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anyone see Rick Gervais on the American Golden Globe awards?

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sean.

cultural marxism is indeed a travesty and i never use SJW, but even someone like bill maher uses the latter regularly now, so even though origins maybe be right-wing, does it really matter if we all get what it means?

as for virtue-signalling, if the right actually came up with that (they often steal things from the far left), then it's a very rare glimmer of psychological insight from that camp. i avoid using the term because of the association and would appreciate an alternative.

I'm not sure we do all get it though: here it's basically synonymous with leftist, but with an inflection implying scorn for the young. Might be apocryphal but I think the term "virtue signalling" was coined by right wing hack and NHS privateer James Bartholomew. It certainly did a lot of work for the alt-right movement. Personally I think it has a very strong affinity with the right, especially in the context of the current culture war, which feeds off resentment 1) that anyone might presume to represent anything beyond their own self-interest and 2) at the young leftists stifling the voices of ordinary decent people with their censorious white noise. I don't think there's any left alternative because it's really quite specific to those particular resentments. E.g billionaires holding charity galas isn't virtue signalling, it's just straightforward money laundering, whitewashing, deception.

I feel the same way about "cancel culture", "woke" etc. They're not just words they're ideas and they're all part of the same reactionary formation. I'm sensitive to it because I work with the kind of people who it's aimed at, i.e. young, mostly black, mostly working class students trying to find their feet politically, personally, under an absolute barrage of abuse from the British press and government, and British culture generally, which is really awful at the moment. They internalise it: if they want to venture a political opinion they first apologise for appearing "woke". I've just finished marking an absolutely self-lacerating essay on cancel culture. I think young people have enough to put up with without taking responsibility for the culture war being waged against them.
 
The term has evidently been embraced and extended to death. We can say ‘class warriors gonna class warrior’ because that's about class. Perhaps that's because class advocacy has been increasingly eclipsed by other forms of advocacy and as such has taken a back seat to all the isms and phobia. Again, interestingly, most -- as in even one above half -- of these groups have very little truck with class issues because they're by and large well off. Go figure. And if they do, well there's that virtue signaling trope again. Nothing like folks enjoying north of 100k in audio gear advocating against poverty.

But we can't say "social justice warrior gonna social justice," even though there are several areas that fall under the social justice umbrella, such as (google it)
  • Race.
  • Gender.
  • Age.
  • Sexual Orientation.
  • Religion.
  • Nationality.
  • Education.
  • Mental or Physical Ability.
Hmm .. age is number 3. Weren't we just going round not long ago about how much better off the world would be without Boomers? And would ya'll just get on with it and die? Education ... hmm. Didn't @droodzilla fling himself into abeyance over that one? I see three on this list of 8 that gobble up the most grease. I don't think it's my imagination that those three comprise a minute subset of the human population represented by that google list. But if I were to strongly advocate that the priorities weren't exactly equitable (another social justice cornerstone) what would happen? I think the thread not terribly long ago with banned user merlin illustrates that pretty well. I don't remember it in great detail, but what I recall was that merlon was arguing in a healthcare thread and opined that the more esoteric medical needs, unlike head injuries, should naturally be triaged to a lower priority, that sort of thing. He wasn't around very long afterwards because social justice said: Bigot, be gone!

/out
Big up Marky Mark, putting it rather eloquently, time to put woke to sleep.
 
I'm not sure we do all get it though: here it's basically synonymous with leftist, but with an inflection implying scorn for the young. Might be apocryphal but I think the term "virtue signalling" was coined by right wing hack and NHS privateer James Bartholomew. It certainly did a lot of work for the alt-right movement. Personally I think it has a very strong affinity with the right, especially in the context of the current culture war, which feeds off resentment 1) that anyone might presume to represent anything beyond their own self-interest and 2) at the young leftists stifling the voices of ordinary decent people with their censorious white noise. I don't think there's any left alternative because it's really quite specific to those particular resentments. E.g billionaires holding charity galas isn't virtue signalling, it's just straightforward money laundering, whitewashing, deception.

