1.5M ratings
277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

inquisitivefeminist asked:

Hate meme: the particular brand of anti-sj that occurs in rationalist circles

[This might be a little incoherent because there’s more than one brand.]

SJ seems to have taken a similar “designated villain” role in rationality circles (at least those that exist downstream of SSC)  that religion used to occupy. 

I see cheap shots at liberals coming from high-status rationalists, in much the same way it used to be the thing to take cheap shots at religion, or deontological ethics, or, I dunno, frequentists? There’s no longer a strong expectation of charity if the person you’re talking about is SJ-aligned, or honestly any expectation of charity at all.

I was going to say that’s the thing I hate, that we give attacks on liberals special exemption from the rules of rationality for no reason.

But … it’s not, honestly. What I really hate is the fact that we all know it’s a problem, and yet there’s no attempt to fix it. 

Reading essays like Right Is The New Left, I’m struck by the fact that Scott describes himself as inexplicably drawn to insult liberals for no reason, finding himself nodding along with anti-leftists even when their actual views are clearly abhorrent, and seeing similar behavior in his friends … and concludes on the happy note that this is probably just the pendulum swinging away from where it had been - i.e. too far on the left - and nothing to worry about.

This is a pretty common sentiment in rationalist circles; society is dominated by the Left, so attacking SJ-ish ideas, even true ones, is no big deal.

You may recognize this as complete lunacy. It’s the exact same bonkers logic people use to claim that bullying autistic people on the internet to the point of suicide attempts is no big deal because they’re “punching up” - after all, the target is white, or straight, or fatphobic, or … something. They have systematic power, so it’s no big deal. (It’s also, y’know, the ad hominem fallacy - where an idea comes from isn’t supposed to matter.)

I get that there are probably complicated sociodynamic reasons driving this, and that many rationalists feel personally attacked. There’s a term for that! Politics is the mindkiller. 

… and at the same time, SJ has deep problems that need to be addressed. 

But if there’s some mysterious force driving you to hate a group, you should correct away from that.

More you might like

earlgraytay
liminy-lemony

what is a childhood grudge: you took my toy when we were kids once and i will forever hold you guilty

what is not a chlidhood grudge: you hated me because i existed since we were 11, stalked my for 7 years, tried to murder me, sexually assaulted me, and got away with everything because of your appearance and family name. the only reason you stopped, was because you were to short to reach me across the country. everytime i even hear of you i get violent flashbacks. i want you dead, but i will settle for hurt. if either happens, i’ll probably throw a party. i’m definitely not going to care, or waste any effort pretending.

if you can understand that, but not why snape is a bitter asshole about the marauders, then you need some perspective.

fierceawakening

“Only the good characters’ PTSD makes sense” pretty much sums up my discomfort with Snape hate.

I mean, we’re living in a world where actual racist right wing radicalization is a serious problem and “this guy stopped and became a hero when he did” is a more important message than ever

BUT NO

ferenofnopewood

I think this is one of those times where nuance and competing access needs are a problem.


Because, like…Most of the hate for Snape I see has exactly zero to do with Snape’s hate for the Marauders (which was completely fucking justified) and everything to do with either his relationship with Lily (tragic to me, but a lot of people read it as very creepy entitled sadboy bullshit) and the way he treated his students (which is completely inexcusable).


There’s a lot of discourse on this site about how mental illness may explain behaviors, but it doesn’t excuse them. With Snape, it’s like…I see *why* he is an asshole, but that doesn’t make him less of an asshole. The text treats him as a hero who redeemed himself (which is true), so the meta counterpoints that by treating him as an abusive bastard who should NEVER have been given a job having to do with children (which is also true).


And I’m just over here like…We weren’t supposed to really like Snape. He was never held up as an example of a great person. He was, canonically, a shithead. But when the chips were down, for whatever person reasons, he fought against Voldemort with everything he had. He was, in fact, a hero. And that doesn’t stop counting just because he was also a dick.

fierceawakening

I’m troubled by the sad boy bullshit reading, but more than that I’m troubled by the aggressiveness of the people who insist the sad boy bullshit reading is the only valid reading.

I mean, I’ve unfollowed people because every single time I posted that I actually like that a famous book series says “sometimes being an ex-fascist is an accomplishment, but people rarely go from awful to perfect” people vagued about like… “Lololo snapehate ride or die.”

I don’t understand that intensity, especially as a response to “hey, I get something important out of this.”

dendritic-trees

This very much.

I mean, again, I get that there’s some competing access stuff and I understand that if I want the right to get loud and emotional about books I must by necessity extend the same to everyone else. 

