4 ms·

It doesn't seem appropriate to discuss a Quillette article without mentioning that it's an alt-right publication. We must not normalize it, and I strongly enco

It doesn't seem appropriate to discuss a Quillette article without mentioning that it's an alt-right publication. We must not normalize it, and I strongly encourage people to flag the submission. A preliminary search will turn up plenty of reprehensible authors and plenty more reprehensible articles. Posts like these are low-key attempts for Quillette to legitimatize itself.

amazingman 7y ago
Quillette is not an alt-right publication. At “worst” it is a center-right publication, and if you can’t see the value of such a publication existing then you should probably question your own epistemology. Re: the “cement milkshake conspiracy”, the Portland police’s official twitter account posted a warning about cement milkshakes. For a (short) period after that, it was entirely reasonable to mention it as a real possibility. Regardless of whether or not one agrees with Quillette pieces (~50/50 for me), it should be obvious that it is a legitimate, even valuable publication. If you’re having trouble seeing this, perhaps you’ve been caught in a social media echo chamber.
- nameismypw 7y ago
  Quillette is strongly associated with "the intellectual dark web," which is associated with the alt-right. Quillette publishes prominent alt-right individuals. Several articles on the front page, including the one you mention, favorably portray alt-right individuals. You seem to be familiar with them, so I think that you're aware of this, to be honest.
  - chance_state 7y ago
    >Quillette is undeniably associated with "the intellectual dark web," which is undeniably associated with the alt-right. You state this as if it's fact, instead of just your opinion. People who consider themselves public figures from "the intellectual dark web" have time and again made clear that they have virtually nothing in common with the alt-right (Sam Harris on countless occasions, for example). In your OP you say, >A preliminary search will turn up plenty of reprehensible authors and plenty more reprehensible articles. Can you list some examples please? This hasn't been my experience as a casual reader of Quillette.
    - nameismypw 7y ago
      > You state this as if it's fact, instead of just your opinion. It is fact. You cannot have read anything about Quillette without also knowing that it's associated with the alt-right. I've never understood why alt-right people feel the need to dogwhistle even to people who are familiar with that strategy. If you're going to have these opinions, you can at least acknowledge and stand by them. The only time you're wasting here is yours. > People who consider themselves public figures from "the intellectual dark web" have time and again made clear that they have virtually nothing in common with the alt-right (Sam Harris on countless occasions, for example). > Can you list some examples please? This hasn't been my experience as a casual reader of Quillette. Sam Harris believes in scientific racism, so you can start there.
      - amazingman 7y ago
        Now you’ve labeled someone who simply disagreed with you with the “alt-right” epithet. You are demonizing anyone who disagrees with —or asks you to clarify the provenance of— your specific conclusions. You could stop, but first you’ll need to stop and ask yourself how you’ve come to know what you think you know. (Reworded some unnecessarily churlish language)
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        dang 7y ago
        Please don't do ideological flamewar on HN. It's not what this site is for. Also, personal attacks are definitely not ok—we ban accounts for that—so would you please review the site guidelines and use HN as intended? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        amazingman 7y ago
        Definitely wasn’t intending to do that. Is the edit sufficient? Should I remove the wrapped language entirely?
  - amazingman 7y ago
    The “intellectual dark web” isn’t a real thing. Outside of Eric Weinstein, who coined the term, those who try to trade on being part of it (e.g. Rubin, Shapiro) are largely the reason why the term has become associated with toxicity. Indeed some of the other “members” of the IDW (e.g. Harris, Rogan) find the whole idea to be a bit silly. I’ll also point out that you’re calling me “disingenuous” in one breath while broadly painting several individuals with wildly different politics, audiences, and personal ethics with the term “alt-right” in another.
- cocacolacowboy 7y ago
  Quillette is an alt-right forum designed to let people try and normalize old conservative ideas such as sexism, racism, and bigotry. It came from one founder not finding much acceptance of their anti-feminist ideas. It's a glossy pseudo-academic forum for those who would rather play victim because they got their feelings hurt. They like to play the academic, but live in a world of high-toned soundbites https://theoutline.com/post/2307/quillette-claire-lehmann-conservative-snowflakes?zd=1&zi=3j4xeiny https://theoutline.com/post/2307/quillette-claire-lehmann-co...
Aloha 7y ago
It seems more to have a libertarian bend rather than a populist alt-right one. So citation please.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
dang 7y ago
It's penalized on HN the same way we downweight all mostly-political or ideological publications. But such sites do come up with the occasional interesting article, and on HN we care about the article, not the site. Same with Jacobin or something like that.
- nameismypw 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
- pvg 7y ago
  Maybe if Jacobin published articles on Lysenkoism and denounced rootless cosmopolitans.
  - dang 7y ago
    I haven't examined their corpus. But actually the worst articles aren't particularly relevant. On HN we're interested in the good articles. Bad sites sometimes produce good articles, and those are the ones we want here. Conversely when a good site produces a bad article, we don't want it here. Going by article quality rather than site quality works well for HN and has been this way for a long time. We have various penalties for various lower-quality (for HN) sites and various ways to override them.
    - pvg 7y ago
      And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake. While this is a reasonable standard when it comes to brimstoning cities, I don't think it's a sane way to moderate a forum. Send forth your angels to Quillette and I imagine they'll quickly report it's a site that advocates phrenology and can be nuked safely. Having it appear on HN is bad for HN and not principled even-handedness.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      Where do you draw the line? People have submitted VDARE.COM links, and, in fact, more of them have survived flagging than not. I assume there's some kind of threshold past which we're not accepting articles no matter what their quality. Non-racialized Quillette articles, by the way, have mostly served to endumben HN. See, for instance, "Sokal Squared" and "Mathematics Intelligencer". (Jacobin doesn't belong here either!)
rainyMammoth 7y ago
Quillette is not an alt-right publication. It probably doesn't feed easily into your liberal world-view narrative, but they are the other side of the spectrum of publications like the NYT and it is more needed now than ever.

