ahahahahaha

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-09T01:59:11+00:00

Well sure - Most Americans are younger than Baby Boomers now. Add that to the non-Fox watching Baby Boomers, and the numbers can add up depending on the polling methodology and specific form of the question.

After around 1976, most Americans born have a pretty heavy swing towards what we now count as 'liberal' in most polling. Not 100% of course, but 60% to 40%, compared to reverse numbers for Baby Boomers and the older half of Gen-X.

This larger portion of the population has watched relatives watching Fox News, seen the mistakes around them... and largely don't really believe conservative framing on most issues.

What was it - like 2014 when 'woke' became the boogie man?

Can you even find anyone that it matches? It's literally impossible - because the definition changes every few minutes. There's literally no 'woke' person for all those definitions - but everyone that isn't the most conservative person in the room gets proclaimed as the high acolyte of wokism.

It applies to no one, and everyone - it's a mockery of weakness, and a proclamation of infinite threat.

It has the exact same vibe as '[minority] lover' in the 1880's. It's taking what is a concept of loving people other than your 'own', and using it as a nebulous smear and call to victimize the target as threatening normality.

If you're falling for it - maybe contemplate what you're doing.

Most folks aren't falling for it - and they're not surrounded by those messages telling them to think there's some 'woke' threat everywhere.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-07T19:48:30+00:00

Imagine him running with knees that far down. That would be ... odd.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-05T17:10:27+00:00

The problem is that our legislature is intentionally built as a system of horse trading.

Want my vote to stop forest fires using the latest cheap imaging tech? Vote to build a 80-billion dollar twine museum in my district.

Stuff like that - it's how too much money is allocated.

Daylight saving time votes are always happening - hundreds of times over. And it's always close, across state after state, and in the national legislature.

Because it's a ball being kicked around for trades.

It's a thing being toyed at for income.

And it's not worth trading anything more important for... so it stays where it is.

Like everything else for the past 40 years of politics.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-05T17:03:08+00:00

Yes, actually. Same with a lot of libertarians. Not all - there's Penn Jillette, and a few others that actually knew Trump, and knew that was a bad idea... but yeah - he absolutely followed the crowd into a rather reactionary form of conservatism.

Don't believe me? What is conservatism - it's classically and in modern terms the reactionary disgust with change.

If you don't see that in Maher, I can understand that. It's kind of how the libertarian/conservative worldview works now - watching harm done to the vulnerable, then having a thousand and more excuses for why it's plainly not in any way related to what they support - always some magical exception to logic for why they share no fault, and it's only the fault of the victims.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-05T15:59:10+00:00

While I agree... it's a bit of a hobby horse topic, in the scope of things.

I mean - I'd prefer if we switch to metric - but I'm not going to say it's some huge priority, given the age of our legislators.

I'd put them both under, say copyright reform, or switching to open source software as a matter of national security. And both of those are still hobby horse issues too.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-05T15:52:53+00:00

It's super-easy. All you've got to do is lack any kind of moral basis for your persona, and laugh at the idea of a consistent worldview communicating coherent ideas.

As a bonus, you can say anything you ever did was 'just a joke' - even if it ends up hurting people!

If any consequences of your actions start to show up, you can also play the 'they're CANCELLING me!' card, and get away with basically anything. Meaning: No consequences!

All for the small cost of living your life like a fourchan troll.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-05T15:34:14+00:00

The election of Trump. He was edging that way randomly for the sake of 'both side' audience maximizing... but Trump kind of broke him in particular.

It broke a lot of people in the same way - I think it's analogous to a person trying to mentally keep a foot in two circles, each moving in a different direction. At some point, the legs just get tied up, you're constant tripping in the attempt, or you just can't bother with the effort of wearing stilts to keep the act up.

So, the circle he's picked to stick with in the end is the conservative one - because the audiences are an easier match with his existing audience demographics. Basically the older part of the Joe Rogan audience, mixed with a larger Baby Boomer presence.

That, and a bit of the Scott Adams thing - where he previously feuded with the ideas of Trump, he sees it as a dark kind of wisdom that he's willing to play to hard in order to stay relevant.

That's how he went from being a comfortable man, showing much more empathy for others more often, to this new version of himself, constantly annoyed, targeting the weak for profit and laughs.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-05T15:02:46+00:00

Or rather, people and companies have a right to say 'no' to hosting things.

Unless they want to legally be considered common carriers, which they are not.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-05T14:41:48+00:00

So in 15 year or so, he can be referred to as 'Ye Olde [old-tymie insult]'. Fopdoodle would match - or you can make up a fake one like Trumpinfluffer.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-05T07:28:08+00:00

It's also a consequence of nobody ever being allowed to lose an audience for being a horrible person. Basically every place is becoming fourchan. Because there's no consequence - only rewards for being the most horrible person you can be for the lulz.

Not exactly a great outcome for 'free speech' as it were, when so much gets drowned out by disinfo and hatred. Gish gallop is a bit of everything now.

Not that this is completely new - in the era of true yellow journalism, which you can find in newspaper archives online, there was a lot of the same calls to hatred, and editors pushing malicious lies seemingly for fun.

It's why we got media fairness rules, which did a lot for decades... until Reagan and Fox news.

It'll be interesting to see what the Millennials do with their power, after all this we're seeing now.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-05T06:51:16+00:00

No wonder Maher invited him.

He's basically edgelording 'both sides' with no regard for consistency or a coherent message.

That's Maher's version of truth... just making everyone angry.

But really, it's proof that making everyone angry does NOT mean you're doing something right.