I feel the same way about "cancel culture", "woke" etc. They're not just words they're ideas and they're all part of the same reactionary formation. I'm sensitive to it because I work with the kind of people who it's aimed at, i.e. young, mostly black, mostly working class students trying to find their feet politically, personally, under an absolute barrage of abuse from the British press and government, and British culture generally, which is really awful at the moment. They internalise it: if they want to venture a political opinion they first apologise for appearing "woke". I've just finished marking an absolutely self-lacerating essay on cancel culture. I think young people have enough to put up with without taking responsibility for the culture war being waged against them.

I don’t agree with most of this because one premise after another is fallacious. And I don’t think it matters how or by whom you believe or think terms were coined because terms morph over time, or they’re weaponized by pathological personalities to assert personal agendas. Or they’re perfectly acceptable terms when taken in context.

No one here is slagging on youth or race in any way, shape or form. I’m very simply stating that woke cancel-culture by virtue signalers playing at social justice can be useful, or it can be crap. But it’s most often nothing more than hypocritical posturing. And as far as I’m concerned I don’t require or need a political affiliation to make such a determination. Nor does it make me alt-right or an identity-phobe if I happen to use a term like woke, or [...] warriors or virtue signal. That's frankly an abjectly daft leap to make when there's context to the contrary.

Doesn’t it strike anyone odd that the offended in this thread are mostly financially well off white dudes immersed in a meaningless epistemological pissing match while the world burns? Not millionaires, they don’t care, guys with homes full of toys waging pixel war on just about anyone they disagree with for kicks is what I’m talking about. And it's all over the internet and is redrawing political lines --newsflash!-- to favor just the disreputable groups you're so at odds with? Can people be anymore self-centered? I think not.

Virtue signaling, you want some of that? How about the guy you’re so afraid will push the ban button on you that you invariably cower when push comes to shove unabashedly reaffirming a globalist worldview while telling us how horrible the brushfires are in Australia. Oh, wait, Amazon, the mega-corp that’s just terrible at avoiding negative press re: social responsibility (can I get a warrior, please!) donated the USD equivalent of 600k, roughly .80 cents Bezos/amazon worker, to help with the fires. Well then, that’s sorted. Gee whiz. Social justice THAT, why don't you.

I don’t know what world you’re on, but it doesn’t escape the people in my world that woke is defined as a pretentious, hypocritical stance on social issues. That world also defines Cancel-culture as people with too much money and time on their hands acting as human resentment memes who glom onto whatever is currently Trending that they don’t happen to like and run after it like flying OZ monkeys to denigrate it or someone into silent submission by essentializing it / them with a single term (alt-right ring a bell?) to win a war against the boogeyman de jour with uninspired, shallow justifications, hoping to effect some vague social change for their effort. Usually a 100% self serving change with zero regard for anyone or anything but themselves.

It's tl;dr meets angry at the world and apparently too damn clever to take a good hard whiff of their own assholes because they're too busy retailing more toys.

This is one million percent all I’m referring to when I use the terms woke and cancel culture and social justice warrior. Because it happens to fit. Really, really well.
 
Every post from you contains at least some mealy-mouthed gobshittery against either me, the mod team, or my site in amongst the random hipster word-salad/Twitter buzzwords. How about you actually come clean about who you are, what you do, why you are here etc?

PS I’m guessing white, middle aged, wealthy and with tons of free time to troll up the internet for shits and giggles. Likely a previously banned member back in again given how paranoid/aggressive you are about moderation. You certainly appear to have no interest in audio or music that I can detect from your postings here on what is predominantly an audio & music site.
 
Every post from you contains at least some mealy-mouthed gobshittery against either me, the mod team, or my site in amongst the random hipster word-salad/Twitter buzzwords. How about you actually come clean about who you are, what you do, why you are here etc?

PS I’m guessing white, middle aged, wealthy and with tons of free time to troll up the internet for shits and giggles. Likely a previously banned member back in again given how paranoid/aggressive you are about moderation. You certainly appear to have no interest in audio or music that I can detect from your postings here on what is predominantly an audio & music site.