amazingman 7y ago

Quillette is not an alt-right publication. At “worst” it is a center-right publication, and if you can’t see the value of such a publication existing then you should probably question your own epistemology. Re: the “cement milkshake conspiracy”, the Portland police’s official twitter account posted a warning about cement milkshakes. For a (short) period after that, it was entirely reasonable to mention it as a real possibility. Regardless of whether or not one agrees with Quillette pieces (~50/50 for me), it should be obvious that it is a legitimate, even valuable publication. If you’re having trouble seeing this, perhaps you’ve been caught in a social media echo chamber.

nameismypw 7y ago
Quillette is strongly associated with "the intellectual dark web," which is associated with the alt-right. Quillette publishes prominent alt-right individuals. Several articles on the front page, including the one you mention, favorably portray alt-right individuals. You seem to be familiar with them, so I think that you're aware of this, to be honest.
- chance_state 7y ago
  >Quillette is undeniably associated with "the intellectual dark web," which is undeniably associated with the alt-right. You state this as if it's fact, instead of just your opinion. People who consider themselves public figures from "the intellectual dark web" have time and again made clear that they have virtually nothing in common with the alt-right (Sam Harris on countless occasions, for example). In your OP you say, >A preliminary search will turn up plenty of reprehensible authors and plenty more reprehensible articles. Can you list some examples please? This hasn't been my experience as a casual reader of Quillette.
  - nameismypw 7y ago
    > You state this as if it's fact, instead of just your opinion. It is fact. You cannot have read anything about Quillette without also knowing that it's associated with the alt-right. I've never understood why alt-right people feel the need to dogwhistle even to people who are familiar with that strategy. If you're going to have these opinions, you can at least acknowledge and stand by them. The only time you're wasting here is yours. > People who consider themselves public figures from "the intellectual dark web" have time and again made clear that they have virtually nothing in common with the alt-right (Sam Harris on countless occasions, for example). > Can you list some examples please? This hasn't been my experience as a casual reader of Quillette. Sam Harris believes in scientific racism, so you can start there.
    - amazingman 7y ago
      Now you’ve labeled someone who simply disagreed with you with the “alt-right” epithet. You are demonizing anyone who disagrees with —or asks you to clarify the provenance of— your specific conclusions. You could stop, but first you’ll need to stop and ask yourself how you’ve come to know what you think you know. (Reworded some unnecessarily churlish language)
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - dang 7y ago
        Please don't do ideological flamewar on HN. It's not what this site is for. Also, personal attacks are definitely not ok—we ban accounts for that—so would you please review the site guidelines and use HN as intended? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        amazingman 7y ago
        Definitely wasn’t intending to do that. Is the edit sufficient? Should I remove the wrapped language entirely?
- amazingman 7y ago
  The “intellectual dark web” isn’t a real thing. Outside of Eric Weinstein, who coined the term, those who try to trade on being part of it (e.g. Rubin, Shapiro) are largely the reason why the term has become associated with toxicity. Indeed some of the other “members” of the IDW (e.g. Harris, Rogan) find the whole idea to be a bit silly. I’ll also point out that you’re calling me “disingenuous” in one breath while broadly painting several individuals with wildly different politics, audiences, and personal ethics with the term “alt-right” in another.
cocacolacowboy 7y ago
Quillette is an alt-right forum designed to let people try and normalize old conservative ideas such as sexism, racism, and bigotry. It came from one founder not finding much acceptance of their anti-feminist ideas. It's a glossy pseudo-academic forum for those who would rather play victim because they got their feelings hurt. They like to play the academic, but live in a world of high-toned soundbites https://theoutline.com/post/2307/quillette-claire-lehmann-conservative-snowflakes?zd=1&zi=3j4xeiny https://theoutline.com/post/2307/quillette-claire-lehmann-co...

Aloha 7y ago

It seems more to have a libertarian bend rather than a populist alt-right one. So citation please.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

dang 7y ago

It's penalized on HN the same way we downweight all mostly-political or ideological publications. But such sites do come up with the occasional interesting article, and on HN we care about the article, not the site. Same with Jacobin or something like that.

nameismypw 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
pvg 7y ago
Maybe if Jacobin published articles on Lysenkoism and denounced rootless cosmopolitans.
- dang 7y ago
  I haven't examined their corpus. But actually the worst articles aren't particularly relevant. On HN we're interested in the good articles. Bad sites sometimes produce good articles, and those are the ones we want here. Conversely when a good site produces a bad article, we don't want it here. Going by article quality rather than site quality works well for HN and has been this way for a long time. We have various penalties for various lower-quality (for HN) sites and various ways to override them.
  - pvg 7y ago
    And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake. While this is a reasonable standard when it comes to brimstoning cities, I don't think it's a sane way to moderate a forum. Send forth your angels to Quillette and I imagine they'll quickly report it's a site that advocates phrenology and can be nuked safely. Having it appear on HN is bad for HN and not principled even-handedness.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Where do you draw the line? People have submitted VDARE.COM links, and, in fact, more of them have survived flagging than not. I assume there's some kind of threshold past which we're not accepting articles no matter what their quality. Non-racialized Quillette articles, by the way, have mostly served to endumben HN. See, for instance, "Sokal Squared" and "Mathematics Intelligencer". (Jacobin doesn't belong here either!)

rainyMammoth 7y ago

Quillette is not an alt-right publication. It probably doesn't feed easily into your liberal world-view narrative, but they are the other side of the spectrum of publications like the NYT and it is more needed now than ever.