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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32320 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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The X-Files captured a moment in time when conspiracy-theorizing was more bipartisan. Within the context of that content, the government and national leaders were mostly engaged in cover-up to hide the truth of the actual subject matter of those conspiracies, which were a giant nebulous "other." That stands in sharp contrast with today where the conspiracy-theories are much more niche, partisan, and point the finger at the government and real people rather than a fictional entity.

It seems quaint to think of a time when the biggest conspiracies a baby boomer would come across would be aliens, bigfoot, etc. I think part of the reason this stuff is given oxygen is because it harkens to a time when being a "conspiracy theorist" meant something completely different, and more benign, than it means today. Back then, that conspiracy mythos brought people together more than it pushed them apart, even people with different political beliefs could have a discussion about aliens or bigfoot. Now they just live in entirely different universes, and the "conspiracy theories" are that the other side is irredeemably evil.

It's easy to tell about one's labors and days. More of a challenge with one's times. Especially our times. Why is that?

In Carbon times, there were a lot of smartasses thinking about the future. No wonder people knew little about their own era. Everything important was declassified on average in a century, and a lot of interesting things were revealed about great tank victories, assassinations of presidents, moon landings, contacts with reptilians and so on.

But, although people lived in the darkness, they knew some things about their present and past. For example, that a certain great tank battle really happened on such and such a date in such and such a place. Or that such-and-such a president had really been assassinated in such-and-such a city.

The rudiments of freedom remained with the people of that time, too. It was still possible to argue with each other and even with the officialdom, although it was connected to many risks.

And you could say anything you wanted about the future - they wouldn't kick you from there. That's why in Carbon they were constantly writing articles and novels about the coming epochs. They'd say they'd have it this way, and this way, and this way.

Well, here we are in the future. And it turns out that even with the most naive predictions of our ancestors, it is difficult for us to debate.

Because today we know nothing about the world. We don't know anything at all. But we can't talk about it - the very belief in the existence of "secrets" is strictly punished and is called "conspiracy" (yes, I'm alluding to my most famous punch-in, but I'll talk about it later).
The list of what we know for certain is very short. You can count it on your fingers with me. One hand will suffice.

[…]

That's it. No, really.
Thought there'll be something more? Check it on your own.

We do not know the answer to the rest of the questions that our inquisitive ancestors used to ask: whether machines think, what are the limits of technological growth, who has the real power over the world and the Cloud, what the exact political map of space looks like and who is the beneficiary here.

But not because anything is hidden from the people. Nothing needs to be hidden now.

The implant with the "QQoo" doesn't highlight excessively distant expeditions of human curiosity. We don't even know what our economic system is - feudalism? Capitalism? Post-capitalism? Meta-socialism? Maybe even some total klepto-corporate communism? I personally tried to figure that out for one of my punch-ins and couldn't.

The questions aren't posed like that anymore.

They're not posed like anything at all, because they've ceased to be raised.

– Pelevin, KGBT+

Your comment reminds me of this video about Deus Ex in which the guy talks about how much the cultural baggage around the term "conspiracy theorist" has shifted since the game's release in 2000.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=UN1GJLBM8Wc

For anyone debating wasting 22 minutes watching this, it is a left-coded video essay about the author, having been subsumed into the successor ideology, becoming uncomfortable with his previous enjoyment of Deus Ex now that the subject matter is more right-coded. He goes on to call Gamergate and other grievances “conspiracy theories”.

It's so depressing to me when I see this happen: "I used to enjoy X but now that I espouse ideology A I see how misguided my enjoyment was and can no longer experience it". Their brain has literally been attacked by a parasite that is eating away their personality, how sad. Like a psychological version of Alzheimer. I hope it never happens to me.

If the exercise wasn't so depressing, I think I'd start collecting these sorts of videos for a documentary or something. There's a thousand things I find wrong with the successor ideology, and I think I could suffer through most of them, even the ones resulting in the loss of human life and lowering of living standards across the board, but brainwashing someone into putting away their favorite toy (publically!) hits me right in the heart.

The march of progress may continue unabated, but I think this sort of stuff is getting memory holed, and I'd like to force people to remember it.

Why the assumption that this person cannot make his own decisions and can only be "brainwashed"?

Why the assumption that brainwashing is contradictory with making your own decision?

I believe he's brainwashed for the same reason I believe Pavlik Morozov was. Not that "I don't like my favorite game, it's for rightoids now" is the same as selling out your own parents, and on the other hand it very well may be that Pavlik was a little rat psychopath who never loved his parents and communists just gave him an opportunity to shine, but assuming we're dealing with psychologically normal people, I believe that not only is it natural to protect the things you love, it's perverse to self-flagellate over having loved something. I've seen turned-away-from-the-life-of-sin-born-again-Christians who have more ability to enjoy media they find problematic. It doesn't help that his sudden realization that Deus Ex is problematic comes smack on top of the peak of the Brown Scare hysteria, this has peer pressure written all over it.

Is it not within your conception of the psychologically normal person that they can change their mind? Even about something they loved? Yes, sure, according to some worldviews no one ever changes their own mind, but just assuming you believe in freedom of will.

It's just that it looks like, according to you, there is no purpose for this forum as a platform for seeking truth, because everyone who's normal is just going to defend what they love instead of what's true.

Is it not within your conception of the psychologically normal person that they can change their mind? Even about something they loved?

Not in this particular way, especially about the things they loved.

It's just that it looks like, according to you, there is no purpose for this forum as a platform for seeking truth, because everyone who's normal is just going to defend what they love instead of what's true.

That's not what I'm saying, and the question of truth doesn't even apply here. The idea that past enjoyment of a game is problematic is a moral claim, not a factual one.

Yeah, I didn't agree with all of it. He's right that the term "conspiracy theory" has vastly different connotations now than 20 years ago, but I did bristle when he described gamergate as such.

I was thinking the exact same thing.

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