like for every centrist pundit that says, "oh, you learn to live with this in your replies": what do you think this does to your soul
Replies
Again, smart people think that because they are smart they are immune to well understood realities of human psychology. So they think that seeing this stuff all the time won’t slowly dig into their subconscious
sep 2, 2025, 3:49 pm • 52 7 • view
its good to see opposing views like 'chocolate is the best flavor' not like: 'nazis were good actually'
sep 2, 2025, 6:08 pm • 1 0 • view
Also, "evil" is not an emotion!
sep 2, 2025, 4:53 pm • 1 0 • view
First they acclimatize, then they absorb.
sep 2, 2025, 6:16 pm • 0 0 • view
The real answer is that a lot of white people are simply not bothered by anti-black racism
sep 2, 2025, 5:04 pm • 2 0 • view
Sorry swing voters from Wisconsin clearly stated that they don't care about my soul
sep 2, 2025, 5:56 pm • 0 0 • view
let alone the regular monitoring you have to do for death threats and other abuse if you have an even minimally-popular account. There are literal economic costs in addition to the emotional ones.
sep 2, 2025, 4:52 pm • 5 0 • view
You become more and more (verbally) violent, yes
sep 3, 2025, 1:06 am • 0 0 • view
And then you get kicked off Twitter after the 2024 elections for issuing death threats to fascists and tankies alike for days on end, because fuck them, this world would be a lot better without them
sep 3, 2025, 1:08 am • 0 0 • view
The entirety of western soicety is infused with this mode of viewing the world through a lens that exists only now and forever but without any connection to history, completely devoid of context. Memes work
sep 2, 2025, 6:07 pm • 0 0 • view
I know people who still commit themselves to normative egalitarianism and just have been stewing in Twitter eugenics stats for so long that they consider it uncontroversial. It's not good for you.
sep 2, 2025, 4:55 pm • 23 1 • view
Like even if you believe that everyone's an individual and should be helped to succeed it's probably bad for your mind to just expect social inequality as a natural state of the world.
sep 2, 2025, 4:58 pm • 12 1 • view
At the very least, it opens you up to the softer-sounding Steven Pinker version of this stuff before sliding down the Charles Murray path all the way to the really hard stuff.
sep 2, 2025, 5:00 pm • 7 0 • view
"What soul?" they ask as they look up a poll telling them how they should feel about empathy.
sep 2, 2025, 3:39 pm • 8 0 • view
They do not aspire to be better people. That is it. There's no desire to make oneself more than the sum of their parts. They're concerned with what is "popular" in the moment. It's a "view from nowhere" that rapidly turns into vapid foolishness.
sep 2, 2025, 3:54 pm • 27 4 • view
They have no dreams of the world being better, they simply see the world as a Lego collection with the temerity to want a say in how they reassemble it *this* time
sep 2, 2025, 4:22 pm • 7 0 • view
tbh being on 4chan from 2007-2016ish didn't turn me right-wing but it did make me more depressed and self-loathing so probably the spiritual damage happens *somehow* it's just not always obvious what form it takes.
sep 2, 2025, 4:55 pm • 3 0 • view
genuinely I knew I had to get off twt when I started genuinely considering "maybe being an out and out nazi is actually is normal and I'm the weird one" those thoughts went away in like a week lol
sep 2, 2025, 5:01 pm • 3 1 • view
I mean, relatedly: bsky.app/profile/shay...
sep 2, 2025, 3:38 pm • 12 0 • view
They somehow learn to cope but Blueskyism is something they must protect their mind palace from at all costs.
sep 2, 2025, 4:45 pm • 0 0 • view
I mean if the joke before was that every journo thought Twitter was real life, and the concerns of Twitter users an echo of the everyman, then at this point those still there assume America is careening towards nativism and authoritarianism, when really that's just what their peers are up to.