PS: I've written it before. A few times in fact. Yes, I'm a white man of six decades. The opposite of wealthy. Free time, yes. I post on one other forum infrequently. And that's it. No Twitter, no facebook. I joined this forum years ago while researching gear but didn't post for some time after. I've never been a member here under any other name. Talking about gear doesn't interest me. I came to prefer listening to it rather than buying it.

Why don't you tell me what gives you the effrontery to repeatedly imply that I'm alt-right, phobe-this-or-that simply for using a term? And then when you get some blowback for resurrecting a nearly dead thread with a "take-down" post, and I reply, you double-down and refer to me that way again? I'm not supposed to take offense at that? You drop these turds like a rabbit and never amend them. In fact, you drop them again and again. You like submissive people, I get it. I'm not that.

What did I say about moderation that's objectionable? That you're accepting up-votes and giving them out? It's true. That I've never seen that before on a forum? That's true. That it's terrible form? That's true. That you have a penchant for handing out two week vacations over and over to the point that on face seems a little sadistic? It's true. That you've made it clear no one can write negatively about Amazon for what are reasons I understand, but that is in total conflict with indicting others on social issues related to class? That's also true. So I'm to take it that truth is objectionable now too? Doesn't surprise me in the least.
 
I don’t agree with most of this because one premise after another is fallacious. And I don’t think it matters how or by whom you believe or think terms were coined because terms morph over time, or they’re weaponized by pathological personalities to assert personal agendas. Or they’re perfectly acceptable terms when taken in context.

No one here is slagging on youth or race in any way, shape or form. I’m very simply stating that woke cancel-culture by virtue signalers playing at social justice can be useful, or it can be crap. But it’s most often nothing more than hypocritical posturing. And as far as I’m concerned I don’t require or need a political affiliation to make such a determination. Nor does it make me alt-right or an identity-phobe if I happen to use a term like woke, or [...] warriors or virtue signal. That's frankly an abjectly daft leap to make when there's context to the contrary.

Doesn’t it strike anyone odd that the offended in this thread are mostly financially well off white dudes immersed in a meaningless epistemological pissing match while the world burns? Not millionaires, they don’t care, guys with homes full of toys waging pixel war on just about anyone they disagree with for kicks is what I’m talking about. And it's all over the internet and is redrawing political lines --newsflash!-- to favor just the disreputable groups you're so at odds with? Can people be anymore self-centered? I think not.

Virtue signaling, you want some of that? How about the guy you’re so afraid will push the ban button on you that you invariably cower when push comes to shove unabashedly reaffirming a globalist worldview while telling us how horrible the brushfires are in Australia. Oh, wait, Amazon, the mega-corp that’s just terrible at avoiding negative press re: social responsibility (can I get a warrior, please!) donated the USD equivalent of 600k, roughly .80 cents Bezos/amazon worker, to help with the fires. Well then, that’s sorted. Gee whiz. Social justice THAT, why don't you.

I don’t know what world you’re on, but it doesn’t escape the people in my world that woke is defined as a pretentious, hypocritical stance on social issues. That world also defines Cancel-culture as people with too much money and time on their hands acting as human resentment memes who glom onto whatever is currently Trending that they don’t happen to like and run after it like flying OZ monkeys to denigrate it or someone into silent submission by essentializing it / them with a single term (alt-right ring a bell?) to win a war against the boogeyman de jour with uninspired, shallow justifications, hoping to effect some vague social change for their effort. Usually a 100% self serving change with zero regard for anyone or anything but themselves.

It's tl;dr meets angry at the world and apparently too damn clever to take a good hard whiff of their own assholes because they're too busy retailing more toys.

This is one million percent all I’m referring to when I use the terms woke and cancel culture and social justice warrior. Because it happens to fit. Really, really well.
Let's put it like this. On the one hand you've got some self-righteous loudmouths on Twitter calling everyone out in an annoying manner. And on the other you've got (or we've got: this is the situation in the UK) right wing newspapers, talk radio, celebrity sh_t-talkers and the actual government building a moral panic around them and wilfully stoking dangerous levels of resentment, just to keep their nasty old show on the road. One side of this equation is massively more consequential than the other, and the consequences are felt disproportionately by vulnerable groups, so that's the side I pay most attention to. SJW Twitter mobs, finger pointing virtue signallers...seriously, who cares.

