CuriousCat Archive Page 165 of 202

  1. For the Alt Right Playbook, do you plan on talking about big Youtubers like Pewdiepie and how the contribute to the alt right pipeline?

    NonCompete already made that video.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnmRYRRDbuw
    As ever, I have a larger point about recruitment I want to make that will mention YouTube recruitment, but I don't like saying things that have already been said well.

  2. Any thoughts on Captain Marvel? (assuming you've watched it)

    Serviceable.

  3. Have you read or watched any good faith criticisms of The Last Jedi? I've tried so hard but the metadiscussion surrounding the movie is so poisonous that it's really hard to find people talking about its actual flaws in a meaningful way. People frame the movie so abjectly positively just to frame against the bad faith criticism of some commentators.

    I don't engage in videos about The Last Jedi because I already know what I think about it and don't require discourse. It is a flawed and in some ways messy movie, but it is also quite possibly the best film in the Star Wars series, or at least might be my favorite.

  4. If Leftism is about abolishing vericality then why do so many Leftist regimes become intensely vertical and hierarchical? I.e. political cadres, vanguadism, social responsibility rankings a la China, putting the capital class under the proletariat class?

    Isn't this horseshoe theory? Since the Right just want an authoritarian totalitarian society as their ideal goal?

    in response to Is there any value to the horseshoe theory or is it complete horseshit?

    Most socialists will point out that these regimes don't practice Marxism, they are socialist in name only. Often, after a revolution, there is a power vacuum, and sometimes authoritarians seize power. Many socialist states *don't* become intensely vertical or militant but we tend not to talk about them as much because they don't fit this particular narrative (also they tend to get violently overthrown by capitalists).

  5. Would you abolish private property since it's a tenant of capitalism?

    I dunno!

  6. Do you think Charlie Hebdo was islamaphobic magazine?

    This is a trap.

  7. Relating to this, a popular sentiment defending capitalism I've seen online is: "capitalism = the market" therefore "no capitalism = no market = poverty = bad". Is there any short, simple way to refute this?

    in response to Based on your assertion that capitalism has inherently degraded our social lives, if that were the case, then how can society produce new services and products without some form of industrialization?

    The most succinct I know:

    Capitalism doesn't create goods and services. Labor does. Capitalism just determines who gets paid.

  8. Based on your assertion that capitalism has inherently degraded our social lives, if that were the case, then how can society produce new services and products without some form of industrialization?

    Wh-

    Why are you equating industrialization and capitalism?

  9. Is Broken Sword worth playing just to see how bad it is?

    Lots of people love it so you might think it's good.

  10. Is there any value to the horseshoe theory or is it complete horseshit?

    total horseshit

  11. It seems to me that a lot of leftists online were, at some point in their pasts, usually center-right, sometimes conservative, before something made them shift left. There don't seem to be many people that started left. What's the reason so many people see centrism as the default? Or am I generalizing my own observer bias?

    Probably generalizing. I know a fair bunch of liberals who've gone leftier since Trump... happened.

  12. Same anon as before. Do you think that is part of why the right has been more successful lately? It seems it is harder to agree on how to implement equality in the abstract than it is to maintain a hierarchy.

    in response to This sounds like a question in bad faith, so my apologies, but I am genuinely curious about it. Are there any beliefs that are predominantly held by the left that you disagree with? I ask because I recently moved from a more moderate mindset to a very liberal one, and I am finding that I disagree with the past version of myself on many issues, ie. gun control, corporate taxation, and capitalism in general.

    The Right has always managed to come together when it's time to vote. When you believe in hierarchy, you place value on falling in line. This doesn't mean they agree on much of anything, but that they have an investment in putting disagreements aside to preserve the hierarchy.

    I'd chalk the Right's recent success up to a few things:

    1. The Far Right capitalized on the internet as a means of mainstreaming their politics in ways that liberals were completely unprepared for, and still haven't learned to combat because most haven't even admitted it's happened.

    2. Factionalism among Democrats over whether or not to drift to the center or drift left. A lot of centrist Democrats would seemingly rather lose to Trump than give the nomination to anyone socialists might vote for.

    3. The basic fact that representative government IS hierarchical, and powerful people within that hierarchy, no matter which Party they are in, are invested in maintaining the hierarchy because it's the source of their power. This is why, if you believe in proper equality, sometimes liberals aren't your friends.

