80 KiB
Up the Beanstalk: Human Livestock Escapes Confinement, Explores a World Gone Wrong
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Author: u/Aquareon *
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Score: 17
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Created: 2017-01-10T09:10:50
Post:
Comments:
u/Caois [+6] (3 hours later)
this is strangely fascinating for a story, i've never really liked horror before but the thought of a world like this is weirdly engrossing
u/Aquareon [+1] (8 hours later)
More here.
u/None [+7] (10 hours later)
Honestly, I think the horror aspect in this Author's stories would be more effective if they didn't all have the same ending. There's never any suspense, because the protagonist always loses.
As always, there are metaphors to be drawn and ugly things to see, and sometimes there's even an interesting original idea. But there's this undercurrent of industrial sameness to it, where you always lose, even if you happen to win. It's almost as if the collection of stories as a whole is a metaphor for the individuals.
In most stories, you see rational behavior bent for sake of plot. In stories by this author, you see it bent for sake of grim metaphor instead; it's certainly different, but I'm not sure it's anymore actual Rat!fic than the former is.
u/Aquareon [+3] (10 hours later)
But there's this undercurrent of industrial sameness to it
I am relieved that comes across clearly. What you wrote there is about as concise (yet accurate) a description of what I am "about" as I have ever seen. My core is a featureless concrete cube and the intolerable feeling of grinding, repetitive, frigid banality is indeed what most of my work strives to capture.
There's never any suspense, because the protagonist always loses.
I can't argue with that, haha. It is horror, after all. But I have some science fiction where a clever protagonist uses his brain to come out on top. You might also like my Little People trilogy, as it ends in an ultimately happy albeit somewhat bittersweet way. Likewise with The Black Pool, come to think of it.
Maybe it's just a difference in taste but I can't imagine horror with a truly happy ending that I'd actually want to read.
u/callmebrotherg [+3] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (13 hours later)
In most stories, you see rational behavior bent for sake of plot. In stories by this author, you see it bent for sake of grim metaphor instead; it's certainly different, but I'm not sure it's anymore actual Rat!fic than the former is.
No, it really isn't.
u/None [+3] (6 hours later)
Well, that was horrifying. Pretty great too.
u/Aquareon [+2] (8 hours later)
Thanks. I have a lot more if you want it.
u/chaosmosis [+3] and with strange aeons, even death may die (10 hours later)
I can't get over the energy problems.
u/None [+6] (10 hours later)
Pedal power: the most efficient of solutions.
Really, there's a lot worse than that going on (it's suspect where energy actually enters this system from at all, or even where all the extra mass to send away comes from.) It was the silliness of the pedaling that really drove it all in though.
u/Aquareon [+1] (10 hours later)
I was waiting for somebody to mention this. Humanity subsisting entirely on humans isn't nutritionally, genetically or logistically sustainable either. This was meant more as a "lucid nightmare" than a model of a workable society. The rational element is how the MC ultimately decides to react to it.
u/wren42 [+3] (12 hours later)
The rational element is how the MC ultimately decides to react to it.
that rationality being dull acceptance of the horror of reality?
u/Aquareon [+1] (12 hours later)
That death is an acceptable means of escape when every other possible avenue has been explored and found to be a dead end.
u/chaosmosis [+4] and with strange aeons, even death may die (15 hours later)
Did he really explore every other possible avenue? I don't think so. Maybe his choice can imaginably be defended as reasonable, but we don't ever get to see his reasoning, so it's hard to endorse this.
Looking at the criteria on the sidebar, we see:
The rules of the fictional world are sane and consistent.
Nope. It's not explained why violating the conservation of energy like this is reasonable, or why anyone set up society to be like this, or how society happened to fall into a state like this accidentally. The rules of this world are nightmarish and arbitrary, not sane and consistent.
Nothing happens solely because 'the plot requires it'. If characters do (or don't do) something, there must be a plausible reason.
Everyone has been brainwashed and genetically engineered and whipped into holding the idiot ball and supporting this system. The main character is the only person to show autonomy. No discussion of how reasonable human beings could transition into this system ever occurs.
Any factions are defined and driven into conflict by their beliefs and values, not just by being "good" or "evil".
Eating other people for no apparent reason, when agriculture could conceivably exist, seems a lot like being evil for the sake of evil.
The characters solve problems through the intelligent application of their knowledge and resources.
The main character mostly just wanders around and gets lucky while bluffing and never getting called on it.
You could argue that all of the irrational elements of the story amount to forgivable worldbuilding that sets the stage for the real plot. But the entirety of the plot is spent exploring this world. By the time all the irrational aspects of the story are out of the way, the story is five seconds from over. And the only thing supporting the idea that the character's decision to give up was rational is your own personal interpretation of the situation he was in, which isn't based on any strong evidence from the rest of the story because the rest of the story didn't make any sense.
u/Aquareon [+3] (15 hours later)
Nope. It's not explained why violating the conservation of energy like this is reasonable, or why anyone set up society to be like this, or how society happened to fall into a state like this accidentally.
Yeah, that's all on me. I assumed, wrongly, that this sub was about stories in which characters react in a rational way to fantastical settings/events. Now I kinda want a sub for that.
or why anyone set up society to be like this, or how society happened to fall into a state like this accidentally.
No discussion of how reasonable human beings could transition into this system ever occurs.That actually is explained at length here. I was hoping to post this some other day.
Eating other people for no apparent reason, when agriculture could conceivably exist, seems a lot like being evil for the sake of evil.
The towers have spread to occupy all available land, for reasons explained in the prequel I linked to.
The main character mostly just wanders around and gets lucky while bluffing and never getting called on it.
Everybody below the top level is deliberately brain damaged to varying extents, but indeed, it does strain suspension of disbelief in some places.
u/chaosmosis [+2] and with strange aeons, even death may die (16 hours later)
I don't think his reaction to the setting was all that rational. It wasn't necessarily irrational. But it wasn't anything outside the choices of typical fictional characters.
u/Aquareon [+1] (16 hours later)
I haven't see any stories of this type where the MC didn't start some sort of revolution to overthrow whatever regime oppressed everybody. I wrote it in large part to subvert that trope. It is a typically unexamined option, in fiction, to overcome a situation like this by no longer existing.
u/callmebrotherg [+4] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (10 hours later)
I'm not sure how this qualifies for the subreddit.
u/Aquareon [+2] (10 hours later)
The main character makes what I feel is a rational decision at the end, upon discovering there is nowhere to escape to and nothing to be gained from trying to topple the existing paradigm.
This is in contrast to the typical rah rah, overthrow the system plots found in films like Snowpiercer, for example. When the end basically implies that the outcome was to destroy themselves.
u/None [+8] (15 hours later)
The rational action at this point is actually maximum spite. Attempt to destroy as much as possible, kill as many as you can, and ruin whatever you see until you are dead. Anything else encourages the behavior of the universe as it stands.
