Conversation

Found myself wondering. In conflict when on defense, kings retreat to fortresses. Peasants head to the hills or urban slums. Where does the middle-class retreat? Religious and educational institutions are peacetime strongholds. The answer is actually obvious. Can you guess?
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We hide in complex, long-form language. This has all sorts of interesting consequences, since waging war on language is difficult.
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Prediction: this will not stay contained to Twitter. Some version of this will spread across the social media landscape. Just as the ethnonationalist wave did not stay contained in individual countries. So “mastodon or discord?” is the wrong question. This will spread everywhere.
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This is probably a distinct new culture war. And everywhere the indirect target will be complex language. But it’s a hard target since thankfully it’s actually a necessary institution and flattening it directly is too costly since the goal is to capture the institutions intact.
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So the attacks will be subversion. Trumpism showed us first-generation anti-language warfare. Derailing complex policy conversations with “covfefe,” midwit/NPC memes, and humiliating nicknames. We’ll see much more sophisticated techniques now. But still indirect subversion.
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They’ll never get to a point of unconditional attacks on all complex language. Just enough to persuade it to speak for them.
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