    I want to restate that "liberals believe in equality, conservatives believe in hierarchies" is over-simple. Both patterns of thought are ingrained in all our minds, and the preference for one or the other is sometimes very marginal. Most conservatives do believe in equality - or, at least, *think* they do - and if you described voting for demi-tyrants like Trump as "falling in line to preserve the hierarchy," they'd probably say "fuck that." These are largely unconscious behaviors, and a lot of conservative rhetoric is how they rationalize voting for Trump anyway, convincing themselves it's for some other reason than loving hierarchies.

  13. This sounds like a question in bad faith, so my apologies, but I am genuinely curious about it. Are there any beliefs that are predominantly held by the left that you disagree with? I ask because I recently moved from a more moderate mindset to a very liberal one, and I am finding that I disagree with the past version of myself on many issues, ie. gun control, corporate taxation, and capitalism in general.

    There are ideas on the Left I disagree with, but that just means I agree with different ideas on the Left. A point I made in my most recent videos is that the divide between Right and Left is, in many ways, a divide between hierarchy and equality. There are a lot of ways to interpret "equality," but they're all on the Left. Even when I have an unpopular opinion, it's an unpopular lefty opinion.

  14. I'd like to point out (purely theoretically) that :

    1) Pig dung smells like hell on earth

    2) Pig dung is *sticky*

    3) Pig dung can be safely manipulated with simple cleaning rubber gloves

    4) Pigs - by the nature of dung- do not need their manure once they're done with it and collecting it is not animal exploitation

    I only point out these facts in the interest of theory of course.

    in response to As a vegan & anti-fascist, do you feel conflicted about 'egging' fascists?

    ::nod::

  15. Is "totalitarian" a useful tool to analyze politics or was it just made specifically in order to lump Nazism and (URSS style) Communism together ? I tend to think the second statement is true but I'm not sure...

    in response to But they're different systems

    It is entirely useful in my research so far.

  16. As a vegan & anti-fascist, do you feel conflicted about 'egging' fascists?

    You should only egg fascists with locally-sourced eggs.

  18. Michael Haneke once quote:

    "An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message."

    Do you agree with Michael Haneke? Especially if you've seen any of his films

    All art has a message. If you don't put one in on purpose, you'll be left only with the accidental ones.

    But I have mixed feelings on whether art is obligated to provide answers to questions it raises. Didacticism has its place, but most art suffers with it. That said, in art school I ran into a LOT of artists - both students and professionals - who felt that art that took a position on anything was "telling the audience what to think." Which I feel is, frankly, horseshit. Taking a position in art isn't telling the audience what to think, it's telling the audience what YOU think. If you don't say what you believe, you don't give the audience the freedom to disagree with you. A lot of these artists made very political art that was purposely vague on what it was trying to say, which usually left the audience free to project whatever they wanted onto it. You make a video about race where racists and anti-racists alike can walk away happy, I think that's about the most pathetic and cowardly thing you can do. And I have seen a LOT of art that fits that description.

    I haven't seen any Michael Haneke all the way through. But I know some of his stuff wades into pretty heavy territory. I think it's pretty spineless not to have - or to present as not having - an opinion on that stuff. It's either not trusting your audience to think for itself, or not wanting to deal with their possible dissent. Either way, it's being kind of a ballsack.

  19. You have any faces or heels in the competitive Street Fighter scene? (Or people you root for and people you root against).

    I don't follow Street Fighter.

  20. Wait, how... can they just replace Sonic's design this late?

    exploitative labor practices for the animators, most likely

  21. Why did Kotaku became the figurehead for "clickbait journalism" even though they publish some really great investigative stories about gaming industry?

    GamerGate, for one.

  22. Dictatorship,
    Monarchy,
    Communism,
    Totalitarianism,
    Egalitarianism
    OR
    Democracy?

    Rather a lot of things on this list are not mutually exclusive.

  23. ok, this is a long one, i'm very sorry

    so, in the wake of the Spanish general election, the new far-right, alt-right-ish, Bannon aproved party is already floating the idea of possible voting fraud and trying to force a "full recount" of the votes (that's... actually not a thing here, a full recount is kinda impossible under the Spanish system), but the thing really irking me the most is that the posts i've seen from supporters pretty much all cite the fact that "when the votes were at 12% tallied they were giving the party 23 seats in parliament, but at 100% it had just 24" as proof of some shady goings-on, as in "well if the votes counted where sorta homogeneous, it should have ended at 23 * 100/12 ~= 192 seats". This is obviously ridiculous, and many people have been dunked on trying to defend it, *but others keep repeating it*, same numbers, same percentages, same wording... which leads me to believe there might be an ongoing campaing to spread it and really hammer down on it.