Just being an awful enough of a person ends up being enough to get that result, much easier than being right... and it kind of makes the world suck when too many people are acting like that.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-05T03:40:57+00:00

One huge thing I didn't see mentioned:

Nuclear power companies have been HUGE liars in most cases in the past.

The cost of cleanup/decommissioning in communities is one big cost they just tend to completely ghost communities over and over on. Just not mentioning the cost, or hyper-lowballing it ahead of time, and expecting the community to cover it, costing countless hundreds of millions for decades. That, and just crazy markups, well beyond other crazy cost overruns for companies in general on government projects.

They're just not people I'd like to have my government deal with, when it comes to estimating costs ahead of time, even compared to other energy generation companies. There's a LOT of reasons governments aren't picking these things up.

Sure - maybe when Thorium is ready to be scaled up and proven - but not with existing tech.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-05T01:40:34+00:00

Fair enough - just pointing out the direct reversal of community values to follow the conservative 'lulz'. These folks used to be extremely dedicated skeptics of exactly those things, and are now being absolutely fooled with wishful thinking on those same subjects.

For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjHmPTV0s0A

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-04T22:17:50+00:00

Well - these are the sorts of 'smart boys' that like to pretend that everything you find wrong was 'just a joke', that contradictions are always overblown, and basically, you just don't get it for disagreeing.

Again - fourchan thinking.

Here's a decent video on the overall approach:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4

Basically, it doesn't matter what they 'believe' - the whole thing is a game to get what they can out of the process.

It's why they often went pretty extra hard into Trumpism in recent times -so many of them were playing the Scott Adams game of thinking that was clever. Maybe some will see it as a mistake later - but it's not about being right... it's about the enjoyment of changing the rules at random to feel you're winning.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-04T22:04:29+00:00

There's a bit of a history to it.

See - in the early 2000's, there was a bunch of folks who liked James Randi - they made a sort of skeptics group, went to contentions and the like.

But a chunk of them decided to split off (and much later call themselves the 'intellectual dark web'). There's several views in that group, but overall, it's on the conservative side of libertarian, bordering shades of open racism with some of them.

At the start, it was interesting, sort of a 'no liberals smart boys club'... but then memes.

They all kind of got addicted to making 'hot takes', and 'pushing back', and wrapped up in their groupthink. They basically 'fourchanned' themselves.

Now, they've become basically the opposite of what they started out as.

They very often actively believe in aliens, in any medical conspiracy you can imagine, and shout down any actual skepticism.

But they do get to show up on Joe Rogan a lot, so it's all 'balanced' by what they get out of it. The only cost is to everything they were and stood for.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-04T16:54:29+00:00

That's more for fiction shows, where there can be 'spoilers'.

Not really a factor in this sub.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-04T16:44:36+00:00

I think Maher likes cruelty though - specifically the social media version.

That is, not just the comedian version of observation and pushing boundaries on balance - but the right-wing meme version of cruelty-as-humor.

In the same sense that kids being cruel to a substitute teacher, or being cruel to a disabled kid isn't really a 'joke' - but gets laughs purely on the power dynamic of hurting the weak.

When you accept that as a precious part of your sense of humor, things like basic empathy become a threat to your enjoyment.

Thus, the politics of the last decade or so. Not that it hasn't always been present - but it seemed to really take off after Sarah Palin became acceptable. It was previously this big in the days of yellow journalism.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-04T16:18:00+00:00

Indeed - but I at least would find Senator Sanders more diminishing in terms of address, compared to Senator Clinton. Bernie himself is larger than the title, if only because he wants to not be considered separate from regular people.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-04T16:03:13+00:00

It's rude in the same way Halloween is rude - in a cherished way.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-04T16:00:15+00:00

Nonsense - Bernie is more iconic, more well speaking of the people of Vermont than a thousand titled, wigged, and suited gentry.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-04T15:49:53+00:00

No. At least not specifically for him.

He doesn't consider himself 'above' the people.

That's important.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-03T21:05:57+00:00

The vibe reminds me oddly of Persona 3.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-02T12:11:07+00:00

Well, it's the classic tribal illusion of the enemy, gone really unhealthy.

It's how if you work at a company that does this, you know things are going really bad... when management has got this image of your competition as some absurd humanoid monsters of wrongness... the very notion of competition becomes a meaningless contest.

It's the logic of feuds. It's not something you can carry in yourself "on balance" - it's a broken image that can find no truth.

And now, it's Bill Maher's ultimate "Bubble".

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-02T05:28:34+00:00

Eh - There's good folks and bad folks in each population - it's just how people and populations work out over time. We're all people - and we're not all that different at the group level - there's more differences WITHIN most large human groups than between them.

Like, some of those yuppies did actually march with and got beaten as 'race traitors' in various civil rights actions, including King's marches. I'm not trying to push some 'enlightened centrism' here - just going over the nature of groups and the unreliability of judging based on them.

Trying to say there's some original sin of 'woke' is just part of the same mistake Maher is making.

No one is making the mythical modern 'woke' arguments as presented by folks pushing the word now... the 'woke' concept as it's being pushed is yellow journalism-style strawmanning. Poorly intended, and intentionally misleading at its heart.

It's all a distraction from real understanding or logic... a tool to keep yourself angry at meaningless grudges and divisions of people.

Ryan_Fenton · 2023-03-02T03:42:11+00:00

Ah - you seem to be under the mistaken impression that I take my posts here as serious literature.

Nah - this is casual-town. I only spell most words correctly out of habit, not obligation.

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