8 ms·

It's always the loudest few. I've read takes from conservatives in favor of BLM, racial justice, queer rights, etc from conservative principles. The "conservati

by mkr-hn 5y ago

It's always the loudest few. I've read takes from conservatives in favor of BLM, racial justice, queer rights, etc from conservative principles. The "conservatives" who go feral over any queer representation in media or even discussing reparations probably don't represent the majority numerically, but the silence of the rest (probably out of fear) makes it hard to say they aren't, essentially, representatives. I try to do right from my "side," but sometimes it's scary when popular checkmarked people on Twitter call for genocides of "red" states, where I happen to live, to thunderous applause.

nine_k 5y ago
I personally am entirely fine with queer people (some of my closest relatives and friends are queer), I think that racism is wrong due to many reasons, and certainly I'm totally fine with immigrants because this is how America came to be and later became great. What I see as troubling is the "cancel culture", the force of the righteous mob. I believe that a society with more justice and grace than we have now can be built entirely without it, and that the intolerant fighters for inclusion and tolerance make the prospects of building such a society weaker. You can't force people to be just, loving, and caring. You can force them feign that, but I suppose you very well understand how fraught such a society would be. There is a number of historical examples, all sad.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  At the risk of self-promotion, I found some cause for empathy for the crusader types when writing about the subject: "They’re mostly people whose elders, the people who might guide them to a fierce but strategic advocacy, were murdered by police or mob violence, thrown in prison for bullshit reasons, or allowed to die in a plague. If you can bring empathy for the guy who got fired from Google for circulating a paper that made his colleagues uncomfortable, you can bring it for people who are dealing with a strange world with no one to talk to who gets what they’re going through." https://viewfinderfox.com/history-is-canceled/ https://viewfinderfox.com/history-is-canceled/ This is the part where I'd anticipate a crusader type accusing me of infantalizing people if I were on Twitter. I don't think it's entirely people who have no guidance + people taking up their cause (often without asking), but I think it's a large part of it. Some of it, maybe most of it, is Well-Meaning Allies causing a lot of noise while not listening to the people they're trying to help. I had a cis woman on Twitter lecture me on nonbinary identity because she didn't realize I was describing my own experience. I think that type is what most people get annoyed at, and sometimes their anger/fear has splash damage on people who didn't ask for that help.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    Indeed. The fury of revenge is totally understandable, but also not very constructive; it did a lot of sad things throughout history. The founders of great spiritual movements, Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, all warned against revenge and called for forgiveness (even though Quran calls more to the due process and justice while gospels call to radical forgiveness). This is easy to understand rationally: a society with a lot of revenge keeps killing itself and keeps nurturing cruelty. Such societies tend to not survive for long. I'm very sorry for all the Black, queer, Jewish, Arabian, East Asian, etc people who were victims of bitter oppression. I adore those of them who struggle for justice, cessation of oppression, peace, and reconciliation with the rest of the society. But I would not join those of them who strive for a war and a revenge. Fighting against a powerful enemy, it's important to be watchful and not become the enemy's mirror image. I hope the people among them who possess more wisdom and compassion will eventually help most of them choose a better path.
    - XorNot 5y ago
      Who do you think is fighting for war and revenge? The OP is referring to issus which are faced by LGBTQI rights advocacy. Who do you think they're waging war on? How many people has radical gay rights murdered recently?
      - nine_k 5y ago
        Fortunately, LGBTQ struggle is mostly avoids destruction and wounds from either side. Unfortunately, mass street protests very often do not. Even if every participant of such a protest had a very good reason to feel infuriated and destroyed stuff because of that, I say that it's not good for them, it's corrupting them. AFAIK Rosa Parks didn't break a single window. The lure to use the fury of the crowd gathered for a just cause is always strong for their leaders. Holding this fury back and not allowing it to turn the gathering into a riot is always hard work for those leaders who strive for a non-agressive way to protest. Same applies online.
        XorNot 5y ago
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Perhaps you can name some people who fell victim to "cancel culture" who weren't utterly despicable people. Cancel culture is an utterance that seems to lack a singular clear definition. When someone tells others to vote with their wallets against something that is contrary to their own interests if a conservative is effected by people's free choice not to associate with him we are told its "cancel culture" likewise when someone hires someone nearly entirely for their image then no longer desires to be associated with their former hire's flagging popularity which is flagging precisely because of their own bad behavior.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    Also the idea that "cancel culture" is even a left-wing thing is laughable. There is not a week that goes by that a conservative group of some stripe is not calling for the boycott of something or someone. There hasn't been a year that has gone by that this is not the case - anyone who grew up in the 90s would remember that this was generically video games in response to every social issue, then specific developers, before that it was comic books. For some reason in the 80s it was the imagined cabal's of Satan worshipers and the very real lives which were ruined by it in an actual way (they went to jail).