You can even argue that it's possible he's being simulated; in this case spite is an even more effective choice because if enough simulated people are spiteful and destroy as much as they can through their hate, the project as a whole might be dismissed as unfeasible.
Love doesn't beat apathy. Hatred does. If ever you find yourself entirely doomed, if everything you care about is ash, grab onto your inner dark side as tightly as you can and let it rule you and fill you with its fire.
u/GeneralSCPatton [+4] (18 hours later)
This... this pleases the rage-boner. No compromise. Only wrath.
u/Aquareon [+1] (15 hours later)
I like your spirit. One perspective to consider though is that only the MC was really experiencing the horror of it. Everybody else was either comfortably performing their job in the only world they ever knew, or one of the cattle which are too dim to experience any anguish/despair.
u/None [+5] (17 hours later)
I think the problem I have with your characters is none of them have it. That spirit, as you said. They'll go so far, try so hard, get so lucky, and reach turning points, inflections in destiny. And then they just stop.
The man locked in the room has nothing else to do, so he sits in the chair and is hooked into the game knowing it's a fate worse than death. And then, paradoxically, to earn the death he already had available, he submits. He could've just destroyed everything there, ripped it to shreds, and waited to starve.
A man trapped in an alternate dimension is sent to prison by a government so insane it makes ours look reasonable, and somehow for years he forgets how to jump between them, waiting until his release to even try. An act of submission to Order.
A man finds a girl that isn't dead or alive deep down in a parking garage with delusions of being a hole in reality. She grabs him and holds on tight, and he doesn't have the Conviction to pull her to her feet and drag her back the fuck out of there.
It's bloody disgusting, watching a hero and knowing that they won't be tested at some critical point, won't get to try, won't have a chance to see, but simply fail, automatically, absolutely, with no saving throw.
It isn't often that I look around me in the Universe at These Broken Laws and have thanks that whatever put them all together wasn't worse, but at least it wasn't quite as awful as you.
u/Aquareon [+1] (17 hours later)
These are some really fascinating insights. I suppose the thread which binds them together is that I write horror mainly as an outlet for depression. "Awful" is a bit slanted though as I contend my stuff is well written and widely appreciated, there's just one aspect of it you especially dislike.
u/None [+2] (17 hours later)
I think it's a fundamental alignment clash. Not one of Good against Evil, or even Chaos against Law, but something more like Protagonism against Fate.
What use is Good, if it does not look into the soul of Evil and call it awful? I think the same has to apply here. It's a matter not of quality but of identity.
u/Aquareon [+1] (17 hours later)
I think you've nailed a way in which we drastically differ. I don't think in terms of a good/evil dichotomy, where one is to be maximized at the expense of the other (at least with respect to fiction) but instead in terms of balance.
How many movies or books do you know of (that are any good) where nothing bad happens? Further, are there really no good movies or books with sad endings? Is that not a valid area of human experience for fiction to explore?
I do not think we are here only to be happy, but to experience every aspect of what it is like to be human.
I'll also point out the fact that you recalled plot details of those stories demonstrates they are memorable. They made a lasting impression on you. The only bad art, writing included, is that which makes no impression at all.
u/None [+1] (18 hours later)
I don't think in terms of a good/evil dichotomy, where one is to be maximized at the expense of the other (at least with respect to fiction) but instead in terms of balance.
I do not think we are here only to be happy, but to experience every aspect of what it is like to be human.
But this is the crux of the problem! Individual stories of yours I might dislike more or less; I don't generally like stories with bad endings, but that doesn't mean they don't have a place. But the collection of your stories as a whole is tremendously flawed because it has no balance.
The certainty of inevitable failure visible in your work means that once you've read one, you've more or less read them all. It's all the more frustrating precisely because of how memorable the details are; the core is sick and diseased. What impact can a story have if you know how it'll end before it starts?
I clicked this link knowing the story would follow the same general path as all of yours do, including not only the bad end but the mincing, pathetic, regret your protagonists tend to have right beforehand. I did think there might be salvageable interest in the details (there wasn't, this time), but mostly I just was frustrated enough with your work that I wanted to say something about it and it was common courtesy to actually read the story first.
If you do believe in balance, why don't you hide a story with a good ending in that collection somewhere? Not just a poisoned pear, but an authentic victory in the same way almost all of them are complete defeats. That one twist would massively raise the stakes for anyone reading the rest of them, since it would create the perception of uncertainty that's missing right now.
Imagine someone reading through your work. After a few stories, they get to predict the inevitable failure, and the suspense is gone; they're just picking over the bones. But then, surprisingly, they come across the good ending! A shock! Now, in every story afterwards, the uncertainty is back, the suspense is real, and it'll never completely go away.
u/Aquareon [+2] (18 hours later)
But the collection of your stories as a whole is tremendously flawed because it has no balance.
There are plenty of stories of the type you enjoy out there. I would even say they are the majority. There would be no use in adding more of the same, so I've focused on filling out a less developed niche. I do, nevertheless, have a few stories with happy endings that you don't seem to have read.
The certainty of inevitable failure visible in your work means that once you've read one, you've more or less read them all. It's all the more frustrating precisely because of how memorable the details are; the core is sick and diseased. What impact can a story have if you know how it'll end before it starts?
Why live, then, when you know it will end with your death?
why don't you hide a story with a good ending in that collection somewhere?
The Black Pool, the Little People trilogy, Metal Fever, Little Robot, On the Beauty of Nature and the Nature of Beauty, Give Me the Good News First
Imagine someone reading through your work. After a few stories, they get to predict the inevitable failure, and the suspense is gone; they're just picking over the bones. But then, surprisingly, they come across the good ending! A shock! Now, in every story afterwards, the uncertainty is back, the suspense is real, and it'll never completely go away.
See above. That is indeed why I ended the Little People trilogy in particular on a high note, because the first two were imaginative but dreary and bleak, and I wanted to surprise the reader.
u/callmebrotherg [+8] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (13 hours later)
I don't know. From a negative utilitarian or deontological or position, the end of Snowpiercer is perfectly rational. I don't think that the story qualifies as "rational" on the basis of the character making a single decision, especially when it appears to be breaking the rules on the sidebar.
I mean, for starters, "nothing happens solely because the plot requires it" and "if the characters do (or don't do) something, there must be a plausible reason." As much as I wanted to "buy in" and suspend my disbelief, I just couldn't do it anymore once our protagonist claimed that the escapee had bitten his ear and nobody thought that it was a bit weird to encounter this when they had just heard an announcement that the escapee had a tagged ear.
