CuriousCat Archive Page 172 of 202

  1. 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

    Last I heard, there was a very strange script for a pilot that he leaked, with no indication that it was going to be produced.

  2. Am I the only one who thinks it's ironic that the only actor nominated in this year's Oscars for BlacKKKlansman is a white man??

    I am positive you're not the only one.

  3. Em... basically a girl/dude who has no relations to any victims/perpetrators involved makes a 9/11 joke to anyone at the expense of someone nearby who was affected by 9/11 to a certain extent

    I think 9/11 jokes are just lame and needs to stop. It's like racists jokes that also involves contexts

    in response to Are 9/11 jokes punching down?

    yeah, that sounds not good

  4. Are 9/11 jokes punching down?

    The question is too vague. "Punching down" is when people with privilege mock people with less power than them. Who is making the joke? What about 9/11 is being used for humor? Context is everything.

  5. Wait what? he can just declare a state of emergency without legislative review? so much for the self correcting system.

    in response to What should we do about this dictatorial move? What even can we do?

    I mean, per usual, the "self-correcting system" relies on Congress impeaching a President who misuses these powers, because impeachment was designed before we had political parties, the loyalties of which completely break it.

  6. What should we do about this dictatorial move? What even can we do?

    I don't know yet.

  8. does this bullshit fake national emergency stunt even matter or is it just another part of the spectacles? feels like trump can get away with pretty much everything now like some ducking mary sue villain

    Yeah, it super matters.

    Like, the range of possibilities here is, on one end, it comes to nothing, and, on the other, this is the Reichstag fire. I have no idea where, between those poles, we're gonna end up.

  9. Just wanna say I really appreciate the transcript. Makes quoting your vids to own the CHUDs easier.

    if you're trying to own the chuds, you're ignoring the content of the videos

    :-/

  10. With the current state of things, how optimistic are you on a possible game devs union?

    medium optimistic

  11. Have you ever used the phrase 'those meddling kids '?

    I tend to favor "buttfaced miscreants."

  12. will you ever do guybrush threepwood part three, given that a lot of the games you mentioned in part two are now released?

    I do have another episode or two of Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood? planned, but not to follow up on my hype list. I've been writing capsule reviews of the games in Part 2 (as well as several others) over on my Tumblr: http://innuendostudios.tumblr.com/tagged/capsule-review

    I'm a few behind, but I'm planning to get to all of them.

  14. are you blocking people over calling out lauralei even if they have not done anything to angiespeaks?

    No. I have blocked a handful of people who kept yelling at me after I said I wasn't going to discuss it.

  15. Do you read any self-help, "motivational" books? Are they helpful? If not, why?

    I've recommended The War of Art before, which I did find in the Self-Help section of the bookstore. But it's not a genre I've spent much time with.

  16. What can we do to stop this rot from repeating?

    https://66.media.tumblr.com/5494a0bb5cf3b5bda6e6f92c5610d309/tumblr_pj9ru1NxXo1ryvq99o1_500.gif?fbclid=IwAR1oGLbtl6fAz24KJdh5d-Bkxktu484nZ2-tKDsaKe3Z-ypIsmtzBK1q_sQ

    die earlier

  17. Do you think the video game industry may crash soon in the future? And if it did, would that be a good thing?

    I don't prognosticate.

  18. Have you tried the Impossible Burger and/or the Beyond Meat burger? If both, which do you prefer?

    in response to Are you a vegan/vegetarian?

    I've had both but don't remember which is which. They're fine.

  19. should i give money to charities in rich countries that are not my own? Americans not necessarily are luckier than me because they live in the strongest economy in the world, and there are very important couses, but it feels weird.

    If you want to give to charity, give to whatever you are moved to give to, or whatever you feel is most useful to give to.

  20. I'm surprised by how open you are on curiouscat. I find it commendable that you really open yourself to talking with internet passer-bys. Have you changed your policy on what you do or don't respond to as time goes on? Will you always answer questions people have for you?

