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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38429 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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My money's on no toxoplasma. It's too one-way: shooting up a school does not attract support. No one wants to root for a mentally ill loser, and school shooters automatically go in that category.

It will certainly get less coverage than, say, Uvalde. Right-wing circles will correctly notice this and incorrectly claim it means coordinated suppression efforts. While it'll be hard to measure, I expect one or two leaked editorial messages a la Alex Jones, followed by assertions of collusion. Six months from now, the only coverage will be Fox News crowing about how left-wing outlets got all embarrassed, as it did with Covington.

incorrectly claim it means coordinated suppression efforts

How do you know this is incorrect?

I don’t!

@desolation has the right of it. I think the (lack of) coverage will be driven by individual discomfort. Editorial meddling will be less common, and inversely proportional to the scale of the outlet. Suppression at the C-suite level will be rarer still, and coordinated suppression between executives in different corporations will be nonexistent.

Thus I expect to see a few leaked conversations at lower levels saying things like “mentioning gender makes us look bad!” or “we’re giving ammunition to people who hate trans.” It goes without saying that this will be spun as strong evidence for Soros (or whoever is the Gay Agenda bogeyman?) commanding his minions to bury the story. I realize I can’t disprove this, since the absence of evidence could just mean a bogeyman is competent. But my expectation is that burial will emerge from individual incentives. Starlings in flight.

@desolation has the right of it. I think the (lack of) coverage will be driven by individual discomfort. Editorial meddling will be less common, and inversely proportional to the scale of the outlet. Suppression at the C-suite level will be rarer still,

All perfectly in accordance with coordination theory

and coordinated suppression between executives in different corporations will be nonexistent.

Yeah, they coordinate on the strategic, rather than operational level.

I realize I can’t disprove this

I'm not even asking for that. Just would be nice if you didn't confidently assert the opposite without providing arguments.

I think this is basically the "prospiracy" idea: there is no central coordination or singular grand plan, but everyone is in the same direction anyways.

There's mailing lists, and discords, and other forms of communication.

The key here is coordinated, which would be virtually impossible to prove anyways; the position is there's no Grand Dragon of Progressivism contacting all the networks to shut it down or else.

That's not what coordinated means. Since problem_redittor decided to jog our memory of GamerGate, I firmly recall it being called a "coordinated harassment campaign" because a bunch of people met up in chat rooms, even though there was no Grand Dragon of GamerGate either.

For me the key is "incorrect". If you're going to say something like that, you should give a compelling argument for why I should consider it so, not hide behind mere lack of evidence for the opposite.

but some people get fussy about "coordination" sounding conspiratorial.

I'm the resident conspiracy theorist here, and my response to "it sounds conspiratorial" is "thanks for noticing".

Or the key could be suppression; no one's "suppressing it," they're just selectively ignoring it because it has some inconvenient features.

While I can't prove it in this specific case, it's not exactly uncommon for an editor/producer to kill a story.

The perfectly tuned manifesto might trigger toxoplasma. I can see "Desparate cry for help from trans youth* brutally abused by religious fanatics" to split the public on whether we should blame the shooter or transphobia more.

* Not actually very young

I think less toxoplasma if the shooter is FTM because the right-wing narrative of FTM is that they're deluded female victims not masculine aggressors. If the shooter was MTF all hell would break lose.

I think the only shooter who kind of succeeded in any of their political goals was the Christchurch shooter. He was an accelerationist and chose his weapons to aid the cause of gun control.

That doesn't prevent mass shooters from writing manifestos and truly believing that they will be the spark that ignites the race war, the holy war, the revolution, or whatever.

Brevik's objective was to wipe out the best and brightest of the next generation of AUF leaders.

Counterfactuals are hard to measure, but I can believe that in 2040 Norway's uniparty will have slightly less competent leadership than it otherwise would have.

I don't know, Christian school bullies trans student who snaps is a compelling narrative (true or not). Depends on the manifesro contents i imagine.

10+ years later?

deleted

Nah because they killed kids. That's a bridge too far.

The manifesto won't matter. There is nothing it can say that will convince normal Americans that a school shooting was a good idea. By extension, news outlets will not take that angle. I expect to see minimization, or at most both-sidesing, and the latter will be considered edgy.

Also,

28 years old

Pretty sure the perpetrator wasn't a student.

They said they were an ex student in the conference though right?

I agree the chance if that narrative us probably not super high though.

If they went in and shot their bullies maybe, but this is going back to your school 10+ years later and killing random kids.

Will we ever see the manifesto? If it hasn't been leaked by now it's probably only the police that have it. The shooter is dead so they don't need evidence. Is there any reason they couldn't just chunk it or leave it on a secure server somewhere?

Apparently the manifesto was found in the home by police, so most likely it was never published online. I doubt the police would ever release it.

Doesn't matter. by this time tomorrow we'll have archives of their social media activity.

Pretty sure the perpetrator wasn't a student.

According to this NBC News article, the shooter was a former student.

Unless the left claims the shooting was motivated by transphobia.

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