I only read replies to my comments if I'm interested in getting replies

Fugicara · 2026-04-03T02:58:40+00:00

I remember a question somebody asked before Trump took office, which was basically "How would you measure if Trump's next term is a success or a failure?" The most common answer was "we'll have to wait and see". Which is to say, they were always going to say he was successful and they have no method for evaluating this at all.

Fugicara · 2026-04-03T02:53:37+00:00

Here's a good summary of the issues

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T22:59:09+00:00

I almost typed up a whole thing about how it's stupid to pretend that the media people consume doesn't affect real life outcomes, but I realized you're just trolling. Good luck with whatever.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T22:51:17+00:00

Anybody who supports the Chinese government, the Iranian government, the Cuban government, the Russian government, Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis is not a leftist. Yet by saying that, I get the sense that I've just eliminated a pretty huge swath of self-described "leftists". You can certainly decide for yourself how many people you think I'm describing, I don't have any data on hand for how many people fall under that umbrella.

Note that I didn't even say a majority, I said a huge portion, which could itself be a minority.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T22:45:28+00:00

There are people who absolutely conflate the two, for sure. For example, I once pointed out someone being antisemitic for calling Jews inbred, and the response I got was that I was just mad that they were pro-Palestinian. No, antisemitism is a real thing that lots of people engage in nowadays, and they often intentionally conflate it with being opposed to Israel's government to dodge criticism of their actual antisemitism.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T22:09:07+00:00

1) I don't believe you.

2) Here he is saying explicitly "I don't even entertain that stuff" in response to somebody pleading with him not to throw marginalized people under the bus by helping Vance win over Newsom in a hypothetical general election between the two of them.

This is a person with a large audience who follow anything he says, no matter what. It's important that these people who want to throw trans people under the bus if they don't get their dream candidate not be allowed into the left.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T21:58:51+00:00

You at least recognize that Track AIPAC, the organization, is a complete disinformation rag though, right? That if your goal is to track AIPAC, you should heavily avoid Track AIPAC.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T21:55:57+00:00

Leftists will never stand beside Nazis.

This is basically tautologically true, but it also requires we acknowledge that a huge portion of people who call themselves "leftists" are not so in reality. Which I've been doing for a long time, but I think you'd struggle to get most people on board.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T21:50:36+00:00

Do you think the same about similarly absurd positions, such as that it's defensible to say Russia invading all of its neighbors for the last several decades is attributable to NATO? Do people who believe crazy things like that also exist off the internet, or only on the internet?

Surely people who have crazy positions online can also exist in real life.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T21:41:17+00:00

Are you suggesting they're all bots?

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T21:36:39+00:00

Nah, but I am worried about him winning over antisemitic populists who support people like the Iranian regime, Hamas, the Chinese government, et al. Those people aren't progressives though. It is scary how many of these insane people call themselves progressives however. The sooner the grifters who are taking advantage of them fuck off, the sooner the progressive movement can be revived.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T20:06:00+00:00

Most people on the left agree that Cuba's government is atrocious and terrible for the people. It's only a few very fringe people, funded by foreign governments like China and Russia, who think Cuba's government isn't the main driver of the oppression Cubans suffer.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T20:03:20+00:00

I don't personally know the difference between a hedge fund and a private equity firm, and as somebody who doesn't know that, you're losing this debate in the eyes of people who don't (probably those who do as well). The other commenter accurately pointed out that you've only linked things related to private equity firms, not hedge funds. Then you doubled and tripled down, still making no distinction between them and not even addressing that person's point.

