Made up a good modern question:
“Is this really the hill you’re choosing to get canceled on?”
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It’s an actually useful question as opposed to its parent, which is mostly rhetorical. Woke derangement syndrome (WDS) really seems to tempt people into poor tactical choices. Woke is not a monolith. Even if you’re against all of it, not every issue is worth getting canceled for.
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To defuse woke you gave to oppose it selectively and strategically. Like any cultish religion, the more you treat it in all-or-nothing ways, the more power it has. The point of a “resistance is futile” posture is to invite an indiscriminate kind of resistance, which IS futile.
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The more you manage to navigate individual issues on merits (which admittedly takes some skill; easier said than done), the more you undermine attempts to impose a uniform code. The power of a monolithic ideology lies in successfully forcing an all or nothing framing.
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To calibrate, it’s about as hard as trying to order a la carte at a restaurant that claims to only serve prix fixe. The emptier the restaurant the easier it is to get your way. It’s a tricky negotiation from an asymmetrically weaker position (they own the restaurant) but winnable
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It won’t so long as “being canceled” is effectively a debut event at the opposite pole. You become the belle of the alt-right ball in 5 minutes. You could say the natural Streisand effect of opposing either side has been co-opted and captured by the other side.
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Replying to @vgr
The digital Streisand effect. Being "cancelled" will become an effective marketing, or antiviral marketing tool of future artists, activists and mavericks.
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Trying to actual own your opinions today is actually hard. It’s a 2-front war against 2 asymmetrically larger adversaries that both want you to rent bundled opinions from them.
Mere pious moral posturing isn’t enough, you have to actual fight to maintain a position.
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The middle isn’t a tenable position for a coherent ideology. It’s more like a series of live skirmishes where your tactics and arguments change depending on which side you’re telling to fuck off on that particular day. It’s a coherence-agency tradeoff.
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One analytical error I made in the internet of beefs post was to assume that because it looked like endless Hobbesian honor conflict for the sake of conflict there was no content. There is, it just isn’t being engaged because it’s in nobody’s interest to end it.
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The mercenaries don’t pick their battles because they gain from keeping it going without outcomes, true believers don’t pick battles because it feels like moral compromise. Strategy only matters if you want an outcome.
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Made up a law: Conflicts continue so long as it’s cheaper to sustain self-serving positions than to solve for decisive outcomes. Exhibit A: Afghanistan. Exhibit B: US Culture War.
You need solution processes to be cheaper by an order of magnitude to get off the ground.
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Hmm, subtle effect. "Self-serving" aligns well with "prosocial" for those who inhabit clean categories. Advocating for yourself is aligned with advocating for a clear group. Which is why people who successfully resist both sides tend not to fit the easy categories of either side.
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Or in terms of my law, the cost of maintaining a self-serving position is higher outside of clean categories, and the cost of working for a solution is lower.
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Replying to
The digital Streisand effect. Being "cancelled" will become an effective marketing, or antiviral marketing tool of future artists, activists and mavericks.
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