Musings On Present Day - Death Is Bad

The Radioactive Waste of Outrage-Marketing

Feb 092016

00003422 Here’s a silly post by a guy trying to sell books by stirring up outrage.

In short: he wanted to think of some really original reason for an AI to decide to wipe out humanity, a reason that readers can really empathize with. He went with the old AIs-realize-that-humanity-attacks-things-they-view-as-a-threat, and-thinks-humanity-will-see-AI-as-a-threat. This is kinda the opposite of originality. It’s pretty much the stock reason given in every popcorn AI-wipes-out-humanity flick or novel. I’m not saying it’s a bad trope. After all, it is a darn good reason, and one we can empathize with. But Cole seems really impressed with himself for thinking of it. /shrug

Anyway, according to the author, his moment-of-clarity for the AI is when the AI learns about abortion. He says this isn’t a pro-life/pro-choice debate, but duh, obviously it is, we’re not stupid. For an AI to be more concerned with terminating an unwanted pregnancy than our species-long history of genocide and violence, is a very clear message that an objective, non-emotionally-invested third party would view abortion as a stronger indicator of humanity’s dangerousness than genocide is.

That’s blatantly a pro-life message. That’s fine, I personally like message fic, as long as it’s actually about the message and engages it. From the sounds of it (again, based only on the author’s post), this was just kinda stuck in at the beginning of what is otherwise a popcorn action book. It’s basically just a big middle finger to the hated Other Side, a simultaneous rallying cry for the like-minded, before moving on to good shoot-‘em-up fun. That’s not really message fic, it’s just being divisive. I will be the first to say that there isn’t anything wrong with this, if that’s what you’re going for. But it will turn off all the readers on the Other Side, while gaining you some fans on the Correct Side. That’s what it’s designed to do.

HarperCollins didn’t think this would gain him enough readers to offset those lost, and refused to publish unless he changed that. He refused, they parted ways, and that’s that.

Hahahaha, no of course it’s not.

Nick Cole is now making some pretty good hay out of the fact that his publisher wouldn’t accept the book. I can see this from HarperCollins’s point of view. The contract would have included an advance, plus they would be out the cost of production & printing & promotion (if any). If they were confident that the book wouldn’t make back its cost, not publishing it is the logical choice.

On the other hand, identity politics is crazy profitable right now! Every few months one side or the other gets outraged over something and dumps a lot of money into “supporting their side of the cultural war” or whatever. Chick-fil-A, that one pizza store, Sad Puppies 3, etc.

The real problem is getting some controversy going. It’s not hard to find bad message fiction out there, the internet is awash in it. We’re drowning in bad message fic. How’s a guy to differentiate himself, and get some attention? What you need is some sort of Great Injustice to occur that people can really get behind.

And thus the post entitled “Banned by the Publisher”. Where not only does Nick claim that he was censored and silenced by elitist liberal publishers, but he paints himself as a courageous oppressed minority fighting against the powers of Hitler. No, really. Here’s some direct quotes:

“I had no right to have such a thought”

“That is censorship, and a violation of everyone’s right to free speech.”

“I am a writer.
No. One. Will Ever. Bully. Me.
Ever.”

“A writer is often the last defense in a society collapsing into a one-mind totalitarian state where the rights of people are trodden upon by the ruling elite”

“artists disappear either by blacklisting or “disappearing” ”

“It is my job to stand up and say what cannot be said”

“Many dead writers have paid for the freedom of others with the truth, and their lives. Writers are often the last flame of freedom on the flickering candle of civilization in the darkness of a world going mad.”

“Thinking like that made the concentration camps possible”

At this point, he has a shot of getting the big Counter-Oppression dollars, so kudos to him! It’s unlikely he would have gotten anywhere without HarperCollins turning down his novel, so I suspect this is “banned” in the same way that SuperBowl commercials are “banned” – ie: intentionally designed to be refused.

I guess that’s a viable business strategy right now, but I really dislike how it relies on hatred to be effective. This is the same reason the Sad Puppies 3 campaign was bad. The externality this ignores is that the publicity isn’t free. It comes at the cost of manipulating one group of people into feeling extreme anger and hostility at a different group of people undeservedly. Hatred of actual evil is good. It’s a motivating force. But it’s a dangerous tool, and extremely toxic. Exploiting it for book sales is like dumping radioactive waste in a community’s ground water.

Ultimately, I would have shrugged and supported Nick Cole in going self-pub with this book, if he just put it out as a self-pub because his publisher wouldn’t print it. By turning it into another toxic rage-fest to boost sales, I consider him vile. :/ Way to take “freedom of expression” and ruin it for all of us, dillweed.

