everybody on ilx complains about reddit

re internal logic, having an answer to every argument doesn't mean those answers have to line up with each other. as long as they only need to answer one question at a time, the ideology is protected enough, in their eyes.

and they know it too! all of these new hate movements are like this, at least on reddit. go on the_donald, no belief is ever expressed in good faith. they know half their shit contradicts the other half, it's more about getting on message, and enjoying the company of others who are bullshitting their way onto the same message.

t_d is more ironic about it, but the approach is the same i think. it's more about sharing the message than believing in it

a friend of mine saw me using zing on my phone yesterday and wanted to know what ILX was so I gave her a two minute tour and her takeaway was "oh, so it's like a low budget reddit" and i wasn't sure what to say to that beyond "...kinda, yes"

it's at least a high-budget reddit!

our quality/$ratio is very good

Don't compare ilx to anything with fucking nested comment threads.

Ilx is a more user-hostile metafilter if you're going to compare us to anything

Ilx isn't much like other online communities I've seen, thanjs God.

i like "user-hostile metafilter"

the reality that doesn't exist (where women are as perfect as they are in the movies ...)

their ideology is built on the fantasy of the pursuit of women, which disgusts them.

Again not wanting to defend 'these guys' but I do think of this worldview as emanating from some central point of culture (mass television, movies and advertising) and heading outwards and outwards until we reach the obviously toxic edgeland of incels.

Like the narratives they come out with about sex sound less like actual experiences from life, and more like the cliched plots of low budget teen sex comedies? Or the logic of the narratives is that of advertisements (have big car, get to fuck sexy girl).

So I think all the stuff people are saying about certain online communities and reddit specifically helping this stuff to really fester and get properly nasty is OTM, but also that reddit is perhaps just an accelerant acting on an ideology that is already here?

by reddit do you mean social media in general?

i agree with you about the media aspect, it's one of the things i mean when i say solipsism -- they sound like they have possibly never had any sort of human contact with an actual girl, and they're taking media portrayals of girlfriends as the world they were promised. when i think of their idea of the ideal woman, i'm always thinking about the girlfriends video game webcomics artists write for their self-insert protagonists.

i think it comes down to patriarchy and rape culture and capitalism and this attitude has taken some form for a long long time. but i disagree that the online communities are only accelerating it. if the communities were shut down, it would be a legitimate blow to the strength of the ideology and the spread of its language. if the subreddit was shut down specifically, and any attempts to resurrect it, then a few of them might migrate elsewhere, but for the most part it would be dead on reddit. and the thousands of men that are set to be converted would go on to doing what they were doing before, being sad in their solitude and then going any number of different paths from there, some positive some negative. i really believe that angry young men are driven to right-wing extremism when the opportunity of a community is right there.

and incels in particular is such a trap. no one who subscribes to it is just dabbling in it. there are a lot of trump people who will stick their toes into t_d, post there a few times and then i guess get bored with the act. it's like a lot of the other meme boards that are built on doing the same joke over and over. incels is a whole identity, it's degrading and miserable and you have to commit to it. culty.

you could say that other hate subs, fatpeoplehate and c**ntown and idk what else getting shut down didn't stop those ideologies, but there was already significant overlap with other boards at least. and i do think it was still a net positive that they were shut down, and that there aren't dedicated places to spread that hate, at least

shut down incels, take MGTOW with it too

i’m vocel now

. i really believe that angry young men are driven to right-wing extremism when the opportunity of a community is right there.

i agree 100% with this

the internet isn't just "amplifying" hate that was with us all along. it is doing that but it is also facilitating hatred, and allowing it to take new forms.

i think the reason i liked ilx at first was that it was the opposite of these cultish communities where people reinforce each other's bullshit all day long. at its best, people challenge each other here.

it’s amplifying hate

there have been a couple studies that ppl don’t necessarily come to specific policies or opinions on their own, but if it’s part of an in-group identity they’ll wholeheartedly adopt it as part of the group

it was about pro-lifers in the evangelical movement but there are definitely people even more desperate for a coherent identity that’ll be like, uh, I like video games so I guess I’m a republican shithead now

