Random Thread

[zompist]

maybe the long-term solution to this (rather than seeking to empower victims and appoint more watchdogs) is not to give them that power in the first place.

How do they suggest we do that? (Sorry, I don't like watching video essays.)

From the Vulture article, Gaiman was strangely specific in his victims— e.g. he took advantage of more than one babysitter, and apparently one venue had a standing rule to not let young women alone with him (though they kept inviting him back anyway).

Googling suggests his net worth is $18 to $20 million. I'm on board with the idea that there should be no billionaires, but I'm not sure about millionaires. There are about 60 million millionaires worldwide.

[Linguoboy]

Googling suggests his net worth is $18 to $20 million. I'm on board with the idea that there should be no billionaires, but I'm not sure about millionaires. There are about 60 million millionaires worldwide.

Well, the essay spends quite a bit of time talking about "cultural capital" and how we end up letting people accrue it. Arguably, that was at least as important as his wealth when it came to enabling his abuse. Women weren't literally throwing themselves at him on con floors simply because he had millions. The fact that he'd been able to cultivate a public persona as a "feminist" (at least in part by partnering with an outspoken advocate for the rights of abused women) did a lot of heavy lifting too.

[Raphael]

Well, the essay spends quite a bit of time talking about "cultural capital" and how we end up letting people accrue it. Arguably, that was at least as important as his wealth when it came to enabling his abuse. Women weren't literally throwing themselves at him on con floors simply because he had millions. The fact that he'd been able to cultivate a public persona as a "feminist" (at least in part by partnering with an outspoken advocate for the rights of abused women) did a lot of heavy lifting too.

To be honest, that sounds even more difficult to implement in practice. How do you reliably prevent people from accruing cultural capital? That would probably even happen in an anarchist society.

[Raphael]

Unrelated: One thing that surprises me about zompist's Brazil reflections (https://zompist.wordpress.com/2025/01/1 ... flections/) is the use of a phrase that literally translates as "it's legal" to mean "it's great". If I were told that someone described something as "it's legal", I would probably think at first that it's a form of damning with faint praise: "How's the food in this place?" - "Well, err, um, err... ... I guess it's legal?"

[Travis B.]

Well, the essay spends quite a bit of time talking about "cultural capital" and how we end up letting people accrue it. Arguably, that was at least as important as his wealth when it came to enabling his abuse. Women weren't literally throwing themselves at him on con floors simply because he had millions. The fact that he'd been able to cultivate a public persona as a "feminist" (at least in part by partnering with an outspoken advocate for the rights of abused women) did a lot of heavy lifting too.

To be honest, that sounds even more difficult to implement in practice. How do you reliably prevent people from accruing cultural capital? That would probably even happen in an anarchist society.

Creating a culture which is steadfastly conformist, which tends to cut down anyone who stands out from the rest of the population (much like traditional Scandinavian culture with the janteloven)? Personally, I wouldn't want to live in such a culture myself.

Anyways, back in my anarchist days, there was the idea that there would still be leaders, but they would have to earn their position and would be directly democratically chosen as leaders by those around them, who could also directly democratically unchoose them if they so saw fit. This is in contrast to the idea of people having positions based on arbitrary authority. So even in an anarchist society there would still definitely be cultural capital, as after all those who would get to lead would be those who accrued it and were selected by their peers on the basis of it.

[Raphael]

Anyways, back in my anarchist days, there was the idea that there would still be leaders, but they would have to earn their position and would be directly democratically chosen as leaders by those around them, who could also directly democratically unchoose them if they so saw fit. This is in contrast to the idea of people having positions based on arbitrary authority. So even in an anarchist society there would still definitely be cultural capital, as after all those who would get to lead would be those who accrued it and were selected by their peers on the basis of it.

And even without any kind of official "leaders", there would probably still be people who got themselves famous in some way or another, which would come with cultural capital.

[Travis B.]

