To start, we are talking about people's lives here and it's particularly odious to throw them under the bus on just a moral basis. While they can be annoying, If Books Could Kill has been documenting just how manufactured and overblown the fixation on trans issues has been in mainstream media. To the point that it parallels the hysteria over gay men in the 80s and 90s. It would be refreshing to see a response on that which would move the argument forward beyond obsessing what some blue-haired septum piercing grad student said on Bluesky.
Now is there underlying legitimacy to these questions? Do people have qualms? Sure. But the level of discourse on such a small group of people that are being used as culture war distraction is exasperatingly tiresome.
If we're talking politically, we saw how anti-trans ads were ineffective during the Virginia governor's race. And yet this doesn't seem to get acknowledged by the "Popularists" whose mantra is "Just do what's "popular".
While that sounds sensible, the other component of what voters view as important or "salient" to use the ten dollar word of the day changes all the time. This never seems to get considered when talking about this approach. We know that gun control is "Popular" and yet no one except the people who are rabidly vote against it are motivated. This is not a magic bullet approach as we see with the Labour party in the UK.
The other problem in just "following the polls" and nothing else is that it completely excuses the idea that persuasion never exists to raise the approval and salience of a cease. I find it annoying that this never gets addressed or it does get addressed in a smuggy unproductive way. And if it's being conveyed in the latter, why should I even bother listening to anything else being said because it's impossible to tell if it's being said in good faith.
Ultimately it would be nice to see responses on any of this or collaboration with those who say otherwise to achieve some kind of consensus. Otherwise, we're just laundering our priors yet again to the point an AI chatbot could spout them.
Ngl I love the names and the taglines of ppl in the Chad ranking- like “Generic Apex”, “humble Mogger”, “Romulus - where is Remus?” etc lol
To start, we are talking about people's lives here and it's particularly odious to throw them under the bus on just a moral basis. While they can be annoying, If Books Could Kill has been documenting just how manufactured and overblown the fixation on trans issues has been in mainstream media. To the point that it parallels the hysteria over gay men in the 80s and 90s. It would be refreshing to see a response on that which would move the argument forward beyond obsessing what some blue-haired septum piercing grad student said on Bluesky.
Now is there underlying legitimacy to these questions? Do people have qualms? Sure. But the level of discourse on such a small group of people that are being used as culture war distraction is exasperatingly tiresome.
If we're talking politically, we saw how anti-trans ads were ineffective during the Virginia governor's race. And yet this doesn't seem to get acknowledged by the "Popularists" whose mantra is "Just do what's "popular".
While that sounds sensible, the other component of what voters view as important or "salient" to use the ten dollar word of the day changes all the time. This never seems to get considered when talking about this approach. We know that gun control is "Popular" and yet no one except the people who are rabidly vote against it are motivated. This is not a magic bullet approach as we see with the Labour party in the UK.
The other problem in just "following the polls" and nothing else is that it completely excuses the idea that persuasion never exists to raise the approval and salience of a cease. I find it annoying that this never gets addressed or it does get addressed in a smuggy unproductive way. And if it's being conveyed in the latter, why should I even bother listening to anything else being said because it's impossible to tell if it's being said in good faith.
Ultimately it would be nice to see responses on any of this or collaboration with those who say otherwise to achieve some kind of consensus. Otherwise, we're just laundering our priors yet again to the point an AI chatbot could spout them.
My gut instinct was to ignore the Clavicular circus because attention is exactly what they want, but damn I can't deny it is captivating.
This post made me finally read that Harper's article and wow I loved that.
I’m not sure about the Durant thing, people also love pretending to be famous people on the internet.
I did immediately think of ur commentary on posting being the most powerful force in the universe when I heard about it tho.