Conversation

3 traits I’ve noticed most often in people who get cripplingly invested in culture warring: - Lack of strong individual interests outside of group affiliations - Sense of humor restricted to amirite and mockery - Totalizing (hedgehog) aesthetics
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Took me a while to see the first and most important indicator, because many of the people are often extremely intelligent and accomplished. Even creative and imaginative. But only situated deep within a field. Esteemed pillars of some community or the other.
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Replying to
I concluded about 3y ago that people invested past critical point in culture war are beyond my ability to influence in any way. I’m decent at ordinary influence but not cult deprogramming. But many are convinced they can “rescue” their “lost” peers. Guess who they are?
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Yep, those who are themselves past the critical point on the other side. Bunch of deep blue-pilled types trying to redpill each other. Cultists trying to deprogram opposed cultists. Me, I drop any friend bitten by zombies on any side, though they usually drop me first.
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My own learning curve: Phase 1, ignoring, 2000-09: noticing but blithely ignoring clear early signs as “depressing to think about” Phase 2, denial 2009-13: “surely this will never get worse than fringe crackpottery?”
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Phase 3, rationalization, 2014-15: “okay this is a thing, gotta culture-war-proof of my social media. It’s a problem with real causes that will get addressed, and then storm will pass.” Phase 4, siege, 2016-17: “ah shit, those of us NOT invested are the fringe crackpots now”
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Phase 5, normalization, 2018-19: “Shit, this has no real cause or resolution, it’s a way of life for these people. Need active countermeasures and zero-tolerance defenses against it penetrating my life. This is now a cost of having a life beyond domestic siege now.”
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Phase 6, endgame, 2020: “well, this might be weaponized by a virus and kill us all. It’s not a stable or nornalizable situation.”
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The main reason my neck of the woods has been largely free of culture warring, beyond a few border skirmishes, is not ant kind of foresight or planning. It’s pure laziness. For web properties to become targets or loci of the war, they need to be highly newbie friendly.
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I’ve been too lazy to make anything I do particularly accessible, learnable, or coherent enough to sustain aesthetic projections. That’s a fancy way of saying my shit is a fragmented mess that does not reward or reinforce the 3 core traits. It’s not worth colonizing as a warzone.
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Of the 3 criteria, which I think are each almost necessary and collectively almost sufficient, it’s the #2, amirite-mockery humor that makes is awkward to tag explicitly. Though I think I have a decent, broad sense of humor both as consumer and producer, it’s cringe to claim this
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But I don’t know how else to describe this. It’s not humorlessness only. It’s narrow humor range. If life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think, perhaps it’s rare to have high humor and emotion range. Humor is an anti-emotion in a way.
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Humor is how intense feelings you didn’t know you had present their ridiculous aspect and find release. So there’s almost a zero-sum there based on a personality set point. You can laugh more or feel more. It’s not a choice, it’s a trait.
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It’s not that thinking preference implies high quality thought or that feeling preference implies refined, nuanced emotional processing. It just means you lean towards thinking by default or feeling by default. Not that you’re good at it.
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Anyhoo, not sure where I was going with the thread. I guess it’s sort of an update to my 2017 culture war map, and the internet of beefs post this year. I’ve concluded we’re in a chronic end-of-history conflict with no vaccine, so wear a culture-war mask and get on with your life
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Adding this thought here. There’s an aspect of inability to play here, as a core culture-warrior trait. They can do sports, and play cat-mouse, or bully, but not play. Important exception is a subset of shitposting edgelords.
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All work and no play make *ism a dull ideology
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The distinction is probably finite-game play (Huizenga) vs infinite-game play (Carse). The former strives to win (“own the libs” and “spot the your/you’re error” are clear examples). It’s play of sorts and there is laughter, but it’s not jumping-in-puddles type fun.
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