EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

I’m really sorry Aimless but I have a rare form of synaesthesia that causes me to hear all your posts as a long fart noise, so I can’t engage with whatever it is you’re saying :(

Someone remind VHS how much he cares about Muslims when they happen to live in the same countries as the rest of us and can’t be used as props in an argument.

You are making a lot of assumptions.

VHS, plz notice that you will make no headway in resolving this disagreement and it is not because you are failing to make your points, but rather because your points do not penetrate the carapace of the people who are still responding to you.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, December 10, 2021 4:30 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, I'm getting to that conclusion. Considering it comes from the usual people who seem to take pleasure in insulting other people instead of advancing a discussion, it doesn't matter much.

― Van Horn Street, Friday, December 10, 2021 4:53 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

dont make me tap the if youre going to be condescending you have to be smart sign again

No, I remember things you’ve posted. I don’t think anyone will have a more accurate take on you than lagoon though.

(long wet fart for the aural entertainment of gyac)

oh now it's bad to make assumptions, from the guy who implied none of us care about people outside the U.S. and told us to travel

Honestly when even the most dedicated simp for the ruling class is calling your defence of the status quo dickish

― coombination gazza hut & scampo bell (wins), Friday, December 10, 2021 3:02 PM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol is that me? I think I have some hang-ups about demonizing individuals, but I freely admit that the system is fucked

damn did u have to make it wet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzhmy9YJBH0

nothing is too good for gyac

Ha yep xps

these individuals = actual billionaires = the actual fucked system

But you are the reasonable one in this instance imo sorry to use you as the bar

sometimes i feel we rely on crude binaries, the system and the individuals can both be bad

dont make me tap the if youre going to be condescending you have to be smart sign again

― lag∞n, Friday, December 10, 2021 5:01 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

There is a particular sadness in being brought to call anonymous strangers stupid because you do not agree with them.

Good luck with the dystopia folks.

were all stupid sometimes

If we knew your name it wouldn’t make you less stupid

only if you are going to be condescending

Staying out of this moronic clusterfuck except to say that that trampoline video was great, lagoon!

lol ive watched it so many times

reminded me of when I was visiting my sister last week and for reasons I can't remember, I got her two children to start chanting in unison TOTAL DOMINATION. It was alarmingly easy

classic uncle behavior

imo the question 'is the US a dystopia' is unhelpful

the question should be 'what is bad, and what can be done'

― imago, Friday, December 10, 2021 3:15 PM (three hours ago)

i wash my hands of your DEMOLITION
DIE if you want to, you half-assed SHIT PUPPET

guy just think you could have been born on venus. it's over 800 degrees fahrenheit there. seriously, check your privilege

van horn street more like ban, scorn, yeet wow owned

Anybody read this from ftgi a couple of days ago:

I have in recent years felt frustrated when I observe a difference of opinion turn heated, turn into a pile-on. I have felt a desire to express things with the intention of de-escalation, that in turn have been perceived that I’m “siding” with the person who is being excoriated— though the opposite is generally true, at times I’ve myself felt revulsion at what is being expressed by the person being excoriated. I’ve been seen as playing Devil’s Advocate when oftentimes I’m genuinely interested in the ideas and thought processes of people I fundamentally disagree with.

This tends to be a thing that has caused conflict for me irl. I’ve stated that I’m interested in learning about the psychology behind people who espouse viewpoints that I think are fundamentally wrong, as a way of better understanding them, and perhaps finding a way of gently convincing them. I wish the same for myself when my own opinions are in the wrong. I do not think escalating a disagreement into conflict teaches anybody anything. I think that escalation only causes certain individuals to become more entrenched in their viewpoints. I feel that this point of view is out of step with present-tense discourse both here and elsewhere online, and also oftentimes irl. This is not so much a comment on this board specifically but a general observation on present tense state of discourse, which includes discourse on this board.

https://i.imgur.com/bnDvjPk.jpg

i wash my hands of your DEMOLITION
DIE if you want to, you half-assed SHIT PUPPET

― mookieproof, Friday, December 10, 2021 7:19 PM bookmarkflaglink

i always appreciate you dropping Jesus Christ Superstar lyrics into threads

ffs if ilx isn't a safe space for white supremacists

https://quotefancy.com/media/wallpaper/3840x2160/3033-Carl-Sagan-Quote-It-pays-to-keep-an-open-mind-but-not-so-open-your.jpg

He was high as giraffe pussy when he said that, though.

lol that ftgi post is gonna become ILX's Exiting The Vampire Castle.

