doesn’t understand context

Context ' I said some nonsensical idiotic things 3 years ago , so you should take these more seriously then the idiotic things I said yesterday which were highly critical of you and positive of Putin' . Seriously? This is your argument? Elon isn't the 'person most responsible for keeping the ukraine army in the fight' that is a ridiculous statement. Are we saying whatever at this point without any interest to the truth? Seems like you don't actually understand context.

Truth?

Let’s recap slowly for you since you seem to be having trouble understanding.

  1. The claim was the Polish FM was an asshole for trying to conjure up a threat.

  2. You claimed it was a threat.

  3. I said “look at the context — Musk was making a claim to prove he wasn’t a Putin lackey and therefore his statement that Ukraine would fall absent his Starlink was not a threat but a premise in his argument.”

  4. You respond that Musk is closer to a puppet of Putin. That is of course orthogonal to whether in Musk’s post on X he was making a threat where of course he wasn’t. Yet you continue to get high on your horse calling me uninterested in truth?

  5. Finally the ability to actually communicate amongst your frontlines is crucially important. Elon might play a small part overall but that doesn’t mean there is another person more responsible for saving Ukraine than Elon. I know that hurts to hear because you are balls deep in your hatred of Trump and Elon but the truth can hurt.

Of course it’s not a serious answer. Social media has near-zero incentive for serious answers. Televised Congressional hearings were bad enough when it came to grandstanding; why’d we have to make the feedback instant?

Twitter delenda est.

I know that’s not actually a practical option. I would like some way to convince the public that it’s not actually important, though.

I know that’s not actually a practical option. I would like some way to convince the public that it’s not actually important, though.

Power Importance resides where men believe it resides

You know, I don’t actually own a crossbow yet.

I thought all mods got one?

Nah, they only issue us Lugers.

What are you referring to when you say ' it's not actually important ' ?

Twitter. X? The broader category of short-form social media, really.

Imagine if most government broadcasts came through TikTok. Every day a bureaucrat would smile for the camera and tell you how great the economic forecast looks for today, or that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia. Then she’d floss or whatever it is the youth are doing. Fifteen seconds total.

It’s fundamentally silly. Unserious. Recognizably low ratio of signal to noise. You could swap out the message and 90% of the video wouldn’t change, because it’s almost entirely style over substance.

That’s X. The actual content of a tweet is of secondary importance. What matters is the style—the snappy phrasing, the correct applause lights. What matters is connecting those things to the right people. Deliver unto your bubble what they were already thinking, and the algorithm shall reward you.

Elon Musk can quote whatever the fuck he wants and people who like his style will gather, insisting he’s “directionally correct.” Then his network gives him all the positive feedback he apparently craves. The amplifier is in saturation. There is next to no signal.

I would like the general public to feel the same way about tweets as they do about TikToks. They are entertainment. Leave the information transfer to a more serious medium.

Oh of course. I agree. In fact I would be even more pessimistic in my position and would say that you underestimate how much the younger generation ( 26 and under ) believes what they see on tiktok. I am 26 and see it relatively often in some of my peers , thankfully not many , yet the younger you go the more the percentage increases. Pretty depressing honestly. I personally believe at this point that X , tiktok and instagram are some of the worst things that have happened to humanity.

I worry we're getting lost in defining terms here, possibly my mistake.

Making incorrect statements and sticking by them certainly seems to be one type of brainrot (as per OP), but I think it's fair to broaden it out, and to be clear my definition of brainrot isn't "maximizing for heat", though that's part of it, it's also more generally that many people senior in the US government seem to be basically shitposting on twitter. That seems really odd to me, and I include Vance and Rubio in that shitposting category.

I honestly wanted to discuss with people why that might be the case, and if others agree with the shitposting accusation, but if you don't want to discuss that, that's fair too.

but I think it's fair to broaden it out

Also, @mixpap.

And I believe that's a bad idea, unless you can come up with a clear definition that all sides agree on from the outset, otherise this will clearly devolve into "everything I don't like is brainrot, and the more I don't like it, the more brainrot it is". I can easily make an argument that the CDC declaring that racism is a public health emergency, or the entirety of the transgender movement is "progressive TikTok brainrot".

I don't think it's necessary to get into a deep analysis of the word brainrot , we know and you know what we are trying to express. A man that that might have been capable in a specific field , now very deluded and problematic in his statements ,getting involved in all kinds of things that don't concern him and lying constantly while doing it. If , as some have suggested , ketamine is the cause of his insanity then ketamine induced brainrot could possibly be a relatively accurate diagnosis? I am only half joking.

A definition of brainrot I found with a google search is “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration”. I would argue that this is exactly what's going on with musk. He is degrading intellectually as a result of online content ( a lot of it being russian propaganda as I have many times underlined ).

I don't think it's necessary to get into a deep analysis of the word brainrot , we know and you know what we are trying to express.

I don't think this is true, and the fact that you didn't address any of my examples shows it, as does the motte-and-bailey dance from Musk to other public figures, and back to Musk depending on which one is convenient at the moment.

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