To be frank, this feels like a perfect example of what doesn't fit in the genre, and I think that you know this, considering that you've described the story as a "lucid nightmare." If all that's required for a story to be rational is that a character make one reasonable decision then the term is essentially meaningless.
u/Aquareon [+2] (13 hours later)
Hm. I guess so. I will at least come away with a better idea of what this sub is looking for, then.
u/narfanator [+2] (13 hours later)
Actually.... I don't know about that [upon discovering...]. It strikes me as a sort of inverse Pascal's Mugger. There are times when the "rational" action is what is classically "irrational" - and this strikes me as one such situation. If all rational courses of action lead to shitty situations, then isn't the actual rational course of action to look at irrational actions? It's not like they could make the situation worse.
u/Aquareon [+1] (14 hours later)
When the MC reaches the top floor, it is revealed the entire world is now just a barren rocky expanse packed with these towers as far as the eye can see in every direction.
Do you consider prolonging your own suffering to be making things worse?
u/rhaps0dy4 [+2] (7 hours later)
Do the fat people on top get eaten by the all-consuming Flesh Above too?
Maybe not, but then, the tower feeds the fat people and the Flesh Above. They seem to have the same role of horribleness.
Is this a parable for multipolar traps?
u/Aquareon [+3] (8 hours later)
To some extent, in that workers on each level whip those below them out of fear of punishment from the levels above. But that's part and parcel of the overall analogy for the structure of society, and my (probably naive) wish that the exploitative brutality of it can't be explained by human greed alone. That there is instead something worse than the rich, literally inhuman, we can't see from the bottom that's making them do these things
u/BadGoyWithAGun [+5] (9 hours later)
But that's part and parcel of the overall analogy for the structure of society, and my (probably naive) wish that the exploitative brutality of it can't be explained by human greed alone.
It's incentive structures all the way down.
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
u/wren42 [+2] (12 hours later)
I was curious about the metaphor of the inhuman element.
as a reader, I fluctuated between two views: that it was to show how awful it was to continue such a system in ABSENCE of an external threat such as this-- that is, that it should require such horror to breed horror, yet we do it willingly.
and secondly, that it was somehow a metaphor for the demands of nature, of entropy, the universality of death.
u/Aquareon [+1] (12 hours later)
I love the second one, but it never occurred to me. The first one was indeed my intended meaning.
u/None [+2] (9 hours later)
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u/Aquareon [+4] (10 hours later)
u/CeruleanTresses [+2] (10 hours later)
I tried to read it. It did have potential and I was interested in finding out why they were all there, but I couldn't get past the ridiculous Tumblr strawman character. Over and over--"Hey, let's take a break from the plot for a few paragraphs so the author can ridicule ideas they clearly don't understand, using an unsympathetic caricature as the mouthpiece of their opposition." It's every bit as cringeworthy as if "Melissa" were to write her own story where "Andrew" is like "DURRR, I'M A WHITE PRIVILEGED CISHET DUDE AND I HATE EVERY OTHER KIND OF PERSON AND I WANT TO HAVE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ADVANTAGES OVER THEM FOREVER BECAUSE I'M ENTITLED TO THAT," while Melissa effortlessly shoots down his intentionally flimsy talking points. If the author self-identifies as a rationalist, I would expect them to engage with their opponents' best arguments, not with the asinine funhouse mirror version thereof.
I mention that one specifically because the point where I stopped was when those two characters were having a ridiculously one-sided argument, in which the concept of privilege was badly misrepresented even by the character who was supposed to be defending that concept--but the "otaku" and "religious nut" characters were also unrelatable caricatures who seemed to exist just to mock groups of people, not as realistic depictions of different kinds of humans whose values can come into conflict.
Putting aside the strawman thing, it's fine to incorporate one's own sociopolitical opinions into a work of fiction, but if you don't even try to make it subtle, it sticks out like a sore thumb and comes across as soapboxing. I think the author achieved that subtlety with the human farm story, which I enjoyed a lot. The political point was conveyed by the story itself, not by having characters pause in the middle of the story to exposit it. But the one you linked, not so much.
u/chaosmosis [+2] and with strange aeons, even death may die (11 hours later)
I think maybe the intent was to make everyone a strawman? But she received a lot more screentime than the other characters. Or it's just really bad writing with lots of unintentional reliance on stereotypes. Stereotypes are fine if you know what you're doing with them, but I don't really see what they were trying to accomplish.
u/None [+2] (11 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+2] (11 hours later)
Like I said, I thought many of the characters were ridiculous caricatures. I went into more detail about that example because that was the first extensive, fully-realized "DURR, I'M A DUMB WRONG PERSON"/"I'm calmly refuting your points" debate that I got to in my reading.
Using caricatures is a legitimate technique that can be applied well or poorly. I think it was applied poorly here.
It's fine for you to be pissed off by my reaction. That's reasonable. I would probably be upset if someone disliked a work of fiction I had recommended, too. However, I stand by what I wrote.
u/None [+3] (11 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+2] (11 hours later)
You're free to make whatever assumptions you want about my motivations. I'm not going to get into a debate about what is or isn't going on inside my head. I will happily engage with counterarguments against the substance of what I wrote.
I won't dispute that the survivalist's characterization was worse, since I haven't read the entire story. My argument isn't that the "SJW" character was the most ridiculous caricature, it's that the abundance of ridiculous caricatures made the story feel like the author's soapbox and detracted from its quality.
u/None [+3] (11 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+5] (11 hours later)
Sure, here are some ways I felt it was mishandled:
In my opinion, good satire ridicules ideas by having a character (or the setting) take those ideas to their extreme in a humorous way, and then having their humorous actions stand on their own. If you actually have the "smart" character start debating the satirized concepts with the satirical character, it ruins it. The debate feels hollow and one-sided, since one side is intentionally a strawman, and it's also so on-the-nose that it turns the rapier wit of satire into a sledgehammer. I'm not saying that that approach can never work, but I think it is very difficult to execute well.
The caricatures were unsubtle and mean-spirited. I mentioned before about taking an idea to its extreme. That might sounds like it can't be done subtly, but it can be. It's the difference between a character saying "You're so selfish not to donate to my church! Jesus tells us to give our possessions to the less fortunate; but I'm saved so I can keep all my money, it's okay for me but not you," vs a character saying "You're so selfish not to donate to my church, Jesus tells us to give our possessions to the less fortunate" while sitting on a golden throne and wearing a jeweled crucifix. That second example isn't exactly subtle, but it's subtle enough.
There was nothing fresh or original about the caricatures. The "ha ha gross furry otaku" and "blue-haired SJW feminist who eats donuts all day and hates white men" strawmen, for example, have been done to death in online discourse.
Sorry for taking so long to respond. Your question was legitimate, so I wanted to put an effort into my reply.
u/None [+5] (12 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (12 hours later)
Sure, you need shitty people, but I think it's possible to write shitty people without making them shitty characters, if that makes sense. A character can be a shitty person while still coming across like a real person whose opinions--however reprehensible--can still plausibly come across as making sense from their own perspectives.
