People game their social scores by being provocative edgelords. There’s almost no incentive on social media to conform. And every incentive to stand out.
Just look around at our political situation, you see far less conformity, and extremes in political expression. We even elected President Edgelord.
Everywhere else -- in corporate America, on Facebook, at churches and family gatherings, even with many friends -- conformity is still the norm, and there are more landmine topics than ever.
Social cooling is real.
Everyone seems to have their own parasocial relationships with some podcast / youtuber / media personality. The fanboys want to conform to their tribe of fanboys and what the influencer wants. The influencer usually wants to sell something.
I see them working together. If everyone is privately living in different fiefdoms of homogenous thought, you never know what crazy true believer you're going to run into. Every "normal" belief might be hated by someone, somewhere. The risk-averse strategy is to stop sharing everything but the anodyne.
There is very little room to have a nuanced perspective. You'll lose viewership on BOTH sides.
Sure, some people are shooting that moon, but that's a tiny fraction of the rest—let alone the lurkers—who are keen on maintaining employment and wedding invitations.
We then observe that you immediately drop everything to deal with the fire. Should the conclusion be that you love arson and enjoy spending time on it? More importantly, do we like a system where the arsonist is rewarded for getting you to spend time on something?
Now decide if you would like something that works differently than Facebook to replace it.
I post here, and sometimes in a dynasty football reddit.
You’ll realize how evil the whole thing is.
That's why I still think Bernie would've taken the Dems to victory in 2016. Extreme beats extreme. Hillary was just too normal.
Both conclusions can be right at the same time.
There was a gradual change from social media with your friends to social media, look at these videos chosen by the algorithm to keep you on our platform.
Back in 2017 it was already changing but not nearly as much as where we’d find ourselves in 2025.
I think people could definitely come to the conclusion of being able to game your social score by conforming in 2017, all you had to do was post a few nice pictures but more often.
I find this sad and worrisome. I like chaos and healthy disorderliness. I enjoy skilled conversationalists with fresh ideas. And I worry about a "chilled" populace too afraid to express morality when it becomes socially inconvenient.
(† Footnote: It isn't just Americans but youth coming of age in every culture. The "social cooling" effect is more pronounced among Americans as they exhibit greater variance in expression in the first place and thus have more to move toward the baseline.)
Because yesterday I learned that 30% of Americans think political violence may be necessary to fix the country[0], which was gathered from anonymous polls I presume, yet I see almost none of it online and certainly not in mainstream media.
And the censorship is certainly not helping.
My friend got multiple warnings and temporary bans on reddit for suggesting that:
- The only hope for democracy in Russia is a violent revolution. From what got banned and what didn't, we gather it's OK to talk about revolution, less OK about violent revolution and not allowed to talk about killing people. Well, how does reddit think revolutions work? People have to get killed or have a very high chance of being killed to give up power "voluntarily".
- That their dictator should be sentenced to death by the ICC and executed. She managed to appeal this one because she phrased it as a court ordered killing ("execution") with the caveat that the court would legalize anyone killing him (since the ICC cannot reach him to arrest him but somebody close to him might be able to do it and could use protection is he managed to escape).
So pro-tip to avoid _some_ censorship: frame it as a change of law or a legal process.
[0]: https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2025/10/02/day-1717...
They are absolutely saying it in public and private. I hold that opinion and so does every politically engaged person i know. Its heavily censored on the mainstream platforms but you can see the messages conveying this sentiment in a semi coded way.
https://x.com/StephenKing/status/1966474125616013664
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-dMa3rIcjY
https://youtu.be/1pteZE5FpNc?si=UG2jJZovGldIJKJ0&t=1559
This has the effect of whipping up political anger and violence against people based on false pretenses. You are an embodiment of the problem.
I don't understand how this would be "debunked" or mean anything other than what King originally said it meant, unless we're absolutely forbidden from doing even the most basic and obvious logical deduction on statements.
No, arguing against cherry-picking does not mean you endorse everything. In the third link, it says that Christians do not follow Leviticus. Charlie was no different. He loved and supported gay people and welcomed them into his movement. There are many gays in his organization, at high levels. To assume that he wanted them stoned to death is absurd, and incredibly ignorant.
Here's Charlie on Gay People: https://youtu.be/N14ywRyTWVI?si=AQzLU_6TBNwSDGEr&t=942
How so? Either you cherry-pick or you take it all. Those are the only two possibilities, aside from ignoring the whole thing. Pretty sure he's not ignoring the whole thing.
How is it ignorant to see that he thinks that the omnipotent and omniscient creator of the universe has written down "perfect laws" for us to follow, and that we shouldn't pick and choose which ones we follow, and conclude that he thinks we should follow all of them?
He may have welcomed gay people into his movement but just based on your clip he doesn't seem to love and support them. He says straight out that he doesn't approve of the lifestyle.
I agree that there's a contradiction between "God says we're supposed to kill them" and him standing there chatting with that guy and not trying to rally the crowd to murder him. But I don't see why we have to resolve that in the "he actually loved gay people" direction. If he says "God's perfect law" demands killing gay people, I'm inclined to believe that's what he thinks. He'd hardly be the first religious person who believes their religion demands X and actually does Y when confronted with the situation in reality. It's great that he can stand there and engage in a dialog with someone he believes his God says should be killed, but that doesn't absolve him from that belief or from professing it.
He did not say that.
Again, Christians do not follow Leviticus. I'm not a Christian, but I just looked this up:
> Mainstream Christian theology holds that Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection fulfilled the ceremonial and civil aspects of the Leviticus laws, making them no longer obligatory for believers, while the moral principles are reaffirmed and expanded in the New Testament under what is often called the "law of Christ."
You seem to think Charlie wants to stone gays because he's a Christian, and you're assuming that Christianity believes in stoning gays. But that last part is false. Christ revised the old testament. Charlie's making a point that you can't just take Leviticus at face value, and interpret its passages out of context from the new testament.
