Anti-intellectualism never works because you are left with stupid people with persecution complexes running things. And they are going to do stupid stuff.
The trouble is that they can really wreck a society in the process.
It works long enough to really fuck things up, though.
On this track, unless they’re pushed out of power soon the whole planet is going to fry.
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Naw, dawg. There’s a an insane food chain at work here, and these people know it.
If you hear the term “techno-feudalism” thrown around a lot lately, this is why. The “haves” are now the people who control the IP, that generates the wealth for a select few, that is then redistributed to the people who work for them, and then down to the areas they live and work in. Feudalism used to be abput resources, but now it’s been so abstracted away, it’s just about money. These fuckers saw this coming two decades ago, and the world wasn’t ready because we hadn’t seen anything like this since the Roman era.
Enter, techno-fascists. “I made this thing, so feel lucky you have it.” Types. The Musks, the Bezos’, the Gates’…etc. They got in early, and are now spending all their maxima of capital to make you rent bullshit you never thought you even needed. Now we live in a world where you can’t live without and be relevant. They made this happen.
I question your knowledge of feudalism and the Roman Era but you’ve got the spirit
Feel free
K.
What years do they think they represent, how do you define “Roman,” do you understand that many historians don’t believe feudalism was really a thing, and even if you accept it as a synonym for medieval society the interaction of obligations and rights with the peasantry varied wildly by region and time, and why do you think the situation wasn’t also applicable to previous or subsequent eras?
And for that matter, why do you think feudalism in particular was about resources, compared to any other system?
Because quite honestly that makes it sound like you meant colonialism.
If there’s one thing I learned is that things can always get worse. Especially when fascists are involved.
Edit: just make a new comment of you want to talk about something else. This just gives everyone a headache.
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Yes, but even dumber.
Idk I feel like it’s pretty dumb itself to not just call them fascists.
Like, sure, you’re going to sideswipe some well meaning “libertarians” with it but fuck 'em. Shouldn’t have stolen “libertarian” from the anarchists, you corporate bootlickers.
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Alt right? Das is alt mein lieber, nicht neu /s
Sounds like that’s what they mean, but I really hope it doesn’t actually become the new right. They are still somewhat fringe.
It’s all just mouth noises - the goal is maximum hierarchy. Same as it ever was.
I’m surprised by how little this has sunk in.
People are constantly baffled by the inconsistencies and the strange, warped narratives that are born by aggregation. How do they convey persecution of conservatives when they have so much power? Why did McCarthy get nuked but Johnson is fine if they did the exact same thing? How can they embrace Trump despite his public adultery?
Because the ideology is that anything that makes them look good and entrench power is fine and anything that helps the people they dislike is bad.
There really, really isn’t anything else to it. It’s purely emotional, purely factional and purely of the moment, with zero persistence beyond the memetic. Mouth noises.
We keep asking each other ‘what do conservatives really believe?’ and refusing to accept the obvious answer.
Conservatives do not believe things. Conservatives believe people.
They do not evaluate claims. In this tribalist worldview, that is not what claims are for. You accept or reject conclusions based on interpersonal trust. That’s how you perform loyalty. And I say “you” because they think that’s all we’re doing. That’s all they think there is.
Their stated ideals are ad-hoc justifications. They do not have arguments; they have slogans. Insisting otherwise has never accomplished a damn thing. What is wrong with us if we can’t identify and respond to this demonstrable irrational behavior? God knows it’s not rare or subtle.
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But Robert Evans from Behind The Bastards is there
He should reconsider being at a nazi bar.
What does this mean? You’re boycotting reading blog posts people make via substack?
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Surely there are non-nazis who write there as well. I hear people in podcast interviews plug their substack and I’m talking people who side with Palestinians, advocate for free healthcare, and endorse collective bargaining.
It’s a reference to this:
And here’s one referencing substack specifically:
Black and white thinking is literally Nazi ideology. I agree, Nazi content should be shunned and banned without hesitation, but isolating yourself from information because of someone else’s actions or opinions is insane to me.
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That’s a big cost to yourself in exchange for accomplishing nothing, but best of luck I guess.
Not really sure about this bar metaphor - no bar I’ve ever been to has some system to make sure people aren’t Nazis before serving them, but hard to imagine that makes them all “Nazi bars.” And that seems fine - I don’t think I’d want to rely on the political judgment of either bar owners or substack executives to decide who’s worthy of patronizing their business anyway even if it was practical.
I see where you’re getting confused. It’s not a metaphor. It’s meant to be taken absolutely literally.
If you run a bar and you allow a person who openly and unabashedly espouses nazi rhetoric to feel welcome at your bar, he will let all his shitheel nazi friends know that your bar is a safe place for them to openly and unabashedly espouse their nazi rhetoric unchallenged. You are now running a nazi bar.
