CuriousCat Archive Page 171 of 202

  1. Do you think reparations for descandants of black slaves is a priority for progressive minded organizations?

    No, but in a just world they would be.

  2. What do you think of black nationalism?

    That is a term that can mean a lot of things, none of which are crying out for a white guy's opinion.

  3. When watching your videos, it's pretty evident that the right uses some very nasty and outright mean tactics, yet they prove to be effective. So, I'm asking myself the Question: Should the Left do the same and copy right wing tactics? E.g. why don't we go around to almost every major ad-showing platform with a think tank and if they refuse to show our ads, call everyone "Anti-Free Speech" until they submit and spam the platform with ads from said think tank?

    I'm sorry if this comes off the wrong way. I'm just a very cynical, bitter, angry and hopeless lefty.

    Well, something I tried to emphasize in the Control the Conversation and Never Play Defense videos is that some conservative techniques won't work for us. Treating debates as a show of dominance? That doesn't enforce a leftist worldview. Reducing our arguments to quippy soundbites? Problem there is, our arguments can never be as short and quippy as theirs, because theirs don't have to adhere to reality. Yelling about free speech if networks don't run our ads? Networks don't give a fuck, because yelling about free speech doesn't turn away liberal viewers nearly as much as it does conservative ones.

    Now, there are many techniques the Right uses that are perfectly legitimate for us to use. I stressed in You Go High, We Go Low that conservatism is driven not by rules but by ideals, and that the left should do the same but with better ideals. And we are absolutely capable of controlling the conversation, though we may have to control it slightly differently. But, in general, we need to stop thinking that conservative techniques are the only ones that win.

    I would say the reason the Left keeps failing isn't because they won't follow the Alt-Right Playbook, but because the Democratic Party doesn't seem to have *any* playbook. I spend so much time illustrating Far Right techniques because it seems much of the Left has *no idea* what game the Right is playing. The Right isn't full of masterminds; they're not thinking three moves ahead. But they can anticipate what liberals are likely to do; they are thinking ONE move ahead. And liberals aren't anticipating conservatives at all, or else they are but aren't changing their gameplan to account for it. I illustrate the right's gameplan because we would see a lot more success if we just stopped falling for their traps.

    The fact is, conservatives rely on dirty tactics because their policies are abject failures and their beliefs are unpopular. Their base is dwindling, each generation is more progressive than the last, and their last two Presidents lost the popular vote. We don't have to change that much to beat them.

    The Democrats just needs to actually stand for something.

  4. So... bringing back whats stolen is literally the best thing to come out of 2018 but theres one bit i was curious about. Im not trying to call you transphobic, i dont think you are at all, but theres a clip where you say like, motherhood and womanhood shouldnt be so closely linked in the cultural conciousness, while showing an image of a pregnant man, and i was just wondering how that was meant to read?

    The association between womanhood and pregnancy ignores men who can get pregnant, and I wanted to point that out.

  5. Hello! I'm a fan from Brazil. I would like to ask if there is any material about politics in art you would recommend. Like, how certain beliefs and messages can be affirmed in art even without the author's knowledge or intention. I'm having a hard time making myself understood about this
    in the conversations and I wanted to have a better basis to argue about.

    Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan is kind of the ur-text on that. I'll get around to reading my copy someday!

  6. Hey! I was trying to explain cultivation theory to a friend recently and realized your 'A Single German Study' video was the only good video I could find that meaningfully discussed it on youtube.

    So I was wondering if that was a topic you;d ever want to go over in more detail again?

    I don't know that there's much more I have to say on the matter.

  7. I've been working on a novel with a lesbian main character whose girlfriend's death in the middle of the book is a major plot point. When I was doing a plot synopsis for my partner, they pointed out the existence of the "bury your gays" trope (which I have somehow not really run into myself before).

    For context, I am demisexual and bigendered, very firmly in the QuILTBAG+; this plot point is not in the spirit of punishing a gay character or saying gay people don't deserve or can't have happiness that the trope seems to be used.

    With that said, I worry that no matter how well told or what my intention, the existence, prevalence, and toxicity of the trope will ignite backlash regardless.

    Do you have any thoughts on how to navigate this?

    Sorry, I'm the wrong person to ask. :(

  8. What do you think of religion? Is that going to be included in the alt-right playbook?

    I don't know if I'll ever make a video on religion, but it wouldn't be part of TARP.

  9. So you're an athiest right?

    That's an odd way of phrasing the question, but yes.

  10. "Religion is not inherently anything. One of the reasons Christianity was suppressed in Rome was because it was basically communism. Spirituality has no innate political form; there are religious beliefs for every social structure that has or will exist."

    Religion and spirituality are 2 separate categories.

    There are people here in the US who try to make Buddhism fit into their box by saying they're "spiritual". When in countries like Thailand Buddhism has a long and deep history in that country.

    I just think it's disingenuous to try and say they are the same thing.

    I like how you imply that I am knowingly conflating two concepts to mislead people instead of just using two words that are often treated colloquially as synonyms.

  11. Why is our generation so unhappy?

    ...because things are bad?