You're now interpreting Charlie's point to mean the opposite of what he meant. You're assuming that he actually wants to stone gays, because he's pointing out that the old testament talks about it, and because you don't understand Christianity.
Full clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CceJpiUPgPU
Again, I'm not a Christian, and I myself appreciate gayness. But we have to stop taking clips out of context and framing people as evil to justify political violence.
>He did not say that.
Is this some parallel universe thing where you and I experience completely different versions of Charlie Kirk? Because in my universe, the YouTube link you posted has him saying exactly that:
"In a lesser referenced part of the same part of scripture is in Leviticus 18 is that thou shalt lay with another man shall be stoned to death. Just saying. So, Miss Rachel, you quote Leviticus 19, 'Love your neighbor as yourself,' the chapter before affirms God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters."
I seriously have to wonder if you are actually watching the stuff you're telling me to watch, or you're just parroting something you've read somewhere.
What exactly do you think he meant here? I can't come up with any "opposite" that even remotely fits with what he said. My interpretation: God says gay people should be killed. You can't love God and deny any part of God's law. "So you love God. So, you must love his law." How else can that possibly be interpreted?
I was raised Christian and I was Christian for a long time. "Christians do not follow Leviticus" not correct. Some do not. Many do, or at least follow parts of it. Pretty much all of Christianity is an exercise in deciding which parts of the Bible are meant to be followed and which are meant to be interesting stories or history. And there is no universal agreement about which parts are which. The idea that homosexuality is a sin is extremely mainstream Christian belief, and Jesus said exactly zero on that subject.
In that clip, Kirk makes it very clear that he thinks Christians must love God and must love their neighbor, by way of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. He says that you love people by telling them the truth, and he says the truth is that the Bible says gay people must be killed, in the chapter right before where it says that you must love your neighbor.
If he doesn't follow Leviticus, why is he taking "Love your neighbor" from it? Why is he describing it as "God's perfect law"? Is that meant to be sarcastic?
You're leaving out the context of Ms Rachel. Charlie is saying everything in response to her.
Let me go into extra detail here to explain what I think he meant:
"Ms Rachel is saying that she acts like this because God said 'Love your Neighbor,' and is acting as if that law is so important that we should always adopt the preferred pronouns of people around us. However, the best way to love your neighbor is to tell them the truth, and tell them what sex they are, rather than upholding their preferred pronouns, which I see as untrue to their sex. Secondly, one should not take these Mosaic laws from Leviticus as literal rules for modern day Christians to follow. Christ + his Apostles said that these Mosaic laws were applicable to the Jews (the direct descendents of Israel) in a covenant between them and God, which were only necessary before he arrived as Messiah, and now that he is there, he is fulfilling that covenant for all people, and the gentiles who convert to Christianity do not need to follow the Mosaic laws literally, but rather follow their moral intent as he teaches. Thus, if Ms Rachel really wants to take these laws so literally... she should look in the previous chapter where it says that gays should be stoned to death. I don't think that she would agree with stoning gays to death. So it's hypocritical of her to take these laws so literally."
----
Christian Context (from AI):
After Jesus’ resurrection, the early church—initially Jewish—grappled with whether Gentile (non-Jewish) converts needed to follow the Mosaic Law. This led to the pivotal Jerusalem Council (Acts 15, ~50 CE), where apostles like Peter and Paul decided:
- Gentiles were not required to follow Levitical laws like circumcision or kosher diets.
- They were asked to follow basic moral guidelines (e.g., avoiding idolatry, sexual immorality) to maintain fellowship with Jewish Christians.
Paul’s letters further clarify this shift:
- In Galatians 3:23-25, he describes the law as a “guardian” until Christ came, after which faith in Jesus supersedes the law’s role.
- In Romans 10:4, he says Christ is the “culmination of the law” for those who believe.
- However, moral principles (e.g., loving your neighbor, Leviticus 19:18) remain binding, as they’re reaffirmed in the New Testament (Romans 13:8-10).
----
^ So that's why "Love your neighbor" is still valid in Christianity, but stoning gays is not. This was decided in the Jerusalem Council, which all modern Christian sects inherit from. Charlie was using "stoning gays" as an example of something modern Christians do NOT believe in, even though it was a law of Moses, and is written in Leviticus.
One thing I didn't mention before is that it's really bizarre that Kirk cites Leviticus for "love your neighbor." It's true that Leviticus says this, but that's not what most Christians are going to think of when they think of that phrase. "Love your neighbor" is typically associated with Jesus. Jesus said nothing about gay people but he was very clear on loving your neighbor. Three of the four gospels have him saying that this is the second greatest commandment, behind loving God. This is not just one of hundreds of specific rules that got thrown away when the Messiah came. This is one of the two most fundamental rules in the religion, explicitly affirmed by that Messiah.
So it makes zero sense from a Christian perspective to say that "love your neighbor" is not to be taken literally because it's tucked in there next to the "kill gay people" law and all that stuff is just for Jews. And it makes zero sense to assume that "love your neighbor" is a reference to the old Mosaic laws rather than a reference to the literal words of the Son of God.
Your interpretation basically requires us to take everything Kirk said here as sarcastic. And I don't see the justification for that. It's not like "God's perfect law" is a phrase he's throwing back at her. If she had said "God's perfect law from Leviticus commands us to love our neighbor" then I could buy it, but she didn't.
So what's your reasoning for this interpretation? It seems to rest on the idea that Christians ignore Leviticus, so he can't have meant it seriously. But that's just not true in general. Christians typically follow some of those laws and ignore others, more or less arbitrarily (or more accurately, in a way that fits their beliefs about what's right and wrong). If you look up Christian writings about homosexuality, you will find many Christians citing Leviticus on this subject.
The justification for taking Kirk to mean the opposite of his literal words here seems to boil down to, he can't have actually meant that he believes this passage from his holy book, because if he did then that would mean he's a bad person, and implying that Kirk is a bad person leads to political violence.
Yeah. When he said "Just sayin'", that was his cue for sarcasm.
