Yes, new media has a quality problem. That quality problem is old media people and their followers. Both are high on sentiment illiteracy. People so conditioned to respond to and produce inauthentic emotion, they can’t recognize the real thing when it punches them in the face.
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Clueless types who respond strongly to theatrically elegant emotional expression, and to an affect of calm authority, preternatural poise, and gravitas, based on absolutely nothing, are unguided missiles set off by cheaply produced fake resonances. That’s what virtue signals do.
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Telltale signs: Confusing intensity of real emotion for hysteria Frequent calls for “calm civil discourse” and “reason” Mistaking good grammar for goodtakes Prioritizing norm following over effectiveness Confusing “articulate” for “correct”
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Repeatedly I’m saddened by the sight of people I otherwise like, who are kind, thoughtful etc in their narrow domains, turn into unguided missiles uncritically doing the bidding of assholes because they are just too lazy to acquire a little sentiment literacy.
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I actually don’t mind virtue signaling by conservatives, libertarians, or classical liberals. I don’t really expect better from then, since they are defined by their holy cow virtues and institutions, and the behavior is kinda natural for them. Harmonizes with their institutions.
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Progressive virtue signaling though, grates in an unpleasant way. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because I expect more from them. Ironically a virtue signal is an aliveness anti-signal to me. If you’re virtue signaling you’re not thinking and I generally expect prohressives to think.
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This may sound weird, but I don’t expect actual thinking from the rest because their value lies is faithfully reproducing old arguments, that were once progressive in their own time. I expect high-quality reproduction. Classic greatest hits from Aristotle to Hayek.
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Replying to @vgr
Hm, so if there’s a chain of different types of people claiming “the right answer was found at this time in history and we just have to be true to it”, I don’t see any reason why that chain can’t include people who ascribe that truth to a left-of-center position.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @vgr
Political compass idea: weird/normal, left/right. On Twitter I see mostly fights between Weird Right and Normal Left, with occasional comments by Weird Left (that’s you) complaining about being left out. Normal Right seems rare.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
Weird/Normal sounds fairly close to libertarian/authoritarian on the original compass? I think authoritarian is usually normal for a large faction. Libertarian is not always weird though.
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“Weird” here kinda means libertarian *personally*, but definitely not in terms of ideological commitment. Right-nationalists are Weird Right in that they’re edgy and transgressive in their manner, but are not libertarians in their politics.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @vgr
The Cato Institute is politically libertarian, but persona-wise Normal (dignified, reassuring, appealing to tradition, not at all edgy.)
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
Okay so distinct axis but not quite orthogonal
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