  12. It's not a question, but thank you for everything you do. Watching the Alt-Right Playbook (especially The Card Says Moops) has REALLY made me feel a lot more empowered to say "I'm not going to engage in this" and ignore the "see I won because you aren't arguing" rhetoric afterward. That's really really valuable and I am so excited to see what lies at the other side of the "so how DO we talk to conservatives" question. You are massively appreciated.

    <3

  13. But just because it's cultural doesn't mean it's good, right?

    in response to A more popular talking point to justify capitalism is "it's not perfect, but it's the best system we've got". So it's like learned helplessness, if we're being charitable. It's like that saying: “If you are not liberal at 20, you have no heart and if you are not conservative at 40 you have no brain.” Btw, how true is this in your opinion? You mentioned you have liberal parents, have they gone right-wing now that they're older?

    I certainly never implied it was good.

  14. Thought experiment: if you were Thanos and you snapped your fingers and made everybody to the Right of you disappear. Would the world be a better place?

    I get a lot of questions on here trying to get me to advocate violence against the Right. I usually delete them, but this was a creative attempt.

  15. Sorry if you've answered this question before (or something like it), as I've only just found your CuriousCat page. Recently I adopted a policy of calling out people who casually use offensive language in chats I'm in, usually discord servers. Antisemitic "jokes," anti-lgbtqa+ terms, and transphopic terms, most commonly. My idea was to vocalize an objection, to make it known that not everyone present is just going to be silently complicit in such, and maybe start pushing such language out as a result. Even if everyone else winds up dogpiling me with a "can't you take a joke" or some such. In your opinion, do you think such action is productive? Is there a better way to go about it? And also thank you so much for all the work you do, my partner and I love your videos.

    I think it has the potential to be highly productive, but it depends a *lot* on context. Speaking up can make it clear there are dissenting opinions. But if people routinely yell at you, seeing how you get treated can actually discourage others from speaking up in the future. It depends on the culture of the group or chat or forum or comment section you're in. Sometimes the problem needs to be addressed with a call-out. Sometimes it needs a call-in. Sometimes it needs to come from a community member. Often it needs to come from a moderator. You need to account for the fact that, should people react badly to getting challenged, they may not only take it out on you. So you need to know something about the people you're challenging to anticipate what kind of reaction you're likely to get. You need one set of tools if you're trying to change someone's mind, and a different sent of tools if you're trying to convince their audience not to listen to them.

    So, yes. Such action is productive, and a major part of making things better. But it's one part of a multi-pronged solution, and it can be useless or even backfire if used in the wrong context. There's no silver bullet for this stuff; every situation is unique, and you'll have to think through what the best way to handle each one is.

  16. I often find myself overwhelmed and just mind numbingly angry about the sorts of things that right wingers say/do in order to support their beliefs. Coupled with the daily news' potential to have me hoping and praying it's just an onion article and this isn't really happening, I'm often left feeling so overwhelmed that I just try to forget any of it even exists. This is not a good way to be an exact change. Do you have any advice on how to circumvent or remedy this burnout?

    I've said this a few times before, but here's what's worked for me:

    The two central features of overwhelm, in my experience, are feeling like there's too much to deal with and feeling too disempowered to do effect any change. So my solution was to narrow my focus to a manageable area and *do something* about that area. I chose reactionary rhetoric and ideology and started The Alt-Right Playbook as a means of researching it and educating others with what I learn. I know people who've started going to their local DSA meetings and come out feeling much more hopeful. Some folks start volunteering with non-profits that are doing work in areas related to current issues, like refugee advocates or environmental groups. I've been considering volunteering with Life After Hate if I can find the room in my schedule.

    So, if you want to try what's worked for me, take a look at what issues are most concerning to you and look at your skillset, and see how you can apply the latter to the former, and make that your project. No guarantees that it'll help, but it's been good for me.

  17. Does the world as a whole really get more progressive over time? I know you don't predict future trends, but do you believe there are underlying reasons for social progress that make it likely to happen/continue besides the specific folks & movements who worked for it?

    in response to A more popular talking point to justify capitalism is "it's not perfect, but it's the best system we've got". So it's like learned helplessness, if we're being charitable. It's like that saying: “If you are not liberal at 20, you have no heart and if you are not conservative at 40 you have no brain.” Btw, how true is this in your opinion? You mentioned you have liberal parents, have they gone right-wing now that they're older?

    It would've been more accurate for me to say "the Western world *has* gotten more progressive over time" rather than claiming it's the whole world or that it's inevitable. That was thoughtless of me. There is no guarantee that progress will continue. I do feel that intolerance and tribalism are inherently unsustainable, and that movements built around them will, on a long enough timeline, fail. But that's not empirical, and there's no accounting for how far it sets back progress or how long it'll take to climb out of that hole. So, yeah, things don't get better because that's just how society works, things get better because people make them better.

  18. Is capitalism basically just feudalism? A person owns something, they “let” others use it and then collect all the wealth while workers barely scratching for basic needs.

    It contains similar structures and problems as feudalism, but I don't see the value in using the same term for both.

  19. I honestly abhor the left-right dichotomy because in practice, it allows right-wingers to claim victim status, blame """the Left""" for virtually everything, and fooling naive centrist (myself when I was young) into believing the false equivalences, like "Democrats and Republicans are equally bad". When discussing politics, I usually jump straight to the policy and avoid using labels like "left", "right" "centrist", "liberals" "conservatives" altogether, so no one can go "you are bias against conservatives yada yada yaddaa". Should I start using labels more so as to "mainstream" them, as you said in your video?

    in response to Are there more sides than the Right and Left in politics? Is there an Up or Down?