Anyways, back in my anarchist days, there was the idea that there would still be leaders, but they would have to earn their position and would be directly democratically chosen as leaders by those around them, who could also directly democratically unchoose them if they so saw fit. This is in contrast to the idea of people having positions based on arbitrary authority. So even in an anarchist society there would still definitely be cultural capital, as after all those who would get to lead would be those who accrued it and were selected by their peers on the basis of it.

And even without any kind of official "leaders", there would probably still be people who got themselves famous in some way or another, which would come with cultural capital.

Oh, the idea was not that there would even be official "leaders", just that even an anarchist society would unavoidably end up with de facto ones, as has been the case with practically all anarchist movements to date. Even anarchists have had their leaders, such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, Malatesta, Makhno, Durruti, Bookchin, Chomsky, and so on.

[Linguoboy]

Creating a culture which is steadfastly conformist, which tends to cut down anyone who stands out from the rest of the population (much like traditional Scandinavian culture with the janteloven)?

Wow, Travis, that's exactly correct! You clearly watched the video to the end--probably several times, in order to summarise it so perfectly.

[Travis B.]

Creating a culture which is steadfastly conformist, which tends to cut down anyone who stands out from the rest of the population (much like traditional Scandinavian culture with the janteloven)?

Wow, Travis, that's exactly correct! You clearly watched the video to the end--probably several times, in order to summarise it so perfectly.

You do realize that some people don't like video essays, right? I reserve YouTube for music videos.

[Ares Land]

On the Vulture piece -- my first thought was, oh, that's who 'Vaulter' in Succession is supposed to be a satire of!
I fiddled with stuff a bit to get access to it in spite of the paywall... I sort of regret that I did. That was excruciating.

'Cultural capital' feels a bit weird because to me, it means something closely related but maybe not quite what we're talking about here.

But, regardless of political system, the point that maybe we shouldn't let people acquire the kind of, I don't know, unconditional trust in certain circles, Gaiman had is probably a good one. It definitely looks like there was kind of a public persona, but ultimately people didn't know anything about him.

Which doesn't mean there shouldn't be celebrities! But it's perhaps good to remember we don't know our idols that well.

[Travis B.]

'Cultural capital' feels a bit weird because to me, it means something closely related but maybe not quite what we're talking about here.

But, regardless of political system, the point that maybe we shouldn't let people acquire the kind of, I don't know, unconditional trust in certain circles, Gaiman had is probably a good one. It definitely looks like there was kind of a public persona, but ultimately people didn't know anything about him.

Which doesn't mean there shouldn't be celebrities! But it's perhaps good to remember we don't know our idols that well.

Thing is, do we really want our private lives to be out in the open for everyone to see? Do we want having a modicum of recognition in certain circles to mean one has no privacy? I personally don't, and I bet that many other people wouldn't either if they knew what that meant.

[Linguoboy]

Creating a culture which is steadfastly conformist, which tends to cut down anyone who stands out from the rest of the population (much like traditional Scandinavian culture with the janteloven)?

Wow, Travis, that's exactly correct! You clearly watched the video to the end--probably several times, in order to summarise it so perfectly.

You do realize that some people don't like video essays, right?

And some people don't like reading. Nu?

I reserve YouTube for music videos.

That's your prerogative. As long as you don't mind looking like an utter knob when the video essayist has not only anticipated your exact strawman argument but addressed it already in the essay in question. (Timestamp 1:08 if you can bear to stop listening to the latest release from Serpent With Feet long enough to check.)

[Travis B.]

Wow, Travis, that's exactly correct! You clearly watched the video to the end--probably several times, in order to summarise it so perfectly.

You do realize that some people don't like video essays, right?

And some people don't like reading. Nu?

I reserve YouTube for music videos.

That's your prerogative. As long as you don't mind looking like an utter knob when the video essayist has not only anticipated your exact strawman argument but addressed it already in the essay in question. (Timestamp 1:08 if you can bear to stop listening to the latest release from Serpent With Feet long enough to check.)