The metaphor is the comparison of a blogging platform to a bar. Substack is not a bar, it’s a website, hence your description of it as a “Nazi bar” is a metaphor. You’re analogizing how to behave if you own a bar to how to behave if you own a website. The problem with that being a) website and bars are very different and b) you’re not even really describing bars realistically.
Wonkette is there.
I don’t think this weird theory of theirs is all that new. They’ve been saying this kind of thing for decades - see their feelings about “cultural Marxism”, for instance.
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No idea lol, I’m a bluesky man
Wait, you’re on Lemmy but not Mastodon?
I keep seeing people make this argument and I think we all need to realize that different people use social media in different ways.
I moved to Bluesky as well. It’s where my friends went, it’s where the artists and authors I follow went, it’s where some of the bigger names I care to keep up with went.
Feels a little gross, I’m not gonna defend Bluesky or anything, but there are more reasons for the choice.
Sure, and I’m not asking to beat anyone up over it (I’ll share my strong opinions elsewhere). Just seems strange to reap the benefits of decentralized social media on one hand but turn around and centralize on the other.
I get the “social circle moved there” argument, since that’s what has kept a lot of people using Xitter, despite the toxic atmosphere.
I do have a mastodon account but have not found myself using it very much. Bluesky just does a better job of replicating what I liked about twitter. Mastodon seems like it was designed by people who had a bunch of problems with how twitter worked and wanted to implement their own different version of a microblogging platform that unfortunately kills a lot of the virality and “one big chatroom” vibe that made twitter so fun. Lemmy does a much better job of replicating what I liked about reddit.
I think the issue (and blessing) lies in the fact that there’s no algorithm. People are used to the various centralized platforms serving them content by default through whatever algorithm decides what should be relevant.
Mastodon, however, is self-curated by design, so there’s no algorithm but you to craft your feed. You won’t see anything you didn’t opt-in to seeing, whether that’s following an individual account, a tag, or an entire instance. Boosting and tagging are also core components that replace the “random post to try out” of the algorithm and implement human intentionality instead.
Bluesky, on the other hand, necessarily has to drive engagement to stay profitable enough to operate, so you will see things in your feed you’d like and things you don’t (because rage farming is effective). Mastodon, on the other hand, has no goal of profitability.
If you want that “giant chatroom” vibe, you can absolutely get that by doing things like following tags for subjects you like and following individual accounts from there. I know you said you went to Bluesky already, but if anyone ever wants to switch, you can get that old Twitter vibe with a little intentionality.
I think that’s a reasonable description of the difference. Algorithms are very valuable tools for surfacing content that I will be interested in but didn’t know to seek out. No matter how many people I follow on Mastodon, it won’t be able to replicate having new interesting people and posts served up to me like that, nor the resulting vibe of everyone seeing a lot of the same viral content.
I started a Mastodon account before bluesky even existed, tried to get into it, was still trying when I got a bluesky account, and then was beat over the head with the superiority of bluesky despite having more of an ideological affinity for the Mastodon project. I still have that account but would be surprising if I started using it more, since the issues with Mastodon are pretty baked into the underlying design.
I see it as the difference between Windows and Linux. Windows has the benefits and drawbacks of centralization, and users get a lot of automated setup and compatibility with limited freedom and the acceptance that your data isn’t yours. It’s a business-centric model.
Linux, on the other hand, is free but has a steeper learning curve and the core ideology of the user’s ability to do what they want is supreme. It’s a user-centric model that is so vested in the whims of the user that many simply feel lost or confused.
I appreciate that some people don’t have the inclination to be in the second group, but I do wish more people tried a little harder not to support blatant fascist conspiracy theorists like Melon Husk. It is possible to find new communities and make new friends, after all!
Anyway, I won’t belabor the point any further. You seem like good people. Have a lovely day!
Haha I guess I cannot argue with the Windows-Linux comparison because that’s another situation where I’m ideologically more sympathetic to the user controlled open source model, but am nevertheless a Windows user for the convenience. I don’t really give much weight to ideology over user experience in making these kinds of choices, for better or worse. Sometimes the version I prefer ideologically produces a superior product because of that better outlook, but often the evil corporate version is a superior product because of their greater resources or greater concern with hooking customers or just network effects, and either way I’m getting the one I think is superior. I haven’t even fully left reddit, though my usage is way way down.
I appreciate you less lazy and more willing to inconvenience yourselves in the name of the open software movement people, without you doing that everything would be worse, even for people using the corporate stuff who don’t even know any alternative exists. Cheers
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ew
