Another great benefit of quitting the MRA stuff was that it made it much easier to avoid conflict-perpetuating, outrage-industry bullshit like We Hunted the Mammoth that was slowly alienating me from my own values by association.

I like this concept of a POE political swear jar.

While I appreciate the sentiment (and also stopped watching rage-inducing MRA videos 2 years ago with great results), I feel compelled to remind everyone:

Being apolitical is a political stance. Choosing to ignore what is happening is a conscious support for the status quo. Furthermore, the ability to remain apolitical is a kind of privilege: people directly affected by awful political happenings don't have that choice.

That said, maybe we can make the conscious decision that PoeTV comment threads are an unproductive place to focus our political energy. I'd be ok with that.

I am going to argue from scientific empiricism like a dirty dog, JF, so please forgive me.

Politics, being completely removed from the reality of knowledge attained by the scientific method, is not a science, therefore nonparticipation is akin to not participating in a religion. To say nonpolitics is political is the same as saying that in a theocracy atheism is a theology.

Until politics can frame its opinions in a double-blind verifiable way, the level of control it has on society is not a measure of its validity and its participation is not involuntary.

Living in a world run by politics while not participating no more makes me political than living in a war zone and not participating makes me a soldier.

When electric universe and other science wordsalateers use science words and say it is science, it still fails to be science.

I will take politics, and economics, seriously when you show me a formula for entropy within its systems and that the people who do participate in it know what it means. Until then, politics, as a lot of you frame it, is nonexistent to me, and I only see rhetoric.

Politics hardly counts as a special class of human engagement.

So could you form a list of subjects we aren't allowed to talk about out of the fear that opinions could hold power over us?

pls b nice 2 rous, a black fellow beat him up once and now he is allergic to reason.

*****
Stars for OZ and meme doing the things I like most about them.

"I will take politics, and economics, seriously when you show me a formula for entropy within its systems and that the people who do participate in it know what it means. Until then, politics, as a lot of you frame it, is nonexistent to me, and I only see rhetoric."

Not a closed system. It's like Brownian motion, where nearly microscopic beings (brownies) move particles around in your tea: they defy thermodynamics by being powered by infernal energies.

I know what actual Brownian motion is, so I know you just insulted me because you're miffed I find politics subsentient and detrimental to human prosperity.

Just an annotation.

I know what it is too -- I was dusting off an old concept from "Science Made Stupid" -- but you see my point I think.

http://www.chrispennello.com/tweller/

"jfcaron_ca
While I appreciate the sentiment (and also stopped watching rage-inducing MRA videos 2 years ago with great results), I feel compelled to remind everyone:

Being apolitical is a political stance. Choosing to ignore what is happening is a conscious support for the status quo. Furthermore, the ability to remain apolitical is a kind of privilege: people directly affected by awful political happenings don't have that choice."

I'm not even close to aploitical, this is just about maintaining a healthy degree of compartmentalization.

And that's all I'm going to say, because I don't have anything to add that's worth $10.

jf, I feel compelled to remind everyone:

Talking about/attacking "the status quo" as a monolith is at the root of what has lead the left wildly astray. Using "the status quo" as a shorthand creates an intellectual shortcut that recursively/reflexively makes The Whole Status Quo the Enemy, instead of targeting specific problems like income inequality or reforms in justice/policing. It casts an over-wide net to where the screwball-left is enraged about JUST EVERYTHING that is part of the status quo, as if the anti-status-quo = good ('with no counter-examples'), and as if the goal is to do things like: vigorously identify enemies, carve everyone into teams, and generate group identity INSTEAD OF embrace the middle and cut off the extremists and elitists. Thank fucking god this isn't how the left did it in the 60's.

Making it a religion is why it gets so much pushback. The pushback isn't from "so many haters", as you'll notice with Obama being elected or the polling on marriage equality. The pushback is from the hostility.

The fact that so much of the left is talking about 'white privilege' and the puritanical emphasis on scouring/scourging your status quo conscience, and hating it all instead of targeting reform on income inequality which the CENTER-RIGHT citizenry AGREES ON is what makes the left illegitimate. Reforming income inequality helps everyone who is poor right now, but that's not what the hard-left wants at all because they're too full of hatred.

