[HN Gopher] The Internet of Beefs
___________________________________________________________________
The Internet of Beefs
Author : rinze
Score : 233 points
Date : 2020-01-20 19:02 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ribbonfarm.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ribbonfarm.com)
| dluan wrote:
| Throw in Nadia Eghbal's Tyranny of Ideas
| (https://nadiaeghbal.com/ideas) and you'll realize it's not
| humans beefing, but ideas. Posting is praxis, and the internet is
| a series of tube battlegrounds for the best ideas.
|
| I'm a multitour veteran of the scarred hellscape where modern and
| historic ideas struggle - 4chan, TEDx conferences, irc, VC
| conference rooms, local candidate door-knocking campaigns,
| reddit, and of course twitter. The brawling is better there than
| in academic journals and library shelves. Today I proudly do my
| duty fighting off the bad ideas with the Good Ones.
|
| Jokes aside, this is a horribly lame and out of touch take,
| saying that people's righteous anger is in fact not because of
| their legit complaints about society, but because _they just want
| to argue_. It 's a both sides false equivalence, equal to PG
| implying he's better off being an "accidental centrist", whatever
| the hell that means.
| kick wrote:
| I hesitate to criticize this person, because they're presumably
| writing for an audience that already knows them, and probably are
| following for this style of writing, but I have to ask: What is
| it with think-pieces that state obvious and widespread
| conclusions while using jargon and jokes to obscure how basic of
| conclusions they really are?
|
| I can't fault people who do this because they're paid by the word
| and taking 5,000 of them to describe the color of the sky brings
| them a nice amount, but I don't see why it's done here, where
| that doesn't seem to be a consideration.
| quacker wrote:
| Agree. Out of context, this takes a ton of effort to
| understand.
|
| Some examples
|
| - _Great Weirding morphs into the Permaweird_
|
| - _underground Internet that I've previously called the
| CozyWeb_
|
| - _unflattened Hobbesian honor-society conflict_
|
| - _Mookcoins are mined by knights through acts of senpai-
| notice-me_
|
| - _retreat into what I call waldenponding or to the CozyWeb_
|
| Several of these link to other essays which, in turn, use ever
| more jargon whose definitions are found in yet other source
| material.
| Lammy wrote:
| I understand how it might seem obtuse and undecipherable, but
| it makes it so much more genuine and heartfelt to me. You
| can't fake the experience of somebody who can channel that
| style of deep 2000s Internet zeitgeist.
| twic wrote:
| It reads LessWrong's cooler brother.
| kick wrote:
| Cooler? It reads like LessWrong's twin that decided to play
| D&D for an afternoon instead of Shadowrun.
| piaste wrote:
| More heavily watered down than cooler, I suspect.
|
| The only other Ribbonfarm article I've read was the
| "premium mediocre" one, in which they described
| _themselves_ as a premium mediocre blog, adding "the
| actual upper-class readers read SSC or Marginal
| Revolution". On the limited basis of these two articles, I
| am leaning towards the idea that it was an accurate
| assessment.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| To learn about the link with SSC, it does not at all
| surprise me that Riboonfarm shows the same aspect of
| someone talking about various topics (in particular
| sensitive and sociological ones) without showing any
| evidence of reading any established research on them.
|
| It's perplexing how similar essays on natural world, not
| taking into account any research on physics in the last
| 100 years or more, would not be nearly as appreciated. If
| it's not acceptable in physics, why do we accept it when
| it comes to sociology or media studies?
| creaghpatr wrote:
| You're probably right about the first part as it's pretty
| tangential to usual topics of discussion at Ribbonfarm.
| [deleted]
| alanbernstein wrote:
| I suppose you could have shortened your comment here to "Why is
| this article so long?". Why all the extra words?
| kick wrote:
| Funny! Though the News Guidelines would prevent me from
| saying that.
|
| A better reduction of the comment that loses less meaning
| might be: "This article is pointless, and intentionally
| obscuring that it's repeating universal knowledge. Why?"
| claudiawerner wrote:
| My personal gripe with articles like this one is that they
| invent their own terms to frame the discussion in a
| particular way, perhaps in the hope that some time in the
| future, people will really start talking about "Internet
| beefs" or "beefy conversations" or something equally silly.
| The issue isn't the length - after all, use as many words
| necessary - the issue is with the relative paucity of
| research into whether this topic has been addressed in the
| relevant fields (sociology, psychology, media studies).
|
| Does the concept already exist in the literature? Are there
| any similar concepts?
|
| Let me have a go at it. I call this "the hacker blogger
| mindset", in which relevant literature in the field is passed
| over or simply ignored (assuming due diligence has been taken
| to research the topic, which it often hasn't been) in favour
| of a kind of NIH-syndrome thinking in which every concept the
| author thinks of is novel, it has not been noticed before by
| lay people or the academic community, and of course it hasn't
| been written up into a snazzy article with nice jargon that
| makes us sound clever like "mook manorialism". We'll throw a
| reference to Francis Fukuyama or Weber in there to convince
| the more skeptical that this is more than an unsubstantiated
| blog post.
|
| A famous guardian of the hacker blogger mindset is Scott
| Alexander[0] (and to a lesser extent Paul Graham and the
| LessWrong community), but it's nice to see new contestants
| who want to try their hand at sociological analysis without
| referencing any sociology. I hope I'm not being too crude
| when I say that essays like this are a kind of poor man's
| academy. You don't have to learn about standing objections to
| the theory (or the theory's assumptions) made by experts,
| because I called my theory "internet beef", and the
| remarkably similar academic theory that already exists isn't
| called "internet beef" - so none of your objections are valid
| against my internet beef!
|
| The optimist inside me wants to think that this topic hasn't
| been covered before, and that the essay addresses a problem
| that hasn't been addressed before. If that were the case,
| however, I would have expected the author to at least state
| as such - that after reading tens of papers on discourse
| analysis and Internet sociology, nothing similar to "Internet
| beef" showed up. Maybe I'm wrong and being unfair to the
| author - in which case, fair enough. Unfortunately, it
| doesn't negate all the other times I've seen this.
|
| [0] Scott wrote a whole post on his blog about a particular
| German philosopher. As it turns out, he hadn't read any of
| the philosopher's works, but only Peter Singer's much-
| criticized entry in the _Short Introductions_ series. This
| was sufficient. Likewise, the author of this blog post doesn
| 't seem to have read up on Internet discourse analysis, a
| topic which a search on Google Scholar throws up hundreds of
| papers.
| jslabovitz wrote:
| I enjoy and appreciate Venkatesh's Ribbonfarm writings, and
| other writings like his. While the cultural situations he's
| writing about may be obvious, I appreciate his discovery and
| naming ('jargon') of the patterns he finds. You could look at
| it as developing an intellectual framework. I consider it a
| sort of contemporary philosophy, which tries to be both
| conceptual and actionable. Some of his essays have made me
| rethink major outlooks on my own life, and make important
| decisions. I think it's important writing for our time.
|
| Often his essays are essentially experiments in structures and
| definitions, a kind of 'what if we looked at things this way?'
| methodology. In answer to your question of jargon/jokes, yes,
| that's his methodology. There's a lot of serious stuff in there
| too, but he likes to have fun with the ideas, as well as try to
| integrate his words into modern (online) culture in useful
| ways.
|
| Venkatesh wrote a related article a couple of years ago: 'A
| Quick (Battle) Field Guide to the New Culture Wars'
| (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/03/06/a-quick-battle-
| field-g...). He essentially proposes that the only way to
| understand the the culture wars is to see them as actual wars,
| fought using the logic of warfare, not of, say, diplomacy or
| social rationalism. This essay has been extraordinarily useful
| to me, and has helped me develop very different political
| stances and associated actions.
|
| As this article itself suggests, I enjoy an information diet in
| moderation -- some short, some medium, some long. Ribbonfarm is
| part of the medium/long diet, and I feel much better having
| read there.
|
| EDIT: removed unnecessary criticism of parent]
| itronitron wrote:
| the jokes are there to build a bond with the reader through
| identification of shared knowledge ... specifically, if the
| reader 'gets' the joke then they feel a sparkle knowing they
| have a special shared insight with the author.