    I'm not here to tell you what you should or shouldn't do. But if you focus on policy, and consistently support policies from the Left, the Right is going to say you're biased against conservatives. You can't win by their rules, because their rules are "we always win."

  20. A more popular talking point to justify capitalism is "it's not perfect, but it's the best system we've got". So it's like learned helplessness, if we're being charitable. It's like that saying: “If you are not liberal at 20, you have no heart and if you are not conservative at 40 you have no brain.” Btw, how true is this in your opinion? You mentioned you have liberal parents, have they gone right-wing now that they're older?

    in response to Would you say that the way that the right blatantly ignore suffering in a way to justify things like capitalism is a form of the card says moos or do you think that there is something deeper to it?

    No. My parents were raised by conservatives. They got more liberal as they got older.

    The argument that you get more conservative as you age comes from a few factors: Historically, people got richer as they got older, and conservatism correlates with wealth. Also, the world as a whole gets more progressive with time, so your beliefs can seem liberal in your 20s but conservative in your 40s without changing much. And, finally, our parents are our models for adulthood, so as we get older, and especially if we have kids, we tend to partially emulate our parents' politics, and since the older generation tends to be more conservative than the younger, we often end at a halfway point between our own politics when we were young and our parents' politics.

    It has nothing to do with conservatives having more brains. It's cultural.

  21. "They lash out because they feel we have been slowly and furtively taking things from them their whole lives."

    But why? Like... Okay, I get equality feels in just when the cards have been stacked in your favor your whole life. But how does that apply to art? Surely, novel music or writing or film about things you're unfamiliar with, is more engaging and interesting than the same shitty jokes, the same over-emphasized perspective, the same conventions, over and over and over. I'd rather have art I DESPISE because I so strongly disagree with it, than art that gives me more of what I already have.

    Well, art isn't so easily categorized into "familiar" and "different." The reality of people is that there is a sweet spot of novelty that people like. I could go off on a tangent about the science of dopamine - novel experiences release more dopamine the more unfamiliar they are, and a little dopamine feels good but too much feels horrible - but, to speak simply: people want stuff that's new, but not TOO new. They want to expand out of their comfort zones gradually, without giving up certain things they are attached to.

    I did a whole video series on women in violent movies and the various ways they are coded to be "acceptable" to men. She's a violent lady, but don't worry! She's one of the guys. Don't worry! It's because she's a mom. Don't worry! She's also sexy. She's new, but not TOO new. The core idea that violence is the domain of men is expanded, but not challenged. And not only does this reassure the male ego, but they enforce the idea that the male ego SHOULD be reassured.

    And, like, liberals have comfort food too, you know? Is my third rewatch of Avatar: The Last Airbender teaching me anything new? Of course not. It's unchallenging, and flattering to the beliefs I already hold. That's not a bad thing, and I'm less offended when someone hates on it, and maybe more open to series that would challenge those beliefs. But it's not like I went out to see American Sniper, or God's Not Dead, or any of the other stuff marketed to conservatives. I am most interested in being challenged by parts of the Left that may make me uncomfortable; I'm not that interested in hearing the Right's bullshit for two hours. I think that's true of most of us; how often does the Left listen to Jordan Peterson *not* filtered through the lens of Contrapoints and Shaun and Peter Coffin?

    I'm not trying to paint an equivalence here. I'd say conservatives are, on average, considerably more protective of the sanctity of their comfort zones than liberals. But the Right seems more aware that culture is a battleground than the Left. They know that movies and books and music full of ideas they despise aren't just things that upset them, they are mainstreaming ideas that will materially affect their place in society. They get upset about Black Panther referring to while folks as colonizers because they know the world will change if that idea catches on.

    They lash out over art because they intend to win the Culture War, and most liberals won't even admit the war exists.

  22. Would you say that the way that the right blatantly ignore suffering in a way to justify things like capitalism is a form of the card says moos or do you think that there is something deeper to it?

    Wait til my next video.

  23. Have you got any advice for how to talk to (white, male) communist types who are anti-IDPol and consider things like The Testimony of Actual Black Activists and Basic Sociological Findings as establishment propaganda?

    Don't.

    There is probably better advice out there, but that's all I know at this juncture.

  24. No question, just wanted to say thank you. You're answering questions I didn't know I had, both here and in your excellent video essays. You've given me a lot to think about.

    thank YOU

  25. Speaking of Vietnam, as a Vietnamese, I was wondering how popular the belief among US citizens nowadays that the Vietnam War wasn't imperialism, but "the US heroically tried to fight the evils of communism by helping the South Vietnam government (and accidentally killed millions through bombing and disfigured generations with Agent Orange)? (the latter interpretation I've seen being supported by quite a few people on places like reddit or quora).

    in response to Isn't Vietnam currently a non-authoritarian communist state? Although incidentally Vietnam is one of the most pro-US countries in SEA right now.