sep 2, 2025, 4:07 pm • 16 2 • view
"I hear and see this all the time and just don't let it influence my views" is simply not how human brains work.
sep 2, 2025, 3:57 pm • 111 20 • view
You can tell the ones who stay on Twitter because they'll brag about 'trolling' the right and will give verbal support for the worst left-wing violence in the same way a teenager brags about stealing from the supermarket.
sep 2, 2025, 4:14 pm • 6 0 • view
i would rather be on a centrist or leftist echo chamber then see a world where people justify this
sep 2, 2025, 3:48 pm • 159 0 • view
Tbh there’s an aspect to this where people pretty consistently say that they find the far right less annoying that the center left to far left. As to why is actually a great question the answer to which I’m kinda afraid of
sep 2, 2025, 3:54 pm • 87 10 • view
My best guess is the center left and far left’s arguments are “this is kinda shitty” and they usually have some truth to it. The far right’s complaints is stuff like “YOU WOKE IDIOT” or “DEI”. Essentially the left can call them out accurately and it hurts their ego that they’re refute it
sep 2, 2025, 3:59 pm • 18 1 • view
Oh, that's easy The far right says stuff like "Black people suck" or "LGBTQ people suck", etc. The left tends to say things like "You, Mr. Centrist pundit, *you suck*". Considering that your average pundit comes from a place of serious privilege (and is probably white) you can see where this goes
sep 2, 2025, 7:55 pm • 2 0 • view
Less moral hectoring, which usually only really bothers you deep down when you needed a little hectoring.
sep 2, 2025, 4:39 pm • 5 0 • view
the left asks the right questions. the right gives wrong answers. simple as that.
sep 2, 2025, 4:10 pm • 4 0 • view
A lot of people who don't consider themselves racist and who we wouldn't recognize as racist from day-to-day interactions, are racist. They think black people are less intelligent and more rowdy and can jump high. So when they see these posts on X, they agree but they think it's rude to say it.
sep 2, 2025, 4:26 pm • 12 4 • view
well, white people say that anyway which is basically the answer you're afraid of
sep 2, 2025, 3:56 pm • 56 0 • view
Is Richard Hanania white, the greatest thread in the history of stormfront, locked by a nazi after 12,239 pages of racist debate
sep 2, 2025, 3:59 pm • 50 2 • view
As a side note, it’s kinda crazy how Hanania was able to get his “forgiveness” arc when he never abandoned his belief that black people were intellectually inferior, just that we should have a racial caste system instead of just genociding them all
sep 2, 2025, 4:02 pm • 43 1 • view
isn't it funny that all the people terrified of Blueskyism are cishet men? what a strange coincidence.
sep 2, 2025, 3:57 pm • 19 0 • view
It's always funny to see these sorts complaining. Yeah, I get along fine on Bluesky. They're pretty chill if you're not a dick. "But they were mean to me." Skill issue? Performative dudes on Instagram Reels know how to avoid this. Git gud.
sep 2, 2025, 4:10 pm • 15 0 • view
Ngl there is legitimately a lot of Tumblr 2014 going on here, people were playing dumb about what “blueskyism” is, you know exactly what they’re talking about, it’s just I find that all a lot less concerning than people saying USAID is bad because it’s dysgenic.
sep 2, 2025, 4:19 pm • 15 0 • view
I mean. I do. I just don't think it's localized to BlueSky or an outgrowth of things here. Particularly in the case of the centrists who love picking fights. Pick fights, and people *will* fight back. It's miserable to be "in the barrel" here. But I don't think it's special. Twitter was similar.
sep 2, 2025, 4:24 pm • 7 0 • view
Like, I've seen Ellie and Will and a few others suffer immensely for just sticking to their guns. And that *is* an issue. But I remember that shit on Twitter. I suppose the biggest departure is a lot of posters here have adopted the Theophite Doctrine. Which *is* aggressive.