    I don't feel that open. I deflect or delete a lot of personal questions. Mostly I share opinions I think are interesting to share, or just say shit I think is funny.

    I was more willing to answer questions that were not, strictly speaking, interesting in the early going. "Have you seen [X]" is more likely to get ignored now. And "here's a video/article/book title" gets ignored more now, as well, not so much because it doesn't look interesting but because I just... don't have time for extra homework.

  21. Hi there. Hope this doesn't come across as a bad faith question, but here I go anyway.

    I don't have any fondness for Donald Trump — the man is a narcissistic sociopath with a very easily wounded ego. I see a lot of people calling him a sexual harasser, and that the Access Hollywood tape was him openly admitting to sexual assault. I haven't ever asked anyone this, because I think it's kind of embarrassing, but what about what he said was him admitting to sexual assault?

    Like, he said - when you have money - you can do anything because they let you, and isn't that... consent? "I just kiss them" is obviously a bit more rapey, and I don't find it very convincing that Trump himself knows a whole lot about consent.

    Could you weigh in on this for me? Again, not intended to be bad faith.

    "When you're a star they let you do it" means they don't put up a fight. That's not consent.

  22. Are you a vegan/vegetarian?

    yes

  23. Of couse! Small scale barter is not really the same as buying stuff with money from for-profit businesses. And presumably it will always exist.

    in response to Not going to utopian communism, but it possible to have an entity that distribute consumable to people, replace their stuff if it get broken etc and make markets secondary (for recreation for instance) or non-existent. I'm not sure it will make better results (either on the worker or consumer side) but there are alternatives.

    So - it would seem to me - if there is barter, there will be a market of some kind, so we should think about how we want that market to function because it could recreate some of the systems we see today, and maybe we want different systems.

    This is all highly theoretically because we're imagining a scenario that doesn't exist and I'm not an economist. So I'm just saying what seems sensible to me and people who've studied this may find me ridiculous.

  24. (Diff anon)

    LOL

    The anon got that first question based on a line written in a novel by Iain Reid's I'm Thinking of Ending Things

    Also adapted into a future Charlie Kaufman feature film on Netflix...

    Now I know where this is gonna go to.

    And it's not the only best thing that Charlie has ever gotten into

    in response to But that requires two people, you and your other half, ain't it?

    that is far less interesting

  27. aMSa! He did so well!

    WHAT A FUCKIN BOSS!!!!

  28. Can you watch Alita: Battle Angel please?

    Theoretically. Is there something about it you want me to weigh in on?

  29. But that requires two people, you and your other half, ain't it?

    in response to Do you think one person can be the best kisser in the world? I believed that one person alone could not possibly be the best kisser in the world It’s like not playing the guitar or something, where you’re alone and you know you’re good at it. It’s not a solitary act. There needs two to be the best, yes?

    whenever I kiss someone, the other person becomes the world's second best kisser by virtue of kissing me

  31. Is post modernism alright for literature and film?

    I don't understand this question, sorry.

  33. Do you think one person can be the best kisser in the world?

    I believed that one person alone could not possibly be the best kisser in the world

    It’s like not playing the guitar or something, where you’re alone and you know you’re good at it. It’s not a solitary act.

    There needs two to be the best, yes?

    i can verify that there is a best kisser and it is me

  34. I watched your video on mainstreaming and I have genuine, good-faith question to ask: how do you push back against the takeover of terms by the alt right? You posit, very correctly, that the alt right has taken over things like Pepe and made them symbols - how do you correct this? What if they come for something you love and make it their symbol?

    If I knew, I would've told you.