    Well, within my own bubble, and the way it's portrayed in media, the Vietnam War seems to be thought of as boondoggle. A lot of people won't admit it was imperialism, but most don't think it was heroism, either. Similar to Iraq and Afghanistan, it was the US getting into a dodgy situation with little public support and no real victory condition. So, a mess, but I think a lot of Americans are fuzzy on *why* we got into the mess in the first place.

  26. Are there more sides than the Right and Left in politics? Is there an Up or Down?

    If we're getting really broad, political ideology is about power - who should have it, whom it should be used on, and how it should be distributed. You can view the Left-Right spectrum as, the further right you go, the more consolidated and hierarchical power is, and, the further left you go, the more distributed it is. There are a billion different interpretations of how these different power structures should take shape, but I don't think you can add an extra axis to it. Most any political structure you can think of will probably fit somewhere on the line between "power should be vertical" and "power should be lateral."

  27. For all the “not all conservatives are bad” that the Internet loves to throw out, I’ve noticed that people who identify as conservatives (or even as capitalists) very often behave like assholes online, especially in discussions that aren’t even too political, being unable to accept that people might see things differently and when not getting the support they wanted, start blaming things like “sjws”, “far left”, “echo chamber” and so on. You have experience talking to right-wingers, so I was curious as to whether this behavior can be considered a product of their political belief or not, or is it just “people are shitty online”.

    It's important to understand that conservatives behave that way because they feel they are responding in kind. They feel they are being attacked, degraded, and belittled by the Left pretty much all the time. They feel much of what's wrong with America is the fault of the Left - the reason they don't make more money is the Left's immigration policies sending all the jobs to immigrants, the reason they can't flirt at work is because of the Left's overreaching discrimination policies, the reason they get yelled at online is because the left has made it a crime to be a straight white man.

    None of this is true, but that's hardly relevant. They believe it.

    A while back I talk on Twitter about how conservatives infiltrate communities, and I spent the next 48 hours being dogpiled by people yelling about how leftists infiltrate communities all the time. Thing is, they see "expressing a liberal opinion in a forum" to BE infiltration. Doesn't matter if it's someone who's been in the community since the beginning, most communities are supposed to be "apolitical," so if you're talking politics you're infiltrating. Of course, they don't feel that way when someone talks politics they agree with, because that doesn't seem political, that just seems like common sense. And if Nazis are in their forum, well, that's not political, because no one takes Nazis seriously.

    They lash out because they feel we have been slowly and furtively taking things from them their whole lives. They see our very presence in society as robbing them of the happiness and security the world promised them. We've ruined dating, ruined the jobs market, ruined gender, ruined music, ruined video games, ruined comedy.

    They aggress because they see our believes as inherently aggressive. That's why they're constantly talking about "taking back what's ours" and "owning the libs" and "making America great again."

    They're not "being shitty." To them, it's self-defense. And, sometimes, it's revenge.

  28. Piggy backing on the communist atheist question...

    Would you say that communist regimes that became authoritarian became that way because of communism... or was it that those authoritarians found communism to be their best tool?

    I wouldn't make any claims without doing more than cursory research.

  29. Hi :)
    I hope you’ll forgive my ignorance, but I don’t know much about communism except for having watched First They Killed My Father, and learning some very rudimentary stuff about the DDR and USSR in school. Basically I have no idea where to look for info, so my question is here (and two-fold) what’s your opinion of communism and do you know of any communist societies that have existed peacefully (without violence/persecution/genocide)?

    My thoughts on leftism in general are ill-formed and wouldn't fit into Curious Cat's character limit. But, bullet points:

    - I believe capitalism to be extremely bad
    - while I exist within a capitalist system, I want to reform it into a less horrible state
    - I am aware that there is only so much better capitalism can get
    - I believe capitalism should be replaced, but I'm not sure how to do this
    - of the systems we could replace capitalism with, I am most sympathetic to democratic socialism
    - socialism is also the most viable system for replacing capitalism, being that it has the most support
    - I don't know for sure if socialism works
    - I know for a fact capitalism doesn't work
    - I am thoroughly convinced that the primary reason we are not dealing with climate change is due to corporate interest in making profits at the expense of the planet
    - in no uncertain terms: if we go extinct from climate change, it will be capitalism that killed us
    - the very low bar I would need socialism to clear is "not make the species go extinct"

    So I consider myself a "lefty" or "pinko" or whatever term you want for someone with generally leftists beliefs but no official alignment. One of these days I will sit down and do a shit-ton of research and see which brand of leftism suits me, but that day hasn't come yet.

  33. That's a lot of words for "no I can find a single example of a non-authoritarian communist political entity".

    I listed three, smartass.

  34. You seem to give a lot of nuances between different types of leftism, and even finding the differences and nuances between communism itself. This isn't necessarily wrong of course, the world is nuanced. But it seems that you lump the Right all in a similar category?

    Do you believe there's many sides to the Right as there is to the Left? If no, why not? This feels like bias to me.

    I have actually, expressly said that the Right is, in many ways, *more* diverse than the Left, and despite devoting an entire video to explaining the differences between the Alt-Right and conservatives in general, people still accuse me of conflating the two.

    Believe it or not, I am deeply versed in the varieties of conservative viewpoints. I have spent much, much more time talking about the different mentalities on the Right than the Left. My "bias" is that, though conservative thought may express itself in many ways, the root ideas of conservatism are ones that I have engaged with deeply and found to be fundamentally wrong, and, frankly, immoral.