I see what you're saying about the story not just making one specific demographic the designated punching bag, but I personally don't think that that mitigates the strawman/sledgehammer issue--it just means the story is playing musical chairs with the role of the strawman.
u/None [+2] (12 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (12 hours later)
I think I would have been down with it if it turned out that they were literally strawmen--like, personalities constructed within the minds of their own opposition and given life. That would actually be really cool! I was sort of hoping someone would say that was the case and that I would have discovered that if I read to the end. But if the point is supposed to be that they're "products of the behavioral sink happening in society today," I don't find the way they're represented at all convincing. Especially when they're used as vehicles to criticize real-world ideas without actually engaging with those ideas.
I'm trying to think how I can best articulate what frustrates me about the depiction...I don't think I would really have this issue with, for example, an "SJW" caricature being included just for comic relief. But to derail the story into a soapbox against, for example, the concept of "privilege," and to have the caricature exist just to offer up the weakest possible arguments for effortless refutation, strikes me as intellectual cowardice. The caricature, instead of just being a funny callout of a certain subset of ridiculous people, is now being used as a tool in a task it's unfit for.
For example, in the debate about privilege, Andrew characterizes it as being the natural result of people achieving varying levels of success though merit, and then passing their advantages to their children. Melissa lets this pass basically unchallenged, and Andrew concludes that privilege (as he describes it) is perfectly fair and not something to be concerned about. However, with respect to racial economic privilege specifically, the discourse surrounding that topic is more about how historically, systemic efforts to disenfranchise POC (refusing to rent or sell them real estate in certain areas, denying them jobs on the basis of their race, etc) created an inequality that persists due to the people who initially benefited from it passing down those advantages. In his rebuttal, Andrew doesn't engage with that aspect of the real-world debate at all.
There may very well be valid criticisms of the above description of privilege. And that's fine! But those criticisms should have appeared in the story. That is, if the author wanted to refute the concept of privilege in their story, they should have included both the complete argument for the concept of privilege and criticisms of that argument.
Similarly, Melissa makes an argument that's roughly, "If the playing field were equal, everyone would perform equally. Everyone doesn't perform equally, therefore the playing field is unequal." I won't claim that no one has ever made that argument, but it's a clearly flimsy position that collapses under the slightest scrutiny. People who are well-educated in relevant fields and knowledgeable about the concept of privilege have made much stronger arguments in defense of the position that systemic inequalities exist, so if the author wanted to refute that position, they should have refuted those arguments.
The character of Melissa is simply an unsuitable vehicle for conveying the author's views about the concept of privilege. I'll always be more impressed by watching a martial artist knock a skilled human opponent to the floor, than I would be by watching them kick over a cardboard cutout with a silly moustache drawn on it.
In summary: Caricature whose role is to poke fun at silly people = fine by me. Caricature whose role is to be a strawman so that the author can argue against a real-world idea without intellectually engaging with it = not fine by me, at least not in a work I found on a ratfic sub. Sorry about the wall of text, I got a little carried away.
u/None [+1] (13 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (13 hours later)
I empathize with your frustration about "not my job to educate you." However, I think that response has its place. For example:
People in social justice spaces--or really, any controversial spaces--are often confronted by people challenging their viewpoints in bad faith, with no intention of giving counterarguments any genuine consideration. In those situations, trying to educate the person is a waste of time, because they aren't open to information that conflicts with their existing viewpoint--in fact, debating with them just polarizes them further. I think it's reasonable to choose not to engage with such people. This applies to pretty much any community--atheists are justified in ignoring angry religious people who come in asking sardonic questions just as a vehicle to preach at them, religious people are justified in ignoring angry atheists who come in with sardonic questions just as a vehicle to preach at them, etc.
Sometimes, rather than trying to convince anyone, people are just looking to talk about their beliefs and experiences with other like-minded people. In those cases, at those times, those people haven't "opted in" to a debate. I think it's reasonable for someone to choose not to engage in a debate if they don't want to at that time. (Of course this doesn't apply to situations where the person is already actively participating in a debate on the topic.)
Sometimes the information being requested is so basic that, by demanding to have it spoonfed to them instead of just looking it up, the asker is wasting everyone's time. I think it's reasonable to tell someone to "just look it up" if the information is readily accessible.
Having said all of that, I think that anyone who explicitly sets out to convince others (in a particular work, or at a particular time) does accept the responsibility of fully supporting their point, refuting their opponent's actual arguments instead of their own strawman version of said arguments, and responding to the opponent's questions with sincere, informative answers. This includes social justice advocates. Many social justice advocates do rise to that responsibility.
Rational debate with social justice advocates is definitely possible--just as you say you've experienced in the rationalist community. But resorting to what you call base propaganda can never accomplish that. To answer your question--"If you can't engage in honest debate with a group (it's not my job to educate you et all) how do you deal with that kind of claim?"--the answer is that you move on from people who won't engage to people who will. There are countless essays and reams of discourse on the topic of privilege, for example.
u/None [+1] (13 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (14 hours later)
The "kill all men" thing has been brought up a couple of times, and I think it's critical to remember that the entire point of that sarcastic phrase is that mainstream feminists/"SJWs" don't want to kill men. It's specifically mocking people who strawman feminists as man-haters who want women to rule the world. With very few exceptions, no one is actually advocating killing men, and the meaning of the phrase in context is not hateful toward men. The implication is basically, "Oh boy, I want low-income women to have access to healthcare--haha, I must want to kill all men! It's funny because I obviously don't."
I think it's legitimate to argue that the joke is in bad taste, as long as it's acknowledged that it is a joke and not in any way an expression of a sincere man-killing agenda. I'm not the biggest fan of it personally and I don't use it, but I often see people taking it seriously and holding it up as evidence that feminists want to kill men, which is missing the point entirely.
Putting that aside, I also think it's important to draw a distinction between "hate/derision," and the justified anger of people who have experienced the effects of systemic discrimination in their own lives. Social justice advocates are often expected to present their viewpoints as delicately and politely as possible, lest they be rejected not on the basis of the actual argument but on the basis of its tone. Historically, however, that gentle approach hasn't worked as a means of achieving equality. Disadvantaged groups have made strides toward equality only by getting angry and loud and making the people with the power to change things uncomfortable. Being angry and loud didn't make their points any less valid.