  35. Check out the comments from “the card says moops videod”. “””Centrists””” are nothing but masters at false equivalence.

    in response to May I suggest banning the word “strawman” and all its iterations from your comment section? I’d like to see all the “left leaning progressive centrist classical liberals” come up with some new insults. (And apparently, they’re calling you the “liberal Ben Shapiro” now, so have fun destroying right-wing snowflakes with FACTS and LOGIC)

    haaaaaaaa

  36. (diff anon) ok but how do you go and describe a first encounter when you find the other person attractive IF NOT through objectification? I of course have myself work to do, but I don't see a complete stranger on the bus that i find attractive and think "what a beautiful jawline. I bet he also have dreams and aspirations that match dat ass"

    in response to For example? Because I find any description related to describing an attractive lady being objectifying in nature

    Look, if you see an attractive person, and the *only thing* that interests you about her is how good her body looks and the only interaction you could have that matters is sexual, and you're not the tiniest bit curious about who she is or what she's doing or what she likes or what she'd want from you or even what stop of the bus she's getting off at, I dunno, maybe you've got some shit to work through.

    Here's a reality about desire: if you see an attractive woman, and you want something from her - sex, romance, or just attention - then she has agency. She can give or deny what you want. Pick up artistry is all about trying to deny this fact, trying to manipulate women out of their agency basically by hacking social codes. But the nature of desire is granting agency. And if you ignore that, you're not much better than the pick-up artists.

    You don't have to have answers to "who is she? what is she like? what does she want?" Merely wondering is acknowledging that she is a human. And if those questions don't factor into your attraction, you just be kind of shallow.

  37. What do you think of Pacifism?

    it good.

    it doesn't always work.

    but it good.

  39. wait so if I want to enjoy media more I should whenever possible marathon it?

    in response to I want to springboard off your comment about how marathoning games tends to skew scores upward. This is a borrowed observation from back around the release of the second(?) season of Orange is the New Black. I can’t remember who, but someone suggested that Netflix’s practice of releasing full seasons of its originals all at once (as opposed to weekly episodes, for example) produced a similar effect, because the ability to binge-watch reduced the investment needed to keep watching, masked what might otherwise be considered a mid-season slump, etc. Do you think that might be another manifestation of the same phenomenon?

    Marathoning a piece of media will help keep you from noticing if you're having a mediocre time until a bit after you've finished it. It doesn't mean you're going to remember it fondly a month later.

  40. You reckon that Christopher McQuarrie makes a decent screenwriter?

    Sometimes!

  41. I want to springboard off your comment about how marathoning games tends to skew scores upward.

    This is a borrowed observation from back around the release of the second(?) season of Orange is the New Black. I can’t remember who, but someone suggested that Netflix’s practice of releasing full seasons of its originals all at once (as opposed to weekly episodes, for example) produced a similar effect, because the ability to binge-watch reduced the investment needed to keep watching, masked what might otherwise be considered a mid-season slump, etc.

    Do you think that might be another manifestation of the same phenomenon?

    in response to are gaming review a flawed concept to begin with because of how long and engrossing a game usually is to be fully analized in a short amount of time? I'm too old to care if a particular news outlet gave an 8 to a game that was a 9 to me, but i also realize that given the same expertize, you can view a movie 2 times in a single day and form a thought out review, while a game could take you a whole week to form the same opinion and daddy's gotta write a review to pay his bill, honey

    I would assume so.

  42. So Ayn Rand was already a bad apple from the start? What do you think?

    in response to Is Ayn Rand just a shitty person after all?

    Nobody's a bad apple from the start. Ayn Rand chose her path.

  43. are gaming review a flawed concept to begin with because of how long and engrossing a game usually is to be fully analized in a short amount of time? I'm too old to care if a particular news outlet gave an 8 to a game that was a 9 to me, but i also realize that given the same expertize, you can view a movie 2 times in a single day and form a thought out review, while a game could take you a whole week to form the same opinion and daddy's gotta write a review to pay his bill, honey

    Reviewers could have plenty of time to play the game if companies sent them keys earlier. They don't, most often because reviewers marathoning the game on a tight deadline tends to skew the score upwards. Sometimes reviewers are only able to play the game at a company site, where they're made comfortable and given snacks and whatever else might make them remember their time with the game more favorably. There's nothing wrong with game reviews as a concept, the problems are with execution.

