Do you want me to stop being mean to you?

No, having belligerent drunks try to lecture me makes me feel right at home tbh

I 've seen the amount of effort that John Wilkes Booth has put into turning his life around and I am impressed. It must be so hard to resist the temptation of drugs and- wait didn't you just get fired for being a pothead?

Hey where's Steph so I can tell her not to buy a house with some dude?

wow you totally got me i guess i don't have it all together after all.....

I don't even expect you to try to get your life together dude but as long as you've been working at BK you should own the mother****er by now... Real talk i bet you've been there longer than I've ever kept a job bro

can you two have some nice subtextually erotic bickering without insulting each other's life choices

I wasnt insulting i was admiring his loyalty and subservience.. employee of the decade imo

yeah and I'm just admiring the nice romantic tension going on here

The meat of your post is basically you arguing against some strawmen. Couple that with your "vapid as ****" comment and it's pretty good signalling of the tedium that it can be to engage with you in anything like a serious discussion.

You don't know what my european perspective is. Your description of the free market of ideas is not representative of any deeply held beliefs that I have. Neither do I think I'm blathering on about echo chambers and cancel culture without considering anything else. Am I blaming radicalization on itself? I didn't know that. You assume I dismiss "material conditions" as explanations. Do I? Thanks for letting me know.

It's like you're railing against some manifesto you think I wrote, but it's mostly from your own brain.


Please don't make strawmen. You spend some time on the market of ideas, so against my better judgment, I'll clarify a little some things that I believe. What I actually believe is that ideas are much like genes. Ideas can spread from brain to brain and they sometimes mutate, creating altered or new ideas that are either more or less competitive. There's a natural selection of ideas like there is for organisms so that ideas that are not well adapted to the environment tend to become fewer or die out while those that are better adapted become more numerous.

Sometimes, ideas clump together for mutual benefit to form complexes, like the idea of God and the idea of hell are both more successful when they work together. Complexes may form religions, conspiracy theories, political beliefs or just narratives about the world. For many ideas and complexes, most brains hold one of each type and so variants of a type are in direct conflict (ex. "trickle down economics work" competes directly with "trickle down economics is a lie").

The environment that ideas have to adapt to or die out is part human nature and part human culture. We generally remember and care more about things that make us happy, scared or angry. And then we make cultures that affect how we feel about certain things.

For myself, I am very anti religions. I think they're a stain on humanity and that we'd be better off without. I could want to cancel them, but to me that's a bit like treating a symptom and not the cause. The things that make people religious might still be there. A better way, if a little idealistic, would be to better the quality of education, an education based on empirically evidenced knowledge about the universe that also included the philosophy of critical thinking. Instead of attacking religious ideas, you would instead change the environment so that religious ideas do worse and lose the competition against rational ideas. Instead of combating a negative (religions), you promote a positive (education) which would change the environment and help tip the balance in rationality's favour.

Something that may happen if you instead aggressively attack ideas and shame people or whatever is you mobilize their defenses. They identify you as an enemy (it's probably plain to see), so your ideas can't penetrate them. They hunker down in their own echo chambers and the environments of those echo chambers is one where the ideas you oppose or even despise actually thrive.

This is why I asked you about Trump and if you saw it coming. When you cancel something you think is bad, someone else may be cancelling something you think is good. You think you're all woke and then the other echo chambers are actually bigger than you thought possible and they get to decide on the next fascist president.

I can't say for sure that cancel culture isn't good, because I'm not 100% sure. It could be that cancelling Dave Chapelle is the best thing for the world. But Dave is a guy who has brought a lot of joy to so many people and who also has spoken on some issues in a positive way. I still don't know what he's said this time around, but it seems sad to define the man entirely by a bad take during a stand up routine. I also don't think people like John Cleese and Richard Dawkins should be barred from speaking at unis and I wanna watch Harry Potter with my kid, even if Rowling has some bad ideas.

I'd rather help change the environment than cancel artists. We tend to focus a lot of attention on combating negatives, but it may actually be better to spend that time promoting the positives. It's a better way of influencing the "free market of ideas". You stand a better chance of getting your ideas under the radar and past the defenses of your would-be opponents. Before I get accused/strawmanned for it, I am not saying we can't still disagree. Do so, loudly if you want.

Harry potter is lame bro smh...