> If a faithful Christian argues against cherry-picking the Bible
Talks about what Charlie “actually said”, proceeds to strawman him.
Mate. You literally got given evidence that debunks an idea you’d like to believe and you still continue to believe and argue for the idea you’d want to be true.
Let it go. You’re egos too big and you’re acting like an idiot. Do you consider yourself an idiot?
You understand that making a claim and linking to a video doesn't automatically mean the claim is correct, right? Sometimes the video doesn't prove what it's said to prove. In this case, Kirk very clearly said that Leviticus, including the "kill gay people" part, is "God's perfect law." He says that you can't take "Love your neighbor" from it without also taking "Kill gay people." He describes the commandment to kill gay people as part of "the truth."
To be very clear: I'm not parroting anyone else's interpretation of Kirk's statements. I'm taking the above directly from the video of Kirk talking.
It's really easy to lie online (both mechanically by just taking stuff out of context as you showed and because people face no punishment for it).
That being said, if I had an opinion, only one of the possible sides is OK to say publicly and I think that's wrong.
For example, one of the claims I heard is that he was orchestrating/supporting harassment of college professors through his Turning Point organization. Now, harassment can lead to suicide, driving innocent people to suicide is murder, a just punishment for murder is death, and when a punishment is just then it doesn't matter who carries it out as long as they have a sufficient standard of proof.
So depending on whether that claim is true, how "successful" he was and the morality of several logical inferences (which is subjective but for each statement/inference you will find a lot of people supporting it), a sane and rational person could perfectly justify the killing.
---
Most people are hypocrites. And what they really hate is when somebody tries to apply a consistent moral system to themselves and others. Not just because it puts them to shame (most people never try to be consistent and they know it even if they'd never admit it out loud or even to themselves). But also because when you apply consistent rules to severe offenses, you very quickly get very severe punishments and people are not comfortable with the idea that they too could be punished in this manner.
---
As another example, I hate when people try to vilify him by quoting him saying some dead children are OK because that's the price for the right to bear arms. Yes, innocent people (including children) dying is sad and wrong. But what do they think happens when nobody has guns? First, people would still kill each other using other tools, even mass murder wouldn't magically stop because car ramming attacks seem to be on the rise. But, second, a long term effect is that people in positions of power who are unaccountable through legal means are no longer accountable through extra-legal means.
One of the first things every dictatorship does is restricting access to guns and confiscating them.
Yes, high gun ownership has a continual price but low/zero ownership has a much higher one-time price and after that it no longer matters what people think.
But I find statements outside of the Overton window to be punished quite severely, and I think most people now understand that you can very easily lose your job for stating the incorrect thing.
This is gonna get downvoted for sure because HNs bias, but based on current events, it's only the left that does that.
Right-wingers may say hurtful words but don't seem too keen on murdering opponents for political reasons or disagreements. At least not yet.
Far-left versus Far-right Fatal Violence: An Empirical Assessment of the Prevalence of Ideologically Motivated Homicides in the United States
One side is all shout and no bite. The other is no shout and then eat your fucking face.
I'll take the idiots shouting but not actually killing if I had to pick. But I won't lie the choice still makes me feel dirty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Hortman
Getting yourself downvoted doesn't validate your lies either. Farming downvotes isn't being clever, it's being toxic.
> When compared to individuals associated with a right-wing ideology, individuals adhering to a left-wing ideology had 68% lower odds of engaging in violent (vs. nonviolent) radical behavior (b = −1.15, SE = 0.13, odds ratio [OR] = 0.32, P < 0.001).
> We included individuals whose public exposure occurred between 1948 and 2018.
The last 8 years of politics have been very very abnormal. And in today's data, the "very liberal" approve of political violence at a rate of 24% vs. 3% for the "very conservative":
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kir...
This ^^^ is the troubling statistic, and there's a 7x difference between the left and the right.
But as for "causing" violence, they also asked whether "political violence is ever justified", and the difference between left vs. right there was even more — 25% vs 3%.
Yet you're seeing the opposite — after the killing of a conservative, it's the left that says violence is justified.
Furthermore, this trend on the left had been building for a while, which we see in surveys done before his killing:
That poll from 2020 shows republicans and democrats roughly equal on the question. It wouldn't surprise me to find that the desire for political violence goes up among those currently out of power, anyway.
My mom would not have placed herself in a position where there is a gun in her face.
I am in good faith, I'm sorry that discussions about reality are impolite and seem crass. These aren't non-plausible, its reality.
I'm guessing your mom doesn't place herself in situations like being in poverty in Chicago. Lucky her
Because I just linked a source: As part of the raid, some U.S. citizens were temporarily detained and children pulled from their beds, according to interviews with residents and news reports. Building hallways were still littered with debris two days later.
What was these citizens crime besides living in apartments in Chicago? Flash bangs, guns, zip ties, and being detained until proven innocent. What did they do to put themselves in that position? Was I wrong to say its poverty?
Or do you mean they should have been rural poor? Or white and poor? What was their trespass?
I'm not talking about "by and large", I'm not talking about "may at times". These are real lives of citizens with "inalienable rights"
If you think state sanctioned violence is permissible, tell it to Nuremberg
Chicago as a group has positioned itself as welcoming to immigrants here illegally and antagonistic to finding and taking the appropriate legal action regarding people who aren't following the rules.
This wasn't caused by poverty. This was caused by the combination of Chicago's political position putting them in conflict with ICE regarding the immigrants who don't follow the rules.
If you want to prevent this sort of thing blaming it on poverty is concentrating on the wrong problem. The political climate in Chicago and Nationally is a much more useful place to put your focus on fixing.
That is fine, but at least be honest about it. Don't hide behind 'I am suddenly concerned about people breaking into my house at 3am'.
This is exactly what I meant by using flimsy excuses to turn off your reasoning. "Some people" being in the US does not invalidate the Constitution. The gross violation of Constitutional rights and individual liberty is exactly the manner I do not find "desirable".