|
| I got the permaweird joke but the rest went over my head,
| naturally I stopped reading about a third of the way through as
| it is long-winded.
| mc3 wrote:
| My initial thoughts when reading were cynical - along the lines
| of "this person is trying to look clever and sell freakonomic /
| pop-science type books, but are the statements and conclusions
| based in fact, likely to be correct or are they useful to me?".
| Since I can't answer I didn't read on.
| kick wrote:
| They do seem to sell freakonomic/pop-sci books. Nice eye!
| tylerjwilk00 wrote:
| Fascinating and thoughtful article.
|
| I loved this short poignant sentence: "To participate is to
| lose."
|
| It's so true and so sad.
| jaredcwhite wrote:
| TL;DR: Here's my beef with all the people on the internet with
| beefs.
| dsalzman wrote:
| "the term freelancer comes from mercenary knights, with no fixed
| loyalties, in the medieval era" - Great TIL
| [deleted]
| Thorentis wrote:
| This is an interesting framework in which to analyse the Internet
| and the communication that occurs on the Internet, but I don't
| think all parts of the analysis are correct. Or at least, I think
| many assumptions about the reasons for people behaving as they do
| have been made, that are not necessarily correct. I think the
| observations of behaviour are fairly accurate for some
| significnat proportion of those involved though.
|
| Could it be, that the Internet has simply magnifed what humans
| have already been doing for hundreds (thousands?) of years? The
| rise of the Internet has also coincided with a large portion of
| the English speaking world (where the Internet first originated)
| being at the highest point of literacy and education in history.
| This simply means that the ability of each human to express their
| own ideas to another human is at an all time high. Now, add to
| that the ability to: * Observe the large numbers of people that
| agree with you (social media) * Broadcast your opinions on other
| groups of people to everybody that agrees with, and to everybody
| that disagrees with you (social media) * Carry the ability to
| make these broadcasts with you at all times (smartphones,
| tablets) * Be able to get instant feedback on your broadcasts
| (real time messaging, notifications)
|
| ... and you have simply magnifed existing human conflicts,
| desires for attention and belonging, opinionatedness, and so on,
| by many orders of magnitude.
|
| What we are seeing on the Internet is simply the human experience
| and human nature on steriods.
|
| ---
|
| The writer raises some doubt about how much of what they call the
| Internet of Beef is actually a culture war. But I have no doubt
| in my mind that it is a culture war. What is culture? The
| collective views, values, customs, art, morals, and beliefs of a
| large somewhat cohesive group of people. This is exactly what is
| being constantly debated, influenced, changed, synthesized,
| refined, and convoluted by the on-going Internet wars. It is
| shaping our culture.
|
| Internet culture - due to the prevalence of smartphones and other
| devices - has begun (it begun a while ago) leaking into everyday
| culture. It makes sense then, that the politics of the day would
| be influenced by what happens online too. You can no longer
| separate the online world from the "real" world. The real world
| is made up in large part by the Internet world. Our culture has
| simply been given superpowers if you like, in order to rapdily
| evolve and shift and change at unprecedented speed.
| anonu wrote:
| I think this article captures the Zeitgeist of this internet era
| perfectly.
|
| I'm a bit surprised at the hasty conclusion though:
|
| > The conclusion is inescapable: the IoB will shut down, and give
| way to something better, only when we know who we want to be --
| individually and collectively -- when the beefing stops, and
| regenerate into that form. Only that will allow history to be
| rebooted, and time to be restarted.
|
| The IoB is driven by human nature. It's demise would only lead to
| beefing in some other arena that we cannot postulate yet...
| onceUponADime wrote:
| Imagine two curves, ressources, and population growth, one
| bouncing against the other, deminishing it. Imagine a blind
| force, trying to adapt to this circumstances.
|
| How would a neuro-typus look like, that adapts to strife? How
| would its build up look like?
|
| What would be the treshold to bring it out of hibernation in
| hiding out in the open? What could return it to hibernation?
|
| Would it try to create a everlasting thirty year war, if it
| could? What re-purpose could such a neuro-typus have in peace
| times? Is something that is adapted to its surrounding even sick-
| can you call someone who traumatizes and revels in it, in its
| environment even sick?
|
| Is religion - the maximum production of genetic lotterys for the
| great lottery of war- at cost of liberty, just another peace time
| adaption to this adaption to the perfect cycle of strife? How
| many neuro-typuses are there? Can diffrent neuro-typus form a
| social machinery?
|
| Has the peacefull humanity, this idealized version ever existed?
| Or is this just some luxery delusion, created by science? Give me
| energy in abundance, give me fertilizer, give me fresh-water,
| give me forrests, i shall devour them, and call myself peacefull.
|
| Will virtual violence (games) allow to hack/circumvent the cycle
| of strife behaviour?
|
| Will self-surveilance gadgetry allow us to behave, even when the
| state collapses?
|
| We live in intersting times.
|
| We could feed this regressive behaviour for another thousand
| years, if we had fusion and spaceflight- but then, we would be
| exponential up and out there, holding the rocks of gods. Maybe
| its better to resolve this down here.
|
| To harden the roots of the scenario-tree, give it all the chances
| to self-control, learned in a thousand years of repetition.
|
| Dang, I wish you could invest kharma in a point, with a dividend,
| depending on investment. And with insolvency goes away all your
| posts to the underworld.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I'm not quite sure what to make of this, but I think I agree with
| this conclusion:
|
| > We are not beefing endlessly because we do not desire peace or
| because we do not know how to engineer peace. We are beefing
| because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually,
| and collectively as a species. Knight and mook alike are faced
| with the terrifying possibility that if there is no history in
| the future, there is nobody in particular to be once the beefing
| stops.
|
| > And the only way to reboot history is to figure out new beings
| to be. Because that's ultimately what beefing is about: a way to
| avoid being, without allowing time itself to end.
|
| What this era calls for is us to discover new ways of being
| human. It sounds grandiose, but I think that's where we are.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| This is an excellent analysis of the state of the modern
| internet, though I don't entirely agree with his diagnosis of the
| cause; I think it's more down to two main things:
|
| 1. We are all, at heart, covetous xenophobic apes, and we've been
| doing the same basic thing (arbitrarily define an in-group and an
| out-group and proceed to wage total war on the out-group) since
| before we were even human. This is just the latest iteration of
| the thing we've always done.
|
| 2. For more than a decade now, people have been spending fortunes
| building platforms and algorithms that rely on ever-increasing
| user 'engagement', often without really knowing what that is. As
| it turns out, conflict is the most engaging kind of engagement.
| Twitter especially is a machine for conflict - it funnels anger-
| inducing information to the user and makes it trivial to strike
| back at the source of the anger. I really don't think anybody did
| this on purpose, but it's what we ended up with.
| devchix wrote:
| >conflict is the most engaging kind of engagement
|
| This doesn't feel right. I ask myself, do I go places to look
| for people to fight with? Emphatically no. Do you? Probably
| not. I just read this great|hateful book|movie|thing. I want to
| talk about it with people who have experienced this
| book|movie|thing, would be great if they saw it the way I did,
| also great if they disagreed but we could discuss it with a
| shared language and experience. I feel we are too far apart and
| too lonesome to go around picking fight, do picking fights form
| groups? I don't usually engage because 1) strangers on the
| Internet mean little to me; 2) I think I hold an unpopular
| opinion; 3) I'm not driven to articulate every thought I have.
| Conflict drives a good story, I think that's true in a
| narrative sense, but I don't think it's true we humans go
| looking for it. I want to believe we are more cooperative
| creature than a belligerent one. The whole Twitter/Facebook
| "like" culture is a testament, we want to belong.
| ggm wrote:
| I often ask myself why Facebook, Twitter and Instagram say
| "follow" instead of link or associate.
|
| People who seek followers give me cause for concern.
| nostromo wrote:
| At some point people will realize that Twitter doesn't matter.
| The sooner that happens the better.