sep 2, 2025, 4:27 pm • 6 0 • view
i actually don't know what they're talking about, because they are exclusively men who come here to post things they know will make people mad, they post them in a way that often is quite literally "I know this will make you mad but I'm right," and then they cry about it
sep 2, 2025, 4:21 pm • 8 0 • view
I mean what they mean is hall monitor leftism lol — getting lectured for not being adequately woke in all the most symbolic ways lol.
sep 2, 2025, 4:25 pm • 4 0 • view
Right, but the issue is that a lot of the people complaining about getting lectured just are not woke, period. So their complaints ring hollow, and continue their trend of being bad faith. I'll accept this argument from Will Stancil. Not from MattY.
sep 2, 2025, 4:29 pm • 5 0 • view
It's mostly on Gaza. Noah Smith was onto something when he said it had become the MAGA of the Left.
sep 2, 2025, 4:41 pm • 2 0 • view
Eh, we still sparred over that. Though few were supportive of the efforts of the Israeli government. Mostly because they were and are flagrantly inhumane.
sep 2, 2025, 4:42 pm • 0 0 • view
maybe some other people have legitimate grievances about how they're treated, with these guys we need to basically steelman their takes to pretend they don't deserve every second of it
sep 2, 2025, 4:22 pm • 4 0 • view
amending this for a single exception: Will Stancil can reasonably complain about this phenomenon and no one can say he's wrong lol. but i won't extend it to any of the twitter centrists
sep 2, 2025, 4:26 pm • 5 0 • view
Lakshaya Jain (sp?) probably also has a point, he’s can be annoying but I don’t think he’s a MattY/Josh Barro type, he does seem to argue in good faith. Which is my entire issue with MattY, honestly, that he doesn’t.
sep 2, 2025, 4:51 pm • 0 0 • view
Glenn Greenwald is gay, but I think that's the exception that proves the rule.
sep 2, 2025, 6:08 pm • 3 0 • view
yeah also I'm mostly talking about the so-called centrists that often claim to be part of the democratic party, like Matty or Lakshya. Glenn is an irredeemable and literal fascist who hasn't even bothered to pretend to be on our side for most of a decade
sep 2, 2025, 6:10 pm • 2 0 • view
Any time I check back over there it's always the same people having the same fights in the replies, somehow not realizing that the monetized rage bait means you're just being exposed to the worst of humanity 24/7. Just drinking straight from the firehose of awful.
sep 3, 2025, 4:07 am • 0 0 • view
I'm starting to think journalists are the ideological equivalent of rich people. It doesn't matter how much privilege and benefits they get, they want to be surrounded by people they see as less than them.
sep 2, 2025, 5:36 pm • 0 0 • view
It’s not great!
sep 2, 2025, 4:59 pm • 6 0 • view
Also, it probably goes away when you control for wealth
sep 2, 2025, 4:10 pm • 0 0 • view
Oh, well, you see, they don't have souls?
sep 2, 2025, 3:37 pm • 3 0 • view
being on the NYT editorial board is the same thing in miniature
sep 2, 2025, 4:59 pm • 0 0 • view
"Plantation scientist" Jesus Christ
sep 2, 2025, 4:35 pm • 1 0 • view
I forgot where or how I heard it, but I remember it being something like "whatever you spend all of your time reading will eventually become what you believe" even if it's just "for fun" or like "getting a different view" because you keep reading it, and it keeps planting itself in your brain.
sep 2, 2025, 4:04 pm • 6 0 • view
Horseshoe theory, but for Havel’s indictment of the contaminated moral environment.
sep 2, 2025, 5:28 pm • 0 0 • view
If we're going to have a definition for "blueskyism" then we can define Xism bc it's not that hard. It's just bigotry, trolling, and sex bots.
sep 2, 2025, 5:31 pm • 0 0 • view
And why is it better to learn to live with this than to learn to live with people to your left annoying you?
sep 2, 2025, 4:54 pm • 3 0 • view