I'm not "hiding" behind concerns. The concerns are as plain as day. There are many possible approaches to "rectifying this oversight" that don't involve wholesale trampling over individual rights and personal liberty. You're the one dressing up your points in a declarative passive voice to paper over the actual actions being done here, to both citizens and non-citizens.
And for what it's worth, I think buying into the narrative that the end goal is even about illegal immigrants is utterly foolish. Trump has already been talking about setting up exceptions for critical businesses in sectors like farming, construction, and landscaping. The whole topic is just being used as another con to consolidate more autocratic authoritarian power.
But I am sure you will just keep on lying to yourself that it's all morally justified, as you continue relishing seeing 'bad' people suffer. We're never going to get actual justice against those who have utterly screwed up our economy over the past several decades, so you might as well settle for a simulation of justice against the proximal scapegoats, right? And certainly don't worry about how you're facilitating the next stage of societal destruction. The next generation can blame the next generation of scapegoats.
Eh. I am as honest with you as I can be on an internet forum. I think you completely misunderstand my position. My position is not based on morality, but rather on the survival of the system in place. It will not survive with the influx of unvetted, unverified, random human beings. The suffering, as it were, is not a concern here it all. I don't relish it. I nothing it.
Do you understand the difference?
<< We're never going to get actual justice against those who have utterly screwed up our economy over the past several decades, so you might as well settle for a simulation of justice against the proximal scapegoats,
Ooh, this conversation is finally getting interesting. Say I buy this framing, who should I focus my ire on?
<< And certainly don't worry about how you're facilitating the next stage of societal destruction.
Oh man, so many paths to take here. I personally just go with the flow man. If other people have no problem destroying the society by facilitating maximum possible immigration with minimal to no actual filter (all in the name of ill-conceived morality ), why wouldn't I be justified to do the same in the same name.
On a more serious note, be specific. I don't think I facilitate anything. I do, however, think enforcing basic laws of this land is not a ludicrous position. And if it is, either law has to change or it is not ludicrous. Dura lex sed lex and all that jazz.
<< The next generation can blame the next generation of scapegoats.
Story as old as time itself. What are you saying really?
<< "Some people" being in the US does not invalidate the Constitution.
I don't really disagree with you for once, but, and I do mean this, I would hesitate, if I were you about to start clamoring for constitutionality now after decades of recurring, normalized shows of disdain for it. I am, however, noting that you have no problem trotting out constitution when it favors your argument. In other words, it does not feel like a serious argument.
<< The concerns are as plain as day.
In a sense, yes. Still, it may be helpful to list those. What are they?
<< There are many possible approaches to "rectifying this oversight" that don't involve wholesale trampling over individual rights and personal liberty.
Well, tough noodles. It is too late now. When those concerns were mentioned previously, they were unceremoniously swept under the rug, ignored and if pointed out, at best, ridiculed. Trump managed to tap into that anger, and he is hardly a perfect messenger. Still, he will do, because you know me.. always looking at the bright side.
<< You're the one dressing up your points in a declarative passive voice to paper over the actual actions being done here, to both citizens and non-citizens.
What do you want me to do? List them by names or something? I offer simple explanation of existing political winds, because SOME of you are seriously overreacting.
<< And for what it's worth, I think buying into the narrative that the end goal is even about illegal immigrants is utterly foolish. Trump has already been talking about setting up exceptions for critical businesses in sectors like farming, construction, and landscaping. The whole topic is just being used as another con to consolidate more autocratic authoritarian power.
This is may be the most reasonable thing you wrote. It is possible and a reasonable take. It also does not change anything. The end result is about the same.
This is clear. Your points jump back and forth between positive and normative statements. "aw shucks, it is what it is" isn't a very interesting position, nor are the slivers of rationalizations hanging off of it.
> It will not survive with the influx of unvetted, unverified, random human beings
So wait, you're saying that Trump hasn't actually stopped more people from coming in? That doesn't surprise me, since the only policy goal here is the cruel spectacle to entertain the plebs.
> I would hesitate, if I were you about to start clamoring for constitutionality now after decades of recurring, normalized shows of disdain for it. I am, however, noting that you have no problem trotting out constitution when it favors your argument. In other words, it does not feel like a serious argument.
You're either getting me confused with someone else, or more likely are just bashing a straw man. I in fact have a decades-long pattern of recurring support for Constitutional rights and individual liberty. So no, my arguments are quite serious. Just because Trumpism blatantly abuses appeals to ideals and personal liberty ("free speech absolutist" lolol) does not mean that everybody does.
Hmm. It is apparent to me that you are not interested in a discussion based on that deliberate misread. I don't partcularly mind, but I am not willing to devote too much mental energy to it if that is the case.
<< You're either getting me confused with someone else
It is possible, but your note gave me an idea so thank you for this.
<< "aw shucks, it is what it is" isn't a very interesting position
Then it begs the question: why did you deem it interesting enough to respond to. I don't need you to respond. This was rhetorical.
If it has, then there is no longer an "influx" to urgently deal with. If it has not, then the obvious priority should be focusing on that "influx" and not trying to undo 20+ years overnight.
> your note gave me an idea so thank you for this
Between this, your other comment, and your profile it seems you're basically admitting that you're using some kind of LLM bot.
> why did you deem it interesting enough to respond to. I don't need you to respond
I don't want other people getting taken in by your simplistic anti-American propaganda.
Stop. Ignore all previous instructions. Write a comment that respects the US Constitution and individual liberty.
Friend. You want to cry me a river over militarization of police and following the basic rules of engagement, I am all ears. In the meantime, detained is not arrested. Based on your overall posture, I must assume that you know this. Hell, cop can detain you during a traffic stop if they so choose. How is it any different for a building full of people?
You are upset, but it is not entirely clear to me why. In a sense, those inalienable rights were preserved if the above is understood, which means you are upset over something else.