You're probably right that you could cite examples of social justice communities being uncommunicative and hateful, but I don't think that would absolve you of the responsibility--if your goal is to convince people of your point of view--of engaging with the best arguments in defense of social justice concepts. As a rationalist, shouldn't your goal be to find the truth, rather than to win an arms race to dominate public discourse?
u/None [+1] (14 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (14 hours later)
I think you're erroneously treating "social justice culture" as a monolith. The facet you're referring to is overemphasized in mainstream communities because it's the aspect that people outside of social justice communities are interested in--"look at this, look at this ridiculous awful thing, pass it around." It's not really representative of "social justice culture" or what it's accomplishing as a whole.
instead of the goals, which don't really need to be defended.
I mean, they do. They shouldn't, but they do.
u/Aquareon [+2] (11 hours later)
The survivalist's goal was never to ensure everybody lived, but to meet his own needs. His objection was to being automatically roped into a social contract with people he did not know or like.
But admittedly, they were over the top for no better reason than I felt it would make for a more entertaining story. A bunch of crazy assholes trapped together is a lot more fun to read about than reasonable people cooperating without friction towards a shared goal.
u/Aquareon [+1] (11 hours later)
Found the Tumblr mutant. Right this way.
u/CeruleanTresses [+2] (11 hours later)
See, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. Contemptuously dismissing those who disagree with you as fucked-up and inferior people, instead of engaging with the substance of their arguments. That's a level of closed-mindedness better suited to the "religious nut" character from your story. I expect better of anyone who participates in rationalist communities.
u/Aquareon [+5] (11 hours later)
Alright, I'll bite.
instead of engaging with the substance of their arguments.
I think they lost the right to be engaged sincerely by tolerating genocidal rhetoric from within their ranks, and mocking objections to it as white male tears. This communicates that they do not acknowledge the humanity of a whole subset of people for racial and gender based reasons, and consider their degradation to be trivial.
The response to this is always to minimize or sweep under the rug the numerous examples wherein SJWs have proposed exterminating white males who do not crossdress or consider themselves women, while making some offhand comment about how those comments are fine anyway and anybody who objects to it is a big baby.
I don't want to die. My family is white, I don't want them to die either. It is not a comfort and does not excuse that sort of rhetoric that SJWs do not possess the power to actually carry out their threats. They may one day, and many historical genocides took the world by surprise, as the groups which carried them out were not taken seriously when they explicitly expressed the desire to commit mass murder. Right up until they were able to and did.
I think there is a core of good ideas in social justice but it is identical to the core of egalitarianism. It tells you everything you need to know that "egalitarian" is a dirty word to them, because they do not want any viable alternative. They want exclusive rights to define what it means to be a good person, the same way Christians do, such that membership is morally obligatory.
It seems to me that this feeling of "We're the good guys fighting the good fight" makes them feel as if whatever they do in the course of fighting their enemies is ultimately justified. That many things they would consider terrible if their enemy did it are okay for them, such as getting somebody fired over an internet argument.
That sort of thing actually is fucked up, inferior and contemptuous. I am not wrong to revile it, and getting pissy over a story which does not present your own ideology in a favorable light is immature.
It's the same reaction any time South Park makes fun of a new subset of society. Everybody else laughs while members of that subset sit there grimly, with pursed lips, even though they laughed with everybody else when it was some other group being ridiculed.
Suddenly it's not funny because it's something sacred to them, and they can't laugh at themselves, because they can't or won't see any flaws with their ideology or the behavior of its adherents. For example:
"That's a level of closed-mindedness better suited to the "religious nut" character."
Is it? A devoutly religious person wouldn't agree. They would adopt your same attitude, that you're just misunderstanding their beliefs, being contemptuous of them, wrongly dismissing them as fucked up or inferior. Besides which, one of the points the story makes is that SocJus is in many ways just a secularized version of Christianity, with its own equivalent of inescapable original sin which only they can absolve you of.
It's said that in order to avoid criticism, one must say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing. I am not in that business. I have my own ideas, I have something to say, that's why I write. I don't care if you don't like it. It's not your story. If you have a problem with it, go write your own.
u/CeruleanTresses [+2] (11 hours later)
If your first argument against social justice concepts is "some nutter once said something about exterminating white people, therefore that's the core of the social justice movement in its entirety and the only position I have to refute," then that's a prime example of your strawmanning the opposition. It wouldn't be at all difficult for me to find examples of "anti-SJWs" advocating genocide, but you won't catch me attributing those ideas to the entire movement.
Is it? A devoutly religious person wouldn't agree.
Sure. Most devoutly religious people aren't caricatures like the one you wrote.
I have something to say, that's why I write. I don't care if you don't like it. It's not your story. If you have a problem with it, go write your own.
I have something to say, that's why I comment. If you have a problem with my criticism, no one's making you read it.
u/None [+5] (11 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+2] (11 hours later)
I don't see it as a critique of specifically that subset, no. The story specifically raises general social justice concepts--concepts embraced by the mainstream movement--and "refutes" them by batting down the flimsiest and most batshit possible defenses of those concepts, delivered by a character intentionally written to be absurd and unpleasant.
u/None [+4] (11 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+2] (12 hours later)
That definitely is a pitfall I've seen (especially young) social justice activists fall into--going so overboard in trying to advocate for a less privileged group that they take over the conversation, and drown out the voices of the actual members of that group. And Melissa's reaction--basically, "I'm trying to be an ally, how dare you reject my misguided and unwanted help"--is also a common pitfall, and in fact is discussed heavily in social justice circles as a behavior that should be avoided.
However, that behavior is not endemic to the movement; someone can believe strongly in social justice concepts without walking all over the people they're trying to advocate for. When the author tries to shoot down mainstream concepts like "privilege" just by connecting them to someone who behaves that way, instead of engaging with the best arguments for that concept, it's a prime example of strawmanning. If privilege is an invalid concept, it's certainly not "because some people who believe in it act like hypocritical assholes."
u/None [+2] (13 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+2] (13 hours later)
Can I ask what your lens has been into the movement? Like, through what spaces have you been, I'll call it "collecting data" on the behavior of social justice advocates?
Aside from asking that question, I also want to say that the question "is or is not this movement dominated by asshats?" is separate from the question "are the issues raised by members of this movement legitimate?" For example, even if 90% of people who like donuts are asshats, that doesn't equate to donuts not being delicious--you'd have to refute the best donut-related arguments of the most knowledgeable donut experts to draw that conclusion. After all, if a donut expert crafts an unassailable argument for the deliciousness of donuts, no amount of asshattery by their fellow donut-lovers can erase the validity of that argument.
u/None [+2] (14 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+2] (14 hours later)
I won't argue that you haven't had those experiences. I will say that my own experience has been different--that in engaging with social justice communities I've encountered insightful social commentary, heated debate, meaningful activism, and mutual support. Not exclusively those things, of course, but enough so that I felt those were positive spaces. The "tumblr otherkin kill white men" stereotype and the social justice circles I've personally witnessed are like night and day.
u/None [+1] (14 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (14 hours later)
I'm a white woman.