Trump is a Puppy

Musings On Present Day, WorldCon No Responses »

Jan 292016

trump2016

One of the more fascinating aspects of Donald Trump’s run for the presidency is that the Republican establishment doesn’t like him or want him. Dan Carlin comments on this in his latest episode of Common Sense . To summarize his relevant points:

The Republican Party is not officially a government body. It is essentially a semi-private club. Its members can choose to exclude anyone they want.

Currently the rules of the club allows (to simplify a little) that anyone who calls themselves a Republican can cast a nominating vote for anyone else who calls themselves a Republican, and the person who gets the most votes will have the machinery of the Republican Party backing them in the general election.

This works as long as everyone operates in good faith. But the system doesn’t have much in the way of formal defenses against exploitation, the understandings that prevent gaming the system are informal rules.

Eventually the informal rules will weaken enough that they’ll be ignorable (or even considered gauche). Then someone will attempt to game the system. Enter Trump.

The thing about exploiting a system is that systems don’t exist ex nihlo – they are composed of people. There are a lot of people who don’t simply call themselves “Republicans”, they actually work for the Republican Party. They’ve put in years of labor, sometimes decades. Often for very little financial reward. Their identities are wrapped up in the party. Obviously they aren’t doing this just for themselves – they’re doing this for the Ideal of the Grand Old Party. For all the people who think and feel like them, that depend on them to keep the government leaning right. However, they are not without opinions, and they are heavily invested in the Party itself.

I think it’s fair to say that these people have put in the work to have more of a say in what the party does. If a hostile outside group comes in and attempts to subvert the infrastructure that these people have spent decades (centuries?) building, they are fully within their rights to defend themselves.

If a crazy man shouting hatred for ideological/ethnic opponents manages to flood the nominations with bigots that he has roused to angry action via lies and bluster, I can understand the establishment participants deciding to exclude him in spite of how many nominations he receives. Because in the end, the establishment is a private party working for the interests of people they want in their party. And just because there isn’t any formal way to evict party crashers right now doesn’t mean they can’t do so.

If this sounds familiar to people immersed in the SF world, it’s because we already saw all this happen last year, during the Sad Puppies Fiasco. Regardless of how you feel about either side, the parallels are striking.

WorldCon is a semi-private club. Their rules allowed anyone with a few extra Hamiltons to nominate whoever they wanted, and the machinery of the WorldCon establishment would then throw an award party for them. The rules against exploitation where purely informal, it was expected that anyone who cared to attend a WorldCon would care about their reputation among Con-goers and not ignore the general understanding.

A hostile group with active disdain for an ideological/ethnic group (that they believe runs WorldCon) gamed the system, at the behest of a few loud men. They were motivated by anger, and the most odious of them is a proud bigot with no regard for honesty.

The establishment, who have worked for years or decades creating the infrastructure this outside group is hijacking, is more than a bit peeved at the situation.

Hm.

I hear that the Democratic Party has “super-delegates” to help combat this sort of problem. I don’t know if the Republican Party has such preventative weapons in place. I’m interested to see how they deal with this invasion of their party. I’m particularly interested to see if they manage to resolve it in a better way than WorldCon did/is trying to. I don’t think WorldCon did a bad job, all things considered. But I assume choosing No Candidate would be much more harmful for the Republican Party than choosing No Award was for WorldCon.

What fresh bullshit is this?

Musings On Present Day 5 Responses »

Jan 212016

vaping1 I’ve recently seen two vape-shaming attacks. I’d like to point out this is different from mocking people for their hat or beard styles. If this sort of thing succeeds in reducing incidence of vaping it will
A. make your enviroment less pleasant (assuming you dislike the smell of tobacco smoke) and
B. lead directly to more preventable deaths from lung cancer.
If you vape-shame, you are contributing to deaths that could be prevented. Might as well mock designated-drivers while you’re at it.

Civic Duty vs Civility

Musings On Present Day 6 Responses »

Dec 152015

I’ve never seen this movie, or even heard of it before 5 minutes ago. I have no opinion on it.

I prefer to be around self-identified Aspiring Rationalists. I feel like a fraud when I’m around them, because I am not nearly as smart or as rigorous as the Rationalists I read. But I just can’t stand how most people talk about reality, because most people DON’T EVEN TRY to talk about reality. And the thing I really love about Rationalists is that they at least really freakin’ try to talk about reality itself when they discuss the world.

II.

I was linked to an article that asserted in the first sentence that a woman “fired wildly at a crowd in the parking lot of an Auburn Hills Home Depot” in an attempt stop fleeing shoplifters. A bit later it says “[the shoplifters] were not in any way threatening anyone.” The article then stated that the woman received 18 months of probation on one count of “reckless discharge”, and lost her concealed-carry permit.