I mean I like to think I don’t hang on to bandwagons but I’ve had conversations where I’ve made the point for something only to run out of steam as I realize it’s just a part of some platform I support and I don’t remember why I would like that part

see also: political parties being wholeheartedly grafted on to weird-ass international policies

i like "user-hostile metafilter"

― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Wednesday, October 11, 2017 4:42 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

new board description obv

it's probably absurd to try and understand and relate to "incels", but at the same time it's good to see ilx's comments on those darn kids occasionally go beyond "we used to kick a ball in the street".

if these kids ever kicked a ball in the street they wouldn't be in this predicament

Some truth to that. Exercise can ameliorate solipsism.

Does Rocket League count?

I know this is just "we used to kick a ball" but I do think about how at one point the weirdo outcasts (or at least some of them) were more likely to start terrible bands and go to shows in bowling alleys and VFWs and basements.

I was captivated by online communities even when I was doing that, but I think there's a lot to be said for interacting irl with other awkward weirdos vs online during teenage years.

Definitely

https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/7669xp/i_feel_like_an_idiot_i_vastly_misunderstood_how_a/

It's s whole new world for PM_ME_GLUTE_SPREAD

what's sad is, i think that guy's idea of a library (basically a movie rental store, for books) is pretty close to how you'd expect it to be in our shitty society! libraries with free books are an amazing thing that we all take for granted.

if the concept of the library suddenly vanished, and we were all walking around the same 2017 except that libraries didn't exist, and then someone had the brilliant idea to create a physical space with tons of books that could be borrowed, the natural inclination would be to charge money for each book to offset all the other costs of running the library. the idea of making it basically free for the library patrons and instead paying for the operation through local funding, government subsidies, grants, etc would seem naively progressive and unlikely to work in places other than small towns in Vermont. instead, someone would be like "why don't we just all purchase books separately, and then we can lend them to each other using an app that lists the books we own and the books we want to borrow, and then it'll cost $6.99 a month to use the app, and then we'll offer free basic shipping but offer a 1-day shipping option that's more expensive and we take a modest cut of it. yes, that sounds much easier and financially lucrative than going to the trouble of putting all the books in a physical space and trying to pay for it through local taxes."

in my neighborhood these littlefreelibraries have started going up. if you haven't seen them before they're these structures - a clear cabinet on a post - where people leave and take books. it's a huge crapshoot (mostly mysteries/other pop lit and other mass market lit) esp if you like more exotic fare but it can be fun to release a book into the wild if you're otherwise done with it (surely someone else will appreciate this collection of essays on benjamin???) and we've found some great kid's lit including like every single Rey curious george.

speaking of children's lit i know i'm now getting way off field but i have to tell ppl about this and i haven't had the chance to figure out what thread it goes into.

so we have this collection of beatrix potter stories that i've been reading the girls for years - mostly the peter rabbit story and the benjamin bunny one and like the one about tom thumb hunka munka and the dolls. but the other night they asked me to read Jemima Puddle-duck which i had never read bc it's one of the longer ones in the collection. but we had some time so i read them the whole thing. it's really grimm level horrific. i really recommend everyone to read it themselves but basically it's about a duck who really wants to hatch her ducklings but mrs farmer keeps taking her eggs them from her so she goes to the forest to find a place to lay + incubate the eggs herself. while searching she finds this charming gentleman with "black prick ears and sandy-coloured whiskers" (the fox, Mr Tod) who invites her to lay her eggs in his home. he shows her a nice room to use and she's very confused to find that it's filled w/ duck feathers. anyway, she comes every day to incubate the eggs and eventually they're ready to hatch and the fox asks jemima to go to the market to get various spices (that are useful for cooking duck) for a celebratory dinner. she goes shopping and while she's at the market she proudly brags about everything to this local sheep-dog. he solemnly thanks her for the intelligence, gathers up a posse and they beat up the fox. unfortunately in the commotion jemima freaks out and breaks all of her eggs :( but the happy ending is that the next season mrs farmer lets her incubate her eggs and of her 9 eggs 3 ducklings are born because it turns out after all that jemima is not a very good egg hatcher.