    My question is WHY would they do that?? i seem to recall someone somewhere mentioning trolls repeating nakedly, laughably fake info as a sort of misdirection, making others waste time dunking on 100-followers-accounts, trying to debunk something that should be obvious in the first place, and then having official sources come out and go "ah, the left is misrepresenting our position, what we actually believe is this other, somewhat harder to debunk thing"; but i can't find it anywhere now.
    Did u cover something like that in any of the Alt-Right Toolkit vids? or, if u didn't, have you at least encountered before?

    Constantly repeating the same provably false argument can make people accept it purely by brand recognition, or make it appear that, even if the argument is false, that the truth might be somewhere in between it and the actual truth. But it also erodes the very concept of discourse being about truth.

    This quote from Sartre was going around after Trump was elected:

    "Never believe that anti‐Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument has passed."

    Worth keeping in mind.

  24. Have you played any games where the mechanics are cool at first, but get so repetitive that you get burnt out by the end? (I found Sexy Brutale pretty good at keeping the player engaged, since it gives you a new ability to play with each level)

    in response to Have you played The Sexy Brutale? It’s an adventure game with some pretty cool and unqiue mechanics (time traveling included). It’s pretty short (about 6 hours long), so you should check it out if you have time.

    that's my experience with most JRPGs

  25. I'm honestly surprise at the amount of vitriol in your comment section compared to other breadtubers like Shaun, Hbomb or ContraPoints. Do right-wingers just have a huge hate-boner for you or something?

    Which comment section? YouTube?

    I put "Alt-Right" in the title of my videos, so I think my shit's just easier for them to find. I promise Contra has gotten way more harassment than I have.

  26. Have you played The Sexy Brutale? It’s an adventure game with some pretty cool and unqiue mechanics (time traveling included). It’s pretty short (about 6 hours long), so you should check it out if you have time.

    I've heard of it, sounds kinda neat, but haven't played it. It's got a similar conceit to Twelve Minutes and Elsinore, neither of which have come out yet but I've been following both. I might be reluctant to play Sexy Brutale because I don't wanna get burnt out on the core mechanic?

  27. So out of all the toys in the Sonic box, could the hilariously bad movie that people will make fun the shit out of turn out to be the most enjoyable?

    I mean, I'M going to enjoy it. Dunno about anyone else.

  28. u get a lot of rlly tough questions and I just wanted to let u know ur content and wit make me happy! have a goode and stay healthy

    <3

  29. it's not easy being blue......... :(

    da ba de da ba di

  31. Can you expand on your confusion about Us? Was it plot confusion, thematic confusion, all of the above? & have you become any less confused by it?

    Well, the plot isn't confusing, it's just that, in the late game, the big reveals are implausible and the twist is contrived. You kind of have to give them a thematic reading because, on the level of mere plot, they're a bit silly. Thematically, I think one reason I was confused was that one of the major thematic elements, which helps clarify what the heck the movie was about, is revealed in the very last shots, so I had to go over the plot a few times to bring that knowledge backwards into my reading.

    After going over some thinkpieces, I more or less know what Peele is getting at, but it's... muddled. I think some of its threads are, if not incompatible, at least poor fits for one another, where one thread's statements about class somewhat undermine another thread's statements about class, and where the whole thing being housed in a horror film where the metaphor for the downtrodden are also nonverbal, amoral killing machines with half a soul.

    It kinda feels like, read it literally and people will say "you gotta read it thematically," but do any close thematic reading and they'll say "you really gotta appreciate the craft." It's maybe getting a lot of credit for bringing all this stuff up and for being executed with so much skill, but, unless there's some brilliant take I haven't seen, I don't think it holds up to a lot of scrutiny.

  32. Why do you think leftists on twitter were not so vocal about terrorist attack in Sri-Lanka as they were about terrorist attack in New Zealand?

