The toxoplasma of rage (article)



  • Very interesting article. Takes Ferguson shooting, college rape allegations and the PETA stuff, and tries to posit a scientific-ish explanation as to why these things always devolve into shouting matches centered around the most controversial cases.

    No pithy clips or quotes this time. Just read the damn article. It's pretty good.



  • Agree, it's pretty good. Was waiting for him to bring up Gamergate, he saved it for the last line.



  • I skipped about half of the article and then went back to read it because the parts on either side were so good.



  • a person might get them not because ey is very rich

    Oh fuck, another pronoun we didn't need (in a quote, but still).



  • OK, what a weird site that is.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    While undoubtedly true, I'm not sure that site's been around that long...



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    >a person might get them not because ey is very rich

    Oh fuck, another pronoun we didn't need (in a quote, but still).


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @cartman82 said:

    Just read the damn article

    Here are my reactions, before reading anyone else's:

    pretty much everybody who knows anything about factory farming is upset by it.

    Heh. Happy to be the exception.

    I'm the sort who doesn't consider it a meal if it ain't mostly meat. I think PETA is stupid. But I don't have a problem with them offering to pay water bills if people stop eating meat.

    OTOH, this bullshit angers me:

    ey is very rich but because ey really needs glasses.

    At first I thought it was a typo, but then they did it again. :wtf:

    ...If the Catholic had merely chosen not to murder...

    That was a bit of sloppy reasoning. The murder thing is totally banal, because everyone agrees with that. The condoms are something not everyone agrees with, so it's a more useful thing. I don't know WTF the "Consequentialism FAQ" is, but it seems kinda dumb.

    “Rape culture” doesn’t mean most people like rape, it means most people ignore it.

    Huh? No, it's a manufactured thing (in the US, other places have some real problems with actual rape culture) that uses a scandalous claim to grab attention and further misandry in general.

    My second thought was “But when people are competing to see who can come up with the wittiest and most hilarious quip about why we should disbelieve rape victims, something has gone horribly wrong.” My third thought was the same as my second thought, but in ALL CAPS, because at that point I had read the replies at the bottom.

    Thus proving that he didn't understand Instapundit or what was going on with respect to the UVA hoax.

    controversial by Tumblr standards

    Heh...I LOL'd when I read that.

    Here's my tl;dr; for the article: People are interested in interesting things. Some imaginative examples provided.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Here's my tl;dr; for the article: People are interested in interesting things. Some imaginative examples provided.

    Are you pretending not to get the point in order to downplay the article/author/(ancillary beliefs expressed by the author)/(beliefs vaguely hinted that the author might hold)? Or did you really not understand?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Bort said:

    Or did you really not understand?

    Maybe I didn't understand. Did you get something more profound than that? Or are you just trolling me?



  • @boomzilla said:

    Maybe I didn't understand. Did you get something more profound than that? Or are you just trolling me?

    My tl;dr of that point would be something like:

    People form their views of the world from well-publicized cases, which tend to be controversial (and often dubious or fall in gray-areas), and when they don't accurately represent the reality of all cases, people end up with twisted views of the world.

    That's a bit more substantive than "People are interested in interesting things".

    And there was also the bits about moral signaling and the double-bind advocacy groups end up in.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I don't disagree with that. I just collapsed all that stuff into "interesting," which is a bit broader and includes stuff like the Kardashians (and the fact that millions of people find them interesting make them interesting despite any particular hipster declaring themselves unimpressed).

    So maybe my tldr isn't as accurate for the article, but I guess I got distracted by all the stupid stuff in there.



  • @boomzilla said:

    the Kardashians

    Ok, so:

    Celebrities are well-known because they are unusual, and because they are unusual, they misrepresent people in general and this can artificially divide people over issues that would have more mutual agreement if only average people were considered.

    @boomzilla said:

    and the fact that millions of people find them interesting make them interesting

    I think that's a different phenomenon. That's the snowball effect of popularity. The article theorizes about how somethings begins to become popular in the first place.

    How do some of these people start to become popular?



  • Yeah ok, I'm not into the author's ideologies either. But the insight into why the kind of stories that gain social media wings are oftentimes poor representatives of the issues they are tied with is spot on.



  • So you're promoting toxoplasma now, you irresponsible fucktard? People like you should be ashamed of themselves.

    Filed under: teach the controversy, objectively pro-toxoplasma


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Well, sure. Because controversy is interesting. I'm not really convinced that we got Ferguson because it was ambiguous and ultimately a terrible poster case for racist police brutality.

    @Bort said:

    How do some of these people start to become popular?

    People and issues...it seems there are a lot of things that contribute, including what's going on at the time (slow news day).

    I suspect post hog ergo prompter hoc here. [I suspect] It's like reading a Malcolm Gladwell theory. Really neat, but doesn't hold up to deeper analysis.



  • @cartman82 said:

    But the insight into why the kind of stories that gain social media wings are oftentimes poor representatives of the issues they are tied with is spot on.

    Quite. The article's a long one, but well worth reading for that point alone -- it's something that pervades both the traditional and the social media-political complexes, and provides great insight into what's really driving the wedge between Red and Blue -- and even the proto-Grays, to the point where we are seriously risking our ability to meaningfully impact problems simply by bringing them up in the broader framework of social discourse.

    Also: the analogy to T. gondii is a beautiful one in several senses.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said:

    misandry

    Oh look, another MRA.





  • Who put lipstick on the baby?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Probably the same person who dressed him in that clown ruffle.


  • BINNED

    That would be daddy because mummy is not there being a suffragette


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Man, giving women the vote is one of those things that's the right thing to do on principle, but has terrible consequences.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Luhmann said:

    That would be daddy because mummy is not there being a suffragette

    I find that highly unlikely.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Man, giving women people the vote is one of those things that's the right thing to do on principle, but has terrible consequences.

    FTFY.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
                — Thomas Jefferson.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    FTFM.

    FTFY


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