EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzhmy9YJBH0

nothing is too good for gyac

Ha yep xps

these individuals = actual billionaires = the actual fucked system

But you are the reasonable one in this instance imo sorry to use you as the bar

sometimes i feel we rely on crude binaries, the system and the individuals can both be bad

dont make me tap the if youre going to be condescending you have to be smart sign again

― lag∞n, Friday, December 10, 2021 5:01 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

There is a particular sadness in being brought to call anonymous strangers stupid because you do not agree with them.

Good luck with the dystopia folks.

were all stupid sometimes

If we knew your name it wouldn’t make you less stupid

only if you are going to be condescending

Staying out of this moronic clusterfuck except to say that that trampoline video was great, lagoon!

lol ive watched it so many times

reminded me of when I was visiting my sister last week and for reasons I can't remember, I got her two children to start chanting in unison TOTAL DOMINATION. It was alarmingly easy

classic uncle behavior

imo the question 'is the US a dystopia' is unhelpful

the question should be 'what is bad, and what can be done'

― imago, Friday, December 10, 2021 3:15 PM (three hours ago)

i wash my hands of your DEMOLITION
DIE if you want to, you half-assed SHIT PUPPET

guy just think you could have been born on venus. it's over 800 degrees fahrenheit there. seriously, check your privilege

van horn street more like ban, scorn, yeet wow owned

Anybody read this from ftgi a couple of days ago:

I have in recent years felt frustrated when I observe a difference of opinion turn heated, turn into a pile-on. I have felt a desire to express things with the intention of de-escalation, that in turn have been perceived that I’m “siding” with the person who is being excoriated— though the opposite is generally true, at times I’ve myself felt revulsion at what is being expressed by the person being excoriated. I’ve been seen as playing Devil’s Advocate when oftentimes I’m genuinely interested in the ideas and thought processes of people I fundamentally disagree with.

This tends to be a thing that has caused conflict for me irl. I’ve stated that I’m interested in learning about the psychology behind people who espouse viewpoints that I think are fundamentally wrong, as a way of better understanding them, and perhaps finding a way of gently convincing them. I wish the same for myself when my own opinions are in the wrong. I do not think escalating a disagreement into conflict teaches anybody anything. I think that escalation only causes certain individuals to become more entrenched in their viewpoints. I feel that this point of view is out of step with present-tense discourse both here and elsewhere online, and also oftentimes irl. This is not so much a comment on this board specifically but a general observation on present tense state of discourse, which includes discourse on this board.

https://i.imgur.com/bnDvjPk.jpg

i wash my hands of your DEMOLITION
DIE if you want to, you half-assed SHIT PUPPET

― mookieproof, Friday, December 10, 2021 7:19 PM bookmarkflaglink

i always appreciate you dropping Jesus Christ Superstar lyrics into threads

ffs if ilx isn't a safe space for white supremacists

https://quotefancy.com/media/wallpaper/3840x2160/3033-Carl-Sagan-Quote-It-pays-to-keep-an-open-mind-but-not-so-open-your.jpg

He was high as giraffe pussy when he said that, though.

lol that ftgi post is gonna become ILX's Exiting The Vampire Castle.

Seems relevant.

What level of capitalism is this? pic.twitter.com/6BG7PrThiC

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) December 10, 2021

lol that ftgi post is gonna become ILX's Exiting The Vampire Castle.

I found it admirable.

i'm not unsympathetic to it but don't believe it applies to all disagreements. it's a two-way Street, like.

As I said in the thread it first appeared in: if the objective is to "better understand and gently persuade" viewpoints diametrically opposed to your own, a message board discussion is amongst the worst ways of trying to go about that. Much more likely to be constructive if done one-on-one and/or offline.

but also don't think it really relates to this thread at all - VHS's point isn't particularly extreme and I don't think anyone's had any difficulties understanding his motivations for holding it, really.

Tell me in your own words what you think the original West Side Story was about, I’m dying to hear

— Muse of Ire (@MuseofIre) December 10, 2021

(in response to)

They remade West Side Story to be Race Class Narrative about gentrification and I’m here for it.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 10, 2021

and I don't think anyone's had any difficulties understanding his motivations for holding it, really.

― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, December 11, 2021 10:12 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Which are they?

You think Americans are oblivious to the hard predicaments of vast parts of the rest of the world and resent what you see as excessive self-involvement on their part. No?

Was someone doing the de-escalation thing itt? jaymc made a pretty reasonable post, but I didn't really see it otherwise. Also I would think de-escalation would entail trying to get both sides of an argument to stop digging in, though I suppose that's what's useful about calling something a pile-on: you can separate the piled-on, whose behaviour needn't change, from the undifferentiated mass of pilers.

I will say I had no idea what VHS was talking about w/ the guillotine thing, so I looked it up and learned some interesting/dismaying stuff about French colonialism

I believe a lot of them are yes, and that the excessive self-involvement is a net negative. Also that the more the populist and on the fringe of political extremes, the more the self-involvement is crucial to the discourse.

Life is all right in America

but also don't think it really relates to this thread at all - VHS's point isn't particularly extreme and I don't think anyone's had any difficulties understanding his motivations for holding it, really.

Yeah, so. I don't think anything on this thread indicates anyone didn't get that this was where you were coming from, so the posting of fgst's post feels misapplied, is all I was saying.

xpost

i mean he was making bad posts like they were some deep jewels of knowledge, either of those on their own are are prob not going to set people off, but you put them together and youll get told about it, was pretty funny to see the aimless the master of the form show up to lend support

re hand wringing about pile ons brought to mind max writing about something awful

When the 2016 Democratic Primary tore Twitter apart, and establishment liberal journalists and political operatives complained of pile-ons by vicious BernieBros, anyone who’d been on a forum before could see that this was, simply, what happened when you made dumb posts.

good piece https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-most-influential-man-on-the-internet

Yeah, so. I don't think anything on this thread indicates anyone didn't get that this was where you were coming from, so the posting of fgst's post feels misapplied, is all I was saying.

xpost

― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, December 11, 2021 10:27 AM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well some people read it as ‘you shouldn’t complain’ which was not the point at all and then insulted me when I tried to make the case that yes, there are problems in the US and I made sure it was acknowledged.

The guillotine episode reminds me that mostly this is an overwhelmingly anglo-saxon messageboard with very angl-saxon viewpoints on most things. Enough for when I mention something that is jarring because it comes from my history and culture (the guillotine) it is being met with scorn. I don’t think I’m the first (or the last!) who is facing that sort of cultural barrier, and I don’t think some posters understand the level of assymetry at play here.

And yeah if it’s dumb lagoon, which you are still making a very poor case for, shitting on people is not just exactly how you advance anything. Some posters do try to engage in good faith and I appreciated it, other will just use the word ‘cunt’ and think this is some performative battleground of theirs to show how valuable their fight against fascists is and I think this is sort of the pile on goon was discussing.

not sure why were talking about the guillotine when the more relevant execution device is the cross

Anglo-Saxon
lol

Enough for when I mention something that is jarring because it comes from my history and culture (the guillotine) it is being met with scorn.

VHS, pretty sure that the blowback you've gotten on this thread in particular is hardly the result of lack of familiarity with your position; it's probably much more to do with frustration at a viewpoint that most of the posters are exposed to on a very regular basis - certainly the case for me! "We have it very good in America/the West" is a pretty common think to think/say.

I'd also argue that you can't complain too much about "performative battlegrounds" when half of your posts here were about characterizing everyone disagreeing with you as an incurious American when several of those ppl, myself included, aren't American or even "Anglo-Saxon".

The point is not merely ‘you have it good in the West’, it’s that populist movements describing the West as something that is out of touch with reality is bad. The right wing does it ‘we are becoming the third world’ and some on the left does it too. I considered calling it a dystopia an exageration, perhaps I was wrong about the word, but you’ll see people on the left making hyperboles the norm and I think it’s both disrespectful and useless. Never said there’s no reason to complain, I live in Canada and I complain a whole bunch.

Never said that everyone who disagreed with me was incurious, but certainly some posters seem to embody the caricature of the self-involved american and british. And c’mon, the percentage of anglo-saxons people on this board is what? 65%?

there were several posts acknowledging your point about averages and international standards but you still told us to read a book (to learn the same thing we had already conceded, i guess) and implied that we couldn't possibly understand why people would want to immigrate here. but it's just others who are self-involved, performative, condescending, and insulting. now it's anglo-saxon, i'm not even sure what to think about that one.

Yes I agree it was out of line to say to read the book and I lost patience and should not have.

when can we return to insulting Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias

van horn wants to call americans self involved ignorant babies and be applauded for it, which i mean if he had just done that mightve gone over better but he also wants credit for it being some serious intellectual position, combining those two requires a lot more finesse and depth of understanding than has been demonstrated, and then of course were hitting rock bottom with the complaints about being treated poorly

i want to know who the some posters are who are embodying the caricature of the self-involved american and british

The point is not merely ‘you have it good in the West’, it’s that populist movements describing the West as something that is out of touch with reality is bad. The right wing does it ‘we are becoming the third world’ and some on the left does it too.

Yeah, this to me is a fundamental misunderstanding of what people itt are doing when they characterise the US as dystopian. It's not about a lack of awareness of how bad things are elsewhere (Americans who don't care about what goes on in the rest of the world tend to think the US is BETTER off than it is, not worse); it's pushback against the official mainstream narrative (not just "republican", this is a bipartisan consensus) that America is The Greatest Country In The World and obviously the best place to live in the world. It's holding a mirror to the country's propaganda and looking just how far sgort it falls.

Additionally, it certainly rankles with me for you to take offense in the name of ppl from countries that are worse off when, as I said previously, immigrants from those countries who come to places like the US and the UK are amongst the ppl most likely to face the worst of what those countries have to offer dystopiawise, in terms of state surveillance, inequality, racism, etc.

Never said that everyone who disagreed with me was incurious

No, you just casually ignored ever post that you couldn't twist into that narrative :)

And c’mon, the percentage of anglo-saxons people on this board is what? 65%?

If you want to switch that to native English speakers, I'm not at all arguing that this isn't the main demographic of ILX. What I am arguing against is that your disagreements with ILX consensus are down to that factor - I mean even my father in law enjoys a good guillotine reference, and he voted Macron!