    I don't know how confident any of us should be in how leftists at large responded to one attack versus another, since we generally only know what the leftists in our particular circle happened to talk about. I generally think English-speakers follow stories in English-speaking countries more closely because the news is easier to follow. We are also somewhat at the behest of what our news media deigns to promote. I'm sure there is racial bias involved as well. But I'm sure South Asian leftists had a lot to say, so I'd advise against saying "leftists" when we mean "Western leftists."

  33. I'd like to ask

    How do we film people messaging each other practically? How do we film screens practically?

    For me the stupid thing is like.. i hate like when people are tweeting in movies/tv shows and the tweet like shows up superimposed and that's when it gets like corny and weird to me.

    A close-up of a shattered phone to me looks like gorgeous, you know. It looks very interesting and cool

    I think it looks corny because people get too flashy with it. Much of the time, the effect is very clever and is clearly some graphics team showing off, but it doesn't fit the tone of the movie. Now, maybe it strikes us as corny because it's new, and as it becomes commonplace it'll start to seem normal. But I think if more people did what they did in the early seasons of Sherlock, when it was still elegant and understated, it would be less jarring. Basically treat it like subtitles.

    And, yeah, if you can aestheticize the screen of a phone, do that instead.

  34. How worrying do you find it that Trump supporters openly claim they're being attacked when people call out racists or white supremacists w/o mentioning Trump? Like, aren't they not supposed to consciously know what they are?

    Given that I've devoted a lot of my career to arguing Trump supporters are unrepentant bigots, the fact that they clearly, on some level, agree is kind of validating.

  35. There’s something unnerving about how there’s another synagogue shooter, again radicalized by /pol, again mentioning p*wdiepie (joking that p*wdiepie funded the shooting and how he - and other capital W White people - are being oppressed by being called anti-Semitic and white nationalists) and there’s barely any noise on social media compared to last time. How do you deal with this sort of shit becoming normalized like this?

    I often feel, after a tragedy, the numbing anxiety that there is nothing left to say about. This is another white nationalist shooting at a synagogue. What do we say now? What can we say that we didn't say last time? I can offer no new insight. I question whether condolences will mean anything when they are nearly verbatim what was said to the last round of victims - at that point, how are my words more meaningful than the usual, empty "thoughts and prayers"? We don't want to grow numb to these things, but repetition makes us numb. I want to offer the victims something meaningful, but I'm faced with how little I can actually do for them. Anything I could say seems hollow. I want to commit myself to political action that will prevent these tragedies, but I already committed myself to it after the last seven. We don't want our responses to become a ritual, but, when there is a limited range of things we can do after a shooting, and there's a new shooting every week, sooner or later *everything* is a ritual. Everything is empty. And you're faced with how little the last display of public grief accomplished. The shootings keep coming, the families from the last one still grieve. What, really, did all our discourse do for them?

    In the end, the thing that really matters, more than kind words from strangers and thinkpieces and Twitter arguments with racists, is gun control and destroying racist and fascist movements. And the people willing to do that work are doing it. I'm trying to contribute in the ways I know how. It is a slow horror seeing this violence go from a moment of shared national trauma to just another day in America. I don't know how to stop it from happening other than to fix the problem behind it.

    My heart goes out to the victims and their families. But, until the problem is fixed, I doubt my heart means much to them.

  36. Given your playbook videos what do you think the left should be doing to combat the online tactics of the right?
    Specifically curious about more active rather than passive strategies.

    If I knew I would have told you.

  37. Don't you think this difference affects the attitude towards Muslims inside the US?

    in response to He did do all of what you just said, but he's stated multiple times in his speeches that "our war is with terrorism, not Islam". That's a lot different than "we need to kill Muslims because Islam hates us. Fuck them all" rhetoric of Trump. W made sure his rhetoric didn't specifically target groups of people. Language counts even if policies and actions count more. After all people attack Trump for his language alone don't it? I'm not saying W is a good or even tolerable president, but W's language was not Trump's language and W's language wasn't hateful. His presence was more in line with a callous disregard for lives where as Trump wants to see brown people burn.

    I made a whole video about how saying the quiet part loud is evidence that things are about to get a lot worse for Muslims. But let's not pretend W saying the quiet part wasn't leading to precisely this moment.

