WingNews logo WingNews
top | item 47168982

(no title)

api | 3 days ago

I discount prosocial parts of ideologies that are impractical to the point of being pure escapist fantasy.

For the far right, it's either the techno-fascist "we become Gods" stuff or the trad "back to a perfect green agrarian utopia that looks like a Hitler painting where my happy tradwife greets me every day." I suppose the not quite as far right idea of rewinding history and reviving 1950s America (and pretending that was a utopia) also counts.

For the far left it's the ludicrous green anarcho-primitivist stuff where we LARP the Na'vi on Avatar or the idea of achieving peaceful and lasting equity through legislation and redistribution.

I have a hard time accepting that anyone actually believes any of that shit. I get kind of angry when I see it because it's so insanely absurd.

It feels like window dressing for an ideology that, stripped of these fantastical goals, is just grievance politics and nihilistic accelerationism. It's a way for them to hide it even from themselves. They're just angry and they hate their lives and they want other people to suffer for it.

Or do Scientologists actually believe in Galactic Emperor Xenu and Thetans?

discuss

order

mindslight|3 days ago

> peaceful and lasting equity through legislation and redistribution

nit: Your phrasing pigeonholes straightforward reforms into the impractical category. "Legislated redistribution" would be a better phrasing. What you've said also bites off reforms like antitrust measures, personal data protection regulation, campaign finance reform, etc.

mindslight|2 days ago

You had responded to my other comment with a comment I 100% agreed with, and I was going to write a substantive response when I had the time. Maybe you deleted it because it was a little ranty?

I'd go further and say it's not just social media optimizing for engagement, though. I think part of it is the utter lack of social context for internet messages, which is usually a moderating factor. In meatspace interactions, you can signal disagreement without getting into an overt argument. And you can even maintain the relationship afterwards, as there are other dimensions to it that you do respect. Whereas online the sheer majority of the context is the comment you're responding to itself, and one generally dives right into pressing fully-fleshed-out arguments.

Additionally I'd say there is a different dynamic whereby there are a lot of valid rightist criticisms of leftist extremism, and valid leftist criticisms of rightist extremism. Which then make perfectly reasonable people and reasonable comments appear to be from "the other side", and presumably held with extremists views of the other side (see the above lack of moderating context).

api|2 days ago

Yeah, I did delete it. I’m wary of talking about politics online, especially making any point that directly criticizes either the far left or far right. I’ve had run ins with unhinged obsessives from both sides.

Criticizing both sides won’t save you. Recently I’ve noticed even greater ire toward those who dare depart from the duality, either by arguing that the old “middle” was not as broken as people think or by adopting an entirely different view.

I agree with most of this, and context collapse is a great point I did not bring up. I’d also add that these nutty ideas tend to be context collapse friendly. Their arguments can be compressed down to slogans and memes and often rely on no context besides invoking a common grievance. Other ideas, including those that might actually help address some grievances, require essays and context to explain. The social platforms tend to push low depth populism.