The closest parallel is probably atheists who think their target should be Ending All Religion Right Now, and their way of doing it is 'fuck you, stupid religious people'.
^ only total fucking morons do this.

That's about as air-tight a parallel as I can think up.

How can you blame someone for being apolitical in the face of what the overall political climate is like?? It's an evil right vs a semi-evil left that is made up of elitist kleptocrats or hate-filled righteous puritans. The system allows for no third party without reforming the system through the two parties.

"15th
*****
Stars for OZ and meme doing the things I like most about them."


The fuck are you on about, I didn't even MENTION vans.

This place needs more space vanning.

bawbag, it *might* be poor form to bring up someone getting beat up as part of a personal attack.....? Do you think, maybe?

Would you do that in any other circumstance??

Nope, sorry mate but I've no sympathy for racism borne out of getting your ass kicked and he frankly doesn't deserve that level of consideration after the shit he has posted and continues to espouse in his long career of racial shitposting here and on poe-red et al.

Which of us -haven't- taken a severe ass beating at some point? Fuck man, I had 7 years of it in primary school and was hospitalised several times so you'll have to forgive me if I don't believe that RoUS' old-timey fallback origin story of 'I had a really rough childhood' is an excuse for this much vapid, incessant shittiness to minorities.

I've never had an ass kicking. One time a kid punched me in the ribs in 8th grade but he was so bad at it that I barely even felt it.

That same year the same kid tried to take my glasses during lunch and when I grabbed them back he kind of ran at me and I instinctively did some sort of phony, naive tai chi move and threw him three feet, all the way over the table, which pissed him off because he was a belt-farm second degree green belt but it was broken up before anything really happened.

That was the first and last time I've been in a situation where an ass kicking in either direction was even a possibility.

I support this idea. I take this pledge and encourage others to.

[edit: Shit, less than 24 hours later my bank account's dry and I'm standing on a street corner begging for another 5 bucks so I can pay off this comment. fuck you OZ]

Also why I'm here. I love that sentiment. Thanks for posting it.

***************************************

"I don't object to the content of the videos generally, I do object to the overtly political framing and far-right narratives that some users here insist on posting along with them either purely for negative attention or to push their political narrative"

Seeking negative attention like claiming other posters must be Nazis, racists, or bullies? Dude, you are so full of shit. All you want is to imagine enemies where there are none.

And I should add, like you fucking DON'T have a political agenda? It seems to me you want to eradicate any trace of any possible conservative views on this site and lambast anyone that has them as being a Nazi.

You are the most overreactive ninny in the history of this whole fucking site.

"like you fucking DON'T have a political agenda? It seems to me you want to eradicate any trace of any possible conservative views on this site and lambast anyone that has them as being a Nazi."

Only when the shoe fits as you've so expertly shown it does, for you.

"You are the most overreactive ninny in the history of this whole fucking site."
- He screeched across two semi-related threads, knuckles whiter than the alt-right white nationalism he was denying in the other thread.

SURE BRO, COOL. HAMMER THOSE KEYS! HAHAHA :^)

Let's never fight again.

Deal!

Not everyone is a racist, and the fact that you want them to be is just proof that you cannot function without pretending they are.

You are the fucking worst.

"Not everyone is racist..."

You're right, it's mostly just yourself and the significant portion of the alt-right you were trying to engage in denial and apologism for earlier; the same people whose videos you're so keen to share with us all.

Also do try and keep your delicate flower emotions to the other thread out of respect for OZ's request please, you're only embarrassing yourself further.

Maybe I touched a nerve with that video, you precious fucking snowflake. Why don't you tell me about how you need this entire site to be your safe space so you can hide from reality like a good SJW and pretend that other people don't have opinions, and anyone that does have a significantly different opinion is automatically a Nazi

You are a revolting anti-intellectual and you represent the literal death of intellectualism in our country. You thrive off of a pattern of total and complete delusion where you invent scenario after scenario and then just pretend it's reality. You convince other people it's reality. You take pleasure in any pain that I've been through in my life because you think I deserve it. You need someone you hate and you don't even need that much. You don't know me and you don't need to. You just need any excuse to take all of your life's fucking problems out on. You choose people to become your enemies, you can decide they will be your target racists and it is okay to absolutely decimate them with a campaign of total character assassination. Your game of pretend is spreading and I find it horrific.