  44. Not going to utopian communism, but it possible to have an entity that distribute consumable to people, replace their stuff if it get broken etc and make markets secondary (for recreation for instance) or non-existent. I'm not sure it will make better results (either on the worker or consumer side) but there are alternatives.

    in response to Are you inherently against markets?

    Maybe. It's hard for me to imagine citizens wouldn't start trading with each other. But maybe my imagination is limited.

  45. Is Ayn Rand just a shitty person after all?

    "After all"? Was this in doubt?

  46. Does a look of a film truly matter?

    Film is a visual medium. Of course how it looks matters.

  47. Ever heard of a "Beefsteak Nazi"?

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefsteak_Nazi

    Any comments of the phenomenon? I feel like TERFs are the Beefsteak Nazi to the alt-rights.

    That is a really useful term, thank you! However, calling them Beefsteak Nazis would imply that they're Alt-Right on the outside and feminist on the inside, which I think gives them too much credit.

    TERFs are not feminists. They are people who distort feminist rhetoric to justify transphobia. If you gave them a choice between the feminism and the transphobia, they would pick the latter every time. "We're feminists" is a lie they tell themselves so they don't have to admit their movement is built on attacking women.

  48. For example? Because I find any description related to describing an attractive lady being objectifying in nature

    in response to Is it ok to comment on a woman's beauty in my fiction writing? Like I'm trying to write about a guy sitting alone in a cafeteria and this woman approaches him and he describes in detail how the woman looks like and comment on how gorgeous she is compared to anyone else... Is that ok?

    Objectification means to treat a person as an object. Expressing attraction does not *require* you to ignore the character's humanity, desires, or agency.

  49. This isn't a question, really, but I've noticed this in your videos and in general left rhetoric lately. Be mindful with using TERF as a blanket term when you really mean transphobe or transmisogynist. Your typical sexist, xenophobic, transphobic 4chan dudebro is not a TERF; they wouldn't align themselves with any kind of feminism, reactionary as it may be. All TERFs are transphobes, but not all transphobes are TERFs. Broadly speaking, TERFs *are* reactionary/conservative, so a given TERF is closer to the aforementioned bro than she'd care to admit, but "TERF" is one of those terms that has sort of become vague in meaning through overuse. A trans-exclusionary radical feminist is a specific thing, and I've noticed a lot of people on the left have been using the term TERF as a catch-all to refer to any transphobe since the term became well known. There's a lot of reasons I think this is an issue but generally it's important to be specific with terms and clearly say what you mean. Love your content and I think what you're doing is very important, keep up the great work.

    I say transphobe when I mean transphobe. I say TERF when I mean TERF. When I say 4chan dudebros repeat TERF rhetoric, I mean exactly that: they make arguments that they only heard because TERFs popularized them, regardless of whether they heard them from a TERF directly. I am always deliberate with my language, and I mention TERFs as much as I do because I want to make it clear that they are a reactionary conservative movement and fellow travelers with the Alt-Right.

    I also disagree that TERFs are feminists. Trans exclusionary radical feminism is to feminism what national socialism is to socialism.

  50. Saw one of your retests about students of game dev not knowing what GamerGate is and I agree basically. I still don't really know what it was. I am in first year studying computer science in the UK right now and, although i considered myself fairly tuned into modern youtube left discourse, I thought GamerGate was about concerns re: ethical journalism, and although I knew about the abuse I thought it was an extension of callout/cancel culture

    Have never mentioned GamerGate to another real life person and don't even think the majority of my friends would know anything about it. I asked one once and he remembers the reddit threads but neither of us like Internet Drama so we just ignored them.

    probably worth me saying we are both 18 year old white kids

    I don't know what to tell you. I did a series about angry male gamers and the longest video was about GG. I don' t know what more I can do to set the record straight.