This immediately set off my “I am confused” alarm at the volume of an air raid siren. Maybe I’m an idealist, but I couldn’t believe that an action as depraved as firing wildly into a crowd would result in probation on a minor charge and the loss of a license. Our justice system is not THAT fucked up. Right?

More careful Googling shows that the parking lot was as empty as you’d expect a Home Dept parking lot to be. There was no one near her target. And that the woman wasn’t trying to execute anyone, she was shooting at the tires. And she only fired two rounds. And that, as her attorney claims, she’s actually a pretty good shot, because she managed to blow out the rear tire on an SUV with only two shots.

III.

As far as I can tell, the right-leaning segment of this country wants to return to a more civic-duty minded system. One where the populace actively intervenes in crimes-in-progress. A historical model would be law enforcement in medieval Europe, where typically if someone cries for help (to stop a theft or assault, perhaps) it is the duty of all bystanders to mob the assailant. In this article debunking the myth of a “town watch” (in standard medieval European fantasy settings) the author cites several sources, and admiringly tells us that our ancestors were unbelievably tough.

The gold standard of this civic-duty nowadays is Flight 93. Terrorists hijacked a plane, the passengers rushed them, and though they lost their lives, they saved hundreds or thousands more. It’s hard to say they’re anything but heroes.

If I may speak for the left-leaning, we think this is in general a bad idea. There are exceptional circumstances, yes… but in almost all situations that ever actually occur, people should de-escalate and/or flee, and let the professionals handle it. To be honest, we generally don’t trust you guys. Not just because sometimes you’re ill-trained and end up shooting the people you were trying to help. Or because we see some of you stalking innocent people you don’t like and then murdering them, claiming it’s self-defense.

No, in large part it’s because we don’t trust the justice of the mob to actually be just. In medieval towns “there’s a tradition of lynch justice and nobody gets into trouble for string-up a thief caught red-handed.” We’re really not OK with that. We think it makes it far too easy for someone to claim that a person they don’t like (for whatever reason) is committing a crime. We like our due process with a bit more process.

IV.

But the Duva-Rodriguez case (the woman attempting to stop the shoplifters in part II) makes for a very interesting edge case. She saw a man running from security, and she had just heard screaming from inside. For all she knows, this could be a murderer fleeing the scene. She didn’t try to kill or wound anyone – she attempted to disable the getaway vehicle, in order to make it easier for the proper authorities to apprehend the suspects. Once they are in custody, due process could proceed duly. Her success in blowing out a tire suggests she’s decently trained. Honestly, this is a situation worth discussing. (Based on the judge’s ruling though, the consensus seems to have settled on “We want less of this sort of thing”)

In a group of rationalists, this could be an actual discussion. Perhaps people would attempt to quantify how many murders are prevented by Uber drivers intervening when someone actually shoots into a crowd, versus how many taxi drivers are nearly murdered by people thinking they’re fighting ISIS. Can we put numbers on lives saved by sane civic-duty-minded citizens versus lives lost by unhinged civic-duty-minded citizens? Should we push society to encourage more direct involvement by bystanders, or encourage less?

But unless I’m talking with rationalists, I can’t even bring this up. Because everyone else will make up the most unbelievable bullshit to support their side. Instead of discussing reality, they will claim this woman shot wildly into a crowd! Or they will claim that gun control will result in Syria.

I want a world in which the facts matter. More than anything else, I wish I knew of a way to make people actually care about the truth. I’ve long said that there’s no need to convince people religion is false. All you need to do is make someone love the truth enough, and eventually they’ll reach that position on their own. I just don’t know how to make anyone actually love the truth.

Using the NRA for good

Musings On Present Day 13 Responses »

Dec 082015

You gotta admire the NRA for their dedication. They are the embodiment of heroic responsibility, IF one restricts that responsibility sole to defending a right to own firearms.

I enjoy fiction about bad-ass motherfuckers, in the sense that they absolutely do whatever is necessary to Get Shit Done. Takeshi Kovacs and Rorschach are these sorts of bad-ass motherfuckers. Harry J. Potter-Evans-Verres is another. Because being a bad-ass motherfucker does NOT mean physically beating the crap out of someone. It is a state of mind. It means when something has to be done you trust no one else to do it, and you don’t take even the slightest chance it could go wrong, because it’s too goddamned important. Almost no one behaves this way about anything, because it’s destructive and dangerous. But that sort of bad-assness makes my blood sing. :)

The NRA is that way about gun rights. I seriously doubt most NRA supporters actually want to make anti-tank weaponry legal. They want handguns and rifles. But the NRA knows that if we even get to the point where we’re considering discussing limits on handguns and rifles, they’ve already lost. They need to keep the discussion as far from that as possible. In an ideal world they’d be able to keep the discussion on “should we limit people to just TWO rocket launchers?”, so that nothing ever gets even close to infringing on small arms. That’s how important that right is! You don’t take chances on something like that, you leave as wide a margin as physically possible.

Which is why I support making it illegal for people on the No-Fly List to buy guns. As we all know, the No-Fly List is fascist bullshit. People are placed on it without notice and without charge. The process that leads one to be put on the No-Fly List is unknown, and there is no way to challenge or dispute the placement. No appeal, no recourse. It is arbitrary government impingement on one’s ability to travel, and I suppose I should expect that by now, but by god is it vile! The ACLU, because they are principled as hell, opposes any sorts of liberty restrictions based on this bullshit black list.

Normally I’d also be against it. Restricting liberties arbitrarily should never be allowed. Demonstrate why a particular person should not denied their constitutional rights first! But in this particular case, I say – do it. Because the NRA will have a goddamn stroke. Perhaps they will throw their considerable weight behind the effort to make the No-Fly List accountable to some sort of fucking oversight, or have it trashed utterly and relegated to the history textbooks as another embarrassment in our claims of being the land of freedom and bravery. If anyone could do it… well, it’ll probably be the ACLU, actually. But it’d be nice to see the NRA using their wealth and power to do something that’s actually good, for a change.

Zuckerberg’s Moral Karma

Musings On Present Day 6 Responses »

Dec 052015

I generally don’t go seeking out drama. It’s made my life much better. So when I first started seeing posts about how terrible Mark Zuckerberg is, I thought “Well, thank goodness that’s another controversy I won’t ever have to get embroiled in. Everyone I know is already sane.” Turns out I was wrong. I personally, IRL, know someone who started saying what a terrible person Zuckerberg is, so now I have to say something. /sigh

I don’t want to repeat everything that’s already been said better by smarter people, so instead here’s a link to 5 criticisms of billionaire mega-philanthropy, debunked, and one to Unit of Caring.

At first I was shocked to hear anyone was shitting on Zuckerberg at all. Who hears “A billionaire is giving away almost all his money” and thinks “THAT ASSHOLE! Let’s take him down a peg!”? Looking over the arguments, I was struck by something someone else (can’t recall who) said – It is remarkably difficult to steel-man* the anti-Zuckerberg arguements. The “best” I ran into was that this amount of money was insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and Zuckerberg should be using his resources to effect systemic change instead. Interestingly, this argument came from a person who is normally very vocal about how the mega-wealthy have far too much say in politics, and their riches should be ejected from the political process. Do we seriously want MORE money in politics?

And what exactly are Zuckerberg’s options anyway? The people who are attacking him for giving away almost all his money to humanitarian efforts are implicitly saying that he should either A) use the money to go into politics instead, or B) spend it on gold-plated yatches and other rich-people toys instead.

A) What if Zuckerberg isn’t sure his political opinions are the best opinions possible, and he doesn’t want to impose them on others? Or that he doesn’t want to ignite the hatred of half the voting public (look at how Soros and the Koch Brothers are viewed) and doesn’t want to get into that whole EXTREMELY wasteful tug-of-war? Zuckerberg-haters are very explicitly giving a “You’re with us or you’re against us” ultimatum, which is always a big red flag that you are the evil side. What’s a guy who wants to stay neutral to do? One would think that good, politically-neutral charities would be the way to go, but apparently that just gets you hate from both sides. So you go with B)

B) Toys. You know, what rich people typically spend their money on. Anyone who promotes this is, IMHO, trying to make the world a worse place. I am reminded of this fantastic passage from Three Worlds Collide, which takes place in a utopia:

>”There was so much wrong with the world that the small resources of altruism were splintered among ten thousand urgent charities, and none of it ever seemed to go anywhere. And yet… and yet…”

“There was a threshold crossed somewhere,” said the Confessor, “without a single apocalypse to mark it. Fewer wars. Less starvation. Better technology. The economy kept growing. People had more resource to spare for charity, and the altruists had fewer and fewer causes to choose from. They came even to me, in my time, and rescued me. Earth cleaned itself up, and whenever something threatened to go drastically wrong again, the whole attention of the planet turned in that direction and took care of it. Humanity finally got its act together.”

This gives me shivers when I read it. You need the context of the rest of the story, but it’s so damned beautiful. Someday, we can get there. And everyone who is shitting on Zuckerberg is making this less likely. They’re pushing it further away. Philanthropy should be encouraged.

Of course none of this is about philanthropy at all. What it’s actually about is Mark Zuckerberg, and Moral Karma. I want to thank Scott Alexander for clarifying the concept of Moral Karma for me, in his post Ethnic Tension And Meaningless Arguments. So much of the world makes much more sense after reading that. To summarize – in almost any political conflict, no one gives a shit about the actual policies. They pick the side they support. Then they load that side with as much “Good Karma” as they can. (“Concepts get good karma by doing good moral things, by being associated with good people, by being linked to the beloved in-group, and by being oppressed underdogs in bravery debates.”) They load the opposing side with as much “Bad Karma” as they can. (“Concepts get bad karma by committing atrocities, being associated with bad people, being linked to the hated out-group, and by being oppressive big-shots in bravery debates. Also, she obviously needs to neutralize Player 1’s actions by disproving all of her arguments.”). The winner of the Karma Contest gets to set the actual policies as they see fit.

Suddenly all the hate makes sense. Zuckerberg is the head of Facebook. He’s already associated with privacy violations, rampant consumerism, those awful Millennials, those terrible people gentrifying San Francisco, and whatever other excesses of capitalism the Blue Tribe hates. Zuckerberg/Facebook is very much The Hated Opposition of Blue Tribe. Therefore it is a Blue Tribe imperative to ensure his Karma balance is always in the Negative.

Now Zuckerberg is donating all his wealth to charity, which is traditionally a Good Karma move. And it’s a LOT of wealth. There is a danger that this action could push A Hated Opponent into the realm of Positive Karma. This is absolutely not allowable. It is a threat to the side of Goodness and Justice, and what kind of evil mutant supports a Hated Opponent against the side of Goodness and Justice?? This is the time where “she obviously needs to neutralize Player 1’s actions by disproving all of her arguments” rears its ugly head. Since it’s very hard to forcibly stop Zuckerberg from giving away his money, it now must be proven that he’s not really doing it for good reasons, and it doesn’t count, and he’s still a terrible person.

Finally the hatred makes sense. As Jai points out in Foes Without Faces, people love villains, and causes without a human face get neglected (“It’s obviously not worth allying ourselves with an ancient unspeakable evil whose voice is the essence of death just to kill one lousy human, no matter how awful they are. Right?” “Would the plan to compromise polio eradication to hunt down Bin Laden have gone forward if our leaders treated faceless enemies with the same weight they afford human enemies?”). Zuckerberg has a face. The millions of people who could potentially be helped by his charitable efforts? Not so much. No more than the hundreds of thousands of potential victims of polio. They’re a statistic. So it’s easy to get people to keep attacking a hated Villain, and not even realize that they are literally pushing away the Three World’s utopia by doing so.

Because we can’t even say “This person is evil, and the things he did in the past are awful, but this one thing he did is good. Even if he did it for the wrong reasons, it is a good thing, and we should encourage that thing.” No. Fuck that person. Never let anything good be associated with them, no matter the cost. The Karma War cannot be lost.

To not be too much of a downer, I must consider how I update my beliefs. Do I update in the direction of “people are inherently amoral, and political contests matter more to them than actually being good”? Or do I update in the direction of “Outrage is a fantastic way to spread memes, and the most outrage-producing ones are the most shared ones, even when they reflect only a tiny minority viewpoint, and so I should further downgrade my opinion of The Media rather than humanity in general”?

I think the question answers itself. Or at least I tried to word it so it would. :) In either case – Zuckerberg is awesome. The world would be better if more people emulated his example, at least in this regard. A “Like” to him!

* Steel-manning being the act of strengthening your opponents position in order to engage it more fairly and thoughtfully – the opposite of straw-manning)

The media would create a civil war purely for the ratings…

Musings On Present Day, WorldCon 4 Responses »

Nov 202015

…and it is our fault.

Remember Starbucks Red Cup Controversy? Where the media spent days telling us how christians are outraged that the Starbuck holiday cup is plain red instead of having christmas trees and snowflakes on it? And it turns out that it was just one christian shock-jock type, and every single real christian in America was like “What the fuck guys? We don’t actually care. Who is making shit up about us?”

Which is exactly what we liberals think every time we see a “War on Christmas” story.

But the interesting part is that there aren’t less War on Christmas stories as time goes on. Rather, they’ve expanded, so now the leftwing media has their own version, re the crazy Red Cup guy. Years ago the rightwing media found that War on Christmas stories don’t have to be true. They still generate TONS of revenue, because they emotionally charge their viewers. Now the leftwing media has found out the same thing.

As a result both sides of America become more and more polarized, viewing the “other” side as evil and/or idiotic. Over what is essentially lies given to them by their own media. It’s getting worse.

Perhaps you saw today that Donald Trump wants to put all Muslims on a national registry and issue them special identification, and he’s crossed the Nazi Line.