  38. Where is a good place to move to in america?

    If you want affordable housing while still having some of the amenities of a city, you could try Portland, OR or Providence, RI. Employment rates aren't great in either city, so either be independent or have a gig waiting for you. I recommend Massachusetts for the public healthcare, but Boston is pretty expensive. For culture, I love Berkeley, CA. It's also expensive, but it's got tons of theaters and events and I dream about the food all year round. If you want something quieter but with access to a lot of culture and people, I've spent some time in Upstate New York recently, and it's quite lovely and chill.

  39. He did do all of what you just said, but he's stated multiple times in his speeches that "our war is with terrorism, not Islam". That's a lot different than "we need to kill Muslims because Islam hates us. Fuck them all" rhetoric of Trump. W made sure his rhetoric didn't specifically target groups of people.

    Language counts even if policies and actions count more. After all people attack Trump for his language alone don't it?

    I'm not saying W is a good or even tolerable president, but W's language was not Trump's language and W's language wasn't hateful. His presence was more in line with a callous disregard for lives where as Trump wants to see brown people burn.

    in response to is W hateful?

    W and Trump have the same position on Islam, Trump just says the quiet part loud. "Our war is with terrorism, not Islam" is the euphemism that died when Trump took office.

  41. It's _a_ nazi number? Tho it's also the piano number so by itself it's like an #ffdddd flag at worst.

    in response to That's the nazi number.

    I just always thought 69 was misleading because it implies a squiggle is getting tucked into a circle on both ends, when, really, lots of people have circles at both ends, and the 69 most people are referring to is actually a 68 or an 89 and, yeah, sometimes it's 69 but about as often its 88.

    That's all I'm saying.

  42. Does Infinity War endorse Thanos' beliefs or simply fail to sufficiently critique them? Is there a meaningful distinction between those 2 things?

    "Fail to sufficiently critique" would imply they did any critique whatsoever.

  43. Have you seen Avengers Endgame?

    Thank God they don't continue on with Thanos as a sympathetic villain

    It opened last night. No, I haven't seen it.

  44. help me out:

    has brie larson actually done anything specifically to upset the manchild youtuber demographic, or is it just the usual being a woman thing

    You just copy-pasted a Shaun tweet into my Curious Cat.

  45. Sorry if it's a weird question, but do you know any good channels/twitter accounts that focus on Psychology? Not only am I interested in the minds of the Alt-Right like you go through, but I wonder if you have any general go-to people you recommend on the subject?

    'fraid not

  47. Is there anything to the idea that Trump (and W) appeal to the right's anti-intellectualism to essentially fake a working class identity? Or is it classist to imply that?

    Trump and W being wildly successful despite having shit for brains works for a few, interlocking reasons:

    1) They demonstrate that a white man can be an ignorant, hateful, useless piece of shit and still hold the highest position in the land, thereby exhibiting, depending on what you're looking for, the inherent excellence or the supreme dominance of the white male.

    2) By being extremely privileged - to the point of flaunting their wealth and handouts - yet speaking and behaving with the affect of people outside their class (W's "aw shucks" fake Southerness, Trump's brazen vulgarity), they give people suffering under capitalism someone to imagine themselves in the shoes of. This doesn't make them seem poor, it makes the poor feel rich.

    These two things together are an explicit request that poor white conservatives value their race over their class. They are low in the economic hierarchy, but high in the racial hierarchy, so they should focus on the latter. Because look at all these dipshits have achieved just by being white.

  49. That's the nazi number.

    in response to 69 or 96?

    is it the nazi number on its own, without the 14?

  51. Is it alright and fair and justified for potential employers to ask about one's previous salary, especially during job interviews?

    what the hell is a "salary"

  52. I hear a lot of people (mostly on the right, but sometimes on the left) complain about “identity politics”, and at this point I’m still not sure what the phrase even means.

    It's understandable to be confused about that, but you probably shouldn't get it explained to you by a white guy.

  54. Why do so many progressives rehash Obama & Clinton's policy failures these days, while seeming to rarely mention Bush & the way he laid the groundwork for Trump? Did the recent Democrats really do more to influence our current political moment than Bush did, or are we falling for alt-right whataboutism?

    We spent 8 solid years talking about W, and Obama was, in many ways, a response to that. Seeing how Obama failed to fix the problems of Bush, and looking at how both Clintons suffer from similar problems to Obama, means the failures of liberalism feel extra relevant right now. While it's true W paved the way for Trump (in the same way Reagan paved the way for W), I don't think there's anything new to say about the guy. We're watching the Democratic Party fail in response to Trump in much the same way it failed to respond to W, so maybe we need to talk about that.