One excuse for Mark Fisher's vampire essay might have been that, at the time, it probably felt like po-faced SJWs were holding things back, including class based politics. That's clearly no longer the case, if it ever was, and it's much easier to see what the problem is. It's not over-privileged post-grads calling each other out.
 
Let's put it like this. On the one hand you've got some self-righteous loudmouths on Twitter calling everyone out in an annoying manner. And on the other you've got (or we've got: this is the situation in the UK) right wing newspapers, talk radio, celebrity sh_t-talkers and the actual government building a moral panic around them and wilfully stoking dangerous levels of resentment, just to keep their nasty old show on the road. One side of this equation is massively more consequential than the other, and the consequences are felt disproportionately by vulnerable groups, so that's the side I pay most attention to. SJW Twitter mobs, finger pointing virtue signallers...seriously, who cares.

One excuse for Mark Fisher's vampire essay might have been that, at the time, it probably felt like po-faced SJWs were holding things back, including class based politics. That's clearly no longer the case, if it ever was, and it's much easier to see what the problem is. It's not over-privileged post-grads calling each other out.

I often fail to appreciate the differences (USA/UK), but I don't think it's terribly large. And I still agree with Fisher's principle assertions. As to 'who cares' I pointed that out. I'm writing in defense of being labelled on this website by an owner who's obviously quite authoritarian. I don't see any way that's deniable based on behavior, and so while I was hyperbolic, yes, I care enough to that extent. I don't like being falsely labelled by someone, especially someone in authority who can shut the spigot of words off at whim. I realize it amounts to a two-bit pixel dictatorship, so yeah, in that regard, why give two 5hits, for sure. I think I'm very close to it once I shed the outrage of his bullshit accusations.
 
Why don't you tell me what gives you the effrontery to repeatedly imply that I'm alt-right, phobe-this-or-that simply for using a term?

If you use alt-right terms you should maybe factor that people are going to assume that intent. If it quacks like a duck...

I’d also argue you could make your point in a far more clear and readable way by dropping the hipster word-salad. Reading your posts is all to often like trying to interpret some bad social media AI.

That you have a penchant for handing out two week vacations over and over to the point it that on face seems a little sadistic?

The opposite to be honest. I don’t like permanently banning people over a single incident so try to indicate what behaviour I’m prepared to host in the more gentle manner of just throwing folk out for a while to cool down or whatever and hopefully learn the extent to which the hospitality of this site extends. I will always moderate in what I view to be the best interest of pfm as a site. It amazes me how anyone would struggle with that concept. If you want a blog, go get yourself a blog. This is something rather different.

PS I assume ‘up-votes’ is Twiter speak for ‘likes’? That’s just a function of the forum software and is far preferable to the alternative quoting of a post just to add ‘I agree!’ or whatever.
 
If you use alt-right terms you should maybe factor that people are going to assume that intent. If it quacks like a duck...

I’d also argue you could make your point in a far more clear and readable way by dropping the hipster word-salad. Reading your posts is all to often like trying to interpret some bad social media AI.

The opposite to be honest. I don’t like permanently banning people over a single incident so try to indicate what behaviour I’m prepared to host in the more gentle manner of just throwing folk out for a while to cool down or whatever and hopefully learn the extent to which the hospitality of this site extends. I will always moderate in what I view to be the best interest of pfm as a site. It amazes me how anyone would struggle with that concept. If you want a blog, go get yourself a blog. This is something rather different.

PS I assume ‘up-votes’ is Twiiter speak for ‘likes’? That’s just a function of the forum software and is far preferable to the alternative quoting of a post just to add ‘I agree!’ or whatever.

I think anyone I would appreciate understanding what I wrote will have no difficulty getting my drift. Honestly, we've been over the alt-right term thing enough. They're terms that are routinely applied outside of anything suggestive of alt-right. You've got it so far up your ass it's banging off your palette this alt-right obsession. Maybe it's a UK thing. The only alt-right I know of are idiots carrying tiki-torches and clubs or on websites I never visit.