Such a shame that we can only watch Harry Potter movies on every major network and HBO after we had the nerve to call JK Rowling transphobic. What have we done?

Of course we can because the world is full of transphobes and people who don't care. The major networks cater to them and make cash.

It's more that liking Harry Potter is now a signal that you're a transphobe to liberals who will now disregard anything you have to say about anything.

(Disclaimer: humorous hyperbole)

I would def ban my kids from reading Harry Potter

They can read it, but only as a part of the Symposium of Evil where we also cover Mein Kampf, Bell Curve, Turner Diaries, The Secret, etc.

Who's cancelling any of those people? The idea that a Twitter mob can cancel JK Rowling is a fiction probably penned by JK Rowling, along with all the reactionaries who want to elevate her. She's still rich. She's still on Twitter. She's still spreading TERF ****. And now you're here giving credence to her. Guess you got some reactionary genes in you.

And if you prefer to support a positive rather than combat a negative does that mean that when CNN invites Richard Spencer on to talk about something, we shouldn't discourage the platforming of a white nationalist, we should encourage them to speak to people who aren't white nationalists as well? Don't boot Alex Jones off Youtube, cause you don't want good Youtubers booted off along with him?

You still sound like a marketplace of ideas liberal. All the science **** is just dressing your ideas up in a lab coat.

If I could cancel two people, it would be Harry and Meghan. God am I sick of hearing about them. If Joe Biden promises to deport them back to where they came from, he'll have my vote in 2024.

who?

Prince Harry and his vaguely black wife that scandalized a nation.

I would love to be scandalized by her

Sure, she's no Terry Pratchett or George R. R. Martin, but I like the universe she created. I also quite like the Prisoner of Azkaban movie

Now you're turning my argument absolutist, which is not the point and also why I finished my post by pointing out we should still loudly disagree if we want. I wanted to squash that strawman before it got made, but here you are constructing it anyways.

You're sticking to your MO, I guess. Good job.

Are you a horse? Cause you sound like a nag.

I don't judge people who like Harry Potter cause JK Rowling is transphobic I judge them because I've ****ing met people who like Harry Potter and they are obnoxious about it

The soundest opinion in this discussion

What? No you're giving credence to the idea that she's being cancelled.

You're not engaging with my point. Should we or should we not allow white nationalists and far right wing demagogues on public platforms? Cause if not then your whole point becomes "We should carefully choose who we cancel" which runs counter to what you've been saying this whole time.

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

I would like some wine

We obviously have laws against hate speech and various forms of harmful expression. On private platforms, it is roughly up to the owners to make policies. Besides that, I think lawmakers should decide what goes and what doesn't.

As a general rule, I do think that right wing demagogues should be allowed on public platforms along with other scum as long as they stay within the limits of legal expression. On public platforms, they can be seen so we know who they are. Their opinions can be discussed by the public. They can be challenged. Keep them in the light so everyone knows what they're up to. Tying it in with what I wrote earlier, keep those ideas in an environment that is hostile towards them. They're less likely to blossom.

If you de-platform them, they may just find new platforms (like parler) where their messages go unchallenged. They might actually increase their influence that way and their messages might reach more receptive minds. I think this process is ongoing in various places, adding strength to various right wing movements.

That's how we got Trump dawg

Except kicking Alex Jones off Youtube has tanked his viewership and his relevance, and now that Richard Spencer isn't on CNN or any other major public platform nobody talks about him and he's fallen by the wayside. And after that guy punched him in the head on camera he doesn't really do public appearances anymore. Deplatforming these people CAN reduce their relevance, whereas publicly platforming them gives them exposure to an audience who they are not arguing in good faith with. They're just propagandists who are trying emotionally manipulate in a way that circumvents logic and reason. Allowing them that opportunity is simply irresponsible and undercuts the marketplace of ideas.

I don't know Richard Spencer and I'm no expert on Alex Jones either, so disclaimer that I'm aware of that and so a little careful with my claims.

But couldn't you very nearly make a case for the opposite, at least regarding Alex Jones? His influence rose through medias catering to the right, most of all his own media outlet InfoWars.

After Trump got elected, he got a lot of attention on him, even appearing in the news here in Norway. He didn't hold up well under intense public scrutiny, buckled under the pressure and became a worldwide laughing stock, on youtube and elsewhere.

When he got de-platformed from youtube, wasn't he already well into his downward trajectory? If it hurt his relevancy, was it his relevancy as a joke?