    - lazyasciiart 5y ago
      Anyone remember Milo Yiannapolous?
      - michaelmrose 5y ago
        Milo in 2018 "I can't wait for vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight" 2 days later when 5 are killed at the Capitol Gazette "jk" Then there was the article he wrote ""Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy" where he argued that the pill made women fat crazy and promiscuous and then declared his birthday "World Patriarchy Day" Then the time he said that being gay was "a lifestyle choice guaranteed to bring pain and unhappiness." Just reroll as hetrosexual folks! Then there was the time he said it was OK for sexually mature 13 year olds to have sex with adults then claimed being the victim of sexual abuse made him say it. He also said abuse victims were "whinging selfish brats" for "suddenly" remembering they were abused, and "suddenly" deciding it was a problem, 20 years after the abuse occurred. How about the fact that he used his tenure at Breitbart to court white supremacists and promote their views. He was canceled in fact by none other than Breitbart not for this of course but for the pedophile comments which was apparently a bridge too far. Is this an example "cancel culture" gone too far?
michaelmrose 5y ago
The number of people who want to kill all the Texans is microscopic same as the conservatives who are in favor of racial justice and "queer" rights. The percentage of self labeled conservatives who support evil, insane, or potentially disastrous ideas is sadly more like a solid majority. "Both sides" is a tired trope.
- baggy_trough 5y ago
  Awful bigotry.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    Please explicate what precisely you mean by bigotry. 56% of Republicans believe the Qanon conspiracy is partly or entirely true. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-of-republicans-believe-the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-is-partly-or-mostly-true-survey-finds/?sh=25079e75231d https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-o... 60% of them believe in imaginary voter fraud and support undemocratically overturning the election. 43% of them would support doing so via a military coup as long as someone else does it and it doesn't overmuch interfere with their beer drinking. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/11/military-coup-some-americans-would-vote-yes https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/11/military-cou... Please note that this is from 2015 long before any claims of election fraud could have been informed by any real concerns. The desire for violent over throw of the government generated the fake election fraud concerns not the other way around. A former general has a public event where he openly discussed the merits of overthrowing our government like Myanmar. https://newrepublic.com/article/162586/michael-flynn-trump-myanmar-coup https://newrepublic.com/article/162586/michael-flynn-trump-m... There is little difference in my mind between Hitlers supporters in the 30s and Trumps supporters in the 2020s and in the modern day Republican party if you aren't a Trump supporter you aren't welcome near anywhere.
    - baggy_trough 5y ago
      I mean precisely the dictionary definition: intolerance towards those who hold a different opinion.
clairity 5y ago
give up the "side" and the labels like "conservatives" and "red states". those are cognitive traps. you'll never be able to reconcile all the beliefs of a "side" with your own, or another side with your "opponents", so are relegated to either paralysis by cognitive dissonance or selective rationality. most people are generally decent and most people have some odd beliefs and proclivities. that's just life. it's not reducible to some "sides", much less two sides, no matter what the dominant mediopolitical narratives want you to believe. two sides are chosen by tribal groups like political parties because it simplifies the quest for power. 2 is the lowest common denominator of power, and it's chosen exactly to simplify choices, and neatly bypass the inherent frictions of nuance and humanity. it's done for power, not to realistically represent the world or to cleanly align with your beliefs. instead, each side exerts pressure on you to conform to it (that is, coalescing its own power). in exchange, you get little random hits of dopamine, which is oddly as lopsided as it is surprisingly effective.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  It's not the political parties. They're as much victims of this as the rest of us [0]. It's social media, optimising for "engagement". The most engaging content is not the normal, run-of-the-mill commentary from normal people with normal opinions. It's the far-out nut-job stuff that makes you mad. So that's what get prioritised in your feed. I signed off of Twitter and was able to completely ignore it while being publicly abused on it. I've recently uninstalled Facebook and my rage at the culture wars has subsided noticeably. Now it's just Imgur and HN that spark this. I'm working on getting off here too (unsuccessfully). The vast majority of people (I think, I have no proof) are not zealots for the cause (any cause). But the self-censorship effect of our society-wide Purity Spiral[1] means that we never hear from them. We hear the worst, most deranged, opinions out there first because human psychology isn't suited to this kind of situation. I think the answer is to stop optimising for engagement, because we can't hack human psychology. [0] I can't find it now, but there is a blog post out there explaining how politicians are getting hurt by the increasing extremism. The need to be more extreme than your rivals in your gerrymandered district where any sign of "weakness" or ambiguity can be taken advantage of on social media isn't good for politicians either. [1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Purity%20Spiral https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Purity%20Spi...