    Sometimes people aren't biased or ignorant, they just actually judge a thing to be bad.

  35. What kind of leftie are you? A socdem, an ancom, a tankie, a Maoist or a normie American liberal?

    I'm a pinko.

  36. Would you answer more questions if curious cat had a private answer feature?

    A few more.

  37. sincere question, do you automatically assume someone is a regressive if they use "sjw" unironically?

    Yes.

  39. I think it's good to be skeptical of revolution as a way to maintain a lasting social change from authoritarianism, like you said. What do you personally think are some effective ways to change society/behavior without resorting to revolution? Speaking from experience, I don't think things like strikes will work in the long run.

    I'm not against revolution in the broad sense, I just don't know what separates the ones that make good on their promises and the ones that betray them to set up authoritarian governments. How do you organize such that the first thing will happen and not the second? I haven't done enough research.

    I have no idea what makes the kind of lasting change we need. It's a huge problem that I've barely scratched the surface of in my research.

  40. And yet communist societies sought to suppress Christianity and all other religions. Why is that? Actually, why do all communist societies turn into authoritarian regimes?

    in response to Do you think religion and leftist ideology are inherently at odds? Or do you think it's only organized religion that's at odds with leftism, when it gains power?

    These are some very sweeping statements!

    So, doing some very cursory research: There is a Marxist-Leninist tradition tradition of considering religion inherently bourgeois, partially informed by the Russian Orthodox Church having been so deeply ingrained in the Russian state. The Soviet Union and many other communist states - primarily those in Asia - practiced state atheism. What "state atheism" means depends on the state: Russia was actively hostile towards religion, Cuba does not allow religious folks to be members of the Party but its hostility towards religious practice has been variable (threw clergy in jail in the 60's, semi-tolerant now), China's official position is that religion and communism are incompatible but has officially sanctioned religions and the state is explicitly disallowed from compelling people to become atheist.

    It should go without saying: not every communist state is Marxist-Leninist, nor practices state atheism. I can't find any record of state atheism being enforced in Burkina Faso under Sankara, for instance. An expressly religious socialism called liberation theology has been much more prevalent in Latin American communism.

    It also goes without saying that not all communist societies turn into authoritarian regimes. Once a revolutionary movement takes power, there is always the temptation to consolidate that power for oneself instead of distributing it as promised. Orwell catalogued in Homage to Catalonia how many of the more explicitly anti-statist revolutionaries of the Spanish Civil War were rounded up an executed by their supposed comrades as soon as they held some power. This is one of the reasons I am intensely skeptical of revolution, because there is always a real threat of an authoritarian power grab at the last minute.

    However, this is not the rule. Stating "all communist societies turn into authoritarian regimes" is a gross misrepresentation of history. A more accurate statement would be "the ones that don't become authoritarian regimes are easier for capitalists to overthrow." The endgame for many socialist revolutionaries is to get murdered by capitalists, often backed by a foreign power, usually the US. This is Nicaragua, this is Guatemala, this is Burkina Faso. You may remember a couple of wars in Vietnam and Korea. We would have lots of non-authoritarian communist states if we'd stop invading them.

    It didn't take me long to research whether your claims are accurate, so I might recommend doing some research of your own before making such claims in the future. <3

  41. Wait, how can the doops fight? They don’t have hands?

    in response to So I’ve embarrassingly spent 15 minutes thinking about breadtubers’ ultimates in Smash and damnit I’m going to be productive and share it (I’m so sorry) Crystal: Cause an Eurocopter EC 135 crash Foldable Human: Become Foldy and wreck opponents with cardboard Contrapoints: Become Dark Mother and vore her opponents Hbomb: Summon Sobek to fire his sperm at opponents Shaun: Shame his opponents with his Chad circumference PhilosophyTube: Put on sexy fireman gear and.... idk, lost my train of thought. Any thoughts? And what should your ultimate be?

    they don't have *visible* hands

  42. Can the media/entertainment industry itself act as today's moral gatekeeper that spreads its influence to its audience through visuals and sounds that subconsciously (and actively) shape the oblivious minds of the people?

    That's what media does intentionally or otherwise, but that's more power than I would want to entrust a capitalist industry with doing on purpose.

  43. How does a young gay male adult (me) convince his otherwise very loving mother that her choice of candidate (Bolsonaro) has, whether she intended to or not, encouraged violence and discrimination against her son (whose sexuality she seems to accept)? Is there even a way when she dismisses video evidence as “lines without context”, statistics as “forged” and articles on the subject as “fake news”?

    As a straight American with liberal parents, I'm afraid I don't have much experience with this. I don't know the answer, I'm sorry to say. I know this much: You're not going to change her mind with data, because you're dealing with a difference of ideology. Her belief in Bolsonaro isn't rational, so it can't be reasoned with. Her beliefs do not come from thinking the data is fake; she thinks the data is fake because that would need to be true to justify her beliefs.

    Changing a person's beliefs is a long and difficult process, especially when they believe things that fly in the face of evidence. I'm still trying to figure out how to do it. I know that you'll have to talk about your experience, and how the changes in Brazil have affected you, outside the context of an argument. I know you'll have to probe deeply into your mother's beliefs to figure out where your base assumptions differ.