Alt-right. Bigot. Hipster word-salad. Any other insults you care to levy? Now's your chance. But before that ... you know, I posted a long thing about how much I loathed the precious, self-important bullshit in OT. All the sniping and snark. But I played along and tossed it back. And then I grew tired of it. I'm too old to act like that. And then I realized how the culture here came to be, and it's how it usually comes to be on forums. The owner/moderation. The head. Whoever it is that sets the example in authority. Because it always rots from the head.

You set the example. You. You are where this forum culture of petty pedestrian insult for sport derives. It's in practically every reply to me in this thread and in the Brexit thread. And the education thread. And so the forum is rife with it. You insult with impunity and you banish just the same. And you take your Likes and give them occasionally if it scores a point.

As I've said, I've never seen a forum, this software top of that list, where staff are able to give and receive upvotes. I'm sure you know you can turn it off, right? It's just absolutely terrible form to police a forum and play the upvote shit. No thinking person would disagree. But what you're left with is frightened little toadies afraid to speak the truth so you never hear it. Is this hipster word salad too? It's all just ugh. No wonder your country is nearing ruination. Don't worry about banishment. I'll do it myself.
 
If you use alt-right terms

did you not read the exchange above (sean + mark)? i would also add the problem of people on the right appropriating far left social/political critiques, though often in a very narrow and possibly disingenuous way. that' certainly the case with freedom of speech -- i think you know about that one.

it would seem the sensible thing to do would be to have a person clarify what they meant, assuming that it needs clarification. if someone is just tossing out a questionable terms as insult, that's one thing. if it's used in a detailed argument, that's another.
 
FWIW I think we are defining ‘alt right’ somewhat differently between the UK and US. To my reading it is the trajectory that started with the US Tea Party movement and has led to Trump, Farage, Johnson, Breitbart, Guido Fawkes etc. It is not the far/fascist right of the KKK, EDL, BNP etc, so no “burning tiki torches” etc. It is the ugly modern post-truth bollocks that blights both the US and UK at present. The most dangerous politics I’ve ever witnessed as people seem to buy into it in numbers the real fascist right could never dream of.

From a UK perspective, as Sean and Claire have both argued, it is this area of the political map that has weaponised terms such as SJW, virtue signalling and used them to try and shut down modern human rights/civil liberties campaigners etc, even environmentalists such as Greta Thunberg. You got spectacularly suckered in this by taking the side of Jordan Peterson’s hackneyed “free speech” argument over a university attempting to provide a safe and welcoming environment for minority students. A classic right-wing ruse that in the UK at least we see played out in the gutter tabloids pretty much daily. My interest here is a) I have friends who have suffered abuse and beatings for being outliers, and b) I will do everything in my power to keep such shit off my site. As I said I became aware of this crap way back in ‘78 with Rock Against Racism etc and I’ll never stop fighting that fight in my own small way.

I concede I may have called Marky-Mark wrongly on this as I find his writing style impenetrable so I do tend to skim the stuff that is just buzzwords or hostility aimed at myself or site, but I maintain these are not phrases decent caring people should ever be using.
 
You got spectacularly suckered in this by taking the side of Jordan Peterson’s hackneyed “free speech” argument over a university attempting to provide a safe and welcoming environment for minority students. A classic right-wing ruse

do you really believe i am so stupid as to have been suckered by a person that i consider to be a bad academic and totally wrong about many/most of his political and economic opinions? so stupid as to continue to be suckered over 2 years later? is it not possible that a professor at a top north american university can be correct about a thing or or two or does he have to be wrong about everything? when people talk about "cancel culture" is this sort of hat they're getting at?
 
Basically yes! He’s not the only bad academic from Canada IMHO. Some of the crap you’ve written here recently (deleted, obviously) with regards to LGBT issues is at least as repugnant as anything Peterson burps up.
 