  55. After watching your latest video, I have to wonder: is the message "everyone has a place in society, they just need to find it" in popular media (prime example being the movie Hugo, wherein the protagonist literally dreams of becoming a cog in the machine) by nature conservative?

    "Everyone has a place in society" is not inherently hierarchical.

  56. You are a jerk.

    Thanks for watching!

  57. Is “toxic masculinity” a gender-neutral term? I am a (cis)woman and I feel like I have toxic-masculinity problem like not showing tears, emotions, suppressing feelings, not admitting weakness and vulnerability, not wanting to be a victim, stuff like that. I thought that I can’t call it “toxic masculinity” since I am a woman but recently I thought that I can because patriarchy. What do you think?

    I'm no expert, so this is just my opinion. But we usually talk about toxic masculinity in terms of how men are socialized to act. So, if it's just me, I would hesitate to call a woman exhibiting those behaviors "toxic masculinity" because it's just an individual person displaying the same traits, not the larger social construct the phrase usually refers to.

    Take that with a grain of salt because I haven't, like, read a bunch of essays on how the term was formulated and what it was intended to mean.

  58. Do you plan on updating your "Future of Innuendo Studios" video now that you've passed your highest goal on Patreon by almost $1500? (Congrats btw, you've done more than enough to deserve it)

    I mean, making a new Patreon video is tantamount to asking for more money, and I don't super-duper need to fundraise at the moment. I can't really offer new perks since I'm only variably good at doing the ones already promised.

  59. I really feel for anyone trying to review the new Avengers in this spoiler-phobic environment, where you're pretty much not allowed to discuss the plot *at all*.

    How do you make a coherent, interesting review with that kind of informal restriction?

    You're mistake is expecting a review of Endgame to be coherent or interesting.

  60. 69 or 96?

    88

  61. The main difficulty with internet pornography, as I see it, is the total monopoly that exists: MindGeek controls the vast majority of internet pornography. It creates porn, but also profits from the piracy of porn, and so can afford to pay less for industry actors. It's a really complicated issue and I 100% recommend people really investigate the source of their porn. These days, you can definitely engage specifically with creators that you like, rather than participating in systems which continually deepen the monopoly.

    in response to What do you think has to exist in a piece of pornographic media (i.e. anything that sexualise people) to make it not harmful?

    This is not a question.

    (But Crash Pad, IFeelMyself, and Erika Lust all have good reputations.)

  62. I don't understand SOME women.

    Some of them are already in a relationship but yet they still want to flirt with OTHER GUYS

    Have they any shame??

    you can't expect women not to flirt with me, brah

  63. I know this doesn't have too much to do with understanding the alt right but are you planning on making a video that explores some of the psychology and core beliefs of various leftist philosophies or leftism as a whole?

    I just find this sort of analysis really fascinating. Even if it's me that's getting analyzed. :p

    No plans, but that does seem like something I would do, doesn't it?

    I'm considering doing a video (or series) on socialist revolutions throughout history, because that's a thing I want to know more about and it'd be a good excuse to research it. Would be hard to do that without incidentally discussing the core ideas of leftism.

  64. I once saw a tweet that said, "How do you know if a white guy is poly? Don't worry, he'll find a cutesy way to tell you", and I think about it every time I see your (funny, don't get me wrong!) bio.

    What's the story behind the "Monogamist ally" in your bio?

    Appreciate all you do!

    Worried that if I don't sandwich this between me saying nice things that it's gonna come across badly! Very worried about that!

    It came from this exchange with Kat Blaque: https://twitter.com/InnuendoStudios/status/1028844873347223552

    Monogamists have a hard go of things and they need all the allies they can get!

  65. Do you admit that reading a book these days is HARD?

    And are online podcasts and video essays an alternative (but not perfect) solutions to resolve this?

    Reading books is really hard.

    Everything the internet has told you is true: it's your phone. Reading books is hard because of your phone. Throw it into the sea.

    (Or do audiobooks, that's what all my friends do.)

  66. I haven't seen a lot of these people, can you link the ones after peter coffin?

    in response to Is there any chance you'd consider making a video about what Sargon is up to with UKIP? That press conference where he just gets up just to have a pop at the media directly, and the way he responded to Kate McCann is disasterous. And to top it off, he seems to think that he's going to win in the same way Trump won his candidacy, "they will make the same mistakes".

