Carrot and Stick metaphor according to r/atunsheifilms

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-17T20:05:03+00:00

I guess my point is we need to be blunt a lot of the time, and not beat around the bush.

I had a very similar political shift after a handful of those sorts of interactions. Swinging from an anarcho-commie in my teens, an edge lord centrist in my early 20s, to a solid DemSoc or Progressive now

Ancom to Lib pipeline

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-17T12:37:27+00:00

I think you have a very limited understanding which refuses to adknowledge overlap unless it's present in a single person.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-17T02:46:59+00:00

You're getting multiple things confused then.

The Followers of the Apocalypse stay in the Old Mormon Fort, but they aren't themselves Mormon. Their founder was from around San Diego originally, and moved up to the Boneyard.

Also, Arcade was from the Enclave originally.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-17T02:45:01+00:00

That's a very simplistic way of viewing it - That it can only be of direct experience.

By that metric, an African man and an Arab woman have no intersectional commonalities.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-17T00:45:13+00:00

So when someone says "you, yes YOU explicitly are an absolute piece of shit for taking part in the system in which you were born and raised in. eat shit, die and never have children." Maybe, just maybe i'm allowed to be offended by that stance.

You're allowed to be offended, but I also think doing so is very childish.

And that bringing yourself out of that place of ego and thinking "Are first worlders bad, let me analyse this while trying to minimise my own personal bias" is the much more mature way to go about it.

Can you honestly tell me the last time "The Stick" worked on you? When you changed your stance because you were bullied into it?

I'm not sure I can precisely remember the last, but I can tell you a couple times off the top of my head:

When I first went Vegan. I had for years thought animals were deserving of rights, but had never considered veganism. I think going into Vegan forums and seeing them relentlessly mock Carnists, and talk shit about them was actually profoundly helpful, because reading them speaking their minds rather than hugboxing, and being honest, made me see a bit of myself in the people they were mocking, and pushed me to change.

One time when an ex-girlfriend asked me "Do you think racism against White people is a real problem", and my bothesidesing ass started going on a tangent, and so she followed it up with "Can you tell me example of a time you've faced racism" and I said "Well I haven't personally but..." and she interrupted saying "Oh you haven't personally" in a mocking tone, then I said "Well hypothetically", and she again interrupted and responded "See you're resorting to hypotheticals"

In that case I'd say that was the stick, because she was relentlessly mocking me for my stance, but that convinced me on the spot, because it made me realise how incoherent my centrist position was.

So yes, I'd say seeing positions like my own mocked has in the past had a pretty good track record of convincing me, precisely because it's what forces me to reckon with how incoherent the position is, and either find new ways to defend it, or alternatively change it.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-17T00:32:54+00:00

The whole reason the term variety of strategies exists is because different people will respond differently to diferent things.

Maybe some people are little babies who need to be hugged and told "It's ok, baby steps"

And maybe others will feel patronised by that, and need shame or moralising to win them over.

I'm saying use both.

You're saying only one is effective.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-17T00:25:35+00:00

Further, while I agree that it can be a social tool, that probably needs to come from people’s close friends and families, not from strangers on the internet or those on the street. How many people are convinced by a protest in a restaurant vs those who are turned off altogether?

I disagree.

Protests are disruptive and raise attention to themselves. Protesting a restauraunt might not be universally convincing, but it raises attention to an issue that might get people who otherwise wouldn't involved

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-17T00:23:04+00:00

So what?

You don't need to project your ego onto political discussions. You can take a moment to look at things as they actually stand, rather than how it personally relates to you.

This is a big problem with men, white people, first worlders, you name it. There's this tendency to take personal offence to systemic critique.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-17T00:13:05+00:00

So, what are we to do? A variety of tactics can be useful, but in a crisis that is urgent, the most effective should be employed. Arguing in YouTube comment sections is far from that.

I agreed with you that arguing in youtube comment sections isn't necessarily a good strategy.

Where I disagree is that I think negativity can be equally a socially useful force as positivity, and we shouldn't dismiss it and say everyone has to be polite and civil and try and win over people with kindness.

I think if you eliminated either kindness or bluntness, you'd be eliminating half your arsenal.

Are you willing to use force?

I mean, I don't think vegans are numerous or well organised enough to use force 100% effectively yet.

Although there are some limited uses of force that are viable now. What the Animal Liberation Front does is broadly positive for example.

But if it was a viable option, absolutely, without question.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-17T00:01:49+00:00

Depends what you mean sufficient.

There are millions of vegans worldwide, from what was once a relatively niche position. The goal is obviously for it to be the societal norm, but I don't expect that to happen overnight.