So let's get something straight. You don't know I'm a racist. You just need someone to be so you can lift yourself "above" my supposed racism so you can be morally above reproach as you lie through your teeth (everything that you have posted about me is a total lie) and basically lead this website in your audaciously Maoist attempts at berating someone you don't know for imagined crimes of racism.

The truly horrific thing for me is that this site has become a haven of people who want to hide from reality as well.

You are without a doubt THE ABSOLUTE WORST person I have ever come across on this site. You are pure unreason. The total opposite of rational thought, and you don't care.

You just want to be seen through some totally imaginary lens of morality in the new hypersensitive antiracist climate that seeks to destroy people and their reputations based on nothing more than your moral outrage which saves itself for just such an occasion.

A few weeks ago there was this video that surfaced of a woman absolutely going apeshit on an Uber driver because he had a little Hawaiian hula dancer bobblehead in his car and she started screaming at him about cultural appropriation and for being a racist. He finally couldn't take her bullshit anymore and pulled over and told her to get out. And then that bitch got him fired.

You are little better than her. You are a professional victim and you are crying about me because there are no real racists in your life, apparently, so it's time to invent one in the SJW world you live in, where you get to live in a total fabrication. Enjoy it, bud. You don't live in a world where most people are racist, you just view them that way. It gives you a false sense of purpose, a false viewpoint, a false sense of entitlement, and you enjoy the idea of absolutely tearing someone apart because it excites you.

You mock me because you need someone to mock, and I'm not going along with your little game like the rest of these morons. I see right through what you are doing and I see right through the fact that you are manipulating as many people as possible on this website.

SJW's are a cult. BLM is a cult. And you exhibit every sign of being in one yourself.

I have never, and I mean never, been so horrified that so many people on this site could buy into such a complete and total lie as I am right now. You have all lost your goddamn minds.

Can I have the cliff's notes of that wall of bullshit please? Also thanks again for sharing your delicate flower emotions RoUS.

he's building up to saying "anti-racism is code for anti-white genocide"

Re: Bawbag's first post, content of videos isn't something I object to either, it's participating in the political shitposting. The "pay to watch MRA videos" angle was specifically because I started to realize that because of the way an attention economy works, I was supporting them by giving them ANY attention, even the kind of passive negative attention they get from us. The donation thing was a way to even the score a bit, but its actual effect was to get me to not waste time on them because I'm a cheap, narcissistic fucker and would rather spend my $10 on cables or something than on a worthwhile charity.

"bawbag


Also do try and keep your delicate flower emotions to the other thread out of respect for OZ's request please"


This is not a request at all, this is a personal pact between myself and my god (Deke Lord Chet Poe). What anyone else does with it is their own business.

I am blissfully ignorant of most of the factors that incited bawbag's nice post.

Simillion, I apologise in advance for all the scrolling of text you'll have to do when you find the drama post.

I love that ROUS became an in situ exhibit on here. When you gaze into the abyss, etc etc.

From what I recall this is his usual pattern since the poe-red days. A pattern he repeated here and on bo news almost verbatim. All we're missing here so far is the 'bloo bloo apology letter' once the dust has settled.

I'm with ya on this one. I do enjoy reading the cluster-fucks . I've even learned a few things from the walls of text. I don't know what to make of the recent bawbag/RoUS shit-show, but just recently bawbag dropped some knowledge on that thread about trans children. Stuff I didn't know, ya dig?

yeah, he's a real hero!

Wait, no he's a delusional SJW and this site is apparently into that.

You know what, all of you that are backing bawbag are basically pining for the death of this site. I'm totally serious when I say that people like him exist only to seek out people to categorize as evil so they can thrive in the PC bullshit ocean they swim in.

It literally disgusts me and you can all go fuck yourselves.

Any experienced pro tips on tucking like that RoUS? Your instructional text was a bit vague.

bawbag - maybe it's time to stop? I'm with ya and I think a lot of other people are, but consider: all positions have been pretty thoroughly staked out and people can make up their own minds; I don't want RoUS to have a figurative / literal fit; and an argument will persist forever only if neither party is willing to call it a night.

