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The thing is, it's not just left: It's oblivious left. They demonstrate absolutely no awareness of then existence of obvious counterarguments to the ridiculous things they say. After the split, /r/SlateStarCodex didn't just move left. It got dumber. The /r/ : SSC ratio increased.
In terms of IQ, I would say themotte is 1/2 of a sd above /r/SlateStarCodex , surveys be damned. A lot of the smart people left.
Yes, look at this:
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/116a0hi/the_crowd_gasps_audibly_and_outgoing_governor/j96s71h/
ever hear of google? Embarrassing...
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It's censored left. There are HBD posts, most are already deleted is all.
I would like someone to poke Bakkot with a stick on whether it's «Culture War» to mention HBD in a discussion of African dysfunction, if only to see him squirm.
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/r/SSC has been bleeding quality contributiors for years.
The vast majority of the really high quality blog posts were made between like 2012-2014, then there were a few years with much lower output but still the occasional high quality post and then almost nothing.
It's almost a decade since 2014, multiple community splits and a general ban on discussion on the topics that made both the forum and the blog popular.
Endlessly fascinating to me how hard the internet has accelerated the life cycle for nostalgia, I've noticed myself pining for the good ol' days of the internet with newgrounds, YTMND, SA, 4chan or even what YouTube used to be. These things disappeared or underwent fundamental changes to them not so long ago (a similar timeframe to paying off a car loan or meeting, courting and marrying a stranger) and yet everybody who remembers the internet before Facebook (at least those I've spoken with) all seem to share a similar sentiment. My favorite quote that encapsulates this was from a post from 2014 on one of 4chan's now-defunct text boards saying "2012 was so long ago, was i even alive back then. who knows."
Further viewing for anyone who cares about the phenomenal acceleration of nostalgia as much as I do. ALERT! YouTube link! (also contains what can be considered a very annoying pop song)
Go ahead and read the comments below; from what I can tell these are actual children, or at the very least young adults, waxing poetic on the halcyon days of their youth. This, to me, is just incredible. Literally! Imagine if you had told just about anyone across history that the unblooded youth of society would reminisce over their shared childhood, before they had even stepped into adult society proper. Maybe my priors on this are skewed by my neophyte-tier Cynicism and a knee-jerk tribal desire for RETVRN, but I can't help but wonder if this is something very, very new.
A fascinating topic to me, and one I don't have the requisite familiarity or ability to trawl through academic literature on this subject, or even know if there's been anything published that would cover this.
I don't know that the older generations aren't guilty of this also. Happy Days was from the 70's, That 70's Show was from the 90's.
But then, I am part of that generation that this video is probably targeting (millennials), and people of my generation have almost certainly done some time in adult society by now. Maybe the timeframes are shrinking, I do find myself longing for the days before social media was all-consuming (one such post here), but maybe we're all just reaching back to the last real big inflection point.
There's certainly a market for nostalgia, I won't deny that - I will say you've perhaps glanced at the decade and not the precise date. Happy Days is for sure a bit of a prick to my balloon, but That 70's Show aired originally in 98, nearly thirty years after the 70's began. Even drawing the time frame in as close as possible, you're comparing a show ostensibly set 18 years and some change before its air date, to a condensed nostalgia trip featuring a song that came out 12 years ago (peaked in popularity around 7-10 years ago) paired with clips from kids shows that aired up until three years ago. My more pressing point is about the audience's self declared ages (found in the comment section, a hoary place where few tread). There are easily dozens of remarks from individuals providing identifying information on their ages. A highly updooted comment explicitly states that nostalgia for this song, these clips means you experienced the best Gen Z had to offer.
While television programs and Online Content™ are admittedly apples and oranges, it's more the turnaround that has me impressed. Your last point is well taken too, part of my fascination with this video (not necessarily this one though I love it for its QED power, a cursory search for similarly themed videos will turn up comparable results, courtesy of the wackily overtuned algo) is the response it evoked in me. It almost grabbed me for a moment before my brain caught up with my reaction, started placing each reference next to the metaphorical calendar and immediately noticed that things weren't adding up.
Anything that tries to catch me on that sort of level without my permission is met with automatic suspicion so I'm not certain this isn't me reading signals from the noise, or if maybe this means they grew up on recycled content from the previous generation. Either way it seems off to me, to canonize your own past before you've even found yourself properly settled in the present.
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