I assume these days he's retreated back into the far right medias where he can perhaps recuperate.

Making millions off of newfound reactionary support sounds stressful. I'd probably buckle too.

it's also how we got the episodes of Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones when they would bring the KKK guys on... Those were some good episodes

for a minute there, I read "Jerry Jones"

He's a straight up neo-Nazi who wore a suit and cleaned up his rhetoric just enough to be allowed on the news and for a hot minute in 2016-2017 mainstream news would have him on to talk about Trump and the alt right. Then the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally happened (where he was a headlining speaker) and he became persona non grata.





And here's the money shot.



But yeah what was being served by having this dude on the news? Everyone predisposed to not liking him wouldn't like him, but every idiot worried about immigrants or white people being marginalized would get someone put in front of them to potentially push them even further towards fascism. Which was exactly his plan.

Before he got deplatformed on YouTube and social media he had 1.4 million visitors to his Info Wars site every month. Afterward it dropped by half to 700,000. And that's not counting all the views he lost on all those social media sites.

Sure the "respectable" people were laughing but how many chuds started watching him? And Trump himself was always a laughing stock to many people but he still got elected and all the laughing changed nothing. If it hadn't been for covid Donald Trump would still be president. All the public scrutiny and fact checking never deflated his rise to power because he could just bull**** his way out of his problems, which is how the far right operates in general.

Thinking of these people as a joke and not an existential threat in need of removing like a cancer is precisely why far right figures are allowed to succeed despite their reputation. People thought Mussolini and Hitler were jokes. No matter how absurd they might seem and be they are a deadly serious threat who should be treated as such.

I'm glad you're so confident. We were confident with Trump in 2016. I wonder how many people were confident in Brazil or France?

Well, the Dallas Cowboys are known for their soap operas :D

True, but Jerry Springer, Jerry Jones, and the KKK sounds more like a sketch comedy.

Josh O’Connor, Paul Mescal Unite for Gay Romance ‘History of Sound’ From Oliver Hermanus

I'm a little ambivalent about straight actors who keep getting cast in gay roles. Mostly because I always feel they are not entirely convincing (probably the major reason why I wasn't completely sold on God's own country). I feel like casting maybe somewhat less talented gay actors in gay roles achieves more in terms of authenticity of feeling.

Although then there's the whole should we pigeonhole actors according to their sexuality argument.

The counter-argument to that is that gay actors have played straight roles in movies since time immemorial - not to mention in real life - so why not the reverse? Besides which, I think some straight actors have stated that playing a gay role has made them see the gay perspective more clearly. That can't be a bad thing.

An actor, after all, is someone who makes a profession out of pretending to be something they are not.

Sure, but it also may be that it's easier to play straight than to play gay. Maybe. Sometimes not very skilled straight actors might push the role into stereotypical camp which some people might find offensive, like with James Corden in The prom.

I certainly wouldn't make a big deal out of those kinds of things, it's just a preference.

I thought it was fantastic they cast an all gay cast in the recent film version of Boys in the band. I don't think it would have been the same experience had it been a straight cast.

There is a whole history of straights depicting gays in the movies. For a long time when it was taboo to come out of the closet, a gay person would be depicted as someone who was living a sinister type of lifestyle. I remember a movie, Advise and Consent, from 1962, where a senator (from Utah of all states), was threatened with a disclosure of his past. He confronted a person he supposedly had an affair with during the war in the seediest place you could imagine with something that sounded like Sinatra in the background. Long story short, the Senator was so worried that his wicked past would come out that he committed suicide. And this was a sympathetic figure; imagine all the characters that weren't played so sympathetically.


Later, when gay characters became more sympathetic in movies, straight people would still play them despite many of them being afraid their careers would be harmed by playing a gay person. Gay actors, of course, couldn't come out of the closet for the same reason. I think it began to change in the eighties a bit. Longtime Companion dealt with a group of gay men affected by the AIDS crisis. Most, if not all, of the main players were, in reality, straight, but they played the gay characters very well and with much dignity. I even became something of a Bruce Davidson fan from this movie (I especially liked his character). Of course, you could say Tom Hanks brought gay characters into the mainstream with Philadelphia, and I don't think people even think twice now when it comes to gay actors or characters (at least I hope so anyway).

I'm convinced "straight" people take gay roles to live out some sort of fantasy.