|
| For whatever reason, our elites and media are convinced Twitter
| is _very important_. Nothing is worse than getting criticized by
| the peanut gallery. Twitter can end careers, cancel television
| shows, bring down elected officials.
|
| That power quickly turned from, "complain about lost baggage on
| Twitter and get an airline ticket voucher for $50" to "I demand
| anyone I disagree with be exiled to Elba."
|
| The truth is Twitter already doesn't matter, like, _at all_ to
| almost everyone. Ask your aunt or brother-in-law about what 's
| trending on Twitter and you'll get a blank stare. But journalists
| and elites continue to be terrified of, and enthralled by
| Twitter. They've collectively forgotten that "sticks and stones
| may break my bones..."
| danso wrote:
| It's strange to see someone argue how "Twitter doesn't matter"
| when it's been a main platform for the world's most powerful
| man. I use Twitter but don't follow Pres. Trump or find it
| useful to engage with his tweets, but it's undeniable that he's
| used it to material effect. [0]
|
| In any case, Twitter is also a very useful platform for the
| disenfranchised, including those who complain about corporate
| practices. You come up with a stilted example of "I demand
| anyone I disagree with be exiled to Elba" and declare that
| Twitter doesn't already matter, but you're ignoring the many
| daily situations when companies and organizations actually do
| respond to tweets, and make explanation or change behavior?
|
| [0]http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/government_says_trump
| ...
| CM30 wrote:
| This 100%. Twitter is utterly irrelevant to 99% of people and
| organisations on the planet, and the opinions of people on it
| don't reflect the mainstream in any way whatsoever. It's
| especially noticeable in election cycles, where the 'extremes'
| seem to do really well on Twitter but get curbstomped in the
| actual polls.
|
| But it's also noticeable in many so called examples of cancel
| culture too, since the whole result of your usual internet
| backdraft is... nothing much in particular. Everyone I've seen
| get hammered by negative reactions after saying something
| controversial online has seen the popularity not change one
| jot. Logan Paul? Still doing decently. The Nostalgia Critic?
| Still going strong. The people making these complaints have
| virtually zero pull as far as actual influence goes, and the
| angry gnashing of a few hundred/thousand Twitter users is
| vastly outweighed by a hundred times more people
| subscribing/following/supporting stars as normal.
|
| For the most part, almost every business is in the same boat.
| The people on Twitter don't matter. They're not your customers.
| Most of your real customers don't give a toss what some angry
| internet 'influencer' thinks or their complaints about your
| 'offensive' remarks.
|
| When people finally realise that, everything will quiet down
| and sanity will return.
| aristophenes wrote:
| Twitter is amazing. I didn't get into it until a couple years
| ago, I was missing so much. Many of the most influential,
| intelligent, thoughtful people post what they think or are
| interested in. In the past, unless they were a journalist,
| you'd have to wait for someone to write a book, and then buy
| it. Now you can pick and choose from the most amazing people of
| the world, and actually interact with them.
|
| I kind of can't get over that this is free and such a high
| percentage of the people I want to know about are on it, and I
| worry that it is a temporary situation before everyone gets so
| afraid of possible negative consequences that they stop
| sharing. I think it is an added bonus that important people get
| used to dealing with criticism, as that leads to freer society.
|
| It's up to you to pick the right people to listen to and not
| get engaged in foolish flame wars. The information I've gleaned
| from the conversations I've seen and participated in on Twitter
| over the last two years have saved me a decade or two of my own
| personal work.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| _The truth is Twitter already doesn 't matter, like, at all to
| almost everyone. Ask your aunt or brother-in-law about what's
| trending on Twitter and you'll get a blank stare._
|
| Except they might have read an article on CNBC or Fox that was
| based on a twitter thread. That's where it actually makes a
| difference, when it spills over into other media and picks up
| steam. See: Twitter Revolutions [1]
|
| A few years ago I got calls from a friends, who aren't Twitter
| users, that they saw me on E! and other news outlets because I
| was getting lit up on Twitter. The Guardian, CNET, DailyDot all
| picked up the story and ran with it.
|
| So yes, you're right things on Twitter.com by themselves rarely
| matter. What matters is when they are picked up by other news
| outlets and gain mainstream momentum.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Revolution
| gist wrote:
| > Except they might have read an article on CNBC or Fox that
| was based on a twitter thread. That's where it actually makes
| a difference, when it spills over into other media and picks
| up steam.
|
| Exactly (and what I said in my comment). But it goes further.
| Take the NYT widely regarded as 'the Paper of Record'. What
| they say has a great amplifier impact. Ditto for shows like
| 60 Minutes or even the nightly news in some cases. Most
| people in media (say in small towns or in less than
| impressive in any way newspapers) very generally think that
| is what you aspire to to work for - a major media outlet (in
| other words some small station person in Idaho is envious of
| the people who work at the networks like some high school
| football coach is probably envious of NFL coaches, right?).
| _jasper wrote:
| Of course we all _want_ this to be true, but the fact that
| individuals and companies are folding to twitter mobs mean
| there is real power; and why would people with power want to
| give it up
| rob74 wrote:
| Of course Twitter is irresistible to the media - they don't
| need to search lengthy interviews and other texts for quotes
| that sound bad when taken out of context anymore, now they get
| the quotes pre-sharpened to a dangerous point and delivered to
| their doorstep...
| gist wrote:
| > and media are convinced Twitter is very important
|
| > Nothing is worse than getting criticized by the peanut
| gallery. Twitter can end careers, cancel television shows,
| bring down elected officials.
|
| Twitter is in a way like a street protest that gets covered on
| the nightly news. As an example you can have 1000 people (or
| even less) protesting in NYC (a region with what 20 million
| people?) and the media will entirely blow the significance out
| of that protest proportion. Not that there are 19,999,000
| people who aren't protesting but that there are 1000 that are.
|
| > Ask your aunt or brother-in-law about what's trending on
| Twitter and you'll get a blank stare
|
| Exactly true as a general rule.
|
| But better ask anyone what they think is important (and this is
| the sad part) and they will probably mention something they
| received from a traditional media source who got what they did
| from twitter or social media (if not placed by a PR firm etc.)
| cma wrote:
| Twitter pretty ingeniously gave blue check marks to everyone in
| the media. It is a little private club where they can direct
| message most celebrities and politicians. Its media relevance
| isn't going anywhere soon, it is like Bloomberg terminals at
| this point.
| [deleted]
| zojirushibottle wrote:
| well, talking only of medias, they have reasons to give
| importance to social medias. if i were constantly reporting
| risings, protests, riots, movements, etc. that started online,
| i would give importance to social media too.
| slumdev wrote:
| Twitter is interesting because it can bring the unfiltered
| worst out of politicians and celebrities.
|
| If you wouldn't say it to a bouquet of microphones, you
| shouldn't tweet it, either, but a lot of people don't seem to
| get that.
| danharaj wrote:
| I think you're taking for granted how twitter is used as a
| global cafe by communities that would otherwise be disjointed
| and isolated. For every controversial tweet or tweet of drama,
| theres thousands of enriching conversations happening that
| could otherwise not occur.
|
| I think it's ironic that negative takes on the twitter model
| tend to be as shallow and polarizing as they claim the platform
| to be. As for me, I think there's some worth to it that could
| be taken even further if decentralized analogues become widely
| popular.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>For every controversial tweet or tweet of drama, theres
| thousands of enriching conversations happening that could
| otherwise not occur.
|
| I don't believe that this actually happens. Definitely not on
| twitter anyway.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| It absolutely does; I've had civil conversations on Twitter
| many times, and I've been introduced to new information
| because of it. I've met people of similar beliefs,
| convictions and knowledge on Twitter. Ultimately, however,
| I left Twitter because of the problem pointed out by GP.
| sp332 wrote:
| You could say the same about IRC. GP's point is that not that
| many people are even on the platform. Twitter has less than
| 350 million monthly active users. It's about tied with
| Reddit. MSN had more unique monthly visitors than that in
| 2004.
| rob74 wrote:
| TBH, the 280-character limit (and of course, the attention
| economy) doesn't really encourage deep and balanced
| discourse...