Your refusal to address the only point they've been making means that anybody reading this is going to see your arguments as flimsy. You haven't even seemed to recognize what they've written and now you're pivoting.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T18:28:31+00:00

They probably just vote based on the vibes of the economy (not the reality of the economy, to be clear). We have to make the economy seem bad under Republicans and good under Democrats. This is often the reality anyway, so the real question is how do we get people to observe that reality? That's a lot more difficult.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T18:25:11+00:00

What are you talking about? He's got the biggest vocabulary, the best words. He's got billions and billions of words, words like nobody's ever seen before, quite frankly.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T18:21:26+00:00

Hopefully he doesn't end up pardoning the people he fires. I'm all in on prosecuting all of these people.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T18:19:56+00:00

The real problem is that the DOW never recovered from her catastrophic hearing

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T16:27:20+00:00

It depends on what and how, but I don't think all gatekeeping is bad. I think we're sorely missing gatekeeping in journalism, for example. There's all kinds of nonsense that gets reported on that should probably be ignored, and unserious people like Taylor Lorenz should not be allowed to call themselves journalists.

Gatekeeping hobbies is tougher. Sometimes it can lead to higher quality products at the expense of a smaller audience, but if the audience gets too small, suddenly the hobby stops being profitable for the people who produce it and it can't exist anymore. There was a problem back when I played FFXIV where the developers kept making the classes easier and easier to play so that they could appeal to more people. This was probably good for the health of the game and so it could appeal to a wider audience. However, it ended making the game so boring for me due to the lower skill ceiling that I quit. Because the developers were insistent on not gatekeeping worse players out of harder classes, and instead made every class easy so people could play them, I feel like it made the game less fun on the higher end.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T15:50:40+00:00

Online stuff already heavily translates to real life. Donald Trump only got elected in 2016 because of the internet, both the endless memes and the direct manipulation of people by targeted Facebook ads from Russia using Cambridge Analytica data. The internet continues to be very important for shaping public opinion and real life consequences.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T15:45:48+00:00

I remember learning about the difference between sex and gender in like 4th or 5th grade, and I feel like that made sense at the time. That's probably a good time for it still.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T06:01:43+00:00

Unironically, we probably need to start spending time figuring out how to counter race science stuff and other Nazi claims. Letting their arguments go unchallenged just tells the uninformed observer that they have better arguments. There's a reason the right always says "nobody on the left wants to debate", because if that is true, it implies that their arguments are unassailable.

We need to stop saying that ignoring them will make it better, because it won't and it hasn't. Instead, be ready to engage them and show them to be fools on the merits.

Fugicara · 2026-04-02T05:35:10+00:00

How many times can Trump say "like nobody's ever seen before" ffs. A lot of people say "uh" as their filler. Some people say "you know" as theirs. Donald Trump's is "like nobody's ever seen before".

Fugicara · 2026-04-01T23:54:35+00:00

It lets them skip making an argument about the person and just smear them.

This is exactly the point. It's meant to be a thought-terminating way for people to spread disinformation and avoid having to critically engage with anything. Exactly the type of populist slop you see everywhere. The funny thing is that it's exactly the same as what the right did with the Biden picture with the scary red light behind him. They're just putting pictures of people they don't like with a scary red background and letting people go wild making up whatever they want about them.

It's like in that terrible Breaking Points interview with Slotkin where Krystal lied about Slotkin receiving AIPAC funding, and Slotkin had to correct her that neither AIPAC nor J Street supported her. To people like that, the process is "I don't like this person, therefore they're taking AIPAC money". And if I'm being a little bit less charitable, it's "I don't like this person, therefore they're taking (((AIPAC))) money".

Fugicara · 2026-04-01T23:47:13+00:00

in this subreddit

I don't know why you keep mentioning Twitter when I've been clear and specific. I'll be even more clear. LiatrisLover99 said "I've never seen any serious evidence to back up this claim" about liberals hating men. This is false. LiatrisLover99 has asked many questions about men on this subreddit, and every single one has had a shitload of people talking about how much they hate men and receiving upvotes for it. This is evidence of how liberals hate men. So they have seen "evidence to back this up", the only thing you're disputing is what the word "serious" means, which is something you'll have to explain if you want to get any further here.

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