If you’re like me, you shared with the quote from a friend that: “if Trump got elected President, and somehow persuaded both houses of Congress to pass a “Muslims must register” bill, it would be struck down by the federal courts. But the problem here isn’t that there’s a danger of this policy being implemented in the near future. The problem is that it is currently not only acceptable but popular to openly advocate fascist ideas … his popularity says a lot of frightening things about the current American mindset”

But if you’re like me, you also have friends on the other side, who then point out that this is a massive distortion (I apologize for linking to that particularly vile news site). “It is clear from the exchange that Trump thinks Hillyard is talking about new entrants to the United States, presumably Syrian refugees. But Hillyard reports Trump’s answer as if he is talking unambiguously about Muslims already in the United States.”

Which isn’t to say that Trump isn’t both wrong and racist. But he’s plenty wrong and racist on his own, and painting fangs on him just makes our side look like fucking idiots.

But more importantly, it makes us think of him as an irredeemably evil person, and all his supporters as similarly evil, or too stupid/blind to see past their own fear. It further polarizes us into camps that think the worst possible things about each other, and don’t talk to each other. Because it makes for GREAT ratings/clicks.

America seems to be drifting ever closer to civil war, and these sorts of intentional misportrayals by the both sides is spurring it on. Seriously, how long are we going to let the media ask vague questions that could be interpreted to mirror Nazi policies, and then if someone doesn’t immediately and strongly side with the questioner, report that “they didn’t rule it out“???

The thing about devils is that they give you what you want, per your revealed preference. That’s always how the story works. That is what makes those stories compelling. You get what you deserve because the devil always is simply giving you what you want. And then the angels – who care about our stated preferences rather than our revealed ones – come and save us. The Ego triumphs over the Id.

But the Ego doesn’t generate clicks, or share things on social media. The Id does. We have created institutions that mimic the devils of myth – they are rewarded for giving us what we want, in terms of revealed preference. But we haven’t created equally strong institutions that mimic the angels of old – rewarded for giving us what we want in terms of stated preference.

Until (if?) that happens, we really need to develop an immune response to hatemongering. Never share anything that pisses you off. Especially if it’s about someone from the other side. DOUBLE ESPECIALLY if it’s because they are doing something evil or idiotic that must be stopped before all of society is destroyed. And if we could coordinate some sort of institutional response that would punish these media companies/devils whenever they do this (seriously, government oversight to head off a civil war is a legitimate use of government power IMHO), that would be great. Maybe necessary.

Appropriating the White Guys

Musings On Present Day, Personal 2 Responses »

Nov 032015

Two cultural appropriation notes.

I attended MileHiCon over the weekend (an awesome local SF Lit con), during which time I went to a “Writing Characters with Mental Illness” panel. A relative of mine has fairly severe shizoaffective disorder, so I’m familiar with what mental illness looks like IRL, but I’m not a healthcare professional so I like to get some actual professional views on the matter, ya know? The panelists were all either suffering from mental illness themselves or professionals in the field. And I did get some use out of the panel, but not nearly as much as I could have. Part of the reason why? They spent a big chunk of time helping everyone defend themselves from charges of Cultural Appropriation. You gotta say “It’s not a disability, it’s a different-ability” sort of thing. FFS. At one point one of the panelists said “No matter what you do, some people will attack you for writing mental illness. Ignore them, please! Do it anyway! We need more characters struggling with mental illness in our fiction.”

So yeah, the CA-police are having a chilling effect, but people are pushing back. So, hooray for that?

I’ve been told a few times that straight white guys will never feel the sting of Cultural Appropriation. (Actually I was told this by a straight white guy who said he’d never feel it, so he didn’t have any right to have a voice in the conversation.) I think that’s a very silly thing to claim, because there are many types of culture, and almost everyone belongs to SOME minority culture that can be “appropriated.” As proof of this I would like to submit this review of the movie “Pixels” by Movie Bob.

Movie Bob is LIVID about the appropriation of video gaming culture by one of Hollywood’s biggest douchebags, Adam Sandler. Says Movie Bob:

>“it’s so oppressively, endlessly, bald-faced cynical about the disingenuous appropriation of its own supposed reason for existing.”

“[It’s] so fucking glib and self-satisfied with its own sleazy cash-grab existence that it takes time out to make sure it also shits on the sort of more earnest, heart-felt version of the same idea that someone who gave two shits might have made”

“It plays at being this sentimental ode to glory days of classic video games, but clearly doesn’t have a fucking drop of sincere interest of what’s made these characters and imagery so enduring or even what made the game so compelling for all these years.”

“It’s always nakedly the work of a bunch of shit-gargling fuckwits with zero love or understanding of this stuff beyond the ability to sell tickets based on ‘Hey, remember Pac-Man?’”

As a video game geek myself (and old enough to have played most of these games in my childhood), I sympathize strongly with every single thing Movie Bob says. In fact, I challenge every white male video game geek who thinks Cultural Appropriation is bullshit to watch this review so they can understand what other people feel when they say their culture is being appropriated. Are you telling me to you don’t feel even a spark of anger at Sandler/Hollywood after seeing that impassioned rant? Cuz I’m not sure that’s possible.

