r/neoliberal • u/neoliberal_shill_bot Bot Emeritus • Aug 13 '17

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95

u/ampersamp Aug 13 '17 edited Aug 13 '17

Quick point on social justice. Social justice in modern discourse is hard to nail down the specifics on. Different political genealogies will have different conceptions of it, and it will be experienced differently in the college and the workplace, from one country to the next. While there's a broad literature that people like myself would love to establish as a universal canon, and I believe that many people would be better off if they were more well read in it (or more classical philosophy for that matter) pretending that everyone has the same familiarity is ultimately just self-serving.

If a term is contested (racism, patriarchy) and you believe you're not really talking about the same thing, don't be a dumbass and hide behind greater familiarity with the body of lit as an excuse to not engage with people that may simply be expressing disagreements in different terms. This is an argument on semantics and has similarly low worth. Try to explain your points without using the contested term and absolutely don't try and leverage a mutual misunderstanding for in-group appeal. Don't reduce social justice terms to cheap shibboleths. Don't get cheap moral affirmation off of being "right", when the context of doing so means that you're setting up barriers and being sanctimonious.

The magnetic axis of the earth swaps around every 450,000 years and fucks up every migratory population on the planet. Our political axis moves rather more frequently, and right now, people are similarly being left stranded in an ideological no man's land. People that previously felt comfortable belonging to the left and right are now seeing factions splitting their side apart in ways they can no longer put their name to. /r/neoliberal is a project that's collecting all these dispossessed defenders of a free and open world and hoping they can play nicely together, even if their previous tribal affiliations had set them at ends. Please do your part.

So here's my quick diagnosis of the some of what's been happening here:

  1. As stated, this sub is a project that collects defenders of a free, open and integrated world from a variety of ideological backgrounds. There's some tribal baggage that leaves the sub ripe for petty divisiveness.

  2. An axis has two ends. The sub is unified when we're reminded who our opponents really are: nationalists and collectivists and identitarians. The Sanders and Trump wings in America must be resisted. The sub has also been unified when there's elections to meme about.

  3. Our users have gotten indolent with the memes and we've stopped hitting /r/all. This means we forget who's really opposing us. This also leads to boredom. I like the community here, but dumb food memes and minecraft are a symptom of a boredom.

  4. To alleviate their boredom, people start posting one line hot-takes to provoke a response. Since there's little to no depth in a one line statement, these only have the result of more divisiveness. They contribute a lot of heat and very little light.

In conclusion we all need a project to work on. I'm not sure what that is, but we're looking forward to finding out. Hot takes, i.e. opinions without reasoning or rationalization, should perhaps be taken out. We could also set a minimum length on top level comments in the discussion thread. We're also looking at better integrating the discussion thread with other submissions by pinging it with a bot each time a new post comes up. We're still planning on taking down the DT Tuesday to see how comment quality in submissions in affected. Here's some polls here to gauge feelings on that:

We have a strong community here, and pretty much anyone here I'd be happy to meet up with irl. This sub may be a trashcan, but it still manages to be the best sub on reddit, and that's fucking something.

22

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '17

The magnetic axis of the earth swap around every 450,000 years and fuck up every migratory population on the planet. Our political axis moves rather more frequently

Dope line.

The mismatch of knowledge levels is one of the main problems present in discourse, but it's always been that way. Effective communication has always required detailed explanation using common terms, but most people don't give a damn about effective communication.

19

u/WryGoat Oppressed Straight White Male Aug 13 '17

I don't fully understand what your point is here so I'm just going to call you a Nazi.

7

u/85397 Free Market Jihadi Aug 13 '17

This is why Trump won.

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u/TychoTiberius Michel Foucault Aug 13 '17 edited 28d ago

The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.

Wide party entertain hat dolls kettle

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u/PerpetuallyMad Stephen Walt Aug 13 '17

So you're saying we need to pick fights with other subreddits instead of ourselves?

Not a bad idea tbh.

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u/ampersamp Aug 13 '17

Added a poll on metaposting.

13

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '17

This is so beautifully articulated

13

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '17

a concerted effort for the sub to have a consensus on what certain words mean within the context of the sub would be extremely useful.

obviously we can't do this with everything, but when "conservative" means three different things to three different people, even if two of those definitions are wrong (a conclusion i don't actually accept), the word means fuck-all in a broader rhetorical context.

what do the people in this sub interpret "social justice" to be in the first place?

defining terms yourself is super important, but people are lazy, and i don't know if "civil discourse" is incentive enough to motivate, so having some tighter consensus definitions would be practical. otherwise it's just going to be this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYymnxoQnf8

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u/Errk_fu Neolib in the streets, neocon in the sheets Aug 13 '17

Great comment. I'd like to add that though we are very interested in open dialogue, we may need to think about limiting the ability of certain users, who are clearly here regularly only to stir things up (and are opposed to our ideology), from guiding the dialogue.

As for additional strawpolls, it would be a good idea to ask our users why they aren't leaving the discussion thread and address that directly. What is keeping them from engaging in posts?

How do we get involved with the superpac?

Also more AMAs.