    But I don't know what to do after that. I just know that's where you start.

    Good luck! I'm rooting for you.

  44. I'm fairly certain that you posted a mountain goats mixtape a while ago on twitter and I've gotten a little bit into them on my own in that time. I never got around to it and can't find it online to check it out? Could you repost the link, please and thank yous?

    I've never posted a Mountain Goats mixtape, sorry.

    I did a They Might Be Giants mixtape:

    https://youtu.be/VSeXNboc7O8

    and a mixtape of breakup songs:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C408DlZ0E64

  45. What do you think about Chris Rock refuse to do stand up at college campuses, because audience is too easily offended today?

    maybe he's too much of a snowflake for this business

  46. So I’ve embarrassingly spent 15 minutes thinking about breadtubers’ ultimates in Smash and damnit I’m going to be productive and share it (I’m so sorry)

    Crystal: Cause an Eurocopter EC 135 crash
    Foldable Human: Become Foldy and wreck opponents with cardboard
    Contrapoints: Become Dark Mother and vore her opponents
    Hbomb: Summon Sobek to fire his sperm at opponents
    Shaun: Shame his opponents with his Chad circumference
    PhilosophyTube: Put on sexy fireman gear and.... idk, lost my train of thought.

    Any thoughts? And what should your ultimate be?

    in response to for a hot second I thought this was a joke about Fodable Human's stream cohost and I was like, yes, of course she should be in smash, of all left tube she's probably the one that would kick the hardest

    I summon an army of my little doops from The Alt-Right Playbook.

  47. Hi, it's me, OP. Thank you for the response. I feel the need to justify myself, because you're right, it's unfair of me to dump a question like that on you. The reason I asked you in particular is because you're 1) someone I follow, 2) responsive, and 3) really smart. Now, none of that justifies me trying to have you answer a question around my own darn beliefs, but at the same time, on a selfish level, I knew I'd get a decent answer that would clear things up a bit. When I put it like that, it sounds really exploitative. Sorry. I hope I didn't bug you too bad having to answer a vague question like that and hope you have a good day.

    in response to So is it cool to be a Christian and an anarchist then? Not trying to be snarky, I mean that honestly.

    Hey, it's not exploitative and I'm not bothered! Like I said, yours was a very benign question. I was just noticing a trend and Curious Cat won't let me just *make a post*, it's gotta answer a question, and I didn't wanna publish the more problematic ones. <3

  48. Is it weird to request more Competitive Melee analogies in future installments of the Alt-Right Playbook? And if it ISN’T weird, then... that?

    I don't pick my analogies in advance, I pick the one that fits for the argument I'm making.

  49. for a hot second I thought this was a joke about Fodable Human's stream cohost and I was like, yes, of course she should be in smash, of all left tube she's probably the one that would kick the hardest

    in response to Should Krystal be in smash?

    Get me talking long enough and it's like Jigglypuff's up-B.

  50. So is it cool to be a Christian and an anarchist then? Not trying to be snarky, I mean that honestly.

    in response to Do you think religion and leftist ideology are inherently at odds? Or do you think it's only organized religion that's at odds with leftism, when it gains power?

    You should probably ask an anarchist or a Christian about that.

    ...

    Also, sorry to use your question as a springboard, but I've been getting a bunch of questions like this lately.

    "Is it OK to be [X]."
    "Is it OK to think [X]."
    "Is it OK to believe [X]."

    I've answered a few, deleted more, but I'm finding it all kind of odd. Any individual question seems harmless, if inexplicable, but as a pattern, it almost seems like people are asking me for permission? Like, "I have this belief system, does that make me a bad progressive?" And, for one, I'm really not the arbiter of what is or isn't good progressivism. If I say, "No, it's not OK to believe [X]," and someone decides to change their whole belief system because I said to? Would that even happen? If not, why ask me if it's OK? It is *waaaaaaay* too much authority to put in the hands of one random YouTuber. (Especially when you're asking a pinko atheist about Christian anarchy.)

    But it's also weird because my work has been so focused on impact over intent. Someone asks me if it's OK to enjoy the celebrity culture of politics, and I don't know how to answer. Tell me something you're *doing* with that enjoyment and we can talk about the consequences of it. But the enjoyment itself? I'm not the Thought Police. I feel what happens inside your skull is of very little importance to a stranger on the internet.

    I've been talking more explicitly about toxic beliefs in The Alt-Right Playbook - and will be getting even more explicit with the next one - but it's always discussing beliefs to explain behavior, because the behavior is the problem and the beliefs are relevant inasmuch as understanding them is the only way to combat the behavior. What you believe is your business - not because all beliefs are valid, but because only your actions are my problem. Like, those libertarians who say "I hate gay people, but they should have the same rights as anyone because the government can't tell you what to do?" I wouldn't wanna be friends with them, but, on paper, I could say "you do you." My problem is they never ACTUALLY defend queer rights, because people don't work like that.

    Again, sorry to the OP for using you as a platform, this is actually one of the more benign questions I've gotten. But, to anyone else reading: tell me how you're living, and I can talk about what that means to culture at large. But if you're asking me which thoughts are OK to have? I got nothing. I'm not qualified to answer, and, if I were, I wouldn't know how.