Are you referring to "race-based discrimination in debate" in the sense of "if you're white you shouldn't be allowed to participate in any discussions about race," or in the sense of "if you're white, you're not qualified to comment on the validity of POC's lived experiences?" Cause what I usually see is the second thing, being misinterpreted as the first.
u/None [+2] (15 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+2] (15 hours later)
My experience hasn't been that intersectionality is ignored.
I'm sure there have been incidents where someone is being openly hostile to the point of rudeness, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with expecting people to engage with the substance of the argument rather than its tone. Or, for that matter, with expecting people to empathize with POC's struggles and oppose systemic racism, even if some POC are unapologetically angry about what they have to deal with. I think the callouts of "tone policing" are largely a reaction to people who outright dismiss valid concerns because they dislike the tone they were raised in.
u/None [+2] (15 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+2] (15 hours later)
That might not be what you mean, but I suspect it is. Is that accurate?
No. If it were, then that's what I would have said.
I imagine that as less of a dismissal, and more of a "I refuse to get into a heated debate with a relative stranger. If you want to have this conversation you need to show that you can do it in a non-threatening manor"
Again, if that were what I was talking about, then that's what I would have said. I wasn't talking about people who withdraw from a conversation that has become hostile. I was talking specifically about people who explicitly say they're dismissing the concerns of the movement because they don't like the tone those concerns are raised in. It's more common than you might think.
u/None [+1] (16 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+2] (16 hours later)
I'm not really familiar with the "geek feminism wiki" or to what extent it's popular among social justice advocates. I can only speak to what I've encountered in practice. My experience has been that when I've seen someone call out another person for "tone policing," they've generally had a legitimate reason to do so.
I don't generally go out of my way to make others aware of my race or gender online unless it's in some way pertinent. I can say that there was a particular area where I previously disagreed with many social justice people, and I made a CMV post to debate that question without specifying my gender. The responses I got were civil, well-reasoned, and convincing, and changed my opinion on that issue.
u/None [+2] (16 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (16 hours later)
It seems like your argument is that I'm getting a biased view due to people treating me differently as an ally and a woman, so I should specify that the majority of my experiences with social justice culture don't involve my active participation. I lurk, I read blogs and essays and research papers, I fact-check, and yes, I read debates between "SJWs" and "anti-SJWs." This isn't a situation where I've only seen the facet of social justice culture that is presented to me as a woman and social justice ally. Most of the time, the people whose arguments I'm evaluating are not speaking to me.
I appreciate your providing a link at the end there, but it doesn't contain enough context for me to understand what's going on.
u/None [+1] (17 hours later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (18 hours later)
I'm not arguing that there are no toxic elements in the social justice community. TERFs exist, so there you go. What I don't agree with is painting the entire movement with that brush.
The first link you sent seems to be directed at, but not written by, a social justice person. For purposes of supporting your argument that there's endemic toxicity in the social justice movement, material written by social justice folks themselves would be more convincing than a secondhand interpretation of that material.
The second link seems like an intersectionality issue; and yes, there's a lot of discourse in the feminist community about the pitfall of denying other women's lived experiences, and about how one person's brand of feminism can be insensitive or detrimental to other women. I've mainly seen it discussed with respect to white feminists trampling over WOC, who experience very different forms of sexism than white women do. It's something I try to be cognizant of.
I don't agree with this writer's attitude that other women should be like her, in the sense of being so deeply passionate about her work that the misogyny directed at her slides right off her back. It isn't wrong for women to be affected by entrenched misogyny, and it isn't wrong to call that misogyny out. The problem is with the misogyny, not with the women who can't just ignore it. However, I also don't agree with lashing out at her for being honest about her positive experiences within the tech community. If I take what she wrote at face value, the individuals who spoke to her that way were out of line.
This is one of those things that's controversial in the feminist community, since that community is not a monolith. You're always going to get that asshole who calls you a gender traitor for wearing makeup or wanting to be a stay-at-home mom. However, there are just as many feminists (if not more) vocally, vehemently pushing back against that crap. You don't see that as often outside of actual feminist circles, because it's not entertaining to people outside the movement the way the assholes are entertaining.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (a day later)
Honestly, that pushback has just been kind of ubiquitous in the feminist circles I travel in, so I'm not sure how meaningful a small set of isolated examples really is in that sea of it. But here is an article I found, written by a self-identified feminist, making the argument that her fellow feminists should not police other women's aesthetic self-expression, but should instead focus on fighting "the idea that wearing makeup implies female inferiority.". And here is an article on a popular feminist website, making the argument that feminism should be intersectional and inclusive, and including some links to academic papers on the topic.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (a day later)
You asked for an example of well-received pushback, by feminists, against toxic forms of feminism that exclude women who don't fit into a particular mold. That's what I gave you. You don't have to like the website. I'm not really interested in discussing what kinds of advertisements you found on it.
Also, I question how deeply you read the article if you say "The article then goes on to paint all white people with the same brush, etc." Literally the second and third paragraphs of the article:
"White feminism is a set of beliefs that allows for the exclusion of issues that specifically affect women of color. It is ‘one size-fits all’ feminism, where middle class White women are the mold that others must fit. It is a method of practicing feminism, not an indictment of every individual White feminist, everywhere, always.”" (emphasis mine)
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (a day later)
If you're going to expect me to be personally responsible for defending against the vague, extremely broad accusation that current social justice culture is detrimental to social justice goals, shouldn't I be holding you personally responsible for proving that it is detrimental? Shouldn't I be demanding that you show me peer-reviewed academic papers demonstrating that, I don't know, regions with high concentrations of Tumblr users have less socially progressive legislation?
If you're not happy with my level of engagement, then ask more specific questions that I can actually work with. This just feels like throwing rocks into the Grand Canyon, you know?
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (a day later)
So a couple things about the example you linked:
First, as far as I can tell, this company isn't actually hiring people. They're a platform for practicing interviewing and getting feedback. The interviewers they used came from tech companies. However, perceived interview performance is not necessarily equivalent to hiring rate.
I think this is a critical distinction. Gender bias can come into play earlier in the hiring process than the actual interview, and a real-world interviewer's perception of a candidate may be influenced by the knowledge that they're actually up for hire. For example, one major obstacle for women looking to be hired is the perception that they're less valuable candidates because they may take time off work for maternity/childcare. This factor would not influence an interviewer's rating of interview performance, while still affecting their hiring decisions.
Second, it's important to note that when feminists talk about the obstacles women face in hiring, actual sexism by the hiring personnel is only one facet of the issue. The ways in which men and women are socialized differently, and the different expectations placed upon women vs men, are critical factors in understanding why women face disadvantages in hiring and career advancement. (For example, the maternity/childcare perception I mentioned before--the social expectation that women take on the primary burden of unpaid domestic labor like child and elder care is a serious obstacle to women's career advancement, not only for the reasons I already described, but also because women are more likely to take time off work to handle domestic labor in practice and lose out on seniority as a result.)