  51. May I suggest banning the word “strawman” and all its iterations from your comment section? I’d like to see all the “left leaning progressive centrist classical liberals” come up with some new insults. (And apparently, they’re calling you the “liberal Ben Shapiro” now, so have fun destroying right-wing snowflakes with FACTS and LOGIC)

    wait wait wait

    WHO is calling me Liberal Ben Shapiro?! :D

  52. Are you inherently against markets?

    that strikes me as like being against money. markets are likely to always exist, so the question is how we want them to function.

  53. So I met this dude, white, American, Techbro, ofc, online who I've been talking to on and off for a couple of days. Definitely a poopnoggin, probably not worth dismissing entirely as a human being.

    He reckons, and I quote, "Capitalism is the system of politics that absolutely respects human rights." Which is so wrongheaded that I have no idea what to say to it. I'm not invested in "The Debate" but I also would actually like to not be flabbergasted the next time this particular slice of poop is served up to me.

    Is there any particular source I could check out to tackle this? Particularly when somebody rejects basic stuff like "Refusing to feed somebody so they starve is bad" or "Altruism exists?"

    I'm going to take on some of this in the next video, which can help with the being flabbergasted part, but I don't know how to change a person's mind on these things. You can probably assume that he actually does, in some parts of his life, operate on the belief that kindness and cooperation are good things - he is probably, like most people, only selectively selfish. So there's stuff you can build on. But there's not gonna be a one-size-fits-all solution. You're dealing with some very deep-seated differences of belief, and you'll have to do some sleuthing to figure where your beliefs differ and find where his particular contradictions are. You're looking at a lot of emotional labor, but, if you're up for it, asking a lot of questions and compelling him to actually articulate his beliefs is probably step one. Don't assume you have the same base assumptions about anything.

  54. Is it wrong to out two adverbs together, like "totally unfairly",?

    If you're looking for a prescriptivist, you came to the wrong place.

  55. Is it ok to comment on a woman's beauty in my fiction writing? Like I'm trying to write about a guy sitting alone in a cafeteria and this woman approaches him and he describes in detail how the woman looks like and comment on how gorgeous she is compared to anyone else...

    Is that ok?

    Not saying it can't be done inoffensively, but it's played out. There are less objectifying ways to show that a man finds a woman attractive.

  56. Re: Liam Neeson recounting his intent to commit a hate crime and talking about how awful it was -- is this the (somewhat) correct way of going about it? Volunteering that you used to believe something awful and then condemning that belief? AFAIK he hasn't come out and gone full reversal/defensive (yet) like other people whose pasts have been dredged up and had some backlash over it.

    I haven't listened to Liam Neeson's explanation. Today would have been Trayvon Martin's birthday, so I wasn't super stoked to listen to an old white guy talk about wanting to attack minorities.

  57. could anonymity on curious cat lead to problems?

    Depends on what you mean by "problem." I sometimes get insulting or borderline threatening messages on here that people almost certainly wouldn't send if it weren't anon. But, since I have control over what does or doesn't get seen, it's hard for that to descend into the nightmares we see on 4chan.

  58. i've been following your stuff for a while now, but i have no idea how i stumbled upon your content. Were you part of the chez apocalypse crew, when their site was up?

    No. Chez has been down for most of my career. You still might have found me through some of them, though - Lindsay and a few others shared my series Why Are You So Angry? on Twitter while it was coming out.

  59. Ethical consumption under capitalism is probably dumb on an individual level, but can community efforts to avoid supporting unethical practices be effective? (I guess veganism or BDS would be like this but I was also thinking of community efforts in a more localized way)

    I think it's important to think of "no ethical consumption under capitalism" as claiming that there is a limit on how ethical you can be within an unethical framework. Ethics is not a binary, and individuals and groups have choices between being more or less ethical within that framework. So, yes, community efforts - as well as solo effort - can alleviate much of the harm capitalism does, and this is moral, appropriate, and necessary. "No ethical consumption" simply means that, until you are addressing capitalism itself, you are treating symptoms and not the root cause.

