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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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A user can write paragraphs and paragraphs describing textbook narcissistic behavior. And so long as he doesn't call it narcissism, no problem. The moment someone comes along and goes "Yeah, that's called narcissism." out comes the "You aren't being charitable, that's 'boo outgroup'".

This is false and not descriptive of any mod action I can recall. If you are describing behavior, you're fine. "This thing I have seen a lot of Blue Tribers do, it's narcissistic." You'd be fine. Did you notice the key words "a lot of" in the preceding sentence? That's all you need, but apparently that's too big an ask of you.

It's like we're only allowed to point out the obvious and undeniable transgressions of the successor ideology, and those who follow it, by leaving negative space in the shape of it. The moment you point and go "Yeah, they're derange entitled narcissist" because that's what all the behavior that is being described ad nauseum is examples of, you've crossed a line.

If "they" = specific groups of people doing the thing, you have not crossed a line.

If "they" = every person in my outgroup, you have crossed a line.

You know what we mean by "outgroup" and you know what we mean by "Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible" because you have been around too long to keep pretending you are "struggling to get" the rules. You know the rules. You know where the line is. You know because all I'd have to do is rewrite one of your boo outgroup polemics with the polarities reversed, something about all those MAGtard Red Tribe chuds (so racist and fascist, amirite?) and I am absolutely certain that you would have no problem identifying the lack of charity and unacceptable weakmanning and booing in that post, and you would remain unconvinced and unimpressed if I tried to defend it with a catalog of Red Tribe chuds being racist and fascist.

I get it, the project of this place is some sort of open forum where both sides can talk. But increasingly I feel like I'm trapped in a room with cannibals, and it's against the rules to point out how my friends keep disappearing.

Who are the cannibals in this analogy? All Blue Tribers everywhere? Blue Tribers here in this forum? If you want to complain about cannibals eating your friends, point out the cannibals. You know, the people actually eating your friends.

Or I can make vague statements like "Man, it sure is weird that I haven't seen Steve in three weeks. I mean we're all locked in a room together, it's not like there is anywhere he could have gone. And you sure look well fed." But I'm expected to hope that the secret cannibal will just admit they are a cannibal. I can't point out their obvious cannibalism. Even up to the point I wake up and my own arm is missing, I can't accuse them of anything lest I be accused of "lack of charity".

Right, you really truly believe that all Blue Tribers are cannibals. All of them. And we're quokkas because we can't see them feasting on your friends and when you scream "They're all cannibals!" we're telling you "You can't say that, either point out the person actually eating people or knock it off."

I'm sure it's very frustrating to be the only person who can see the horror.

The problem here is, you are not wearing magic glasses and all of Blue Tribe is not cannibals.

Suppose there was a Heaven's Gate cult member here. And he took extreme umbrage that people described it as a suicide cult. He went hard that's uncharitable, and generalizing, and boo outgroup. And no matter how much you tried to point out that all the members of the cult, except for him, killed themselves, he just insisted they didn't. And it's really hurtful, and alienating, and unkind, to keep insisting that they did.

"What if a literal Nazi was a member here claiming that the Nazis never killed any Jews?"

You can argue over questions of fact (did those other people do that thing?) without insulting that member. If you really equate half the population (i.e. everyone not politically aligned with you) with a suicide cult, then I guess you will continue to struggle with how to express your abhorrence of them without breaking the rules, but what I would actually suggest is to not use ad absurdum arguments. Yes, there are Blue Tribe members here, and no, you may not say they are all self-centered narcissists, even if that's what you really believe.

This is how it felt to me watching the groomer debate of a few weeks ago. By every act that we have come to recognize as grooming, grooming is occurring. And yet the side perpetrating it just doggedly claims they aren't, and out go the mod warnings that calling grooming grooming is unkind, uncharitable, generalizing, blah blah blah.

Are you talking about reddit, or TheMotte.org? If the latter, you're going to have to point me to the mod warnings in question, because even if they were mine, I don't remember them, and considering all the spurious reasoning above, I am deeply skeptical that you are accurately describing what happened.

What even are these rules? Are they supposed to facilitate truth finding? Or are they supposed to protect malicious actors who can just lie with a straight face and feign indignation? Or people so cognitively mutilated they can't draw the connection between their actions and their consequences?

"Why can't you fools see that I'm objectively right and my enemies really are that terrible and you should be taking my side, so please start enforcing the rules keeping in mind that my outgroup is in fact The Worst" never seems to go out of style.

Even granting that you sincerely believe this, try engaging in some epistemic humility.