besides being a casual children's story about a predator tricking his prey into letting him eat her and all her offspring in his murder den, it lets pass without any judgement that mrs farmer was doing the same thing - using jemima to create a never ending supply of eggs to eat herself and her supposed mercy at the end of the story is just her creating more egg hatching machines. it's v bleak for a children's story told in a very bright, upbeat fashion.

what's sad is, i think that guy's idea of a library (basically a movie rental store, for books) is pretty close to how you'd expect it to be in our shitty society! libraries with free books are an amazing thing that we all take for granted.

― Karl Malone

free public libraries are cool and all but my understanding is that they're basically the work of a ludicrously rich corrupt monopolist who wanted to be remembered as something other than a ludicrously rich corrupt monopolist - like, not really all that different from google today?

i hate to see the bing version of a 'littlefreelibrary'

https://i.imgur.com/QkxshDE.png

in my neighborhood these littlefreelibraries have started going up. if you haven't seen them before they're these structures - a clear cabinet on a post - where people leave and take books. it's a huge crapshoot (mostly mysteries/other pop lit and other mass market lit) esp if you like more exotic fare but it can be fun to release a book into the wild if you're otherwise done with it (surely someone else will appreciate this collection of essays on benjamin???) and we've found some great kid's lit including like every single Rey curious george.

we inherited an unofficial one of these outside our new house. i just have to tidy it up once a week or so, otherwise it takes care of itself. it's great! a lot of spanish stuff, a lot of kids books, an anomalously large amount of franzen.

Speaking of libraries, "Ex Libris" is really really great. Reddit users wondering "what does the public library mean in 2017?" will have all their questions answered.

i thought it was pretty weak by wiseman standards tbh; the beef that he's allowing his agenda to be warped by the institution he covers with lots of board meeting coverage rang uncomfortable in libris to me

god bless the NYPL of course
and wiseman too incidentally

Mordy otm re beatrix potter. The Tale of Mr Tod, with two brawling psychopaths competing to eat children, isvalso horrifying. graham greene wrote a great essay about it which i cannot find online.

thx for the tip - looks like it's in his collected essays. $1.99 mass market paperback. ships from uk tho - hopefully in a month i'll remember why i ordered it.

Support your local independent bookstores. Not Amazon or libraries.

free public libraries are cool and all but my understanding is that they're basically the work of a ludicrously rich corrupt monopolist who wanted to be remembered as something other than a ludicrously rich corrupt monopolist - like, not really all that different from google today?

― bob lefse (rushomancy), Saturday, October 14, 2017 12:42 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

1) no, 2) even in cases where yes, who gives a fuck? libraries are one of the few decent things we have.

Support your local independent bookstores. Not Amazon or libraries.

― Treeship, Monday, October 16, 2017 9:48 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like wtf are you even saying?

The library thing was kind of a joke tying into the discussion I support libraries. But I think bookstores are cool too and Mordy just mentioned buying something from Amazon.

ok, not a joke i really got but it wouldn't be the first time.

independent bookstores are fine! they're also by and large not serving esl readers, or like poor people in general (he says, for the record, not countering any particular post)

Yeah they're different kinds of institutions.

neither bookstores nor libraries generally have the book i'm looking for

i love them both but they can only stock so much

you can have local bookstores and record stores order stuff! and not pay shipping because they’re getting it from the distributor in a weekly shipment. local record store knocks a dollar or two off retail price if I special order.

It's true.

I order everything thru my local bookstore now except academic presses because they end up having to charge over the cover price for those. It's fun!

I'm had at libraries because I haven't got the focus to finish anything before it's due back, or even start reading things right away