    But it's not like we can just ignore the symptoms!

  60. Do you support the normalization of people talking openly about their exact salaries? Could it have any downsides?

    Of course there could be downsides. Much of the harassment against Anita Sarkeesian was about her having "too much money" for what she was doing. A salary is just a number - it doesn't tell you the greater context of the local cost of living or how much labor a person performs, and folks will always resort to nebulous and biased gut feelings about how much a person "deserves" for what they're doing. Salary transparency only works if EVERYONE does it, so we can compare how different groups are compensated for the same labor. But the people most willing to share their salaries will be the people with the least to hide about what they earn, which will skew people's assumptions about what everyone else is earning.

    I would say that, before we talk about "normalizing" it for everyone, we should begin by pressuring the most privileged and powerful people to share theirs, so that when marginalized people reveal their salaries there's some context for it.

  61. Does the term "bad faith" apply to people or arguments? Are some arguments inherently insincere, even if believed honestly?

    I suppose you could draw a distinction between "argument made in bad faith" - the person making it is being deliberately manipulative - and a "bad faith argument" - an argument created to manipulate but that is being repeated by someone who believes it.

    So, either.

  62. Is a snake just one long violent worm?

    maybe, but then what's a hagfish?

  63. Recently Youtube started suggestion me videos of "Centrist" gamers, part of the so-called "silent majority" that does not concerned about representation one way or the other. in a way it could be a good development if at least the regressives are not the one that get to take the position of the "sane geek that doesn't care about politics", right?

    well, what youtube suggests to you isn't necessarily reflective of what it's suggesting to other people

  64. Is wanting monogamy ok as long as you are respectful to those who do not want monogamy?

    Of course! You should pick the relationship structure that suits you. I don't have any problem with monogamy - polyamory can be very enriching but also very exhausting - my problem has only ever been with monogamy being treated as a default.

  65. Not OP but your answer piques my curiosity. Based on it, it seems to me that you are against globalization of politics. Are you thus against the UN?

    Second part of the question: The US is on the security council of the UN, it's been my impression that the point of the security council IS to act as some sort of police against international issues and strife.

    Say that the American Left gets exactly what it wants and it leaves world politics. The UK, France, Russia, and China are still on the security council and will still do what they will to interfere with as much as they can for their own gain.

    It feels to me that the answer is to basically disband every global international organizations such as UN, NATO, OAS, OPEC, etc because every region essentially has either a world power or a world power aspirant seeking to dominate and influence as much as it can outside of its borders. A Matryoshka doll of interventionism basically depending on what region is in focus.

    But on the flip side, the point of these organization existing is to make sure something like WW1 doesn't happen again (or stopping the spread of say, an incredibly aggressive imperialist power like Nazi Germany). Are you firmly against politics and activism that extends beyond one's own borders? In other words, are you an anti-globalist (in the purist and non Anti-SJW sense of the word)? If you are, how do you account for issues where the little guy might actually need help from a bigger country from being swallowed up by a power aspiring neighbor?

    in response to Sincere question, leftists complain about US intervention all the time and it is true that we have invaded/meddled with other countries for our own corporate profits for the worst of others more than any other country. But why are leftists strangely quiet about Russian or Chinese interventionism and meddling? The way China is going about installing state controlled corporation in Africa and buying their debt is really just enslaving their countries to Chinese whims instead of Western ones. Not to mention in a lot of leftists regimes like Cuba and Iran there's literal policies of "exporting the revolution" that is... Inherently interventionist? It feels to me that the Right ignored US interventionism as a thing and pretend we're just "being the good guys helping spread freedom" but the Left ignores interventionist from China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia too. Frankly this makes me hard to sympathize with either position in terms of international policies.

    This is extrapolating rather a lot from my statements. The original question was why American leftists criticize US interventionism but not Chinese interventionism, and I answered that we are generally more concerned with our own country's behavior and know that there are dissidents in China to criticize theirs.