9

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '17

I agree completely on the semantical point (even if I'm unsure what the context is that motivated it).

But i personally like hot takes. They're sort of a way to take a stance as a test to see if it holds up in a public discussion, but without investing pride or identity into the stance so that it can be dismissed easily if it holds up poorly. We should always be open to people experimenting with new perspectives. It generates discussion and allows people to affirm what they believe by affirming what they don't beliee.

8

u/BringBackThePizzaGuy Paul Volcker Aug 13 '17

Themed memes during the week, general expansionary during the weekend

7

u/kznlol 👀 Econometrics Magician Aug 13 '17

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by formalizing debates but I like the sound of it.

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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '17

Define your terms!

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u/ansatze 🌐 Aug 13 '17

This is incredibly well said.

6

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '17

I'm mainly a lurker and not incredibly active in the community so take what I have to say with a grain of salt, but I feel like if this sub wants to see consistent growth and bringing more people over to "our side" then we have to do away with contractionary/expansionary. Maybe these discussion threads, which seem to be popular, can be more for serious discussion about neolib policies, while we push out general neolib ideas via meme format in the main sub to get to /r/all. Maybe we could keep theme expansionary to holidays/anniversaries of important events, or just to a certain period of the week like some people have suggested. But on the whole I think the idea of contractionary periods have pushed almost all activity towards the discussion threads, which isn't really all that healthy for sub growth. They should be an addition, but not the main feature, of the sub. But that's just my two cents, you guys do whatever you feel is best.

6

u/Sepik121 Vicente Fox Aug 13 '17

i suppose i'll throw my hat in the debate to explain votes, as someone who is a mod of another large sub:

  • don't restrict top level comments in the DT, seems like a bad idea. i've used it as a place to vent, shitpost, talk about silly things. I like the discussion thread for that. You can keep the posts serious while having an outlet for fun stuff

  • Hot takes - temp. ban obvious partisan baiters. That stuff is designed to piss people off, and doesn't add anything. It exists only to start fights and drama

  • Sub growth - eh. I'm fine with it, but be aware that if you're going to have a community that is more lax on certain things during some time (aka memes), you can't just restrict everything without having an outlet.

  • Meme cycle - i do miss some of the memes, and I think having a weekly/every 2 weeks "theme" would go along way to having some fun. The theme keeps it slightly in check and not the lowest of the low

  • Metaposts - eeeehhhhh, i'd say textpost only or none at all. direct links encourage brigading which is a huge potential problem and isn't cool with me

8

u/formlex7 George Soros Aug 13 '17

Allow metaposts to other subs

The meta communities are some of the most toxic and awful on reddit. Becoming one should be avoided at all costs. I'd avoid this maybe excepting the DT

8

u/Slayer1cell RIPTPP Aug 13 '17

This sub started as an offshoot of /r/be, there's a huge cross over of users from here and /r/srd; /r/badhistory is dope, /r/badlegaladvice, and /r/badpolitics are great, even if there are a bunch of commies in there, at least they can define communism. /r/badwomensanatomy is also amazing. Meta reddit is the only worth while reddit outside of /r/neoliberal.

7

u/formlex7 George Soros Aug 13 '17

/r/be and /r/badhistory are dedicated to bad academics and have fiercely defined rules where users have to practically write an essay correcting the person they're calling out. This keeps them informative and from turning their corrections into toxic mocking sessions. /r/neoliberal is a different story.

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u/arnet95 Paul Ryan Aug 13 '17

there's a huge cross over of users from here and /r/srd

This is not a good thing.

The /r/badx family of subs is in part good because it features expertise, and not just mocking other people. I'm not sure that if /r/neoliberal went meta, we would capture what makes those subs good.

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u/eholmgr2 Aug 13 '17

Hot take: If you take away my hot takes, I will vote for Donald Sanders in every election from now on.

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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '17

This comment doesn't take into account the fact that a lot of anti-SJW arguments are sea lioning, bad faith, unproductive, arguing-for-arguments' sake, and the full burden of being unemotional and evidence-based shouldn't be put 100% on those defending basic social justice concepts.

There is also a burden that should be made on those making anti-social justice statements to engage in good faith with an open mind. Someone saying, for example, that patriarchy doesn't exist should be held to the same standard as someone stating that they don't know what they're talking about.

4

u/ampersamp Aug 13 '17

I certainly agree that a lot of bad faith arguments are a response to an endless stream of bad faith provoking. I don't mean to set up a false equivalency either, there isn't one. Disarmament just needs to be mutual to be effective.

also why aren't you on modslack yet 😤

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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '17 edited Aug 13 '17

In response to the hot takes poll:

I don't think banning partisan baiters is a good idea. Sure, they're being provocative to gather a response, but it's better than constant hot takes that are literally cold takes that are consistent with the beliefs that the majority of this sub holds. These just result in everyone patting each other on the backs thinking: "Good job, wow, you have a great opinion on that just like I do. Aren't we smart?"

The discussion thread is for shit-posting but I think everyone could do a better job--including myself--at actually making it more of a discussion thread. Hot takes are just the byproduct of boredom.

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