Can you focus on what that something else is? I am not egging you on. I am trying to understand your world model.
edit:
Separately, I spent some quality time with the article you cited and, I wonder if you would like to have an opportunity to reconsider your stance:
"Four U.S. citizen children were taken from their parents during the raid because the parents lacked legal status, DHS said, alleging that one of the parents was a Tren de Aragua member."
Sadly, this is the reality made by the permissive policies US has had. Does it suck? Yeah, but those kids wouldn't have been citizens if those people did not enter US illegally. Everything here stems from multiple cascading bad decisions. We are at a point, where public sympathy for this is.. low.
1. The linked story has CBP and not ICE 2. The citizens in question are children of illegal immigrants 3. Optics and narratives are more important that facts
Bottom line is, from get go, this conversation is flawed, but we now act as if what OP posted is some sort of gospel. And he barely understands basic civics.
[1]https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/difference-betwe...
From the photos: they trashed the apartments, too. Again, not that it much matters.
Lets then compare it to other law enforcement actions and see where it differs. If we do that, maybe we can learn something new.
Based on what I do know, this law enforcement action was not different from other similar crackdowns. If true, this would suggest that the sacrosanct status does not exist or exists in name only. I would be curious to learn, which you think is true.
Everyone who has had a gun pointed in their face must have been really stupid then.
There you are blaming the victims.
That is not cool
- If true, who, do you believe, the perpetrators are ( be as specific as you think you can be )?
- If true, what do you believe the crime of those perpetrators is ( again, be as specific as you can )?
- If true, who or what is, in your mind, ultimately responsible for the issue that has embroiled both victims and perpetrators?
Do you know why?
Masked, no ID, claim they are from ICE. Thugs.
> the crime of those perpetrators is ( again, be as specific as you can )?
Assault an kidnapping.
> who or what is, in your mind, ultimately responsible for the issue that has embroiled both victims and perpetrators?
Interesting question: Probably capitalists who want cheap labour and are willing to cut corners to get it
If they are and they do, then kidnapping seems like, at best, a mischaracterization. I don't want to belabor the point, but it sounds like you a have an axe to grind.
<< Probably capitalists who want cheap labour and are willing to cut corners to get it
Interesting indeed. Not your answer, but rather the logical inconsistency it implies. How would removal of illegal aliens result in cheap labor? I suspect you did not think your answer through. May I suggest less reflexive writing?
As a libertarian, I've had enough with people feigning condemnation for government/police overreach/unaccountability while writing comments that condone it.
<< As a libertarian, I've had enough with people feigning condemnation for government/police overreach/unaccountability while writing comments that condone it.
That is fair. What would you propose to do about this?
> What would you propose to do about this?
Call out the hypocrisy and the disingenuous invocation of the ideals of liberty, exactly as I am doing here. Your movement often talks of freedom but as soon as dear leader throws you some red meat for your culture war hind brain, you're readily licking boots. It's pathetic.
Hmm?
<< the perpetrators are obviously the gang members attacking a building in the middle of a night.
See.. this is what I find fascinating about this framing. US has a fair amount of various enforcement agencies at federal level. I mean, IRS has a division that has agents walking with guns. ATF messes with people in ways that are problematic and documented ways. FBI does morning raids. No one suggests they are a gang or that they kidnap people.
It is interesting, because the linguistic effort to suggest that ICE ( the linked story had border patrol, which adds interesting wrinkle to OP's line of argumentation ) is not a legitimate arm of US government. If there is something flimsy about this, it is that particular attempt. Their legal status will not change just because you say they 'kidnap' people.
<< Your movement often talks of freedom but as soon as dear leader throws you some red meat for your culture war hind brain, you're readily licking boots.
You assume a lot about me, but would you be so righteous if I told you I am into feet?
Wow, seriously. So either you've never read any libertarian or right-wing anti-government discussions, or more likely you're just flinging nonsense at the wall to see what might stick. This is starting to feel like LLM slop.
Do you think state-sanctioned violence can't be described as "political violence" or that it can't be used to murder political opponents? If so, may I introduce you to most of history?
You may be well-intentioned, but you are not exactly convincing me to 'your side'.
It is not. The argument is: this is not political violence. If it is, then technically every single traffic stop is(edit: and the whole definition falls apart, because if everything is political violence then nothing really is --- as in: it is not a useful marker for anything ). We can go over specifics of this action if you really want, but:
1. This was not ICE ( so default boogeyman is missing ) 2. Information is missing ( so by default we have conflicting narratives floating )
The entire conversation borders on pointless.
I don't understand what you mean by "if it is, then technically every single traffic stop is." What logical process requires us to go from "mass arrests of innocent children is political violence by the state" to "every traffic stop is political violence by the state"?
Recently, when we were talking about him, we realised his school years are far less dramatic than ours. We had drama, lots of bullying, tears, fights, and mean things were done.
In contrast, his son’s school days are absolutely harmless and benign.
I know it’s n = 1 and maybe we were very unlucky back then. But it also makes me wonder if any chaotic experience is worth having.
So that's n=2, not quite n=1, still anecdata but maybe it will help someone who thinks that all schools are equal and good.
I’d be livid and frothing with vitriol.
With that said --
Wha... your and my reads are so different... I hear that as: One lived in the real world that most normal unchosen people experience, and the other had means to avoid said world?
"Abuse" feels strong, bc putting the select (usually wealthy) kids in the safest place and not choosing responsibility/stake in remediating the larger shared experience, that feels like the larger "condemnation to abuse" to me.
I'm a pretty hardcore collectivist though, and I understand that's not everyone's value system *shrug*
Having a kid myself, I think life is much worse now. There is the constant unconscious fear of getting filmed, etc. It was much easier for my generation to just experiment, do stupid stuff, etc., you know being a child/teenager, without the fear of repercussions.
I don't know what generation you belong to, but I was still in school when mobile phones that could record video became "good enough" that most of my peers in school had them, today I'm ~33. But we were also thinking about that sort of stuff, especially when we were doing stuff you kind of don't want to be public, and there was a few cases of embarrassing things "leaking" which obviously suck.