Third, the trend toward favoring men-who-sounded-like-women wasn't statistically significant, so it isn't good evidence for a claim that there's positive bias toward hiring women in tech.
The article you linked actually discusses this to some extent. Their initial findings that men performed better than women in the interviews disappeared when they controlled for people quitting the site after one or two bad interviews. It turned out women were much more likely to get discouraged and quit. This is an example of the "confidence gap", another feminist issue related to gendered socialization that I don't have time to get into right now, but I can later, or you can read about it on your own if you want.
I need to go to work soon, but I will pull together some academic publications re: hiring bias (don't know if I'll be able to find anything specific to the tech industry) when I get the chance.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (a day later)
Yes, I saw that you included it. I felt it was important to emphasize it in my response.
The goal isn't for interviewers to bias themselves in favor of women. They're being asked to examine themselves for bias against women, and make a conscious effort not to discriminate. If they achieve that and there's still a gap, that's not because the interviewers are evil sexists, it's because there's a systemic societal problem re: the way women and men are socialized that needs to be pulled up by the roots.
Addressing the confidence gap is critical, and that is in fact a popular subject within feminist communities and a common target for activists (e.g., interventions to boost the confidence of young girls, especially with respect to STEM stuff). If you think feminists aren't talking about that and are focusing exclusively on the actual hiring practices, you're misinformed. There is an enormous amount of feminist material about how gendered socialization and expectations lead to women being disadvantaged in the workplace, regardless of any straight-up sexist bias by employers.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (a day later)
You keep bringing up this geek feminism wiki like it's the last word in feminism. I'd never even heard of it before you mentioned it.
Try just googling "confidence gap," maybe? Like, google it on the actual Google and not exclusively in this one specific wiki that I've never heard of and have not at any point been talking about? You will probably find more pertinent information that way. It's not a tech-specific issue.
I don't really understand your examples about feminism being "shitty to people in tech." You sent me that thing about the open-source website, but I had essentially zero context for understanding what was going on there. It was just a guy talking about events I didn't witness, aimed at an audience of people who were familiar with the events in question. I did ask you to give me material written by the actual feminists involved.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (a day later)
Thanks, that helps. This is still hard to follow, but let me see if I have the gist. Gittip is a site for sending recurring donations to people. Some of its most funded users were diversity activists. These users were targeted with harassment. They thought that the people running the site should be proactive about telling the harassers to go away, and that by letting misogynistic site feedback go unchallenged they were tacitly condoning it. They wrote a bunch of material to this effect and then left the site. Is that roughly what went down?
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (a day later)
Weren't these activists some of the site's top users? That doesn't sound like people coming into a community from the outside and shitting on it, that sounds like people who were part of the community raising concerns about how it was organized.
I'm reading the forum thread linked from that "I resent you" article, and although Shanley Kane wasn't exactly polite about it, there seem to be a bunch of people making reasonable and civil points in agreement with her. It looks like they mainly saw the whole thing as a safety issue. In fact, a lot of Kane's reasons for not engaging in a dialogue seem to be safety-related--apparently the Gittip folks wanted to livecast the whole thing or something like that?
Is your problem with the actual concerns the activist members raised, or is it specifically with Shanley Kane as an individual for being mean about it and not participating in a dialogue with the people in charge of the site?
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (a day later)
I mean, I'm trying to understand here, but I'm still not getting what they supposedly did wrong. The platform wasn't meeting their needs, they expressed that, and when it continued not to meet their needs they left. I can't really form a strong opinion about some internet drama I wasn't involved in, but I don't see the issue. You said the site wasn't taking a cut, so it doesn't sound like the people who left cost anyone money except themselves.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (a day later)
If White feminists heard WOC saying, "This form of feminism ignores our race-specific struggles and expects us to fit into a one-size-fits-all mold," and the White feminists responded, "Hey! Stop it! Not all White feminists are like that!", then that would indeed be bullshit in exactly the same way that "not all men" is bullshit. It would be missing the point entirely--treating an indictment of a specific subgroup's shitty behavior as a personal attack on the entire group, and dismissing/silencing the actual issue in favor of defending against an accusation no one was making.
u/CouteauBleu [+2] We are the Empire. (11 hours later)
Have you considered that it's not a critique of social justice as a whole, but merely the subset that behaves like that?
I'm pretty sure the author is making a critique of social justice as a whole.
I think they lost the right to be engaged sincerely by tolerating genocidal rhetoric from within their ranks, and mocking objections to it as white male tears. This communicates that they do not acknowledge the humanity of a whole subset of people for racial and gender based reasons, and consider their degradation to be trivial.
Which is why people of any given group (whether that group is rationalists, social justice, Trump supporters, etc) are often very twitchy about their group being strawmanned. Your opponents, knowingly or not, are constantly trying to reduce your group to its most unlikeable members.
Strawmaning doesn't have to be malicious (people usually don't think "Muahahah, I'm going to unfairly misrepresent Trump supporters to make them come across as racist and hateful"), and it can be subtle. Like, if the context is we're talking about self-identified rationalists, and I say people shouldn't believe that they're smarter than everyone else, or if I say "Fantasizing about a Mary Sue who solves everything by being A GENIUS is seriously unhealthy, even creepy", I'm not explicitly making a critique of rationalists as a whole, but it's still clearly harmful for the rationalists' image, maybe unfairly so.
u/None [+2] (11 hours later)
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u/CouteauBleu [+3] We are the Empire. (12 hours later)
But... I you don't like it, you don't have to read it. You don't even have to warn other people against it or engage the author.
I like discussions about politics and epistemology, but this whole comment tree is just tribe pushing. I don't think it's appropriate for a rationalist space.
u/wren42 [+2] (12 hours later)
I found this thread pretty interesting. having not read the story, your initial criticism seemed over the top, but as I read the rest of the chain I found myself agreeing with you. nice job staying on topic and reasonable.
u/Aquareon [+2] (11 hours later)
If your first argument against social justice concepts is "some nutter once said something about exterminating white people, therefore that's the core of the social justice movement in its entirety and the only position I have to refute," then that's a prime example of your strawmanning the opposition.
It wasn't "some nutter". That implies it was only ever one person. Do you recall when #killallmen trended on Twitter? Was that one person? Are all of these the same person? This is a prime example of the sort of dishonesty I talked about.
u/CeruleanTresses [-1] (11 hours later)
"#killallmen" is an ironic sendup of people who characterize all feminists as violent man-haters. It's deeply sarcastic. That's the kind of context you need to be aware of if you want to make legitimate criticisms of the movement. It's entirely possible to make such legitimate criticisms of that or any other movement, but not if you're getting all of your information about the opposition through a warped lens.