Fair point.

I'm not backing bawbag. I haven't learned a thing from this current arguement, just enjoyed it. I was just giving an example of a time where a shit show was useful to me personally.

For what it's worth I don't have a problem with you whatsoever, RoUS. I also don't think you're a nazi.

2jar, this isn't a rule or a all for a rule. Copied from above:

"This is not a request at all, this is a personal pact between myself and my god (Deke Lord Chet Poe). What anyone else does with it is their own business."

I just posted it

A) to make myself more accountable to my resolution.
B) because I knew exactly what would happen in the comments.

To expand on B:

I, too, enjoy the shit fits and walls of text, I just don't enjoy compulsively participating in them, and now I won't because $10 is like 2/3 of a pizza.

Now I can just sit back and feel smugly superior, hooray!

For 10 bucks a third, that better be damn good pizza!

or 2/3rds even.

Delivery pizza is expensive here, you can easily spend $15-$20 on an average quality large with a topping or two. I usually make my own (can make 4 12" pizzas for well less than one 14" delivery pizza that isn't as good) but Monday nights I don't have time between work and MNR, so I'll order one.

Unrelated to this purity jar (which is apparently filled with vitriol?), I am going to budget for a regular contribution to "keep poeTV running". Too bad the administration here is so opaque that I have no idea if that'll actually do anything.

What other voluntary payments for internet stuff do people make here?
I am Patreon Patron for the "Go Make Me a Sandwich" feminist gaming blog and Canadaland/Commons/Impostor podcasts. I also donate to Wikipedia semi-regularly.

I imagine PoeTV requires little maintenance for the most part, beyond being a bill pms has to pay every month. I know I'm insufficiently grateful to him for that. I hope there aren't too many days it feels like a burden he'd be happier to shed.

Maybe dropping virgins into a volcano -- I mean sending him money -- will make him feel enthusiastic about this site. Perhaps even inspire him to tinker on the site with enhancements he's just never been motivated to do.

I find myself wondering things like, is the database replicating? Doing so might mean switching to another database system (I favor PostgreSQL) but once you've mastered replication it means you can always have a backup at the ready. That might have been a bridge too far when pms took on the system, but these days, it's more doabler.

Man, all this work I'm putting on pms. Really, if we can just make this site profitable enough for him that he finds it rewarding, that's all the goal we need.

Donating to PoeTV is such an obvious solution I didn't even think about it. I've been really lax on that, I think I've given maybe $10 tops in the past two years.

I tried disabling adblock a while back, but even with PoeTV fully allowed in every ad and script blocker I use, the ads still don't show up for some reason.

... and now I just realized we've got one even more worthy swear jar: kingarthur. Can someone post a link to kingarthur's thing again? For all the shit I've given him, I should do my part.

I've already posted this twice, but this is a personal decision, this is SELF censorship.

Voluntary, semi-ironic self censorship.

What censorship? I'm not sure you know what that word means.

Maybe the censorship of the Id by the Superego?

I think you misunderstood my first post, this isn't community policing or anything, this is a private choice to pay $10 every time I shitpost about politics, no more, no less.

It certainly shouldn't become some kind of proscriptive code of conduct or anything.

Agreed, it needs to be entirely voluntary and on the honor system. But, it also doesn't hurt to have some loose agreement on the sort of things that make PoeTV less fun. At the very least it's a discussion worth having.

It needs to not be a system at all.

This is not PoeTV Heroes.

I'm hoping for the best for you guys over there this Nov 8th, for real.

How do you feel about Proportional Representation as an alternative to the current circus? That's what we have for the Scottish Government and it is a lot more popular with Scots of all political stripes than our UK FPTP system.

Is there any real chance of the current dissatisfaction with the system becoming movement towards changing that two-party dynamic for an alternative? Genuinely curious.

The Republican Party is in such a disarray, I won't presume to say what happens next with them. My lame prediction is, they will not be able to win the presidency again for the foreseeable future, but will work on consolidating wins in state government and in Congress. So they'll be the party of obvious lunatics who wield vast power in pockets of the country.

But the Democrats, I believe, already function like a variety of smaller parties (far Left, center Left, moderate) operating under a loose coalition. The big difference is that they resolve their differences during the primary election and send a single candidate to the general election, which is a lot smarter than multiple smaller parties splitting each other's vote during the general election.