    I'm not going to assume the American Left has a unified position on global politics, or pretend I know what it is if they do, but it's quite a reach to say that, because leftists are critical of US intervention, they are against bodies like the UN or would refuse aid to a country asking for it. That is rarely the form US intervention takes, and it stands to reason the Left is critical of the CHARACTER of US intervention - which is largely imperialist and capitalist - than the CONCEPT of intervention as a whole. For my part, as with anything, what is and isn't right depends on context, and the context of US intervention is almost always cruel and overreaching.

  66. Who the hell could call Iran left wing?

    in response to Sincere question, leftists complain about US intervention all the time and it is true that we have invaded/meddled with other countries for our own corporate profits for the worst of others more than any other country. But why are leftists strangely quiet about Russian or Chinese interventionism and meddling? The way China is going about installing state controlled corporation in Africa and buying their debt is really just enslaving their countries to Chinese whims instead of Western ones. Not to mention in a lot of leftists regimes like Cuba and Iran there's literal policies of "exporting the revolution" that is... Inherently interventionist? It feels to me that the Right ignored US interventionism as a thing and pretend we're just "being the good guys helping spread freedom" but the Left ignores interventionist from China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia too. Frankly this makes me hard to sympathize with either position in terms of international policies.

    I think Iran was on the list more as a country that exports its revolution.

  67. Sincere question, leftists complain about US intervention all the time and it is true that we have invaded/meddled with other countries for our own corporate profits for the worst of others more than any other country.

    But why are leftists strangely quiet about Russian or Chinese interventionism and meddling? The way China is going about installing state controlled corporation in Africa and buying their debt is really just enslaving their countries to Chinese whims instead of Western ones.

    Not to mention in a lot of leftists regimes like Cuba and Iran there's literal policies of "exporting the revolution" that is... Inherently interventionist?

    It feels to me that the Right ignored US interventionism as a thing and pretend we're just "being the good guys helping spread freedom" but the Left ignores interventionist from China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia too. Frankly this makes me hard to sympathize with either position in terms of international policies.

    Because the American Left is primarily concerned with American intervention. China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia have their own activists. Let people take out their own trash.

  68. I have a friend who self identifies as being part of the dirt bag left. Now I've gotten most of my introduction to left wing views via femminists like Sarkesian, you, and others along with racial justice advocacy from various sources in hip hop culture.

    I've found my conversations with them to be extremely encouraging and I'm optimistic that there are tons of overlapping goals between the 'social justice' community and the 'dirtbag left.' The main source of conflict as you'd expect is in what language should be used, and if getting into trolling wars with alt righters on the internet is actually worth it.

    My question is, do you think these groups can find common ground? I genuinely think they can but I'm curious what you think are areas I could ask them to improve in. I've found they the people I've met in this community have an actual desire to improve, and I have a sense of duty as a privileged ally to provide help toward that improvement.

    What do you think?

    Well, I'm always banging on about "flexibility of method," so, in theory, there's no reason the social justice community and dirtbag left can't go about their business in different-but-complementary ways. And an alliance between them would help keep those differences complementary.

    From what I know of the dirtbag left (which, admittedly, isn't a ton), I see a few major sticking points:

    1) The dirtbag left has a tendency to throw social justice rhetoric under the bus in a sort of "no war but class war" mentality - "it's fine to use slurs because bigotry will be solved when we abolish class." This overlaps with the edgy shitlord bravado that is common there as well. This is by no means the rule, but it's a not-uncommon attitude that is, at the very least, tolerated, and prevents alliances with social justice folks because the goals of social justice are treated as less important and social justice itself is denigrated. So the dirtbag left would have to rise about that.

    2) The pervasive desire to "own" conservatives plays into an ideology of dominance that is, frankly, counterproductive to leftist principles, if we're getting blunt. There are ways to troll and embarrass the Right that are productive, but there are also ways that empower the Right and/or put marginalized people at risk, and I don't often trust that the dirtbag left cares about the difference. Again, this is a tendency more than a rule, but it would also have to improve to form an alliance.