But the aggressiveness really bothers me. The refusal to acknowledge multiple readings, especially for a character constructed specifically as a refutation of simple black and white ethics speaks to a very dangerous way of approaching the world.

fierceawakening

YEs! That’s exactly it. I’ve only once seen “I know what I’m supposed to get out of this character, but knowing he never repented for abusing his students means I can’t quite get there.” It’s pretty much always “no, he wasn’t a ~hero~, he was a ~Nice Guy~”

Which is extra weird to me because the biggest redeeming thing about Snape to me is that he *wasn’t* a Nice Guy.

Lily rejected him and he honored it, even though it devastated him.

It bugs the hell out of me that people can call that “friendzone guy” when it is the exact opposite. It is someone refusing to be friendzone guy even though he does not have the emotional maturity to move on after being rejected.

dendritic-trees

This very much.

Personally I’ve always found that saying “well Snape just sucks” completely misses the point which was very much that Snape was the expression of what was wrong with the whole system.

My perspective on him is really altered by the fact that he couldn’t leave. Like, I’ve had bad teachers (none quite as bad as him, but bad), and every single one of them voluntarily went to university and got a whole entire teaching degree and then a whole entire teaching job that they proceeded to do very badly, entirely of their own free will. Snape is there because Dumbledore mind-screwed him into being there. 

And yes, its an uncomfortable thought to be faced with “if you were stuck somewhere really bad for you, and you couldn’t leave what would you do? Could you do better than that? Really? Are you sure?”

But you know, you have to think that thought sometime. Best get on with it.

kyraneko

This is a classic Bully Cycle case, exacerbated by those very circumstances.

Albus Dumbledore took this once-bullied-child and stuck him in a teaching position in the exact same environment where much of his abuse took place, with basically no training on how to be a teacher, how to decently exercise authority, how to healthily handle conflict, how to even be an adult among children. All he had going for him was his experience of teachers from back when he was a child, and given how much James Potter got away with doing to him, I can guess how they appeared to him as a child.

His examples were the same teachers who’d let the Marauders bully him, the same supposedly-caring adults who didn’t care enough to see to his welfare.

Do you suppose he became the teacher he saw them being?

From the eyes of a child whose teachers take his tormentors’ side and never consider it enough of a problem to stop it?

His students, meanwhile—I’m not certain of the timeline, how many years went by between his graduation and his hiring, but it’s quite likely his first older students were people who went to school with him. It’s entirely possible that his sixth or seventh years saw him get dangled upside down and stripped naked when they were first and second years. The only difference was his new position—he’s the teacher now. He hasn’t gained maturity or self-esteem, rather, he’s just been thoroughly shattered.

In fact, that’s something that stuck out to me from the get-go: he’s not interacting with Harry and the other Gryffindors like a teacher or an adult, he’s interacting with them like a fellow student—just one who happens to have teacher responsibilities and teacher authority. He marks Harry Potter as his equal—a rival. An insubordinate subordinate, yes—but a rival in the ways that it matters. A threat.

He has the responsibilities and the position of an adult, but he’s not equipped to be an adult, he doesn’t have the reserves of self-confidence or serenity or wisdom that most adults would have as a goddamn prerequisite to ascending to that position. When he interacts with Harry Potter, he sees James, James who was always only ever as old as he is, as strong as he is, as skilled as he is. In his mind, he’s still fighting against an equal opponent, and the fact that he’s an adult interacting with a child takes second fiddle to the weight of familiarity, the dynamic that has never left him.

You don’t pull punches when you fight with an equal. You do when you fight with someone smaller, younger, less skilled. In his mind, he’s still kicking up, and nobody has given him the skills he would need to recognize otherwise.

And even if he had? He’s never experienced anything but a life written in antagonisms. His home life? Adversarial. His school life? Torment from other students. His teachers? Likely a one-sided resentment from him that they always favored James Potter. Even Lily came with Petunia half the time, and sided with her sister when Severus tried to drive her off. The Slytherins, and later the Death Eaters? Us versus them. Kill the enemy. We are under attack. The strong destroy the weak and that’s not wrong, that’s life.

All of it adversarial and cruel, with a sort of tribalism where Severus was rarely if ever a valued ally wanted for his own sake. All of it marked with contempt and disdain, bullying and abuse, apathy at best and cruelty at worst.

The way he treats his students, his bullying, his threats, his verbal abuse, his cruelty, his overblown reactions to insubordination?

He thinks that’s how the world is.

He thinks that’s the way things are.

He’s never been let into a position to see anything else.

And Albus Dumbledore, whose job it is to protect everyone involved, not only the students in his care (past and present) but also the much-damaged young man who’s come into his sphere of influence and whom he’s placed in a position of heavy responsibility, has troubled very little to show him that anything else.

No standards of behavior, no proper better examples, no directives, no context, no mentorship, no arrangement of observation and feedback, no opportunities for reflection. As if being a teacher was something Dumbledore found as easy and intuitive as Harry Potter found flying, and he had no idea it wouldn’t be the same for anyone else.

Harry Potter, and Voldemort, and Severus Snape, were all three raised knowing neglect and cruelty: one who rejected it utterly, who took every hurt as a reason to be kind instead; one who took those lessons and learned and rejoiced in every way he could take it further; and one who did as was demonstrated to him, time after time, because the only person who was ever any different was first a fluke, and then gone.

(It was never Lily’s responsibility to teach him that a better way existed, or to hold him to it, or to stay with him and make him change, or try to; it was Dumbledore’s responsibility, both when Severus was a student and when Severus was a teacher.)

And Severus Snape, having suffered at every turn all his life, even—especially—from himself (Lily, fifth year; Lily, hunted after the prophecy; Lily, dead in front of her baby), when considering how to treat these children in his care, perhaps wonders what they are that he isn’t, that Dumbledore or anyone else would expect him to treat anyone better than Hogwarts has treated him.

It is absolutely his responsibility, every damaging thing he said or did, and everything that could have done damage but didn’t solely due to the resiliency of its recipient. With power comes responsibility, united, indivisible.

That said …

Perhaps he is treating them like himself.

Perhaps he is what you sometimes get when it takes a village to fuck up a child.

Source: liminy-lemony interesting theory harry potter
misanthropymademe
argumate

‘tis the season to talk about edgy alt-right stuff!

I feel that most alt-right memes are awkwardly trapped between tradition for the sake of tradition, and tradition for the sake of optimising some other metric. This leads to a degree of incoherence in the alt-right memeplex.

For example, take racism. (please!) It hardly requires justification in cultures which are based around promoting a particular ethnic or religious group at the expense of others. But for people who wish to justify it on some other grounds, the situation gets much more complicated.

Genetic factors behind IQ appear to be a popular choice. But if IQ is crucial to society, why screen immigrants on crude racial grounds, instead of giving them IQ tests? And why exclude native citizens from IQ screening? Once you have decided to treat members of one group superior to another without actually checking for any objective reason to do so you’ve already begged the question, and further discussion of IQ only muddies the waters.

Religion is similar. You either promote it because it’s just What We Do, or you promote it on objective grounds of improving social function. But as soon as you concede that you’re doing it for some other purpose, you’re opened yourself to challenge from any alternative social technology that might fulfil that purpose in a superior way, and your tradition begins to dissolve.

(There is the common argument that certain institutions have stood the test of time, but human biology has also been around for a while and yet we see fit to augment it with medicines, clever food preparation, and assistive technologies that make life much more pleasant).

The alt-right position is inherently unstable, and will collapse into a pure appeal to tradition, a politically irrelevant aesthetic, or a technocratic optimisation process that grinds tradition into dust in search of higher metrics.

Source: argumate abstract political theorizing
anosognosic
theblaze.com

College students ‘in tears’ over a banana peel in a tree because it didn’t make them feel ‘safe’

An off-campus Greek Life event …
triggeredmedia

Banana ban incoming.

klubbhead

This is satire right????


RIGHT??????

noelleian

Nope.

>Dude eats a banana, can’t find a trash can to throw the peel away so he throws into a tree.

>Cue a bunch of pussies finding it and making the monumental reach of a lifetime and traumatizing themselves over their own paranoia.

Originally posted by wattpad

friendly-neighborhood-patriarch

What. The. Everloving FUCK.

galleyus

Like what made them so scared??? How did their brains associate it to something offensive. Like holy, if these people associated a bannana peel to something racist maybe they are more. Racist than the peel?

reasonandempathy

I was expecting some unknown or local context to explain it, like MO using banana trees to lynch people.


Or SOMETHING.


But what the shit?

misanthropymademe

Black people get called monkeys, monkeys eat bananas. The link ain’t so hard, though it’s monumentally stupid to think racists would be so coy in this era and not, like, hang bunches of bananas on the doors or tie a noose to the tree or something equally explicit. 

anosognosic

“It was so strange and surreal to see it there,” McNeil said. “We were all just sort of paranoid for a second.”She said the image was especially disturbing in light of an incident on American University’s campus in May of this year. The morning Taylor Dumpson was to take over as the school’s first female black student government president, students found bananas hanging from nooses across campus. Some of the bananas were inscribed with references to Dumpson’s sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha.“That, to me, was a slap in the face to see that banana hanging in a tree after talking about the personal truths of our campus,” McNeil said.

http://thedmonline.com/greek-life-retreat-ends-abruptly-bias-concerns/

Source: ml-pnp fact-checking the discourse racism cw
aprilwitching
superkamigodespurrdragonofmars

Nothing tops @dril’s “face god and walk backwards into hell” in terms of iconic phrases with absurd sources, but @clickholeofficial recently gave us “don’t squander this opportunity! God may have closed a door, but what that stupid motherfucker hasn’t realized is that he left a window open for you to wriggle right through!” And damn if that isn’t the most motivational thing I’ve read all week.

Source: superkamigodespurrdragonofmars laugh rule
See this in the app Show more
Top Photos