And now, having seen the other side, reconsider your position on cultural appropriation. Don’t just take a reactionary “Screw you, I can do what I want” stand. Take a principled stand. Stand firm with “It is better to allow cultures to mix. The things that are bad about “Cultural Appropriation” are more correctly termed either “Racism” or “Being An Asshole” and should be fought as such, and the things that are good about Cultural Mixing are being destroyed by the Cultural Appropriation Police. That is why the term Cultural Appropriation is toxic. Its only real effect is to eliminate the good things that we want to keep around!”

Hate Pixels because it is shit. Don’t support Cultural Appropriation Policing, because that would destroy wonderful things like The Wizard and The Last Starfighter as well. We will accept Pixels because sharing culture and understanding between groups is more important than making sure Adam Sandler can’t shit on a culture’s values. We will not raze the commons in an effort to punish the free-rider.

What even is Cultural Appropriation?

Musings On Present Day, Personal 13 Responses »

Sep 152015

I’ve always believed that Humanity improves when cultures are allowed to mix and mesh. As such, “cultural appropriation” never made much sense to me. Where it’s meshing, it’s good, and where it’s racism, it’s bad. Why are some people conflating the two? So I was pretty happy about these two articles:

To the new culture cops, everything is appropriation

Reflections on Cultural Appropriation

I got some push back.

What is Cultural Appropriation anyway? I’m still not sure it’s even a thing. I don’t view the borrowing between cultures and mixing of cultures to be bad. I think it’s actually a positive for all parties. Does it impoverish other cultures if our teens start love the hell out of soccer, and start calling it “futbol”? Or does it give us more in common, make us more able to relate to each other, and enrich all sides?

I even suspect that it acts to weaken racists. If a stodgy old man can deal with his daughter or granddaughter wearing dreadlocks, he may have to come to admit that when he frowns at the black lady at his office wearing dreads he’s doing it because he’s racist and not because there’s anything wrong with dreadlocks themselves. His white granddaughter may very well be doing good by wearing dreadlocks rather than by shunning them.

And if I may bring up Hollywood – it’s been said that American Mass Media (primarily movies, TV, and music) has been the greatest force for exporting modern liberal values. While there are lots of fundamentalist types who think this is horrendous, I for one think that the spreading of liberal ideals is a great thing. Do we want to put a stop to THAT cultural appropriation, and tell people they can’t consume our media and must remain as foreign and segregated from us as possible? Why on earth would we want that?

I was informed that cultural appropriation is when the dominant group(?) adopts something from a minority and says “When people of my group do it, it’s cool. But when people of the culture that first introduced it do it, it’s not OK.” Like doing Yoga, but discriminating against Indians when hiring, or denigrating them for talking funny. I was given this example:

This is a made up and silly example, but maybe it could help: Let’s say Polish people *really* love cabage, and no one else knew about it. It this scenario, they’ve been enjoying cabbage for centuries, it’s a big thing to them. But… They’ve been fired from jobs for bringing cabbage for lunch. They’ve been run out of town for talking about cabbage publically. They’ve been tried in court for even smelling like cabbage. For centuries they have been negatively affected because the dominant culture is anti-cabbage for no real reason (it’s really just a convenient shortcut to be anti-Polish.)

Flash forward to now. All of those negative consequences are still there, just not talked about. Polish are still fired, shunned, etc. for their cabbage activities. But, the dominant culture has figured out how awesome cabbage is. (It is!) They’re having cabbage-meetup and cabbage-fests and cabbage-cleanses. So not only have the Polish suffered for centuries, they *still are* suffering, while watching the people around them eat cabbage, get media attention for it, etc. Do you see why that would be hurtful to experience?

Yes. But I think it’s stupid as hell to reply to this by saying that white people can’t eat cabbage! Please, share my love for cabbage! You see how awesome cabbage is now, right? So stop being a fucking racist. The way you describe it, claiming “cultural appropriation” rights sounds a lot like revenge. Which, in fairness, I totally get. I feel the desire for vengeance too sometimes.

To take a less made-up example, I sometimes wish that pro-lifers were denied abortions, and creationists were denied antibiotics. But in the end, I realize that’s horrible. When a pro-lifer is raped and wants to abort, I full support her right to do so, even though I kinda in the back of my mind am thinking “You should be forced to live by the shit you tried to force on my loved ones.” Because despite my desire for vengeance, I know that’s bad.

And to extend the metaphor further, even if I did think that pro-lifers should be denied abortions, I wouldn’t say that all Christians categorically should be denied abortions, because I know that lots of Christians are very much pro-choice! Denying it to all of them is even worse that just denying it to just the ones who in a poetic justice way “should” be denied.