Basically yes! He’s not the only bad academic from Canada IMHO. Some of the crap you’ve written here recently (deleted, obviously) with regards to LGBT issues is at least as repugnant as anything Peterson burps up.

i have a PhD in experimental psychology and my area of primary expertise/study is in social identification and group perceptions. to call what i wrote about group-based identity crap means that my thesis examiners were also idiots, including the 2 external experts, one of whom was editor of the most important journal in the field.

btw -- i'm presenting this argument from authority (authorities) because you will not let the arguments from facts and logic be written here.
 
I realise you are qualified, though psychology is a soft-science and there are countless conflicting opinions on all subjects. I view your opinion on LGBT rights etc with all the weight of someone who for years hurled the phrase ‘girlymen’ around online as abuse, referred to things you didn’t like as ‘gay’ etc. These are facts too. I was there, I saw you. To my mind that obvious bias entirely negates any academic training you may try to manipulate to make your rather objectionable and blinkered points on this particular subject. There has always been an underlying stench of homophobia to a lot of what you write, and if you were remotely honest and believed in truth/facts you would acknowledge that. Again, I know *exactly* the crap I have deleted over the years!

PS I will prune this thread back later as I don’t like arguing like this online, but I will also give back as good as I get when it comes to subjects like this. Every time.
 
I realise you are qualified, though psychology is a soft-science

no, cognitive psychology is not a soft science. you are clearly totally out of your depth here. it's quite remarkable and clearly a personal/emotional thing.

it's really convenient that you get to prune things.
 
no, cognitive psychology is not a soft science. you are clearly totally out of your depth here. it's quite remarkable and clearly a personal/emotional thing.

it's really convenient that you get to prune things.

The posts I have deleted recently, especially the one I hoofed you out for (obviously not long enough), have all had that air one gets from a certain segment of the Christian right who use pseudoscientific phraseology to actively marginalise, belittle and trivialise sexual minorities who don’t fit their own blinkered world-view. Your bias and bigotry is so obvious it is almost comedic. I’ll just leave it at that!

PS For clarity I was very far from the only one to pick up on this, so it isn’t my perception that is out of whack!
 
The posts I have deleted recently, especially the one I hoofed you out for (obviously not long enough), have all had that air one gets from a certain segment of the Christian right who use pseudoscientific phraseology to actively marginalise, belittle and trivialise sexual minorities who don’t fit their own blinkered world-view. Your bias and bigotry is so obvious it is almost comedic. I’ll just leave it at that!

PS For clarity I was very far from the only one to pick up on this, so it isn’t my perception that is out of whack!

again, this is totally remarkable. you have no expertise at all in the field and you are making erroneous judgments based on the type of bias we study. i have nothing to do with the christian right and my arguments have nothing to do with god or religious ethics. what i spelled out today, in very dry terms is how the concept of "inner person" was not a valid/serious one in the scientific world. that's one example. that's a debunking of pseudo-science, if you are so concerned with it. everything i have written is completely representative of how things would be discussed in graduate school or an academic talk.

as for the others you reference, they can send me a private message and i would be glad to discuss this with them over the phone.

as for those looking in, do you all think it's OK to delete a person's posts and then attack them by presenting merely your personal impression of the posts?
 
Tony L is probably more tolerant than other webiste hosts tbh, and the audio advice on this site is fantastic. Can I just suggest though Tony that your perceptions on what is permissible to say are a bit narrow sometimes. I really don't see the point in deleting stuff when people debate in a polite and usually well mannered way. One thing you said which alarmed me somewhat as if it was a given 'truth' was "university(s) attempting to provide a safe and welcoming environment for minority students". Universities have never really been places where 'minority students' have had to worry about outright racism, but over the past 20 years the effects on UK society of both the health & safety and PC cultures have brought about an alarmist and over protective attitude to undergraduates for one. You probably recognise moans about PC etc as 'gammony', but that of course is another - rather ugly - prejudice. I was at uni in 1994 - London Guildhall - it had many Asian and Black students, there was never any question of racism being tolerated, minority students faced no more hurdles than any other students. In the 25 years since then I really don't see how all the recent 'protections' for minority students could have possibly helped them, quite the opposite in fact as it constantly draws attention to their race.
 
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