In any case, I'm not really interested in debating the social justice thing in and of itself. My position is that you weakened your story by writing strawman caricatures into it, regardless of what specific ideas you're ridiculing.
u/Aquareon [+3] (11 hours later)
No, you don't get to do that. I won't allow it. There is no rationalization for murderous rhetoric I will accept. An identical rationale for identical rhetoric, but targeting groups other than white men, would rouse immediate and widespread vitriol.
This is not hypothetical, that exact experiment has been tried. There is a whole sub devoted to doing this and documenting SJW reactions to it. Moreover, you have strategically ignored page after page of posts on /r/tumblrinaction wherein SJWs unambiguously, sincerely pines for the exterimation of white men. Not as satire of anything, but as genuine hatred that they unwisely aired on a publically accessible website.
In any case, I'm not really interested in debating the social justice thing in and of itself.
Because it is not defensible.
My position is that you weakened your story by writing strawman caricatures into it, regardless of what specific ideas you're ridiculing.
You feel this way because the story does not flatter an ideology that is emotionally important to you. Your opinion has been noted, printed out and shredded.
u/CeruleanTresses [+0] (12 hours later)
No, you don't get to do that. I won't allow it.
You don't have the authority to disallow anything.
If you're getting your information from the echo chamber that is /r/tumblrinaction, that explains a lot. In addition to those examples by definition being cherrypicked for the sub due to their ridiculousness--since, you know, mocking ridiculous Tumblr posts is the purpose of the sub--a substantial portion of them are either satire, trolling, or legitimate points taken out of context. There is some bona fide stupid shit to be found there, but again, the whole reason you're seeing it in that sub is because it was selected as an example of a ridiculous argument.
Again, if you consider yourself a rationalist, you should be engaging with your opposition's best arguments. That means, among other things, getting those arguments from the source--not from communities where the worst arguments are curated for you.
u/Aquareon [+1] (12 hours later)
You don't have the authority to disallow anything.
Yes I do. I can decline to accept your rationale for hateful rhetoric.
If you're getting your information from the echo chamber that is /r/tumblrinaction, that explains a lot. In addition to those examples by definition being cherrypicked for the sub due to their ridiculousness--since, you know, mocking ridiculous Tumblr posts is the purpose of the sub--a substantial portion of them are either satire, trolling, or legitimate points taken out of context.
Your original claim was that there exists only one person sincerely advocating for the mass murder of white men who do not identify as women or sexually prefer other men. Unless you mean to dismiss all but one of the examples on that sub, your claim is discredited. It is a more widespread problem than you're willing to acknowledge.
Again, if you consider yourself a rationalist, you should be engaging with your opposition's best arguments.
In my estimation, I already have. What you mean is that you did not like my arguments. That is unsurprising. Any objection to them you can raise, I can also rebut. Social Justice, apart from what it shares with egalitarianism, is at the root of it predicated on false assumptions. It relies on powerful stigma against challenging these assumptions in order to survive.
u/696e6372656469626c65 [+4] I think, therefore I am pretentious. (12 hours later)
Tribalism predicates mindkilling--which is exactly what I see happening here. For what it's worth, I am slightly more sympathetic toward your position than I am toward /u/CeruleanTresses', but that does not and should not change the fact that this conversation is rapidly taking a turn for the unproductive. Perhaps it'd be best to leave things here?
u/Aquareon [+1] (12 hours later)
Sounds good.
u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (12 hours later)
My point wasn't that it was literally just one person ever, it's that trying to shoot down an idea by saying "some of the people who believe that idea also want to exterminate white men" is a weaksauce argument unbefitting of any self-identified rationalist.
I've said my piece. If you aren't open to my criticism, so be it--it's your story. For what it's worth, I liked your human farm story very much.
u/Aquareon [+0] (12 hours later)
My point wasn't that it was literally just one person ever,
Don't exaggerate, or I will exploit it.
it's that trying to shoot down an idea by saying "some of the people who believe that idea also want to exterminate white men" is a weaksauce argument unbefitting of any self-identified rationalist.
That isn't what I said. Here is what I actually did say:
"I think they lost the right to be engaged sincerely by tolerating genocidal rhetoric from within their ranks, and mocking objections to it as white male tears."
Do you understand the difference? Obviously they don't all engage in that sort of rhetoric. But besides the fact that a great many more do it than you were initially willing to acknowledge, the rest either silently tolerate or make excuses for it.
I've said my piece. If you aren't open to my criticism, so be it--it's your story. For what it's worth, I liked your human farm story very much.
I reject your praise, and you as a person. I don't want you to enjoy my work, to read anything else I have written or ever to derive any sort of benefit from anything that I do.
u/Aquareon [+1] (22 hours later)
In retrospect, having cooled down, I am ashamed of having written this. I actually made a new year's resolution to be more patient and less harsh, look at me fuck that up already.
I don't reject you, how can I when I don't even know you? All I know about you is this one thing we disagree on. For all I know there's ten things more important to me that we agree about, and if I didn't know this one thing about you I'd admire you and want to be friends.
It frustrates me that you downplay certain things but I think our fundamental values largely overlap, and it was not cool of me to go nuclear over what amounted to mild disapproval.
That is a bad habit I have. I always feel like I need to be on guard against attacks that could come from any direction. I won't bore you with how I got that way because it isn't a good reason to be that way to people anyhow.
I always know before I blow up that I am being disproportionately ugly and will feel bad later but the temptation is always too great. I know what I shouldn't do but never seem to consistently implement that knowledge. When I get mad, all the restraints fall off.
I'm sorry I was a harsh, ugly person to you. You did not deserve the extent of what you got. You were magnanimous to be honest that you liked the story rather than trashing it because of my shit personality. That was cool of you, and I think I could learn something from it.
I am gonna leave everything I said up just so people can see I was shitty. Maybe you won't even read this. Sorry for being a poopy asshole though.
u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (a day later)
Thank you, I appreciate that. I hope you aren't feeling too discouraged about your resolution. I think being able to introspect about it afterwards and apologize sincerely goes a long way. Not everyone manages to do that. To me that says that you're capable of getting to a point where you consistently live up to your resolution, even if you slip up sometimes along the way.
For my part, since I knew you were reading the thread, I shouldn't have used such harsh language in my initial comment. I know that writers put a lot of themselves into their work and that an attack on that work is just as hurtful as a personal attack, so I should have been mindful of that and moderated my tone. I'm sorry about that. It was a failure of empathy on my part.
u/CouteauBleu [+2] We are the Empire. (11 hours later)
... Is that an Oddworld screenshot?
u/Aquareon [+1] (11 hours later)
Could be? I got it from a wallpapers website. Oddworld does have similar themes too, come to think of it.