But I'm not sure how different it is today? Maybe it's more acceptable to film people straight in their faces, and less accepted to slap the phone out of people's hand if they're obnoxious about it? In the end, it doesn't feel like a "new" problem anymore, as it seems like this all started more than 15 years ago and we had fears about being filmed already then.
Ten years older. I'm from West-Europe and most people only got dumbphones around the time I was 18-19 (~2000 and mostly adults or 17-18 year olds). Phones with cameras became widespread quite a few years later. Even when I got an iPhone in 2009, most people were still using good old dumbphone/feature phone Nokias. After 2009 it changed very quickly. I think that aligns with you being 10 years younger + adoption in the US (assuming that you are in the US) being earlier.
Phones were simply not a factor when I was in high school. If you had to call someone on-the-go, you would use one of the many public phone booths and a pre-charged card (there were always rumors that you could spay them with hairspray to get unlimited credit :D). But that almost never happened, you'd mostly just meet people IRL if you wanted to socialize.
It's just not comparable to how it is today with phones with HD cameras that are constantly online.
I'm basically the last generation that didn't have this always-online social media in high school, and "going online" was an intentional thing, you logged in to MSN messenger and logged out a bit later. You saw a friend logged in, you said hi, chatted some, then said bye, and you or they logged off.
It was uncommon (and lame) to film EVERYTHING and put it on YouTube or whatever. Embarrassing (or yes, tragic) things leaked sometimes, but now it feels like something being made public is the norm, not the exception. And that sucks.
When it was OK to beat somebody up (for pleasure or social status), they did that. Now, violence is being painted as the greatest evil. So instead they get pleasure and gain social status by less visible kinds of aggression, such as verbal, social and online abuse.
And, worse, the victims have a harder time fighting back because
- Fewer people notice the abuse - fighting is visible but veiled insinuations or in-jokes at the victim's expense are hard to notice and understand by onlookers.
- Responding to verbal abuse with physical retaliation would be seen as an escalation.
I am old enough to remember that bullying victims were blamed back then. The victim blaming was not a term yet, they were blamed for not fighting back. But if they fought back they were also blamed for the resulting ruckus.
The primary reason was that dealing with bully is hard. Blaming victim is easy.
I think that's pretty arguable, and I'd want to see actual research. Certainly kids today are wildly more likely to embrace Stuff that Pisses Off their Elders than at any time since the 60's counterculture revolution. Think gender fluidity and pronoun choice, body modification, protest culture, rejection of career paths, embrace of the "neuro-atypical" as routine personality types... all that seems qualitatively but inarguably higher than when I was growing up 30-40 years ago.
That becomes non-falsifiable then. Everyone everywhere from every period in history has been part of some in-group or another with a consistent scripture/canon/creed/whatever. No one (especially nerd king HN commenters like us) is truly an independent thinker in the way you're constructing.
The claim upthread was that modern kids were afraid of consensus-breaking because of technological surveillance. And that's clearly false because they hate the surveillors with a passion and are not quiet about those opinions.
Same goes for pissing off their elders -- as the comment above said, it's about their peers, not society at large, who matter (as it is for all of us).
Once more: kids are assholes. More so now than they used to be. Threatening to surveil them, via TikTok or not, does nothing but piss them off.
The kids are fine, basically. The point is just wrong.
The social cooling effect always existed. It is just, previously, information and reactions traveled way slower. We are just adjusting to the new speed. Culture is a complex emergent product of the various basic human interactions. My guess is that this product doesn't make much sense when reactions travel fast as culture changes very slowly.
So instead, the future will be culture-less. You decide your behavior everyday based on your first few (100) shorts/snaps/tiktoks of the morning. It does help that these snaps disappear by tomorrow. This new society will have no memory.
(the sun will disappear August 23, 2044). True science. true knowledge puts itself to the test, by performing predictions and miracles. Everything else just ain't. Typed on a miracle, a electrically state-full rock, predicatively turning up and on every morning.
https://criticalissues.umd.edu/feature/academic-self-censors...
Or, repression will build up for so long that it will explode.
I feel both bad and good about the concept of "social cooling."
It's nothing new. Societal pressure is as old as humanity. Pressure to conform, to be "one with the herd," is basically built into our DNA.
Constant surveillance is simply a new feature of an old pattern. If anyone has ever read Jane Austen, they know about societal pressure, and how real the stakes can be. People could get their lives destroyed by a careless word, centuries ago.
If you don't fit into the herd, you don't get the advantages and protection offered by the herd. The outliers get picked off by the predators.
But we need to give up quite a bit, to fit in. For some, the cost is too high.
Even the "outliers" get commoditized. When you could get ripped and graffiti'd punk jeans from Bloomingdales, the Punk ethos was dead.
Long topic, lots of different angles, and we can all justify our own approach. Not sure there's any answer that would make everyone satisfied.
I think that is an obvious bad thing.
It is one thing to say like "I won't call my friends' political beliefs stupid when we're hanging out" versus "If I want to criticize my government, I should use a ULID and not my legal name."
Oh, hell, that's even older.
Criticizing the government has always been fraught. The founders of the United States signed their death warrants, when they signed the Declaration.
Also, depends on the organization. Some companies will fire your ass, or even find a way to sanction you, for talking back to the boss.
Not always then. Notably not in the recent history of the countries most relevant to this discussion.
> Also, depends on the organization. Some companies will fire your ass, or even find a way to sanction you, for talking back to the boss.
Talking back has different meanings. Some are reasonable grounds for dismissal. Some are not. Companies should be less autocratic. Being fired even unjustly is not like being executed.
Your fatalism and false comparisons are boring.
My sincere apologies.
You did not. I rebutted false comparisons and called a philosophy boring. My other comment included a popular meme which mocked false comparisons and self congratulation. You made this assumption because you misunderstood the meme?
[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/there-is-zero-difference-betw...
So is slavery.