    They're all on YouTube.

  67. I'm confused

    What does Michel Foucault's Politics of Health have to do with literature and writing?

    what?

  68. It bothers me how """the media""" is such a useful scapegoat. Want to avoid criticism? Say the magic words: "cLiCkBaIt jOUrnALisM" and "oUt oF cOnText". Alt-right figureheads like Lobsterdad and Sam Harris have weaponized this, but celebrities with cult-like following like Musk and freaking p*wd*ep*e have also used this tactic to gain substantial fame too. What's worse is how effective this method is at controlling the conversation. Take the recent outrage with Katie Bouman, when it became clear that the whole thing was a manufactured outrage by very angry pathetic men on the Internet, those same men started blaming """the media""" for crediting Katie as solely responsible for the project - a complete fabrication - and "The Discourse" in non-leftist space starts shifting to "journalistic integrity" or whatever. Guess this is not a question, just a mini-rant at how frustrating it is that people keep falling for this shit.

    in response to I agree. I do also think there's something to be said about how anti-media the Alt-Right are.

    Fair point. Maybe I'll talk about scapegoats at large someday.

  69. What do you think has to exist in a piece of pornographic media (i.e. anything that sexualise people) to make it not harmful?

    That framing implies sexualized material is harmful by default and is only acceptable when you do specific things in it. What if I told you there's nothing inherently harmful about sexual media, that there are hundreds of ways to depict sexuality and most of them are entirely ethical, and that the tendency for porn to objectify its women and lack notions of consent or sexual safety is not a problem with the porn itself but with the sexist society that produces it?

    If you want to make ethical porn, follow the same rules as any romcom: both characters have agency, and the audience is suppose to care about the happiness and wellbeing of each. Don't fetishize certain races, orientations, abilities, ages, genders, or body types over others. These are very low bars that we are fully able to clear in tons of other media.

    (I also think "anything that sexualizes people" isn't a great definition of pornography, but that's neither here nor there.)

  70. So I've watched "always a bigger fish" more times than I can count, as well as most of the rest of your videos, and there's been a thought that I can't really get out of my head. Would you say that institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College are what happens when you apply the hierarchical mindset to elections?

    Basically where I'm going with this is that the Senate (and the electoral college to a significantly lesser extent) creates a hierarchy in government, where voters in big states like California and New York are the minnows and voters in small states like Wyoming and North Dakota are the sharks. And conservatives are ok with this not just because it benefits them, but because they're fundamentally comfortable with even democratic institutions having a hierarchical bent. And this would also explain the right's comfort with making voting harder, well that and Burke's influence.
    (also I know I could go anon but I'm not, mainly because I want you to know for sure that even if my questions are dumb and annoying, they're at least asked in good faith)

    Well, the *idea* behind the Senate and Electoral College was - at least, on paper - to distribute power. If votes were proportionate to population, like they are in the House, than heavily populated states would carry more weight than sparsely populated ones. If it ran entirely like the Senate, where every state has the same number of representatives regardless of population, it'd be the reverse: there were a lot more rural areas than cities at the time, and they would have way more influence despite containing fewer people. So Congress just said "por que no los dos" and mashed them together. These attempts to balance the needs of urban and rural voters is part of the logic behind the Electoral College.

    (Do keep in mind that the major issue behind all of this was rural plantation owners trying to protect themselves from liberal Northern cities that would try to end slavery.)

    However much the *idea* of Congress and the Electoral College is about balancing powers, over the last 200 years conservatives have found a lot of ways to *use* them to build and maintain hierarchies. The advent of political parties and dramatic urbanization of the US has changed the country to the point where neither system really does what it was supposed to do anymore (and arguably all it ever did was prolong slavery), but Republicans defend the systems because they know how to game them.

    There is still some valid concern that rural areas would be completely ignored during campaigns if not for the Electoral College, but, hell, if you're not a battleground state you're getting ignored anyway. There are better ways to address that problem.

  71. When you're writing your alt-right playbook videos, do you write the body of the piece first and then the "say for the sake of argument" bit at the beginning, or the other way around? Or put another way, does the "say for the sake of argument" piece inform how you write the rest of the video, or is it the other way around?

    Well, when I sit down to write the script, I usually write from beginning to end, though stuff may move around on revision. But I've generally had some idea of what I want to talk about for months before I sit down. So, even though I *write* the "say for the sake of argument" bit first, I often only come up with the example after ironing out what the body of the essay is about. But it's kind of necessary to figure out the example before starting the script, because it determines my whole approach to the concept.

  72. I agree.
    I do also think there's something to be said about how anti-media the Alt-Right are.

    in response to Is there any chance you'd consider making a video about what Sargon is up to with UKIP? That press conference where he just gets up just to have a pop at the media directly, and the way he responded to Kate McCann is disasterous. And to top it off, he seems to think that he's going to win in the same way Trump won his candidacy, "they will make the same mistakes".

    Tell me more.

  74. This may not be the type of question you can answer. If not, totally understand.

    I have friends who are trans, but twice now two (different friends) have come to me and told me they had feelings for me. I told them that I really love them being parts of my life, but that I'm just not attracted to them. Why does this feel almost like a political issue to me given that, most people, have plenty of people they want in their lives but simply aren't attracted to?

    Another friend of mine said recently that by making it clear I wanted them to be in my life, I was being a bit of an asshole by sending mixed signals given how close we had been in the past.

    I'm not trying to use you as an advice columnist. I'm not ruling out that one day I may really connect with a trans guy (I'm gay), but neither of them have been that for me.

    I have, through both my upbringing (small town England) and pop culture, been subjected to intense socialisation, that has probably shaped the kind of men I'm attracted to. I have tried to talk about this with one of them (who I'm closer to), and he gets it, but he's also admitted that it exacerbates some deep insecurities he has.

    Why does this feel political? Is it because to be trans right now is to have your identity completely politicised? Did gay people go through this/are they going through this still with men who don't lean that way?

    Any input you have would be really appreciated. I don't really know who to talk to about this with experience and my therapist hasn't really been able to provide any meaningful insights.

    Best wishes.

    The personal is always political, and you and your friends' lives are among the most politicized. Transphobia is especially rampant in England, so navigating romantic feelings with trans people is always going to be fraught. For example: when the trans community points out that a lesbian who sleeps with a trans woman is still a lesbian, TERFs insist trans women are "forcing" lesbians to have sex with them. This is peddling the narrative that same-sex relationships between cis and trans people aren't *properly* queer and that saying otherwise is a form of coercion. So I can imagine that being gay, trans, and British could give one a lot of anxiety about rejection - that you will never be accepted as a man by your romantic interests, by your friends, by the gay community, or even by yourself.

    As a cishet white guy, I'm only repeating what I've heard from trans people, so I'm in no way authoritative. But I know enough to know that getting turned down is rarely *just* getting turned down. Your friends may be afraid you don't see them as men, or the rejection may make them *feel* like they're not men (which they are). About the only thing you can do is keep affirming that your disinterest is not a rejection of who they are, that you do see them as men, that you validate their gender and sexuality, that they have every right to date men in the gay community. Insecurities are probably not going to get cured, only managed - British transphobia is not going to be cured in the next couple months - and some of that work they'll have to do themselves. And I can't promise it'll go well - internalized transphobia is a beast - but being a good friend and a good ally is the best you can offer.

  75. I didn't correlate people stoking resentment for the US to position themselves as world leaders with the US collapsing but certain leftists circles do want to see the US collapse given that the US is the leader of capitalism amongst the world no? I'm just saying that removing all US influence from the world full stop gives Russia and China free reign when they've already enacted their own form of imperialism within their own regions and are seeking to further that (Russia's cyber meddling and invasion of their neighbors, China's Muslim concentration camps + Belt and Road initiatives, plus transferring the debt of Africa nations to themselves.)

    in response to Do you not find China and Russia stoking Americanophobia for their own political hegemonic ambitions to be concerning? The world isn't safer if the US is dismantled and then Russia, China, and/or the EU are waiting in the wings to replace it with their own Hegemony.

    a) What you're talking about is accelerationism, and, yes, there is a small minority of Leftists who believe in defeating capitalism by speeding its collapse under its own weight. But I have never indicated that I am one, and they hold little sway over Leftist movements (in part, I believe, because being part of a Leftist movement wouldn't be accelerationist), so I don't know why you're bringing this to me, and, again, I don't see how this is a threat.

    b) What does any of this have to do with Americanophobia?

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