by mkr-hn 5y ago

nine_k 5y ago

I personally am entirely fine with queer people (some of my closest relatives and friends are queer), I think that racism is wrong due to many reasons, and certainly I'm totally fine with immigrants because this is how America came to be and later became great. What I see as troubling is the "cancel culture", the force of the righteous mob. I believe that a society with more justice and grace than we have now can be built entirely without it, and that the intolerant fighters for inclusion and tolerance make the prospects of building such a society weaker. You can't force people to be just, loving, and caring. You can force them feign that, but I suppose you very well understand how fraught such a society would be. There is a number of historical examples, all sad.

mkr-hn 5y ago
At the risk of self-promotion, I found some cause for empathy for the crusader types when writing about the subject: "They’re mostly people whose elders, the people who might guide them to a fierce but strategic advocacy, were murdered by police or mob violence, thrown in prison for bullshit reasons, or allowed to die in a plague. If you can bring empathy for the guy who got fired from Google for circulating a paper that made his colleagues uncomfortable, you can bring it for people who are dealing with a strange world with no one to talk to who gets what they’re going through." https://viewfinderfox.com/history-is-canceled/ https://viewfinderfox.com/history-is-canceled/ This is the part where I'd anticipate a crusader type accusing me of infantalizing people if I were on Twitter. I don't think it's entirely people who have no guidance + people taking up their cause (often without asking), but I think it's a large part of it. Some of it, maybe most of it, is Well-Meaning Allies causing a lot of noise while not listening to the people they're trying to help. I had a cis woman on Twitter lecture me on nonbinary identity because she didn't realize I was describing my own experience. I think that type is what most people get annoyed at, and sometimes their anger/fear has splash damage on people who didn't ask for that help.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Indeed. The fury of revenge is totally understandable, but also not very constructive; it did a lot of sad things throughout history. The founders of great spiritual movements, Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, all warned against revenge and called for forgiveness (even though Quran calls more to the due process and justice while gospels call to radical forgiveness). This is easy to understand rationally: a society with a lot of revenge keeps killing itself and keeps nurturing cruelty. Such societies tend to not survive for long. I'm very sorry for all the Black, queer, Jewish, Arabian, East Asian, etc people who were victims of bitter oppression. I adore those of them who struggle for justice, cessation of oppression, peace, and reconciliation with the rest of the society. But I would not join those of them who strive for a war and a revenge. Fighting against a powerful enemy, it's important to be watchful and not become the enemy's mirror image. I hope the people among them who possess more wisdom and compassion will eventually help most of them choose a better path.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    Who do you think is fighting for war and revenge? The OP is referring to issus which are faced by LGBTQI rights advocacy. Who do you think they're waging war on? How many people has radical gay rights murdered recently?
    - nine_k 5y ago
      Fortunately, LGBTQ struggle is mostly avoids destruction and wounds from either side. Unfortunately, mass street protests very often do not. Even if every participant of such a protest had a very good reason to feel infuriated and destroyed stuff because of that, I say that it's not good for them, it's corrupting them. AFAIK Rosa Parks didn't break a single window. The lure to use the fury of the crowd gathered for a just cause is always strong for their leaders. Holding this fury back and not allowing it to turn the gathering into a riot is always hard work for those leaders who strive for a non-agressive way to protest. Same applies online.
      - XorNot 5y ago
michaelmrose 5y ago
Perhaps you can name some people who fell victim to "cancel culture" who weren't utterly despicable people. Cancel culture is an utterance that seems to lack a singular clear definition. When someone tells others to vote with their wallets against something that is contrary to their own interests if a conservative is effected by people's free choice not to associate with him we are told its "cancel culture" likewise when someone hires someone nearly entirely for their image then no longer desires to be associated with their former hire's flagging popularity which is flagging precisely because of their own bad behavior.
- XorNot 5y ago
  Also the idea that "cancel culture" is even a left-wing thing is laughable. There is not a week that goes by that a conservative group of some stripe is not calling for the boycott of something or someone. There hasn't been a year that has gone by that this is not the case - anyone who grew up in the 90s would remember that this was generically video games in response to every social issue, then specific developers, before that it was comic books. For some reason in the 80s it was the imagined cabal's of Satan worshipers and the very real lives which were ruined by it in an actual way (they went to jail).
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    Anyone remember Milo Yiannapolous?
    - michaelmrose 5y ago
      Milo in 2018 "I can't wait for vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight" 2 days later when 5 are killed at the Capitol Gazette "jk" Then there was the article he wrote ""Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy" where he argued that the pill made women fat crazy and promiscuous and then declared his birthday "World Patriarchy Day" Then the time he said that being gay was "a lifestyle choice guaranteed to bring pain and unhappiness." Just reroll as hetrosexual folks! Then there was the time he said it was OK for sexually mature 13 year olds to have sex with adults then claimed being the victim of sexual abuse made him say it. He also said abuse victims were "whinging selfish brats" for "suddenly" remembering they were abused, and "suddenly" deciding it was a problem, 20 years after the abuse occurred. How about the fact that he used his tenure at Breitbart to court white supremacists and promote their views. He was canceled in fact by none other than Breitbart not for this of course but for the pedophile comments which was apparently a bridge too far. Is this an example "cancel culture" gone too far?