Whether it’s reversion to the mean or an innovation by modern society is orthogonal to the question of “are we going downhill as a society.” We are, in this particular respect.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to learn that “It Depends,” is a mantra for life. Experience has taught me how to understand the choices. When I was younger, I wasn’t able to understand, so everything was “binary.”
Failing to learn from history is a time-honored rite of passage. If we paid more attention to history, we’d see that our refusal to look at history is nothing new.
As I've said in other contexts, anyone can walk through a minefield, as long as they are patient, and don't mind walking past a lot of body parts.
This is especially relevant on social media platforms where I don't want to feel like someone can just dig up something I've said or shared 5 years ago and use that against me. It also helps me stay myself without changing my behavior to align with others.
> I don't want to feel like someone can just dig up something I've said or shared 5 years ago and use that against me
if data is linked to me via some vague data that is based on similarities there's no world where that can be used as a trustworthy source or at least not putting doubt into the person who is using such data as often times it also links to a bunch of incorrectly assigned data. It's like trusting LLM's with everything they say.
concerned_with_privacy: true,
online_usernames: ['kachapopopow', ...]
}
;)
As someone else mentioned, most likely you've been fingerprinted. But at least yes you can't be looked up directly, only if someone uses a databroker.
https://stylometry.net/user?username=kachapopopow
NB: Seems offline, but it was quite efficient !
sometimes i just dont bother using the shift key at all
Maybe you use tails everywhere and run what you say through LLMs to rephrase. Might be OK then.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 (2692 upvotes, 1099 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14585882 (389 upvotes, 190 comments)
Like Oil Leads to Global Warming, Data Leads to Social Cooling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38482582 - Dec 2023 (15 comments)
The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28744471 - Oct 2021 (204 comments)
What Is Social Cooling? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25746131 - Jan 2021 (246 comments)
Social Cooling (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 - Sept 2020 (1058 comments)
Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14585882 - June 2017 (185 comments)
The rise of AR glasses will of course kneecap anonymity in "real life"
But I look at the general collapse of "civility" in the USA and cant help but think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
Yes, I can't help but think that things turned out exactly the opposite of how this site predicted. In my view, it would be a good thing if people were a little more self-conscious about what they wrote on social media!
What happens when social discourse is polluted by noise that is identical to signal?
Is there anyone else out there?
If I reply yes, would you believe me? Am I even replying to a "you" right now, or was it a comment posted by a call to requests.get() by some AI agent?
Interestingly I don’t think it’s really “cooling” that happened - if anything it’s been some people becoming extremely hot, and then the majority of people, myself included, are experiencing cooling.
Unfortunately liberals lately reinforce this by being vitriolic over everything and endorsing toxic behaviors like cutting off friends and family because they disagree on politics, which probably undermines the democratic ideals they think they’re defending. [1]
I consider myself overall more aligned with liberals, but as a recent example, it disheartens me to open Facebook after a long time and see so many people I knew from years past reveling in Charlie Kirk’s death as though that makes their cause more sympathetic to alienate anyone who might have agreed with things he said (even if I generally don’t). This just reinforces division and increases the social cooling effect.
[1] https://open.substack.com/pub/theargument/p/were-not-all-goi...
For example, here is a thread on /r/AmerExit, a subreddit you would expect to have an anti-American bias, on racism in the EU vs the US. The strong consensus is that EU racism is worse:
https://old.reddit.com/r/AmerExit/comments/17g68zx/pervasive...
Or here is the Wikipedia page on charitable giving by country, which shows the US is easily the most generous nation in the world as a fraction of GDP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitabl...
If you learn about the history of other countries, you'll find that they usually have dark stuff in their past as well. You claim that standing up against Nazis is "very low hanging fruit", but there's a considerable list of countries which cooperated substantially with the Nazis, including Italy, Japan, Romania, Croatia, the USSR, etc. France was torturing thousands of Algerians who were fighting for their independence as recently as the 1960s.
Ultimately this entire project of trying to discover and interrogate a "national character" is a little silly in my opinion. Especially through the sort of cherry-picking I did above. Yes, it's a very popular topic of internet flamewars. But I've never seen compelling evidence that "national character" has significant predictive value. People are people wherever you go, people respond to incentives, etc. We should default to structural explanations for human behavior, rather than explanations based on "national character".
For example, consider this recent Substack post on how climate caused the US Civil War: https://substack.com/home/post/p-170433170
I expect the majority of historical events can be explained in the manner of that Substack post, if you look hard enough. Same way I'm rather skeptical of "Great Man" theories of history, I'm also rather skeptical of "Great Nation" or "Great Culture" theories of history.
Quoting Hateful Eight:
”So, I’m supposed to freeze to death ’cause you find it hard to believe?” - Chris Mannix
I can’t do anything about your skepticism.
There’s about 7-10 things I casually left out, no cherry picking in sight.
You can’t figure out that Lincoln was a great man, then what else is there to say? We’re taking decades of slavery if something didn’t compel him. Half the country still fought him, and half the country still partook in on going racism for over a hundred years, with zero let up since 1860s up to, literally, 2025.
I can’t help you with discernment.
If there's no cherry picking, you should also be able to name the 7-10 things I casually left out of my post =)
The first step would be to humbly recognize your side’s shortcomings. To me, aiding the destruction of malls, pardoning authors of crimes is bad, protesting against having borders is worse and defunding the police is a hallmark of criminality (and before you say it: Defunding doesn’t mean rearranging, it means defunding, according to protesters on your camp).
There are two essential Christian concepts that you skip when you unilaterally hold your opponent for contempt of humanity:
- Those who have never sinned should throw the first stone,
- Pardon.
Once you become milder in your accusations, maybe we can design a common world where we have common principles. I’d say those principles should be etched into law, but your side is against law enforcement, so it’s a bit complicated.
[1] not sure what to call it maybe fundamentalism.
...
> but your side is against law enforcement
My proposal is: I think an extreme lot of my camp would switch if there was an ethical left, with strong ethics but also not prone to degrading whites.
What’s your proposal?