| danharaj wrote:
| "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai
| pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."
| bproven wrote:
| Yep, which in turn contributes to this behavior
| unfortunately... The social media tools are setup perfectly
| for this - esp twitter.
| Multiplayer wrote:
| I've already retreated to mostly cozyweb! It's great here.
| dt3ft wrote:
| I started building a new cozyweb community. To join, users need
| a valid phone number. I hope that this will dramatically
| decrease spam and beefy interaction. I don't expect the
| community to be huge, but I'd rather have it cozy and small
| than huge and chaotic.
| kalalala024 wrote:
| https://twitter.com/superbowl2020hd?lang=en
| jcoffland wrote:
| HN is pretty good at moderating discussions. Which is the main
| reason I come here. Still, I've seen plenty of beef only thinking
| here and I too have been guilty at times.
|
| It can be quite frustrating when you make an observation about
| someone's comment only to have them automatically assume you were
| in disagreement. It's good to assume a generous interpretation.
| Since tone is so hard to gauge on the Internet, discussions
| quickly devolve otherwise.
| disqard wrote:
| To maintain type safety, function subtypes are contravariant in
| the input type and covariant in the output type.
|
| "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you
| expect others to accept."
|
| Maybe human communications also has to adhere to basic
| principles to guarantee robustness.
| mrspeaker wrote:
| HN is now my last un-deleted social media account... and even
| here I end up removing 50% of my posts, and regretting another
| 30-odd% after realizing they were low-value emotional negative
| "beef" post.
|
| Why is "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at
| all" so hard in practice? Why do I just NEED to throw in my 2
| cents?!
| ggreer wrote:
| The vast majority of people do follow that rule, but there
| are _so_ many people reading these comments. If even 1% of
| them have a moment of weakness (or are kinda dickish
| personalities), they 'll drown out the nice comments.
| dt3ft wrote:
| That is also true offline. Does Debbie downer ring a bell,
| for example?
| humanrebar wrote:
| > if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all
|
| Because pleasantness isn't a virtue in every context? Some
| unpleasant things need to be done and said sometimes. In
| fact, saying no in certain contexts is _good_ , though it can
| often be unpleasant.
|
| That being said, some people find it pleasant to be
| unpleasant. Certainly self-censor if you sense that urge
| arising. Getting drunk on anger or righteousness isn't a good
| look.
| mrspeaker wrote:
| Unpleasant things very rarely need to be done or said, but
| people (me included) are addicted to doing and saying them.
| We all feel the need to desperately type the first thing
| that pops into our head (like the sentence I just typed,
| and I'd argue the reply you gave). If I wasn't allowed to
| reply to your response for, say, 24 hours - then I might
| write something useful and interesting. But the internet of
| beefs doesn't reward that.
|
| EDIT: FUCK! 20 minutes and I've already failed.
|
| EDIT EDIT: Does anyone have any strategies to cope with
| this? I generally make sure to log out of HN (and have
| deleted Reddit/Twitter/Facebook etc), and my passwords are
| always random key-mashing that I forget so that commenting
| is pain... but still, if "someone is wrong on the internet"
| - even if it's low (or zero!) stakes... I'm compelled to
| type some crap back. Logically I know I shouldn't give a
| shit - but I do. I'm a mook! Is there an escape?!
| livueta wrote:
| IME removing yourself from the original emotional context
| of your post works wonders. Write the whole thing, sure,
| but then go do a context switch - go for a walk, read a
| different article, make some food, whatever - then once
| that emotional immediacy fades (which can definitely take
| different amounts of distracting depending on how pissed
| you are), read the comment out loud to yourself. Probably
| 90% of the time I've written something shouty I'll just
| end up closing the tab.
|
| YMMV, of course, though I found the first couple of
| experiences of feeling like "wow, what kind of ape would
| draft a comment like that?" when I go for the reread were
| enough to emotionally incentivize me to trade time for
| not feeling like a big rube down the line.
| humanrebar wrote:
| > Unpleasant things very rarely need to be done or
| said...
|
| There are teachers out there giving kids deserved bad
| grades on a regular basis. Hospital workers change
| bedpans. Veterinarians have to euthanize family pets.
|
| Do you want more examples?
|
| But, yeah, sometimes the adults in the room have to
| correct a misconception or ask the trolls to leave.
|
| For tips? Consider others as more important than
| yourself, even when you need to do something unpleasant.
| You'll find that teachers, hospital staff, and vets all
| find ways to do that when "nice" isn't possible.
| dt3ft wrote:
| You need to learn how to give less fu*ks. Life is too
| short to be wasted on internet beefs. Get a hobby, go out
| more. Get real friends.
| paganel wrote:
| > I've seen plenty of beef only thinking here and I too have
| been guilty at times.
|
| Most of the beef-related discussions around here involve either
| Tesla, Apple vs Google (when it comes to their phones/mobile
| OSs), FAANGs vs the rest of the world, some futuristic AI
| fields (like self-driving cars) and I think that's about it.
| There used to be a beef between supporters of static-typing vs
| dynamic-typing (I personally was in the latter group), but the
| static-typing supporters mostly won that debate.
|
| Other than that most of the topics on this website are pretty
| civilised (with a few exceptions that confirm the rule).
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| Is it though? or is it the disenfranchised finally are able to
| have their opinion heard? We also get to see the emperors now and
| we realise they have no clothes - they're just like us.
|
| My hope is this is a brief period of education of everyone to see
| each others opinions and something better can come of it. As
| always there are those at work trying to maintain their
| positions.
|
| For myself I have learnt a lot about the belief systems of other
| people from the internet. I can only hope others are doing the
| same, we all have to get along.
|
| Edit: I think of it as the great flattening, to coin a term,
| previous societies were hierarchical with people in charge
| handing down dogma. There were some dissenters - they were called
| antisocial at one stage. Now everyone is at the same level, I've
| had conversations on forums with people who invented tech, wrote
| books I've read, I could if I was so inclined seek out other
| fields - everything is open now. This is bound to cause some
| 'beefing'. End of beef.
| 4thwaywastrel wrote:
| I don't think the posted conception of the culture war as a
| "holding pattern of conflict" is incompatible with the idea
| that it's also a legitimate outpouring of the voice of the
| disenfranchised.
|
| Some might say that we've become stuck in that outpouring, and
| enamoured with conflict rather than any kind of coherent vision
| for how to be.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| Could be, maybe these conflicts are fundamental to being
| human and no resolution is possible? This is the new normal?
| [deleted]
| narrator wrote:
| In the same way that Spark turns a program into a plan for
| cluster computation, there's some sort of process by which an
| idea and a bunch of talking points gets compiled into a big
| distributed staged media campaign through all channels and
| institutions that forces culture change that no one asked for.
| The canonical and somewhat "innocent" example of this is a major
| advertising campaign for a new pharmaceutical like Prozac for
| example, where the company pushing it has to explain it through
| ads, articles, movies (Prozac Diary) and so forth to the general
| public over a number of years so that people get it as a new
| element of the social landscape.
|
| Related to this is a question that has bugging me is how is the
| social justice _" ideological pipeline"_ constructed and
| operated? How does an idea, become an obscure scientific journal
| article, become a slew of newspaper editorials and human interest
| stories, which forms a twitter mob, in which the ideological
| program has been installed on all the "beef only" thinker nodes,
| then it's own Netflix show, and super hero movie and then becomes
| a law where you get put in prison for using the wrong pronoun.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > then becomes a law where you get put in prison for using the
| wrong pronoun
|
| You were going so well until this point, because I guarantee
| you won't be able to find the story to back this up; it will
| turn out that the "wrong pronoun" was part of a sustained
| campaign of harassment or part of a death threat or suchlike.
|
| > how is the social justice "ideological pipeline" constructed
| and operated?
|
| I could talk about how this works, but only if you're genuinely
| interested and willing to take it seriously. And not as part of
| a beef.
| narrator wrote:
| You're beefing right now. I will try to explain it to you
| another way. Maybe you'll get it. See, this is why we can't
| have nice things. I put that in there to purposefully trigger
| any beefers and you popped off like a firework. I could have
| changed it to "... and then Trump becomes president" and you
| would have smiled approvingly like a good mook.