Seems relevant.

What level of capitalism is this? pic.twitter.com/6BG7PrThiC

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) December 10, 2021

lol that ftgi post is gonna become ILX's Exiting The Vampire Castle.

I found it admirable.

i'm not unsympathetic to it but don't believe it applies to all disagreements. it's a two-way Street, like.

As I said in the thread it first appeared in: if the objective is to "better understand and gently persuade" viewpoints diametrically opposed to your own, a message board discussion is amongst the worst ways of trying to go about that. Much more likely to be constructive if done one-on-one and/or offline.

but also don't think it really relates to this thread at all - VHS's point isn't particularly extreme and I don't think anyone's had any difficulties understanding his motivations for holding it, really.

Tell me in your own words what you think the original West Side Story was about, I’m dying to hear

— Muse of Ire (@MuseofIre) December 10, 2021

(in response to)

They remade West Side Story to be Race Class Narrative about gentrification and I’m here for it.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 10, 2021

and I don't think anyone's had any difficulties understanding his motivations for holding it, really.

― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, December 11, 2021 10:12 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Which are they?

You think Americans are oblivious to the hard predicaments of vast parts of the rest of the world and resent what you see as excessive self-involvement on their part. No?

Was someone doing the de-escalation thing itt? jaymc made a pretty reasonable post, but I didn't really see it otherwise. Also I would think de-escalation would entail trying to get both sides of an argument to stop digging in, though I suppose that's what's useful about calling something a pile-on: you can separate the piled-on, whose behaviour needn't change, from the undifferentiated mass of pilers.

I will say I had no idea what VHS was talking about w/ the guillotine thing, so I looked it up and learned some interesting/dismaying stuff about French colonialism

I believe a lot of them are yes, and that the excessive self-involvement is a net negative. Also that the more the populist and on the fringe of political extremes, the more the self-involvement is crucial to the discourse.

Life is all right in America

but also don't think it really relates to this thread at all - VHS's point isn't particularly extreme and I don't think anyone's had any difficulties understanding his motivations for holding it, really.

Yeah, so. I don't think anything on this thread indicates anyone didn't get that this was where you were coming from, so the posting of fgst's post feels misapplied, is all I was saying.

xpost

i mean he was making bad posts like they were some deep jewels of knowledge, either of those on their own are are prob not going to set people off, but you put them together and youll get told about it, was pretty funny to see the aimless the master of the form show up to lend support

re hand wringing about pile ons brought to mind max writing about something awful

When the 2016 Democratic Primary tore Twitter apart, and establishment liberal journalists and political operatives complained of pile-ons by vicious BernieBros, anyone who’d been on a forum before could see that this was, simply, what happened when you made dumb posts.

good piece https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-most-influential-man-on-the-internet

Yeah, so. I don't think anything on this thread indicates anyone didn't get that this was where you were coming from, so the posting of fgst's post feels misapplied, is all I was saying.

xpost

― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, December 11, 2021 10:27 AM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well some people read it as ‘you shouldn’t complain’ which was not the point at all and then insulted me when I tried to make the case that yes, there are problems in the US and I made sure it was acknowledged.

The guillotine episode reminds me that mostly this is an overwhelmingly anglo-saxon messageboard with very angl-saxon viewpoints on most things. Enough for when I mention something that is jarring because it comes from my history and culture (the guillotine) it is being met with scorn. I don’t think I’m the first (or the last!) who is facing that sort of cultural barrier, and I don’t think some posters understand the level of assymetry at play here.

And yeah if it’s dumb lagoon, which you are still making a very poor case for, shitting on people is not just exactly how you advance anything. Some posters do try to engage in good faith and I appreciated it, other will just use the word ‘cunt’ and think this is some performative battleground of theirs to show how valuable their fight against fascists is and I think this is sort of the pile on goon was discussing.

not sure why were talking about the guillotine when the more relevant execution device is the cross