    3) Social justice folks seem generally more willing to work with liberals than the dirtbag left. I think too much willingness to work with liberals is at least as much of a problem as flat refusal, so there's criticisms on both sides here. But the fact that I still vote for Democrats is where I get the most flak from dirtbag lefties, so there'd have to be SOME kind of accord on that, which may require concessions on both sides.

    Honestly, I'd say the main impediment to an alliance is that the dirtbag left doesn't seem interested in one? It often sounds like folks say "we could form an alliance if the SJWs would stop fixating on language so much" a lot more than they say the dirtbag left should modify their language to be hospitable social justice. Somehow it's always the marginalized folks who have to learn tolerance.

  69. I'm not the person who asked the first question, but I'm curious to know if you have any thoughts on The Legend of Korra (assuming you've seen it)? I feel like it tries to address a lot of complex issues in too short a time, and falls short because of that.

    in response to Who is your favorite character in ATLA? Doesn't have to be from the main group.

    I love Korra, but it's a mess. Nowhere near as tight as ATLA, but there's a lot of good stuff in it. Season 3 is actually a *really good* season before it has to rush the ending. And the Avatar Wan 2-parter is phenomenal.

  70. Why do you call conservatives insincere? Leftists are the most insincere. You believe in punching conservatives and harassing others because you believe they and their ideas will bring about authoritarianism and yet you and many of your ilk support or are sympathetic to an extremely oppressive and tyrannical ideology: Communism/Marxism. Why be against an authoritarian ideology if you are going to be for another?

    A small selection of us believe in punching conservatives because conservatives keep murdering people. We don't murder people. Sit the fuck down.

  71. Is this something you're going to eventually have a stand on?

    Forgive me but doesn't everything that is hotly politically contested have a lot of conflicting narratives? It's just a little odd to me that you've included that as reasons for your hesitation as you've been pretty bullish on diving in to separate bullshit from reality.

    in response to Now that Trump has sided with Guaido, the question of Venezuela is now an American question. Swarms of leftists are throwing their weight behind Maduro. So do you support Maduro as well?

    Most of the things I dive in on are areas where I've done the research. Sometimes, a little bit of research from sources I trust is enough to have a solid opinion. In this case, sources I trust are saying different things, which means I need to look a lot more into historical context, and I haven't made time for that yet.

    As I have said elsewhere, it is not actually possible to be fully informed on everything, and sometimes an issue takes a backseat for a while.

  72. why do you think these people want rigid rules to live by instead of playing it by ear? what is behind this question? I have asked a similar question before re: a friend who thinks obsessively about a particular girl and the merits of social alienation but I don't understand the need for sweeping generalisations

    in response to You are dodging my question and arguing the semantics of it. How does my analogy not make sense and thus your advice not contradict itself?

    https://youtu.be/MAbab8aP4_A

  73. Now that Trump has sided with Guaido, the question of Venezuela is now an American question. Swarms of leftists are throwing their weight behind Maduro. So do you support Maduro as well?

    Venezuela is one of those situations where the more I hear about it, the less I want to weigh in, because I haven't done the research and there are a LOT of conflicting narratives.

  74. Has there been any good examples?

    Yeah, in Homage to Catalonia. There's also a long chapter in 1984 where Winston is reading from The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, which grinds the narrative to a halt but is more or less the novel's thesis on totalitarianism.

  75. You are dodging my question and arguing the semantics of it. How does my analogy not make sense and thus your advice not contradict itself?

    in response to These two things don't logically follow. If the politics of your friends are important, then I don't have a moral imperative to cut them out? It sounds to me like you're telling us that it is bad to have tumors growing in you but you don't have an imperative to cut it out. Doesn't logically follow my dude.

    It seems like you're doing the thing where you accuse me of believing something and obligate me to deny it, rather than ask me what I believe. I'm deflecting your question because I'm not going to play this game.

Anon commented:
Ian replied: