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Seconding this, I honestly find it hard to understand having strong feeling one way or another on such a neutral essayist. Though perhaps it's quite telling tha
by errantspark 6y ago
Seconding this, I honestly find it hard to understand having strong feeling one way or another on such a neutral essayist. Though perhaps it's quite telling that I consider him to be "neutral"?
- tptacek 6y agoI do not think that's telling. I think a lot of good people think that S.A. is benign. Part of it might be whether or not you're a "read the comments" kind of person; part of it may be whether or not you pay attention to who he's linking to and referencing (or whether you care about that kind of thing). Some of it is overt; he's taken active stands on some issues that are, if nothing else, not neutral. But I'm only rattling those things off so you can understand how someone could come to a different conclusion about SSC than you do. I think what's going on with SSC is subtle enough that it's dangerous to make judgements about people simply based on whether they get value out of SSC.
- errantspark 6y agoI've probably read < 10 of his posts and on the whole he did seem extremely benign. He had a large body of work so perhaps I just had a huge sampling bias. I meant to specifically ask for some criticism you had of SSC as a self described person on the 'loathing' side of things as purely a point of curiosity. It's a strong word and I'm specifically curious how someone who to me seemed so benign gained your condemnation.
- tptacek 6y agoHonestly I've said about as much about SSC itself as I want to. I don't think it's productive to debate whether SSC is good or bad, because that's not the issue here. I don't think S.A. deserves being outed because he presides over a community I happen to find problematic; I think he's not being outed, since he's been operating in the open for years.
- netsharc 6y agoLate to the thread commenter here, but geez, being asked "what criticisms do you have" and deflecting with this response makes me wonder why you're trying to hide the reason(s) you dislike him...
- philwelch 6y agoI think anatoly was in the right ballpark, to put it mildly.
- pvg 6y agoSomeone's a culture warrior because they don't share someone else's taste in blogs? Which one is supposed to be the culture warrior?
- philwelch 6y agoI wouldn’t put it that way; that’s why I said Anatoly was in the ballpark.
- pvg 6y agoThe original characterization and the comment manage to be rude, condescending and passive-aggressive all at once. It's straight up explaining to someone what their own motivations and tastes are. I honestly don't understand what the ballpark is supposed to be, the whole sport seems awful.