  51. What's your favorite way to "waste time"?

    I dunno about "favorite," but my default relaxation/procrastination is playing Nuclear Throne while listening to Waypoint Radio.

  53. I have a tactical question, if it's not a bother: how do you deal with people (strangers) who are being loudly hateful if public? A couple of weeks ago there were two MAGA guys at my University who were standing with a sign saying "The WALL encourages LEGAL Immigration" and baiting/roping students into debating them by being just giant assholes... what is the thing to do there that's useful? (This sort of thing happens every couple of months on campus, but usually it's Evangelicals shouting that all the women and gays they're going to hell)

    I'm fond of the "loudly blow a vuvuzela every time they speak" tactic.

  55. Is it wrong to be rich?

    sort of

  57. i like your videos but i miss some points because you use a complex and abstract speech and my first lenguage is spannish not english, it would be nice you to subtle them into spannish (idk if its right "you to subtle or "that you subtle"). are you thought about traslating them to spannish?
    after all the most non-english language spoken in US is spannish and the are 500million spannish on the world

    A number of videos already have Spanish subtitles. I publish translations when people submit them, but I'm sorry to say I don't have time to translate them all myself.

  58. For your new narrative project (fiction work),

    Are you looking into press interviews with authors of their past and present works? To find ideas?

    naw, I'm just gonna write

  59. Do you think it's ethical to be interested in elections as a horse race while also caring about policy?

    In my opinion, ethics rarely come into what you're interested in, only what you do about your interests. If you stay informed about policy and that's what drives your actual activism, enjoying the horse race is pretty harmless.

    What I notice is a TENDENCY for people who enjoy the horse race to buy into the culture of celebrity around politicians, which often clouds their ability to judge policy and also places people onto pedestals when they should be thought of as civil servants. If you can manage those things without it affecting your judgment, good on you. But please interrogate yourself thoroughly, rather than assuming your immune.

  60. Hi Ian,

    I heard that you're working on a narrative project. Just wanna ask you since i'm working on one as well:

    Is your current narrative work deriving "inspiration" from past works from other authors?Especially in terms of how they arrange their texts etc.

    Or do you just come up with ideas out of random?

    My narrative project is literally fanfiction with an analytical bent. :D

  61. If they are doing a bad thing to them by employing them - isn't it a good thing that they stop employing them?

    in response to How come management gets all the negative responsibility (blame) when firing workers, but doesn't get any of the the positive responsibility (credit) when hiring workers - being "job creators". Seems to me like that's trying to eat your cake and have it.

    They are not doing a bad thing by employing them, they are doing a bad thing by mistreating and exploiting them. The good thing to do is treat them better, guarantee them a future, and let them unionize.

  62. Do you think religion and leftist ideology are inherently at odds? Or do you think it's only organized religion that's at odds with leftism, when it gains power?

    Religion is not inherently anything. One of the reasons Christianity was suppressed in Rome was because it was basically communism. Spirituality has no innate political form; there are religious beliefs for every social structure that has or will exist.

  63. Is there truth to the notion that the alt-right and it's adjacents are more secular (not to say atheist) and rationalist (therefore less evangelist) than previous waves of american conservatism and if so does it matter?

    I don't have data on this. It is true that a visible subset of the Far Right is loudly atheist, and atheist communities are among the places the Alt-Right has found purchase. But they march lockstep with the neofolk/pagan/Odinist sects of white nationalism without a second thought. And they are all fellow travelers with the Christian Right, who have radicalized along similar lines in the last decade.

    So, is the Alt-Right more secular than past conservatives? Yes, somewhat.

    Are its adjacents? Not really.

    Are *any* of these people rationalists? Not remotely.

    Does this matter? It is, at least, of note, and may be a wedge we can use to drive different sects apart. But mostly it reveals that the "secular" veneer of the Alt-Right is very thin, and they're drinking the same mythological fascist Kool-Aid as the rest of them.

  64. What do you think of socialism compared to a democratic system?

    socialism is a democratic system

  65. Prepare to fuck or fuck to prepare?

    this is the weirdest proposition I've yet received

  66. How come management gets all the negative responsibility (blame) when firing workers, but doesn't get any of the the positive responsibility (credit) when hiring workers - being "job creators".

    Seems to me like that's trying to eat your cake and have it.

    They don't "create jobs," they literally cannot make money without workers. "Let's hire people to do labor" is not a benevolent act or a savvy business practice, labor is just a fact of capitalism. These days, most of the labor is underpaid, undervalued, given inadequate benefits, and sees little of the profit it produces. Mass layoffs are not in opposition to hiring practices, they are part of the same trend of treating labor as disposable.

  67. You have any friends who have a rich kid syndrome?

    I am close with a few people who have serious money, and there are occasions where they misunderstand my experience because theirs is so different, but nothing remotely comparable to Rich Kid Syndrome.

  68. I found your channel a week or two ago, and its so nice to see such in-depth thoughtful content from political commentary (alt right playbook) to movie analysis (bringing back what's stolen). I can't overstate how many times I've been pleasantly surprised by the direction you took a description or analysis. Do you have any other channels you'd recommend with similar worldviews/awareness of issues?