| Unfortunately, you're just another robot. Heck, an AI can
| just play madlibs with you for days and hit all your buttons
| because you can't think deeper than identity the opponents
| argument and pick an associated emotion to feel. You throw
| out the whole rest of the argument and focus on the emotion
| producing sentence fragment because you got triggered. This
| is the problem with online social discourse in the 21st
| century.
| alexis_fr wrote:
| > Importantly, unless you do something dumb that makes you
| vulnerable to being drawn into the mook-manorial economy against
| your will, such as saying something that can be used against you
| while in a position of authority in an important institution, the
| IoB is an opt-in conflict arena. You only opt-in to the Internet
| of Beefs driven by a sincere grievance if you are mook enough to
| want to.
|
| I find this vert true. The particularity of HN is that they did
| not gather by beef but by learning about the startup scene and
| skills.
| thebiglebrewski wrote:
| Man was I really hoping this was an API for cows in a field and
| sensor data attached to each beef. BaaS, or Bovine as a Service.
| mc3 wrote:
| I know you are joking but there is probably a good case to have
| a sensor on every piece of livestock, given how cheap the
| sensors would be and how it would help to manage things. The
| govt. could even carbon-tax the methane emissions.
| [deleted]
| pochamago wrote:
| I've always thought anonymous imageboards were excellent training
| grounds for how to deal with all of this. When there's no
| upvoting or ability to filter people by name, you have to learn
| how to deal with people who often truly are only posting to make
| you mad. There are two good responses, both of which are
| extremely difficult if you have no practice: ignoring it;
| engaging sincerely and with the assumption that the other person
| is doing the same. If you persist with the first they'll
| eventually go and bother someone else, but this is doubly hard
| because it requires everyone to ignore them, and that only really
| happens when the bait has grown stale. The second often results
| in them switching from the troll persona to actual sincerity, but
| it requires several back and forths of responding with goodwill
| to bile, and I think it's even harder to accomplish in forums
| where people have tied their name to their opinions.
| uncle_j wrote:
| Well it is part of anti-fragile thinking really.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile
|
| I run several discords and forums and I allow a certain amount
| of hazing to go on. This has a positive effect in some ways
| obviously has some negatives.
|
| It filters out at lot of "normies". I don't want people who are
| easily offended on my forum, if you want a mod to protect you,
| you can go elsewhere. It also immediately filters out the
| morality police instantly.
| samatman wrote:
| Venkat is enjoyable as always, but the central conceit of this
| essay is an insult to crash-only programming.
|
| The crash-only approach to feuding online is to _stop responding
| when someone beefs with you_. Don 't try to mollify, don't flame
| back, don't explain yourself, just: close the tab, do something
| else, and reboot Twitter later, in a known-good state.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I'm not going to be able to wade through this entire article. If
| this is at all an accurate characterization of Twitter, that
| might explain why I have so few followers.
|
| I don't engage in this stuff on Twitter. I've overall had fairly
| positive experiences on Twitter. I continue to try to figure out
| how to connect positively on Twitter and on the internet
| generally.
|
| I don't agree that the only antidote is to go seek out walled
| gardens and the like. The real solution is to be the change you
| want to see.
|
| Don't go looking for beefs.
|
| Try to bring solutions, not complaints.
|
| Try to have some empathy for people and assume "They must be
| having a bad day" or "Wow, they must have a lot of baggage on
| this topic" and politely decline to get into some shitshow with
| them.
|
| Remember that having empathy for others (instead of just assuming
| everyone is simply intentionally being an asshole) doesn't mean
| being a doormat. Respect yourself. Don't kiss their ass to
| mollify them or something. Instead, just shut up and quit putting
| out the fire with gasoline.
| jcroll wrote:
| > Don't go looking for beefs.
|
| You can't even post a question on StackOverflow without
| creating a beef (e.g. "Why would you want to do that?")
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| If you also get legitimate, sincere answers to your question,
| focus on engaging those.
|
| If you only get pushback, there might be something in your
| phrasing that could be improved.
| Lammy wrote:
| This article resonates with me and my experiences online to a
| startling degree. Specifically:
|
| "We are not beefing endlessly because we do not desire peace or
| because we do not know how to engineer peace. We are beefing
| because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually,
| and collectively as a species."
|
| I think we are seeing a genuine lack of strong family, social,
| and organizational ties among most people, myself (sadly)
| included. I don't think I or any of my peers fully grasp what
| we're missing and how isolated we truly are. I think we as a
| cohort had very good reasons for participating in that change,
| such as me (an LGBT person) leaving the Catholic church I was
| raised in rather than bury that other part of myself to fit in.
| The problem is that I replaced it with nothing, and I think the
| same pattern has repeated across many other people and many other
| traditions. The temptation is to suggest MeetUps and other things
| built to connect people, but those suggested replacements don't
| come with the same assumption of trust built in like many
| traditional organizational and family ties do.
| virtuous_signal wrote:
| This is spot on. I wonder if this exodus has resulted in people
| trying to make workplaces their "religious community"; but
| obviously people who happen to be at the same company don't
| have any reason to agree on important issues. So then the
| mission becomes trying to make everyone at work care about and
| agree on <chosen social issue>.
| spappletrap wrote:
| It's almost like our social bonds are being broken in the
| same way chemical bonds get broken when we digest food. Like
| our capitalist society is a higher-order organism that is
| extracting energy from our societal bonds.
| adamrezich wrote:
| Not saying capitalism is devoid of fault but it seems like
| consumerism is more directly to blame
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Isn't consumerism caused by capitalism?
| rayiner wrote:
| No?
| claudiawerner wrote:
| Consumerism, at the least, is dependent on capitalism's
| core feature, generalized commodity production. So far,
| that seems true - was there any consumerism in pre-
| capitalist societies? I'd hazard a guess and say no. If
| consumerism is further driven by advertising, it depends
| on capitalism even more. This paper[0] persausively
| argues that consumerism is a consequence of specifically
| capitalist society, considered in its historical
| development.
|
| [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/97804
| 7067059...
| rexpop wrote:
| I find it so difficult to understand the mental
| gymnastics necessary to "shift blame" over certain types
| of suffering from "capitalism" to "consumerism" or
| "cronyism" as though those ideologies (and accompanying
| institutions) were independent tragedies, liable to
| manifest in any cultural substrate. There's no cancer in
| bricks, and no commodity fetishism in a socialist
| economy.
|
| edit: truly bewildering to me folks think they're doing a
| service to themselves of their society by silently
| downvoting me.
| kick wrote:
| News Guidelines:
|
| _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments. It
| never does any good, and it makes boring reading._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Commenting on votes will only make you get downvoted
| more, regardless of how virtuous your comment was.
| adamrezich wrote:
| Perhaps, but does it have to be?
| rexpop wrote:
| What a fascinating analogy. There's certainly a well-
| explored conception of Capitalism's benefiting from
| particularly "alienating social relations," but as I
| conceive if it, that benefit's not so much about deriving
| "energy" from breaking social bonds, as it is about
| lowering the cost of coercion. After all, social bonds can
| give us the self-confidence to stand up to our bosses
| orders, and to re-organize our work along lines less
| profitable to them and more profitable to, e.g. our church,
| community, family, selves, etc.
|
| Is the Firm energized by alienating one worker from
| another? Is there, from that event, free energy? I don't
| think so. In fact, it's energetically costly to dis-
| organize social bonds, but for the Firm it's an investment
| in a more alienated--and therefore more vulnerable--future
| workforce.
|
| If the firm extracted energy from social bonds, it would
| collect well-bonded groups, and "spend" them. Oh, wait.
| That's what acquisitions do, isn't it?
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| It's a commonplace today that people are defined by what
| they choose to consume; that one asserts their personal
| identity by what brands they buy and what media they
| watch. The ones who are selling membership in these "sub-
| cultures" therefore stand to gain from the destruction of
| any form of belongingness that they cannot sell as a
| commodity.
| jmastrangelo wrote:
| But a central tenet of Communism was dismantling all other
| social structures like religion. Modern technology under
| capitalism may be destroying these social structures over
| time, but communism did actively.
|
| This whole comment just reeks of fanciful anti-capitalism
| with little real substance.
| codetrotter wrote:
| I think this way of looking at it is interesting and I
| don't see why your comment is currently being downvoted.
|
| Sun Tzu wrote about humans acting as a bigger organism when
| an army work together as one.
|
| And with that in mind, and with your comment on top of
| that, I wonder:
|
| We generally agree that self-awareness is a sign of general
| intelligence, right? So if a group of people see them
| selves as one, in some sense, and act as one in some sense,
| then could we say that we are witnessing an organism that
| is built from people and that is elevated over the mind of
| just each of the individual people?
|
| In the same way that we people are made of what I will very
| scientifically refer to as "a bunch of smaller stuff" but
| yet we are more than just the individual bits of stuff we
| are made of because as a whole each of us have our self-
| awareness and all that.
|
| That is, something of higher general intelligence than its
| parts.
| fipar wrote:
| I think that's spot on and relates with what I understood
| after reading Pirsig's "Lila: An inquiry into morals",
| where he talks about inorganic, biological, social, and
| intellectual patterns, when introducing his Metaphysics of
| Quality[1]. Capitalism would be a social pattern that is
| made of us, as we're made of our cells. And just the same,
| what's best for the organism as a whole does not have to be
| the best for a specific individual cell.
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_Metaphysics
| _of_Qu...
| [deleted]
| MisterTea wrote:
| I have spoke to many people who have said that they feel that
| work has replaced their social life, myself included to a
| degree. It also means that people don't want to move on in
| their careers as they get too comfortable with their work
| family and pass on better opportunities. I have a coworker
| who passed on a great opportunity just because he really
| likes working with everyone. A close friend had to be prodded
| by his wife to apply for better positions in other areas to
| advance his salary. Another friend's wife refuses to get a
| better job because she likes her coworkers so much.
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| > I have a coworker who passed on a great opportunity just
| because he really likes working with everyone.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but your tone makes me believe you
| think your coworker made the wrong decision.
|
| I'm actually jealous of your coworker. Currently, if
| someone offered me a better career opportunity, I'd likely
| take it without hesitation; but I wish that weren't the
| case. I don't hate my current position, but I wish I loved
| it more to the point where leveling up, learning the newest
| framework, and making more money wasn't the priority.
|
| On top of that, everyone around me seems to be more focused
| on the trajectory of their life rather than their current
| situation, so I feel like its hard for me to get out of
| this rat race mindset.
| sunnytimes wrote:
| my ex-wife used to prod me to get a better job all the time
| because at the time we were a small hole in the wall
| company. Now we are a multi million dollar company with
| tons of employees and since i stayed i'm doing really well
| now , her on the other hand , well, bitch's trippin.
| Jedd wrote:
| Alternative proposition.
|
| 'Moving on in your career' may be horribly overrated, or at
| the very least not something everyone prioritises the same
| way.
|
| Enjoying the work you do, and the people you do it with,
| and being satisfied by same, may be a sufficiently
| compelling reason to not engage in high-risk behaviour for
| the sake of 'advancing your salary'.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I agree with you, and I too kept thinking "Hmm, that is a
| really good point." but I found the statement you called out
| somewhat at odds with the rest of the thesis.
|
| What I understood him to say was that his thesis is that
| culture wars are not about identity and yet this endless
| conflict is about a lack of identity. So where does identity
| really fit in there?
|
| The economic and political incentives of inciting "beefing"
| were spot on. And there is nothing like amping up the
| inequality of the distribution of wealth to put energy into the
| "beef battery" (if such a thing existed).
| jszymborski wrote:
| Thank you for crystallising this succinctly.
|
| The loss of cultural meeting places, be they churches, or
| arcades, or malls, is something I consider a huge loss as well.
| The pendulum might swing the other way yet, however.
|
| If we can reinvest in our community centers and hacker spaces
| and make them part of the zeitgeist, we might all be rehumanize
| a bit.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| There are many communities out there for people to join and
| find their tribe, they just aren't easily accessible or
| indexed centrally. A lot of them filter for like-minded folks
| -- even the ones that claim to accept anyone.
|
| Focusing on community or hacker spaces is narrow view of
| one's options. I found mine via attending underground music
| events, then joining one of the groups and attending
| festivals with them, which eventually led to strong ties with
| the burner scene and some of the local artist communities.
|
| I think people are forgetting that to experience these things
| you need to be present, and do so with some frequency. Open-
| mindedness and the right vibe will get you far socially.
| Unfortunately that doesn't really match well with the
| workoholic atmosphere that many jobs insist on, and so you
| end up with unfortunate situations like people mistaking
| their employers for family. I hope that those folks are
| secure in their employment because it is really easy to be
| cast out (e.g. laid off) under the guise of, "it's just
| business". Personally I think feelings of workplace-as-family
| are just another trap engendered by management to maintain
| employee retention.
| Swizec wrote:
| > I found mine via attending underground music events
|
| To find like-minded folks to do things you love with, do
| the things you love.
|
| Problem is most of the things I love involve isolating
| myself from others and seeking solitude in my own projects.
| After work and partner, there's just no more social battery
| left.
|
| When I tried 4-day-at-office weeks for a few months I
| literally became chattier with people at the gym, strangers
| in the park, etc. it was quite extraordinary
| rngAcc56 wrote:
| This is the sad truth about fast and rapidly changing social
| norms. this lack of identity and community.
| kick wrote:
| What rapid changes have we seen lately? The change in that
| person's comment has been in the making for over a hundred
| years. The first thing I personally can think of (in the
| context of America, as one of the last Western countries to
| accept GLBT people, not in the context of the wider world,
| which has been accepting for much longer than America) is
| American GLBT communes in the 1780s.
|
| Given where we are in GLBT acceptance, it seems like, if
| anything, this was one of the slowest-changing social norms
| of all, and one that more than a few generations were pushing
| for before the ones that are currently here.
| cyorir wrote:
| > What rapid changes have we seen lately?
|
| Well change in support/recognition of transgender issues
| has been very rapid over the past 5-10 years.
|
| "More than six in ten (62%) Americans say they have become
| more supportive toward transgender rights compared to their
| views five years ago."
|
| Source: https://www.prri.org/research/americas-growing-
| support-for-t...
| Lammy wrote:
| I think the gutting of middle America is a big part of it.
| The most talented people are forced to leave for the coasts
| to make the most of their capabilities. This hurts both the
| leavers (like me) who have to built roots from scratch in
| their new home and hurts the remaining population due to
| the resulting brain drain. The us-versus-them attitude is
| then worsened by classist attitudes toward those entire
| areas based on the population who remain by my fellow
| "progressives" who will endlessly mock "flyover states" and
| anybody in them.
| virtuous_signal wrote:
| Albeit I didn't know about those communes, but I think LGBT
| acceptance was _extremely_ rapid. The only other change I
| 'm ready to compare it to was slavery and black civil
| rights: consider that the first state to legalize same sex
| marriage was Massachusetts in 2004. Over the next 11 years,
| we reached 37/50 states total, and then in 2015 with the
| supreme court decision we reach all 50/50.
|
| For civil rights: we had slavery since the arrival in 1619
| (which is the date I hear); we get the emancipation
| proclamation in 1863 ending slavery; but there are still
| Jim Crow laws until the civil rights and voting rights acts
| in 1964 and 1965.
|
| To me that makes the road to LGBT acceptance sound
| extremely rapid, but someone with more awareness of
| historical trends in the US should put these into context.
| In particular when might we say various struggles began
| seriously, or entered the public consciousness.
| kick wrote:
| That's framing things from a legal perspective, but even
| then there are some key legal steps you're missing (and
| this isn't conclusive at all):
|
| Beating someone based on sexual orientation was
| recognized as a hate crime first in 1984 at the state
| level. 1995 and 1998 were when Clinton banned
| discriminating against gays at the Federal level via
| Executive Order.
|
| 1996 was when Clinton signed DOMA, which is the reason
| legislation stopped for so many years. Though lately he's
| tried to conceal that, it prevented GLB rights from
| advancing for many years. It was in response to states
| legalizing same-sex marriage.
|
| 1993 was when GLB people were first allowed to serve in
| the military.
|
| 1993 was also when Hawaii found bans on GLB marriage
| unconstitutional (at the state level).
|
| 1992 Colorado made GLB people a protected class,
| preventing people from discriminating against them.
|
| 1998 Oregon makes GLB people a protected class,
| preventing people from discriminating against them on the
| basis of sexual orientation.
|
| 1984's _National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education_
| partially gutted a law that allowed schools to fire
| teachers on the basis of sexuality. (NGTF was founded in
| 1972.)
|
| 1977: GLB allowed to work for the IRS and foreign
| service, GLB activists for the first time invited to the
| White House.
|
| 1960s-1970s: Gerald Ford, for all of his faults, being
| the first 1900s President to really be pro-GLB.
|
| 1970 featured my favorite Nixon quote: _" I can't go that
| far; that's the year 2000! Negroes [and whites], okay.
| But that's too far!"_ By 2000, as you can see, things
| were not much better.
|
| 1950s, 1960s & 1970s saw it come into general awareness;
| lots of protests, including Stonewall.
|
| 1901 saw DC make it harsh again; no felony, but a lot
| larger a fine, no imprisonment.
|
| 1892 basically decriminalized it in DC; you get a fine
| and you pay bail.
|
| 1807 saw Indiana make legislation to lessen the
| punishment for it (although it was the first to be for
| both genders); 4 years max, a fine, and a felony.
|
| 1801 had Maryland making perhaps the laxest law on sodomy
| ever: <7 years of punishment, the act of cleaning one's
| town, no imprisonment.
|
| Jefferson failed in 1779 to liberalize his state's
| punishment for sodomy, but that's probably the first act
| of legislation trying to go easier on homosexuals.
| Virginia later passed (I think before 1800) a law that
| limited the punishment to 10 years.
|
| George Washington brought in a general who was being
| persecuted in Germany for being homosexual shortly after
| we won the Revolutionary War, he was never punished, got
| pension, etc.
| rayiner wrote:
| Reduced religiousity, and reduced family formation. Church
| membership was stable from 1938-1998. But from when Google
| was founded to today, it dropped from 70% to 50%.
| https://images.app.goo.gl/4b5wG27yprR4bfZg6
|
| Median age at marriage has increased from 23 to 29 for men
| in my parents' lifetime:
| https://images.app.goo.gl/A3SinK2HNqjM9s139
|
| Also, it's probably not accurate to say that America is one
| of the last western countries to accept LGBT people. Same
| sex marriage was legalized nationally around the same time
| in the US as in Germany and the UK. A number of western
| countries still don't allow it, including Italy, Greece,
| Switzerland, Czech Republic, and Poland.
| kick wrote:
| Poland and the Czech Republic aren't Western, they're
| Slavic. The USSR wasn't Western, nor are the offshoots of
| the USSR.
|
| East Germany stopped prosecuting against GLB in 1957, and
| homosexual activity was officially decriminalized in
| 1968. 1980s Berlin literally had state-owned (again, East
| German) locations that were explicitly for GLB activity.
|
| Took a bit longer for West Germany, but acceptance
| happened in the 1980s and in 1990 West Germany allowed
| GLB to join the military.
|
| Same-sex couples have had (most of) the same legal rights
| as married couples since 2001 in the combined nation, I'm
| pretty sure, though I could be off a year. They were also
| allowed to adopt pre-2010, but I can't remember when.
|
| Acceptance isn't just marriage.
| sebastos wrote:
| I read this article a few days ago and said almost exactly the
| same thing. The mook stuff is fun, but the line you quoted:
|
| >"We are not beefing endlessly because we do not desire peace
| or because we do not know how to engineer peace. We are beefing
| because we no longer know who we are, each of us individually,
| and collectively as a species."
|
| is the important part of the piece for me, and I'm happy to see
| you and others singling it out. I really relate to what Rao is
| saying here. It's a sensation not unlike boredom. Like we're
| all waiting for something, _anything_ to happen.
|
| A weird example: In 2016, I flew home to PA from Boston
| specifically to vote against Trump in a place that mattered. I
| stayed with my parents for the night, and when I came back from
| the voting booths, the TV was on and it suddenly became clear
| that the unthinkable was happening - Trump was _winning_. I
| vividly remember the sensation that came over me wasn 't
| disappointment. It was excited anticipation, like the way you
| feel right before you leave for a big vacation. It was like
| "ok, here's something actually _happening_ that I'm a part of."
| It's kind of fucked up, but that emotion that washed over me
| felt "truer" than any principled argument that this guy could
| do real damage, etc. It felt like suddenly I was living -in-
| history, rather than beside it.
| derp_dee_derp wrote:
| > In 2016, I flew home to PA from Boston specifically to vote
| against Trump in a place that mattered
|
| this is illegal if your residence is Boston.
|
| Congratulations, you committed a felony.
| cyorir wrote:
| The "if" is key. The parent post does not indicate that
| their voting residence is in Massachusetts - they could
| have maintained a voting residence in Pennsylvania instead
| of switching to MA.
|
| Voting residency requirements are weird because they differ
| from state to state, and can be very vague when it comes to
| maintaining residency. As far as I can tell, Pennsylvania's
| 30-day residence requirement only applies when registering
| to vote; as long as you maintain a voting residence in
| Pennsylvania, you can vote in subsequent elections as you
| do not need to register again between elections. According
| to Article VII of Pennsylvania's election code
| (qualifications of electors), however, you lose your
| residence if you move to another state AND do not intend to
| return to Pennsylvania OR you move to another state AND
| intend to make it your permanent residence. So it depends
| on the parent poster's intentions of whether they view MA
| as their permanent residence or they don't plan to return
| to PA.
| kedean wrote:
| The post is worded like they were in college at the time.
| College students can register to vote in either their home
| state or the state they attend school in, just not both.
| derp_dee_derp wrote:
| There is nothing on their post that implies age or
| student status, unless you think staying with your
| parents is something that only college students do and is
| not possible after graduation.
| itronitron wrote:
| I think the lack of strong social ties was also the norm
| through most of the 20th century (in the US at least) but
| people didn't have the opportunity to connect with focused
| interest groups as they do now. Prior to that social ties were
| enforced through religion and that created it's own problems.
| iak8god wrote:
| I think you're seriously underestimating the decline of
| participation in organized religion in the US both during the
| second half of the 20th century and in the twenty years
| since. Here are just a few numbers to chew on from Gallop's
| long-running polls[1]:
|
| * The number of religious "Nones" - people identifying
| themselves with no religion - was right around 1% through the
| 1950s. In the 1970s it increased from 3-7%, and stayed below
| 10% through the end of the century. It's now over 20%. In the
| 1950's, ~70% of people were Protestant Christians. Now it's
| half that amount.
|
| * In the year 2000, 12% of Americans reported that religion
| was "not very important" in their lives. Now it's double that
| amount.
|
| * In the year 2000, 13% of Americans reported that they
| "never" attend religious services. Now 29% never attend.
|
| [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx
| lsc wrote:
| If we're talking about social ties, you should probably be
| looking at the number of people who attend church weekly. I
| don't think there's a big social ties difference between
| going to church twice a year and not going at all, and it
| looks like your link only goes back to the '90s for 'goes
| to religious observance nearly every week' and 'has been in
| the last seven days'
|
| For that matter, I know a handful of people (my
| grandparents age) who aren't really religious but that go
| to church most weeks 'cause it's a nice social thing.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| My theory is that people have replaced religion with politics.
| They've fallen away from organized religion, but they still
| need somewhere deep down, the comfort and certainty, (or
| "faith"), that spiritual belief conferred.
|
| Many have found that comfort and certainty in the ideological
| tenets of the political groups with which they form affinities.
| As a bonus, people find a sense of belonging that is fairly
| similar to what 50 years ago those same people would have found
| in the various churches or temples.
|
| Again, just a theory, but I think this is why a lot of
| political arguments have started to resemble almost clashes of
| religious dogmas. Or what the author has termed, "beefs".
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Hello fellow LGBT person! We actually have it a lot better than
| many marginalized groups -- if you want community, you can find
| it. You just have to put yourself out there in an offline sense
| and disabuse yourself of any ideas that you are somehow better
| than anyone else in the community. Go on a bunch of coffee
| dates and you'll make plenty of friends.
|
| It's not organized per se, but in many cities the queer people
| all know each other. I live in a big city with a big queer
| scene, and I can't tell you how many times I show up by myself
| somewhere only to see 3 or 4 people I already know there. Or
| find out that the new person I'm dating is besties with another
| friend. We all have pretty similar politics, but we also
| _never_ talk politics or current events (that shit is
| depressing). Conversation is largely about our own lives and
| relationships, which IMO is how it should be. The focus is on
| making space for and supporting eachother, not winning an
| argument.
|
| If you're struggling to break in to the community, just set up
| a dating profile (Grindr if you're a gay man, OkCupid if you're
| not) with something along the lines of "baby queer here, I need
| friends". People will reach out to you because we've all _been_
| you. I have found people in the LGBT community to be incredibly
| caring and willing to invest in people they barely know, simply
| because they remember what it 's like to be alone in the
| wilderness. Community is how we heal, and intentional family
| built one relationship at a time is stronger than relying on
| circumstances to provide you with social ties.
|
| Much love, get out there and get involved, let yourself be
| vulnerable, and you _will_ find your people <3
| Lammy wrote:
| I appreciate your comment, but my experience has sadly been
| the opposite of what you describe. Perhaps I've just been
| unlucky, or maybe I just come off as an asshole, but people
| in Bay Area LGBT circles have been quicker to find
| disagreement and ghost me from their lives than any other
| group of people I've ever met. After the third or fourth time
| losing what I thought was a close friend over what felt like
| a petty disagreement I have become very disillusioned with
| the entire concept of "queer community". I feel like I've
| grown more as a person through my friendships with the
| handful of self-described religious people I've met here by
| accepting and being able to discuss issues where we disagree.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Trust is earned. It's not something you can assume.
|
| That "assumption of trust" you speak of included an assumption
| that either you weren't LGBT or you would bury it your entire
| life for the comfort of the larger community.
|
| Matthew 10:34-36
|
| _34 "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the
| earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have
| come to turn "'a man against his father, a daughter against her
| mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law- 36a man's
| enemies will be the members of his own household.'_
|
| I would say you did the actual Christian thing by leaving. But
| I'm not Christian, so I'm sure many will find that assertion
| offensive.
|
| Community cannot be founded upon an assumption that some people
| will bury an important part of themselves like that. That's a
| foundation of sand and will not last.
|
| We are seeing such things dissolve because we have other
| options these days. In the past, people often grudgingly
| tolerated it because they had no place to go, not because being
| part of some larger community was some wonderfully fulfilling
| experience most of the time.
|
| If the world is seeing a loss of identity, it is because we are
| being freed from the shackles of our old identity. It's normal
| for there to be a transition period where no one knows what's
| what.
|
| That's not a problem. It's just a stage in a process.
|
| It's only a problem if we get stuck here and fail to establish
| a new identity. Then the great experiment fails, the
| opportunity to become something better is lost and we likely
| see things crash and burn so the world can sort of return to
| it's old ways that kind of worked.
| watwut wrote:
| People like you who did not created ties to a group like that
| are quite better and less scary then people who have strong
| loyal unquestioning ties to groups - whether nationalist,
| traditionalist or radical Christians (some of Catholics in my
| country lately tie themselves to extremists).
|
| Membership and trust in these apparently feels great. That
| feeling is dangerous. That trust is not build on truths being
| told, it is build on unquestioned authority and aggression.
|
| Reflection from a country where such groups are on the rise and
| not a side players anymore.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Indeed. A lot of the modern internet "beefs" remind me of
| football "ultras"; the sport is really a pretext for the
| punchup, or at least the singing of death threats at each
| other.
| Lammy wrote:
| I've experienced plenty of that dangerous unquestioning
| extremist fervor from progressive/LGBT circles too.
| monksy wrote:
| It's a little concerning in cultural conditioning is that
| most people don't consider left extremist groups in that.
| They can get dangerous pretty quickly. (Other than the
| usual just shitty to people outside the groups)
| rriepe wrote:
| Everyone is the same amount of religious in my experience.
| The people who join an established religion gain the quality
| of being predictable.
| JauntyHatAngle wrote:
| I really don't see that one.
|
| There are people willing to drink poison for their cult - I
| don't see that level of religious fervour from the vast
| majority of people.
|
| People who join an established religion also vary wildly.
| Gangsters and pedophiles sit next to soccer mums and
| librarians at church services.
|
| I don't see the predictability or religious-(ity) being at
| all normalised.
| maxander wrote:
| Strong social ties can exist without an overarching
| authority, or even without any sort of authoritative
| structure at all- I think the best thing to look at in this
| regard are modern subcultures (punks, hipsters, hippies,
| goths, burners, etc) particularly as they exist in decently-
| sized cities. A bunch of like-minded and like-lifestyled
| people with an excuse to get together; that's at least 90% of
| what the old conservative/religious structures offered.
| wwweston wrote:
| Q: How would one distinguish between IoB culture and a culture in
| which there is a meaningful conflict between ideas and values?
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| The resolution of that conflict. The author posits that the IoB
| tends to maximize conflict and avoid resolution.
| wwweston wrote:
| Observing what avenues for possible resolution exist seems
| like a good place to start and a productive line to pursue.
|
| But it seems to me that there are some conflicts with deeper
| roots than IoB culture that have gone on much longer than the
| internet has existed: whether or not people should be able to
| be understood as property, whether sacred texts are meant to
| be understood in the same way as scientific descriptions when
| it comes to understanding cosmology, to what extent and where
| institutions like markets, or states, or churches should
| shape our lives.
|
| Violence has been employed and even full-fledged war has
| emerged over questions like those, so apparently better
| avenues for resolution were unavailable.
|
| Does that mean those things were also based in beef-first
| thinking? If so, was everyone on each side of those conflicts
| equally guilty of beef-first thinking, and that's how war
| happened?
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| If the architects of these conflicts behave in ways that
| maximize the duration of the conflicts and minimize the
| chance of resolution, then that sounds like beef-first
| thinking.
|
| If it's just two (or n-many) sides caught in an asymmetric
| struggle where they both want some sort of resolution and
| neither one has the resources to get there, then I see that
| as a stalemate.
|
| Most wars to me don't seem to be beef-first because they
| resolve eventually. Even when they go on for a while, it's
| usually because one or more faction/s isn't able to end it
| and the other/s aren't okay with the costs of ending it. If
| a war could be ended at a reasonable cost to someone, and
| they decide they would rather have it continue
| indefinitely, then that's closer to beef-first thinking.
| tlb wrote:
| This framework helps me understand why prominent thinkers on
| Twitter get so much content-free hate in their replies. Most
| replies aren't even disagreements with the thing they're replying
| to. They're missiles in a beef war, against some perceived elite
| group. So it's not necessary to understand the claim and make a
| detailed refutation. They can just reply with a generic personal
| attack, and that keeps the culture war going. And generic
| personal attacks get multiplied by the crowd more than specific
| nuanced ones, because they're easy to imitate.
|
| Also:
|
| > You can only predict it by trying to understand it as the
| deliberate perpetuation of a culture of conflict by those with an
| interest in keeping it alive.
|
| ie, the warriors are playing an infinite game that they enjoy.
| You can't win by out-arguing them. The only way to win is not to
| play.
| durpleDrank wrote:
| "missiles in a beef war" I love this phrase.
| bproven wrote:
| >ie, the warriors are playing an infinite game that they enjoy.
| You can't win by out-arguing them. The only way to win is not
| to play.
|
| Joshua: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play"
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