michaelmrose 5y ago

The number of people who want to kill all the Texans is microscopic same as the conservatives who are in favor of racial justice and "queer" rights. The percentage of self labeled conservatives who support evil, insane, or potentially disastrous ideas is sadly more like a solid majority. "Both sides" is a tired trope.

baggy_trough 5y ago
Awful bigotry.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Please explicate what precisely you mean by bigotry. 56% of Republicans believe the Qanon conspiracy is partly or entirely true. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-of-republicans-believe-the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-is-partly-or-mostly-true-survey-finds/?sh=25079e75231d https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-o... 60% of them believe in imaginary voter fraud and support undemocratically overturning the election. 43% of them would support doing so via a military coup as long as someone else does it and it doesn't overmuch interfere with their beer drinking. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/11/military-coup-some-americans-would-vote-yes https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/11/military-cou... Please note that this is from 2015 long before any claims of election fraud could have been informed by any real concerns. The desire for violent over throw of the government generated the fake election fraud concerns not the other way around. A former general has a public event where he openly discussed the merits of overthrowing our government like Myanmar. https://newrepublic.com/article/162586/michael-flynn-trump-myanmar-coup https://newrepublic.com/article/162586/michael-flynn-trump-m... There is little difference in my mind between Hitlers supporters in the 30s and Trumps supporters in the 2020s and in the modern day Republican party if you aren't a Trump supporter you aren't welcome near anywhere.
  - baggy_trough 5y ago
    I mean precisely the dictionary definition: intolerance towards those who hold a different opinion.

clairity 5y ago

give up the "side" and the labels like "conservatives" and "red states". those are cognitive traps. you'll never be able to reconcile all the beliefs of a "side" with your own, or another side with your "opponents", so are relegated to either paralysis by cognitive dissonance or selective rationality. most people are generally decent and most people have some odd beliefs and proclivities. that's just life. it's not reducible to some "sides", much less two sides, no matter what the dominant mediopolitical narratives want you to believe. two sides are chosen by tribal groups like political parties because it simplifies the quest for power. 2 is the lowest common denominator of power, and it's chosen exactly to simplify choices, and neatly bypass the inherent frictions of nuance and humanity. it's done for power, not to realistically represent the world or to cleanly align with your beliefs. instead, each side exerts pressure on you to conform to it (that is, coalescing its own power). in exchange, you get little random hits of dopamine, which is oddly as lopsided as it is surprisingly effective.

marcus_holmes 5y ago
It's not the political parties. They're as much victims of this as the rest of us [0]. It's social media, optimising for "engagement". The most engaging content is not the normal, run-of-the-mill commentary from normal people with normal opinions. It's the far-out nut-job stuff that makes you mad. So that's what get prioritised in your feed. I signed off of Twitter and was able to completely ignore it while being publicly abused on it. I've recently uninstalled Facebook and my rage at the culture wars has subsided noticeably. Now it's just Imgur and HN that spark this. I'm working on getting off here too (unsuccessfully). The vast majority of people (I think, I have no proof) are not zealots for the cause (any cause). But the self-censorship effect of our society-wide Purity Spiral[1] means that we never hear from them. We hear the worst, most deranged, opinions out there first because human psychology isn't suited to this kind of situation. I think the answer is to stop optimising for engagement, because we can't hack human psychology. [0] I can't find it now, but there is a blog post out there explaining how politicians are getting hurt by the increasing extremism. The need to be more extreme than your rivals in your gerrymandered district where any sign of "weakness" or ambiguity can be taken advantage of on social media isn't good for politicians either. [1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Purity%20Spiral https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Purity%20Spi...