    Sure thing! http://innuendostudios.tumblr.com/post/178958346257/hey-ian-nice-to-finally-be-sending-this-you-must

  69. Why don’t you find smash ultimate particularly compelling? I find melee to be very so so to watch, so I’m just curious to see the other side. Also should wobbling be banned?

    Well, I'll reiterate that I enjoy playing it very much! As for spectating, some of what I love about Smash is its speed and expressivity. Ultimate is still fast and still expressive, but less so in each case than Melee. When I watch Ultimate, it looks like people playing Smash really well. But competitive Melee might as well be a different game from the one I play with my friends! I've also heard that Smash 4 - and, I assume, Ultimate - are more psychological. Since it requires less of the ridiculous techskill of Melee, victory depends much more on mental game and matchup knowledge. And maybe the game would be more exciting for me to watch if I knew more about the matchups and players. But, coming in cold, it doesn't excite me the way Melee did from the first games I watched.

  70. Did you play games by Nicky Case? https://ncase.me/

    I've played a couple. Parable of the Polygons was really eye-opening.

  71. One talking point I sometimes see among gators is that "racism is an American invention" or "it's only racist if you look at it like an American". Do you understand what they're trying to push with this, cause it all just seems super weird.

    I usually hear that as a deflection when people criticize racist tropes in anime, i.e. "those stereotypes aren't racist in Japan." This is one of those "using the language of social justice against you" things where they take an actual progressive stance - don't apply Western lenses to other cultures' media and disregard the local context - and misapplying it to say critiques of shit they like is off-limits, no matter how problematic. It's sort of like when Chuck Palahniuk said some sexist shit and the Left criticized him, and suddenly GamerGate was saying we weren't allowed to criticize him because he's gay. It's a caricature of how they think social justice works, and they don't mean any of it - they don't believe that gay men are untouchable or that cultural sensitivity is paramount, they just think *we* do.

    Anyway, Americans discussing racism in non-Western media is a thorny subject, and I'd say best practices are to a) focus on how this media plays to a Western audience rather than make sweeping statements about its absolute value, and b) seek out and elevate the voices of people within the culture of origin who have critiqued its handling of race. There are feminists and anti-racists and queer activists in every culture, I promise. They are weighing in on their media through their own lenses. Just gotta go find them!

  72. There's a scene in S2 of Dragon Prince where King Harrow says "justice is a just system" or something similar. How do you feel about that considering your viewpoints on values-neutral governance?

    Also, there's a scene where Amaya makes a joke in sign language about an innuendo Harrow makes. I don't speak sign language and couldn't find the joke online, I was hoping "Mr. Innuendo" may know what joke she made?

    "Justice is a just system" is true but broad enough that it can be implemented a number of ways. An implementation doesn't *have* to be Values-Neutral - it can be one in which the intentions behind the law are more important than the letter of the law itself, where context is more important than rules, where outcome is prioritized over process, where a society chooses its values and lives by those instead of assuming good values will rise to the top on their own.

    I would call that a just system.

    I'm impressed that The Dragon Prince is talking about systemic injustice at all, and how it's never enough just to have good people in power. For a show about monarchy, it seems interested in questioning the idea of monarchy itself, though how much weight that carries will depend on how it ends).

    Also, I don't speak ASL, so I don't know what Amaya said. Innuendo does not traverse the language barrier.

  73. I've noticed other tubers like Shaun or Hbomb got like thousands of questions, so they've almost stopped responding (can't fault them). How have you found the resolve to stay active on here?

    I have about 300 followers on Curiouscat. Shaun has 2600 and Hbomb has 4000. They get many, MANY more questions than I do.

  74. One of the right-wing talking point I've seen young people often fall for is how you should be able to say slurs/make bigoted jokes because "it's the intent behind the words that matter" and "either all it's ok or none is ok" or something along those lines. Is there a proper response to this or is it just something that these people will grow out of? (What worries me is that a lot of people don't grow out of it. Worse, they become popular youtubers. Euugh)

    "Either it's all OK or none is OK" is Values-Neutral Governance, which I've made my opinions clear on. "The intent is all that matters" is a mix of extreme deontology and misapplied linguistics, neither of which most people making that argument have any understanding of.

    I don't know that there are solutions, exactly. Something I toy with when people make these kinds of arguments is to ask them to explain their position further. If intent is all that matters, what is your intent? Why do you want to use this word when so many people don't want you to? How can the person hearing you know what your intent is? Do you live by "intent is all that matters" when it comes to other words, i.e. have you never gotten your feelings hurt by someone being well-meaning but inconsiderate? I don't know that you even need to be building up to a "gotcha" moment, just interrogate their position and maybe they'll interrogate it themselves.

    No promises that it will accomplish anything, but, if nothing else, you'll come away understanding how their mind works better.

  75. Have you read any more of Danielewski's books? Besides House of Leaves?

    Perhaps like The Familiar, The Whalestoe Letters, Only Revolutions?

    in response to Did you know that there's gonna be a House OF leaves TV show in the works? Mark Danielewski is writing the whole pilot Lol

    I skimmed through The Whalestoe Letters, though it's like 90% stuff from the House of Leaves appendices. I think I *considered* Only Revolutions one time, but it was just... more pretense than I could handle at that young age.

    Having gone through an inhuman number of years at art school, maybe I could hack it now!

Anon commented:
Ian replied: