First off, wrongthink is not a thing, you're thinking of crimethink.
Second off, those are literally different things. Malinformation is defined in the article as information shared, out of context, with harmful intention. Crimethink is not about sharing or intentions, it's literally about having a thought that goes against The Party. No need to share.
Even authoritarian regimes have to think about civil unrest. The people under them still have some power: they have the power to revolt. Dictators are terrified of this possibility. And a protest is a way of signaling "hey, the temperature is rising buddy".
A democracy by comparison functions as a gradual release valve: smaller amounts of unrest can affect smaller changes, without overthrowing the entire system.
The feedback loop is slightly more complex. Dictators are also afraid of betrayal. And rising temperature creates opportunities for underlings to decide betrayal is profitable.
AIUI, and i'm no expert, it would have to be absolutely massive. When someone put up a banner and burned some tires in Beijing the other day the CCP was blocking the word "beijing" itself on social media for a time. Their level of control is unrivaled.
Is that evidence of awesome control or lack of it? Seems like blocking a word like Beijing because of a single event is over-blocking on a staggering scale; it communicates absolute terror of the populace that results in astonishingly over the top decisions.
You really have to define successful. Get Xi to change a single policy? Get someone else to take over as Chairman of the CCP and Secretary General of the Politburo? Put a democracy in place?
Those are all different goals. Similarly, and as an analog, concerning Russia some people talk about Russia pulling out of Ukraine, some people talk about a coup deposing Putin and some people talk about new, real, elections.
Also, "revolt" doesn't have to mean "completely overthrowing the government". Social unrest can eg. make for a less-cohesive society, harder-to-govern citizens, less-effective economy, etc. These things are valuable to those in charge; a leader would have to be really dumb to not factor them in at all in their calculations. So it's all about tradeoffs: what it would take to appease people vs what would be the social costs if you don't. Finally- protests signal to fellow citizens too, not just the people in charge. They can be contagious.
All of which is just to say their impact is never zero, even if it's small
I think we are arguing over semantics here[1]: colloquial elected vs appointed.
define - assign a job or role to (someone).
elect - choose (someone) to hold public office or some other position by voting
I chuckle at the very notion that any power circle would allow election of a power to a position as influential as HoL without some sort of quiet approval vote taking place by 'appropriate decision makers'[2].
You say it is not elected. I am saying it is elected by a very small group of people.
It is not semantics. The House of Lords is not elected - there is no voting process, which is a necessary prerequisite for an “election”. It is not “elected by a very small group of people” - it is explicitly appointed, with terrible appointees frequently being rewarded for personally closeness to the prime minister. Several of the positions are literally hereditary.
Oh, it is absolutely semantics. Allow me to elaborate.
<<there is no voting process, which is a necessary prerequisite for an “election”.
We might be approaching an interesting philosophical territory here. North Korea had elections[4]. There is a voting process. Kim Jong Un won 100% of the votes. Has an election, philosophically speaking, taken place? Is Kim the elected representative of the masses? Is the existence of a voting process truly a prerequisite for an election to take place?
To put it more subtly, who do you think voted in NK ( apart from the 100% that is )? Whose vote truly did put Kim in? Who was the true electorate? Now ask yourself the same question when it comes to HoL. Who has the power to make that decision ( to elect/to choose/to appoint/to crown -- whatever verb you want to throw in there )? Who has the power to actually vote here? Is it one person? Is it more than one? Do they have to agree? Using your framework, the power to influence this event is the actual election. The vote, as it were, if it truly is a prerequisite, happens behind the eyes.
<< It is not “elected by a very small group of people”
I would encourage you to visit some of the links in my previous post:
"Members of the House of Lords are appointed by the King on the advice of the prime minister."
Note that this is not me making this stuff up, it is British gov website saying just that[1]. Now, I understand that it is upsetting, because you are ( possibly I am only guessing for dramatic effect ) not the one doing the electing or voting, but understand that even that appointment is, in fact, an election. It would not happen if someone sufficiently powerful would consider it sufficiently beneficial to throw a wrench in the cog.
Now, do you know why it is rarely worth the effort? It is because HoL has now 758 members. You are saying some are hereditary and that is true, but even that number was lowered after 1999[3] to 92 ( how many would you wager are encouraged one way or another to participate or not participate for that matter? )
<<with terrible appointees frequently being rewarded for personally closeness
This is exactly my point! The election happens. You just personally do not like the factors that influence that election process.
<<there is no voting process, which is a necessary prerequisite for an “election”
I am simplifying, but when King says "It shall be so" on advice of the prime minister ( he effectively votes with PM's 'advice'; naturally, by advising, so does the PM ) that is the election. I think you are trying to attach structure that has been sold to most people as a voting process, but it is clearly at odds with simple political reality.
It might help if we look at the etymology of election and selection(appointment).
Elect:
Borrowed from Latin ēlēctus, past participle of ēligō (“to pick out, choose, elect”), from ē- (“out”) + legō (“to pick out, pick, gather, collect, etc.”);
Select:
Etymology. From Latin sēlēctus, perfect passive participle of sēligō (“choose out, select”), from sē- (“without; apart”) + legō (“gather, select”).
As you can see from the stem, they are effectively the same word. Now, a lot of people have been convinced they are different ( you mentioned votes as a differentiating factor ), but they are, in fact, the same process.
You could, naturally, to an extent, reasonably argue that selection is not the same as appointment, but if you you look at etymology of appointment you will see the following using your favorite search engine:
'The etymological sense is "to come to a point" (about some matter), therefore "agree, settle.'
Would you not agree that the agreement or settlement would automatically necessitate at least two parties to agree ( and therefore vote their opinions ) on a given decision?
> If you can’t do something in VR because of a limited range of motion in real life, I think that you have failed as a VR developer.
I have never disagreed with an opinion on VR more. The worst VR experiences are the ones that would be possible without the VR. I thought half life Alyx was bad because of this. I don’t want to treat my headset as just another screen.
There's a difference between possible and being the default. What's being said is akin to complaining about UIs that are mouse centric not having a way to navigate or select controls by keyboard, which is a valid complaint. It doesn't have the be the default, it doesn't even have to show itself without a special setting being toggled, but it should be possible.
> "The worst VR experiences are the ones that would be possible without the VR"
Have to assume you meant "impossible", otherwise I'm confused by your comment.
And I have to disagree. There's nothing wrong with giving people are few nice powers and magic forces over their environment. In real life, I'd love to have a way to pick up objects from a distance. Who wouldn't want that? VR can provide that easily.
I personally thought Dragon Fist was one of the few games that makes you really feel like you're in the space. The only bad part is that few people have enough space to really play it properly and the movement button is so awkward to use. Also, it is one of the games with the highest danger of you punching the wall by accident, even with a conservative guardian boundary.
Caveat: I don't get VR sick and hate all of the clunky movement options you are stuck with in most games. Teleporting around is never not awkward.
I also enjoyed Down the Rabbit Hole, but I have to admit that it could have worked just as well on a regular screen.
This is dumb. We measure productivity because that’s what the people with the power to choose the important metrics care about. There’s no “we” that gets to choose anything! They don’t care about your wellbeing and would happily make you eat bugs if it meant their favourite numbers would go in the right direction.
Except for arbitrary cultural conditioning, there’s really nothing wrong with eating bugs. People who live in the forest eat bugs all the time. At industrial scale I could well believe that bugs would be a better food source than some of our current staples, and if bugs were cheaply available and other foods had all of their external costs priced in, I could imagine substantial numbers of city dwellers choosing to eat bugs. (Which is not to say that anyone should be forced to eat any particular food.)
I disagree here. I think this change is necessary for society to evolve. Society is not a static thing and just because things have been done a certain way, doesn't mean it is right. My suspicion is we are doing many things wrong, electricity hasn't even been invented for much more than 100 years, yet we organize ourselves in a similar way as we have been for millennia. If we do need to change, then what? Well-being may be a great measure, in fact I think it may be the only measure. There are many concerns like gaming, lying, or corruption. But I think with the challenges can be minimized; why? Well induction, if we had this current economic system with all it's faults work, then why can't well-being be another metric? Moreover, I think this is exactly the step we need to make because part of the reason this earth is dying is because humans have prioritized materialistic exploitation. We need to move on from those notions, and if well-being is the new metric, then that sounds great to me.
Hey, bug eating can be fun from a well-being perspective too. Some utilitarians will make you eat bugs of it meant their favourite numbers (yes, your well-being is a number) would go in the right direction. But it probably isn't, maybe a vegan diet is what the utilitarians recommend.
Small book stores are one of the least deserving businesses I can think of. They are no different from drop shippers or amazon resellers. These people buy things they had no responsibility creating and sell it to you for a higher price, injecting themselves as middle men to a transaction where it’s not required and then justifying it with a hobby job they made up themselves. The author gets nothing if the book is used so there’s no reason not to pirate. Cheapest is a great metric when you’re dealing with books.
> I have to do chores when I get home for about an hour or two
How is this possible? Are you counting exercise as a chore? I probably do 2 hours of chores in a week and that includes a lot of things related to cooking which you don’t do
It’s honestly fascinating to me that women think bots are so interesting that they deserve an article like this. I feel like almost all men match with more bots than real women. We live in entirely different worlds.
The raw male perspective on modern dating is rarely featured in mainstream media. The only place to get men's perspective on modern dating is basically 'red pill' type of content, which is unfortunate. Most journalists are women, and quite frankly in most of their dating columns they don't seem too interested in understanding male perspectives on the frustrations of modern dating (unless it's to bash extremist incel/red pill types). I can't recall reading many mainstream media dating articles sympathetic to men's frustrations with modern dating, you can find plenty sympathetic to women's frustrations though.
Ironically, this video focusing on "incels" has a pretty good understanding of the male online dating experience (starting around 17:00): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD2briZ6fB0
I agree that the various "red pill" subcultures have done a terrific job of sucking the air out of the room RE conversations about men's dating experience. It's a hard conversation to have with any amount of nuance in 2022.
If you think it’s redpillers who ruined the conversation around men’s sexual experiences - that shows just how well the mainstream media is at influencing you.
Redpill was a niche subculture no one knew about (and mostly still doesn’t) - just like incels. It was the mainstream media who made RP, incels, and general lack of sexual experiences for men to be the next 9/11.
It’s hard to have a conversation about it because women don’t fucking care. You know why? It’s not their problem and it never affects them directly. It also means often that the solution involves women changing and that’s sexist, sweaty.
There's no clean solution here. It requires a shift in cultural norms for everyone. From what I've seen, there are two main issues: 1) amount of options is too much for most women (big cities, online dating, using shallow social networks, etc.) and 2) we are focusing more on looks in our culture (instagram, tiktok, etc.)
In order to solve this - you'd have to change the way people meet and the way our culture values people. We need to value deeper ways to meet people like through hobbies, social groups, etc. where someone can have a more lasting impression than half a second on Tinder. (If you think this mentality doesn't affect people IRL - you are mistaken)
Does this mean that all the work is on women? Nope. It does however mean that there is work women have to do. Thus why it will never happen. We haven't asked women to change much in the last 50 years. The main focus has been on changing men, not women.
What men are sold are "Best date ideas for a special woman", "Top 10 things you can say to make her knees melt", "The perfect gemstone for your perfect woman".
None of the men I talk to in real life have the experiences I see men complaining about online. The women I meet in real life, on the other hand, have stories that match the ones I read about online.
The male complainers just naturally have more to gripe about than the "meh, it's fine" crowd who usually can't be bothered (or aren't believed in the crowd of complaints).
Well I guess that settles it. All the tens of millions of men having issues with dating don't exist in real life since you haven't personally met them.
The takeaway here is that there is a middle ground between the 'blackpill' mindset we often hear about online and the reality. The reality is grim, but not grimdark.
None of the men I talk to in real life have the experiences I see men complaining about online
This is dismissing all the complaints of men. Not all the complaints men have are baseless. This dismissive mindset of declaring every complaint men have as black pill/extremist/incel is probably why young men are gravitating to more extreme 'red pill' characters like Andrew Tate by the tens of millions. This is what happens when you dismiss any chance for nuanced and balanced conversations where both sides grievances are heard.
You just want me to take your "tens of millions" number on faith?
Claiming that it's at the same quantitative level as, say, monthly listeners of Beyonce on Spotify, or many other things that it's easy to find real-life claims of without support is a lot to ask of folks. Tens of millions having a hard time dating or tens of millions convinced women are the enemy and are treating them unfairly?
Cause from the outside, it just looks like there are a bunch of people - who over-estimate the universalness of their experience - who have decided somehow that other struggling men are the expert on women's behavior re: dating and jumped to entirely wrong conclusions. This probably isn't just their fault; the last fifteen years of social media tech have really accelerated the ability of people to take advantage of self-reinforcing bubbles to push toxic views.
Dating is hard, it's always been hard for most people, but there wasn't always such an easy way to find others telling you it's actually everyone else being out to get you. Like this zero-sum-game gem from elsewhere in the thread: "It’s hard to have a conversation about it because women don’t fucking care. You know why? It’s not their problem and it never affects them directly. It also means often that the solution involves women changing and that’s sexist, sweaty." - They're the ones doing it wrong - very deep, very insightful, how much deep introspection and reflection did it take them to jump to that conclusion? But hey, I'm not a woman, so you're gonna have to come up with a new reason I'm skeptical.
I guess I'm just lucky that when I was a late-20s virgin the "foreveralone" convo was more ironic and less violent, so I just focused on my own social skills.
And then there are quick downvotes and lazy dismissals so no wonder the non-angry men don't bother to engage that often.
> None of the men I talk to in real life have the experiences I see men complaining about online.
Same. Just from talking to the women in my life it's clear that women experience way more unwanted harassment via online dating apps than I did personally (I met my wife this way), or any men I know did.
Yes, it's harder to men to get attention on dating apps than it is for women. Yes, men on dating apps are targeted by OnlyFans sex workers. If those issues seem insurmountable to you, then my recommendation is to touch grass and go meet people in RealLife™.
> Ask yourself how many women approach and how many women expect to be approached. Now do the same for men.
93% of women prefer to be asked out on a date, while 16% of men prefer to be asked out. So if you're a man who won't ask women out, you're going to miss out on potential dates with a lot of women. No judgment — that may not be a bad strategy if you're the type of man who needs their partner to "wear the pants", so to speak.
> Here's a bonus: ask men how many women turned 'crazy' after the first night of sex, and do the same for women.
1 in 7 women have been injured by an intimate partner, compared to 1 in 25 men.¹ 1 in 10 women have been raped by an intimate partner, with no comparable data available for men because it's so rare.¹ Dating is far risker for women.
> I love how when it's women it's rarely reported, when it's men the "reported" drops off and it just becomes rare.
Yes, now you're getting it: Dating and physical intimacy is an order of magnitude less dangerous for men, in contrast to the parent commenter's implication (and incel talking point) that I was specifically addressing.
Is it any less of an individual tragedy for the men who are affected? Of course not.
> 93% of women prefer to be asked out on a date, while 16% of men prefer to be asked out. So if you're a man who won't ask women out, you're going to miss out on potential dates with a lot of women. No judgment — that may not be a bad strategy if you're the type of man who needs their partner to "wear the pants", so to speak.
Do you have a source for that because I find it shocking only 16% of men prefer to be asked out.
> women experience way more unwanted harassment via online dating apps
That's because many men have figured out that volume works, and spam everybody. If one answers their spam with annoyance, they're totally amused by sending a really aggressive, rude reply, because you are 0.1% of the "'sup?" messages they sent out that day and don't matter to them. They're irritated that you bothered to reply at all.
Ever trick a phone scammer into talking to you for a long time? When he realizes that you've wasted his time, his reaction is exactly like the 'sup? guys.
I'm not making a point about volume working. Volume works, there's no reason to expand on it. If you spam people, you'll get results. If you spam people with a badly spelled inarticulate message that generates no expectations, the replies you get will largely be exactly what you're looking for, although half of them will be indignant people who you can quickly call ugly or tell to fuck off.
I learned that volume works watching my drummer in my old band. He simply aggressively and tactlessly hit on every pretty girl who got anywhere near him. One out of 20 were down. If you're good-looking it might be more like one out of 10, if you're ugly it might be more like one out of 40. But volume works.
I agree that the extreme rhetoric and immature behavior of online “incels” (that which is portrayed by the media) is basically non-existent IRL.
However the broader and very real issue of Men lacking the societal support/proper outlets to deal with traumatic experiences is probably one of many reasons why 80% of suicides are males. (Men not expressing their feelings doesn’t mean they don’t have any)
I was kind of disappointed that the author was contacted by the scammer and then after exchanging no real information, decided to wrap up the investigation. I understand she might have concerns for her personal safety (giving a VOIP number instead of her real one might have been prudent) but I thought this story was going to go much deeper. The author didn’t really find out much of anything, and mostly just relayed a personal anecdote.
This particular woman was interested, I doubt most would be. This article wasn't interesting at all, she didn't even find out anything about the scam. I don't see why it was written. Newsflash there are scammers on the internet.
Not only bots, but scam artists in general: people abusing the platform for soliciting themselves, advertising their OnlyFans, or (this has actually happened to me) people giving out their (fake? but convincing) social security card photos, presumably to get the receiver to reciprocate. This is on a dating app.
That’s not true at all.. Almost nobody with a house in Canada has the income to buy it at current prices. The only way most people can do it is because they bought a long time ago or got an inheritance from somebody who bought a long time ago