The heart of the problem remains that, no matter which candidate ultimately wins office -- a Republican, a far-Left Democrat, a center-left Democrat, or a moderate Democrat -- it's still going to be someone that a majority of people aren't thrilled with. That will be the case whether the Democrats are a single party or are fragmented into smaller parties.

bawbag, I'd be keen to try

What are the odds? Probably fucking awful. I have some concerns about things that don't bend.... i.e. they break.

" I have some concerns about things that don't bend.... i.e. they break."

Solid concern, this is my feeling with the UK right now too.

I've been noticing an increased agitation both online and out in daily life since 2010-2011. I blame a number of factors, from how online interactions are conditioning people to be confrontational as a general rule, as well as the general dissatisfaction with how the country, and world, is being run on all levels. People are just mad. And they seem to be getting madder.

"I've been noticing an increased agitation both online and out in daily life since 2010-2011."

Absolutely, for us in the UK it was austerity that seemed to kick it off in a big way. It had always sort of simmered beneath the veneer of our society for a couple of decades. The tighten your belts rhetoric of the Murdoch press plus the incredibly callous welfare reforms from our Conservative government set off waves of anger and fear and it's all coalesced into this hard knot of hate.

One side angry they've been royally stiffed, the other side angry that others want help 'from our taxes!11' etc and never the twain shall mediate.

Brexit I fear has just shifted it up a gear but we won't see the real impact of that until 2017 when (and if) May activates article 50 to leave the EU.

I'm hoping for calmer political waters in the US because overall that might soothe some of the social and financial volatility that are about to hit practically all of Europe. *fingers crossed*

So I only moved to the USA from Canada in during the "election" (before the primaries). Are you telling the the whole country wasn't totally fucked up before this? I don't think this happened in the last year.

I had heard about US craziness. I had dealt with Italian bureaucracy. I had dealt with lefty student politics. I thought I was prepared, or that I could deal with whatever I came up against.

It's probably mild depression talking but it honestly feels like every single "system" (in some sense of the word) in the US fundamentally broken. The gov't bureaucracy, health care, tenant protections, public safety, retirement plans, electoral systems at all levels... Maybe it's just worse in Texas?

Anyways I am definitely making slow plans to move away regardless of the election outcomes. This place is nuts and it's unhealthy for me.

"If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent Texas and live in Hell." - General Philip Sheridan, 150 years ago and he still has a point

"every single 'system' (in some sense of the word) in the US fundamentally broken."

"Maybe it's just worse in Texas?"



Yes and yes.

Wait, shit, I think I might have to pay $10 now.

http://imgur.com/a/KrkfR


Next time it'll go to Kingarthur, someone post the link to his donation thing again please!

d'oh, meant as a reply.

I think we can tweak the system in small ways, for example instant runoff voting. But I don't have a concept of a "best" system that resolves the problem of, any given seat can be occupied by exactly one person who is not necessarily the first choice of a majority.

I do think the divisiveness we're experiencing is indicative of society that's trying to move forward, and that's a positive. Black lives are starting to matter, women-raping is something we're starting to take seriously, and economic inequality is actually no longer a dirty word in politics. So I guess i'm optimistic, despite how things are.

It's good there's still optimism there, and I agree that it feels like there's at least some forward movement on actual 'social justice' (as opposed to the annoying campus kid alt-reich triggering stuff).

You do take a lot of shit from the more nihilistic/cynical posters here for your Hillary stuff, I respect that you still come out swinging on that front and as you say you can probably only tweak the system in small ways, which is how I suspect Hillary will actually lead in practice.

Some folks will of course still be fucked off by it regardless of whether they're a Vermin Supreme, Trump, Bern or whoever sort of voter so it will be interesting to see how that plays out. I'm hoping it's bloodless, genuinely and that the rhetoric on all sides finally dies down a bit.

The number of pointless shit flinging posts about the problems with the modern university industry compared and contrasted to the problems of universities in the 40s and 50s during the height of the red scare alone made this a worthy exercise for me.

Yeah, why don't people talk about the problems with the university system in the 40s in equal measure with the problems of the univeristy system today?