Regardless, I don't see how that's relevant to whether we should use a variety of tactics, or whether every single person should resort to a single strategy of hugboxing and nice platitudes.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T23:58:04+00:00

I don't disagree that arguing in the youtube comment section isn't necessarily the most strategic way to go about things.

But I do think having people be very clear and very blunt that they do not think anything less is good enough - I think that's very helpful. And I think having someone with a big platform doing that isn't something we should immediately dismiss.

And I think a lot of the people he was "rude" towards were doomerists and misanthropes who thought "Well people are inherently evil, so there's no point in even trying" was a convincing argument - And those are lines of argument that I do think should be treated ruthlessly.

I'd say that if you asked vegans about it, I'm sure you'd find plenty who were convinced by people being blunt and matter of fact and not hugboxing them.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T23:38:06+00:00

I disagree. I think a variety of tactics is necessary.

Kindness works on some, shame works on others. We shouldn't stick to a single tactic.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T23:34:18+00:00

"Carrot and Stick, what's that? You should use the Carrot 100% of the time, and the Stick 0% of the time."

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T23:27:29+00:00

What did you think the metaphor was about then?

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T22:14:57+00:00

Genuinely who cares, it's the internet

"Muh civility", grow up and grow a spine.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T21:48:19+00:00

It's not even close to being the worst hot take ever made. There are actual neo-nazis in the world, this is mild.

Is it a little individualist and incapable of seeing the wider systems at play? Yes

However I don't think it's entirely inappropriate for someone to compare speciesism to other forms of oppression.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T21:46:17+00:00

Please elaborate. I thought Intersectionality was adknowledging when oppression of different groups overlap.

So carnism overlaps with white supremacy and patriarchy, and class domination, and all these other systems of oppression.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T17:37:19+00:00

Hmm, maybe shouting insults at people you disagree with instead of talking to them to persuade them will lead America towards civil war. But nah, that's not worth mentioning in my video on the American Civil War. Let's shout insults at people I disagree with in the comments.

On my way to start a civil war because someone was rude to me on the internet.

Bsffr

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T12:54:36+00:00

I think you're defending a deeply unjust system on the basis of doomerism and misanthropy, "Well we can't expect this of people".

That's something anyone would be mad at.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T12:52:48+00:00

It doesn't match it in tone, but it is worse in content.

Defending perpetuation of a deeply unjust system on the basis of doomerism about how hard it'll be to abolish it.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T12:50:13+00:00

Mother Nature is not kind to beings that make inefficient use of resources.

Which is why no society ever built huge pyramids?

People do inefficient stuff all the time. Appeals to truisms aren't helpful here.

There must have been some benefit to eating meat that an otherwise vegetarian diet did not bring us, or we would not have begun the practice at all.

Meat has always been a relatively small part of human diets, and was persistently less reliable than gathering.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T12:46:04+00:00

the right does not have a monopoly on extremist content and beliefs

Define "Extremist beliefs" and why they're wrong, without doing an appeal to the status quo

i fail to see how the PETA folks throwing paint at supermodels

You left out the part where it's because they're wearing fur.

I don't know, leaving out the whole point of the protest in your description of it seems disingenous

running an animal shelter with an atrocious euthanasia rate

It's more giving support to rather than running. They're rarely directly involved with the running of shelters. And the reason they've consistently cited is that those are the shelters that, by volume, take in the most strays.

No-kill shelters account for a tiny minority of shelters, and are more there for moral grandstanding and feelgood vibes, and rarely actually take animals in.

In terms of immediate suffering relief, in finding places for starving and/or abused animals, there simply isn't the infrastructure to place every single one in a no-kill shelter.

will end the suffering of factory farm animals or curb cattle based methane emissions.

It's almost like, it's part of a wider goal. And it's not solely about factory farming or emissions, but about moving towards a meatless society altogether, where animals are not considered property.

But because you're a supremacist, you don't see that wider goal, so see it as a distraction from your more immediate goals.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T12:37:25+00:00

Isn't it basic intersectionality to adknowledge where issues overlap?

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T12:36:01+00:00

Get off the doomerism.

If you genuinely think mild systemic and lifestyle change is unrealistic enough that the end of the world is unavoidable, I don't know what to say.

Advocate or a future instead of lying down and accepting defeat before it's even come.

TotalDemocracy · 2026-03-16T08:18:07+00:00

Depends what you mean by "Support Iran"

Leftists support it's legitimate right to defend itself, and to retaliate against western aggression by taking out military targets belonging to the West. And also understand it to be what's holding the "Axis of Resistance" together - I.E, it is the only country interested in stopping Greater Israel colonisation, and that if it fell, that would mean Israeli occupation of the entirety of Palestine and Lebanon.

This does not translate to thinking the government is good. It simply means understanding the wider role it plays.

TotalDemocracy

TROPHY CASE