So no, I don’t want cabbage denied to all white people. At best I only want it to denied to those who denigrate me for loving cabbage. But the solution is to fix racism, not to make up terms like “cultural appropriation” and say anyone who loves cabbage has to be Polish or else they’re appropriating imperialist oppressors. If Cultural Appropriation is “Hey, I like what you’re doing. You’re going to suffer if you keep doing it, but I get to do it all I want,” then I want to stop the “you’re going to suffer if you keep doing it” part.

I was told:

I too would love to see a dismantling of the systems of systemic oppression, but until we’re there you should understand that you get to do something that they don’t because you’re a part of that system. Saying “in a perfect world this wouldn’t be a problem, so get over it” sounds like a bad approach. It’s not revenge to say “maybe hold off on taking our culture until after you stop punishing us for the same behavior that you’re doing.”

To which I again totally agree. How far does this extend? Am I responsible for the behavior of others, or only my own? ie: if I’ve never denigrated anyone for liking cabbage, and treat cabbage-lovers as I would anyone else, can I eat cabbage? What if I’m not Polish myself, but I was adopted by a Polish family at age 6? Can I move out of a state that has anti-Polish laws to a state that has Polish-equality laws, and eat cabbage there? Or is it better to stay in my anti-Polish state but fight for Polish-equality laws?

In reply:
I don’t have great answers, because I’m the epitome of privileged, and will never have my culture appropriated, but I encourage awareness. We can be aware of our privileges, we can listen to those that are affected, and we can try to engage with those around us.

I realize that’s the “wise” answer, but I need a useful answer, not a wise one, because I want to be able to A) eat cabbage, and B) not be viewed as a monster by Polish people. And in this case, please feel free to swap out our euphemisms for real things that may happen in my life. ie: it’s actually important to me to know if I can use the c-word in my writing.

Then we got to the icky, sticky mess at the center of all this:

if I wanted to grow my hair out and get dreadlocks, I should probably talk to a few dozen of my black/African American friends and see what they say. If I don’t have a few dozen friends of a group that I want to pull from? That should be a giant flashing warning sign. How can I believe I could be respectful without feedback from knowledgeable people?

Even if you were adopted by a black family, and grew up in a black neighborhood, and all your friends say “fuck yes, you of all people are legit allowed to do that”, you know what will happen? You’ll be accused of “tokenizing” your black friends/family, and culturally appropriating the dreadlocks. You’ll be accused by people who don’t know you or your history, but they will see you are white, and that’s all they need. They will win, and you will be a monster. That is my problem with cultural appropriation.

think about people in the following Venn diagram:

( oblivious/privileged ) (correctly offended) (incorrectly offended)
While you might never please the ones on the far right (incorrectly offended), it’s the ones in the middle (correctly offended) you’re probably really concerned with.

And the thing is… no, it’s not. I believe that the “correctly offended” people will generally be very small, because I have faith in my education and upbringing to keep me from doing most things that are horribly offensive. I know that I will sometimes be offensive out of ignorance, and I further have faith that those who are correctly offended will help me to see when I’m ignorant and help me to overcome this. I’ll grow, I’ll apologize, and things will be ok.

No, the group I’m actually worried about is the “incorrectly offended” ones, because they can be far, far larger. And they are the ones who don’t care about you, your background, or your apologies. They are the ones who are willing to go to whatever measures they can to try to destroy someone socially. They are the ones who use “cultural appropriation” as a weapon. They are the reason I think it is by-and-large a BS claim, and people should stick to “You are being racist” rather than vague claims about my social background and the circumstances of power structures in my (local?) area.

Clever Liars are still Liars

Musings On Present Day No Responses »

Sep 102015

This add is getting a lot of buzz because of how clever it is. Benjamin Lee at The Gaurdian gave a movie two stars (a rather low review), and the movie studio used that rating on their poster. It’s circled in the picture. I had to search for it a bit, because I couldn’t figure out where the low rating was.

Everyone seems to be swept away by how clever this was, since technically the poster displays the exact rating that Lee gave. I’d just like to take a minute to point out these guys are liars, and assholes. They intentionally presented the information in a way that any reasonable person would interpret it to mean that opposite of what it actually means. It looks like the rating given is much higher. It’s no different from quoting someone that said “No one in their right mind would consider this piece of trash to be a masterpiece!” as saying “…a masterpiece!”

If you intentionally give people information that you hope will cause them to form beliefs that you know are false, YOU ARE LYING, even if technically every word you said is true. You should be branded as a liar, and take the appropriate social hit. No excuses for cleverness.

(yes, HJPEV hides behind this a lot. It may be fun in a story, but he’s a deluded kid if he thinks he can claim he doesn’t lie to people’s faces all the time)

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