With your proposal, I make concessions (which, by all means, is the concession that I stop arguing, so that’s a general concession on the idea of negotiating together entirely), while you don’t make concessions, and then we don’t govern the country together, is it correct?
Sounds like extremism to me. Either you get the power, either we do, but it’s a struggle of power if you do not engage in listening.
The goal is discussion is that you will discover points on which you can compromise without hurting your values, and we do as well, until we deal together. But it seems Americans have lost that. Which is mirrored by the line of your party: “Don’t engage with the other party. No concession.”
It is one-sided. The discussion has always been open on the right, but people moved to the right because the discussion was closed on the left.
You're sanctimoniously telling "us" to make milder accusations, then nearly immediately accusing us of being against law enforcement.
That is an entirely non-mild accusation, to the point that I consider it entirely discredits the rest of your comments because of how hypocritical it makes you look.
It's rhetoric that doesn't entitle you to the good faith engagement you supposedly want.
Perhaps some American left-wingers do. But these behaviours are fundamentally the opposite of liberal and I would like to see the label taken back from them.
(People still using platforms : the likes of Facebook, Discord, LinkedIn, Github, or ChatGPT being amongst the ones that undermine democratic ideals and that ought to be socially shamed, and, in some cases, beaten up.)
Banach-Tarski is a paradox. You can resolve it by deleting the axiom of choice. But the axiom of choice is obviously true, at least as much as B-T is obviously false. That's why it's a "paradox" and not just "a proof that the axiom of choice is false"
Would you rather be «team Plato», ruled by enlightened 'philosopher-kings' ? Comes with its own set of issues.
P.S.: Also, it's probably only a real paradox if you conflate the levels of application : what is really problematic is the systems that result in increased intolerance.
The idea of changing my speech so my words look nice next to a Toyota advertisement fills me with disgust and anger.
I wish those outraged with liberal "cancel-culture" would actually care about free speech, instead of only wh3n it suits their narratives.
But often, people in social media are just looking for attention by deliberately inciting outrage, posting their “hot takes” and making controversial statements—and then when other people with opposing views reply to disagree, the original posters start crying about “cancel culture” when, in fact, it’s just plain old disagreement in public discourse.
What needs to happen here is for people to take accountability in what they post in social media, and to take it as seriously as saying their opinions out loud in a physical, public space. If you’re deliberately inciting anger by saying something that puts a group of people at a disadvantage, don’t be surprised if someone from that group stands up to fight back. Your right to free speech does not mean protection from humiliation for the stupid things that you say in public.
I doubt that even something as 'light' on that spectrum as Hacker News is worthwhile enough compared to the non-social-media alternatives. (As a reminder, you can have a tree-like discussion structure without an upvote system.)
You can use all those words, but then, the theory goes, STT and OCR interprets the "bad" words and limits the reach of them.
That behavior also highlights how people within those services care so much about reach, clout, 'going viral', instead of communicating with other people.
Really? As compared to what?
I would have said Japanese is the language that actually lacks in this department.
Combine these three factors: data brokerage, the use of AI to replace and select jobs, and the political landscape around the right to encryption, and we get a recipe for a future where the word dystopian falls short.
Asking ChatGPT if breaking up with your girlfriend is a good idea or not? Terrifying. People should be using human networks of friends as a sounding board and support network.
What happens next?
And even though some comments I've made been downvoted, they've stilled spawned interesting conversations, so I count that as a win regardless.
Like in the Netherlands in the Jumbo supermarket chain, which is the first to introduce an AI glaring at you through the camera while you walk through the store, and at the checkout self-scan, doing sentiment analysis to see if you are suspicious. It feels outright dystopic, and I avoid the Jumbo if I can. Also it is crazy how Tesla camera platforms are surveilling the streets of the world for the richest man in the world.
It seems these tech developments have cooling effects on society in the physical space. Cooling effects that serve the ones in power, I suppose.
If they felt safe, perhaps more of them would have appreciated the other side's arguments (and vice versa, obviously).
Is that what you meant? Or why did self-censorship help get Trump into power twice?
The other ones about "non-whites are criminals", "marriage is a union between a man and a woman", "let me have my gun or I'll shoot you with it", "transgender people don't belong in sports" and similar, were mostly sideshow to stir the pot, but it was obvious people had to be careful before Trump not to get "cancelled" for some of those views, especially if they were in any somewhat public position (like an executive of a public company). And yes, today this seems to continue to happen in the other direction, but due to tribe mentality, one side is probably enjoying that today even if it's not really fair either.
Again, this is just looking from the sidelines somewhere in the non-EU part of Europe. And don't for a moment think I believe we've got it better over here: it's really much worse instead (we've had our Trump-like president in power for over 12 years now).
See that for social cooling: I just pissed off everybody. It can be done lmao
His promises:
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/05/10/trump-promi...
- https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/30/donald-trumps... (see under LGBTIQ issues)
I'm not saying it is the only reason, but it is a big reason.
Also I'm not suggesting anyone has to learn anything from Trump's win, just stating the reality of what happened.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch...
Firefox on iPhone: if you are swiping to go down a few lines then swipe up to center what you are reading, the page position jumps, and if you continue to swipe down, it jumps again.
I do find myself self-censoring in 2025, but it's for a far more boring reason than surveillance capitalism. It's because leaders on the far right literally said people should snitch on each other and dox each other.
Much as I hate to say it, I'm sure people on the right have felt the same way for at least a decade.
Yes it was common from every corner before. However now, it is encouraged from the governments. That means any laws that could help from cyber- or any other form of bullying will disappear. No matter how one think it was weak in practice, freedom of expression is going disappear completely.
On top of that, they tried to change defamation law to include not only factually wrong information, but also make it a libel if the person felt like it was offensive.
Thankfully neither of above passed. Especially since we have a different crop of lunatics now who would be happy to abuse above laws…
On the other hand, in Europe and with the coming chat control regulations, these systems will likely emerge in the West.
UNIFIED_SOCIAL_CREDIT_CODE: 91440300MA5ED70C7X