Well I can't even watch it right now because YouTube is not working right on my work's Internet (the video comes up, but it sits where it is forever with the spinny thing going even if I change spots in the video). And I am not going to watch it on my cell phone, because my headphones don't work with it. Life would be much simpler if the creator of this simply wrote it out rather than making an hour plus video essay. (Also, I'm not going to sit through watching and listening to something for over an hour.)

You could just say in text what you are trying to get across rather than pointing to someone's hour plus-long video essay, and making remarks when they, surprise surprise, don't watch it, without actually directly saying what it is you think they missed by not watching said video essay.

[malloc]

Creating a culture which is steadfastly conformist, which tends to cut down anyone who stands out from the rest of the population (much like traditional Scandinavian culture with the janteloven)?

Wow, Travis, that's exactly correct! You clearly watched the video to the end--probably several times, in order to summarise it so perfectly.

What video?

[Linguoboy]

You could just say in text what you are trying to get across rather than pointing to someone's hour plus-long video essay, and making remarks when they, surprise surprise, don't watch it, without actually directly saying what it is you think they missed by not watching said video essay.

You do realise that summarising an hour-long video essay that cites Bourdieu and Passeron (among many others) is not exactly a small ask? I may make an attempt later, I may not. In the meantime, I can't imagine the Leftist Cooks aren't the only ones who have considered how to keep certain individuals from abusing their cultural capital without turning the entire world into a capitalist propaganda cartoon of Communism. Perhaps you could seek out some of those pieces before rejoining the discussion.

Creating a culture which is steadfastly conformist, which tends to cut down anyone who stands out from the rest of the population (much like traditional Scandinavian culture with the janteloven)?

Wow, Travis, that's exactly correct! You clearly watched the video to the end--probably several times, in order to summarise it so perfectly.

What video?

The one linked to in my OP: https://youtu.be/T31HKuabyMA

It's obviously not the last word on the subject, but they've thought through these issues more than most commentators I've been reading.

[Travis B.]

You could just say in text what you are trying to get across rather than pointing to someone's hour plus-long video essay, and making remarks when they, surprise surprise, don't watch it, without actually directly saying what it is you think they missed by not watching said video essay.

You do realise that summarising an hour-long video essay that cites Bourdieu and Passeron (among many others) is not exactly a small ask? I may make an attempt later, I may not. In the meantime, I can't imagine the Leftist Cooks aren't the only ones who have considered how to keep certain individuals from abusing their cultural capital without turning the entire world into a capitalist propaganda cartoon of Communism. Perhaps you could seek out some of those pieces before rejoining the discussion.

Since when does the janteloven have anything to do with Communism?

[Raphael]

Yesterday morning, there was an interesting weather-related phenomenon in our street: although the temperatures were clearly below freezing, there was no trace of ice on any of the cars that were parked outside. And no, it wasn't a dry cold; it was actually quite foggy.

[xxx]

this weekend I saw The Day After Tomorrow...

[malloc]

An alternative to suicide recently occurred to me. The libertarians have a rather whimsical concept known as seasteading, basically creating artificial islands autonomous from existing governments. There is nothing stopping leftists from appropriating this concept and leaving behind reactionary oligarchies that want them gone anyway. Granted actually building an artificial island sounds incredibly difficult and it probably says something that even the kind of wealthy people with poor impulse control who call themselves libertarians have not built any. Even so, I am grasping at straws for an alternative to suicide.

[bradrn]

An alternative to suicide recently occurred to me. The libertarians have a rather whimsical concept known as seasteading, basically creating artificial islands autonomous from existing governments. There is nothing stopping leftists from appropriating this concept and leaving behind reactionary oligarchies that want them gone anyway. Granted actually building an artificial island sounds incredibly difficult and it probably says something that even the kind of wealthy people with poor impulse control who call themselves libertarians have not built any. Even so, I am grasping at straws for an alternative to suicide.

There are many alternatives to suicide, from joining your local branch of the Democrats to taking part in protests to looking for a way to move to a different state or country. Those may not be as extreme as seasteading, but they improve the world nonetheless.

Let me leave you with this quote from Albert Camus:

Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.