Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youāll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this.)
Paul Graham is on his bullshit again.
The opening statement is also quite silly already (and makes me belief in a companion to the dead internet theory, the dementia internet theory, as I was sure we have had conversations like this as āthe internetā already, Zuck turning manospherian all of a sudden also makes me thing this (same with the fight over H-1B on the US right, they had that in 2018 already, Trump likes H-1B)).
We had the whole āthey act like they are morally superiorā discussion already a lot, and that was about vegans. Only one problem, they are morally superior on almost all ethical/moral/ideological systems you can think of. Sure hedonists, stoics (who are not allowed to complain), sadists, accelerationist extinctionists, ironic nihilistic status quo pushing postmodernists, all disagree they are superior morally but who cares about the opinion of those people. Sure some of them might be annoying to people, but annoying people can be morally superior.
His statements about how politically correctness comes from the 80ās is also wrong (it predates that, and has quite a complex history of being used by various different groups for different meanings), but at that moment I knew I was going to be wasting my time reading this as I would disagree with every paragraph. (as I have seen these types of articles before, they were popular a decade ago or so).
E2: Whoops that edit should have been on a different post. E3: bonus content: Two articles sneering at Paul, Paul Graham and the Cult of the Founder and Paul Graham, proto-techbro..
Paul I am begging you to actually write out a fucking timeline. Apparently woke started in the 80s in universities when the (white) civil rights protestors of the 70s got tenure in the 60s, as an inevitable and predictable extension of political correctness in the 90s. From the title youāre obviously going to indulge the conservative fantasy that āwokenessā is a coherent thing rather than a political tool to dismiss calls for action to actually address blatant injustice. But if youāre going to bullshit me, at least do it competently and have an internally consistent narrative that allows for the natural passage of time.
If you canāt get through two short paragraphs without equating Stalinism and āsocial justiceā, you may be a cockwomble.
Man wrote nearly 5k words of pure unfiltered cap:
Iām not sure how someone can read all this without capping themselves. We could sneer this all fucking day.
Iām not reading that shit but for the masochists out there who like to read HN licking VC boots, here ya go
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42682305
Iāve been a big fan of HN comments lately
Ah, thanks Paul for validating my disdain for Orwell at least.
Considering popes, priests in general, politicians etc are usually male (historically) i have a feeling these quotes also exclude some groups from being moral enforcers.
It also neatly ignores social pressures, which provides good reasons for women being into certain types of āmoral enforcementā. Either because āit is their duty to protect the kidsā or the revolutionary idea that people are all people and should have equal rites, bodily autonomy, a political voice etc.
But nope: āme and the boys agree, this wokeness stuff is for girlsā.
This all makes me wonder, we know he has proofreaders who help him. Did he either get rid of all the people who disagree with him, or did they give up, as some people dont want understand the other side they just want to argue their forever cause they believe they are correct (so disagreement is a massive waste of time).
E:
Ah. Also 1 name which jumps out to me as prob a woman. Let me google her. Ah right. His wife, and co-founder.
George was writing his stories in the 40s, so at least has āproduct of his timeā as an excuse.
Paulās just a flat out piece of shit to be writing this nearly 100 years later.
Fair, though in Orwellās case the misogyny is not accidental either, but an essential aspect of the mostly conservative ideology he adopted for 1984 (contempt for the working class, linguistic purism, just really being a little too enamoured with his perfect crystal of unending oppression etc).
That must have been really subtle, all I remember is a concern specifically about how a sufficiently totalitarian regime may try to weaponize language as a further means of subjugation, not that language evolving is bad in principle.
I think the premise of total control through language is in itself silly, though that can be excused by the book being satire. But Orwell, for good or ill, was undeniably a linguistic purist, as one can gather from a close reading of āPolitics and the English Languageā.
Huh.
I guess it stands to reason that the guy who made such a fuss about abusing language as a means to nefarious ends would himself have ideas about how it could be abused ethically.
Iāve never heard of anyone describing 1984 that way, could you elaborate on your points or link to some analysis?
I read it in high school. Iirc, the main character in 1984 deeply hates a woman he works with and his violent fantasies about her are tied up in his desire to rebel against the regime. He later overcomes his desire to commit violence against her by having sex with her. His contempt for her fairly leapt off the page when I read it. Iām sure itās arguable what Orwell meant or intended.
In another scene, the middle-class protagonists watch a working-class woman hanging out washing and tell themselves that if there was any hope for freedom, it lay in āthe prolesā (members of the mass underclass, like that woman). But the way they look at her and talk about her is dehumanizing.
Itās probably easier to just read 1984 yourself and make up your own mind. itās not a very long book.
Isnāt Julia a member of some sort of anti-sex league, meaning thereās a lot of bad faith involved in their relationship from the get go?
Also with respect to the attitudes on women and proles, although I donāt think itās entirely written in the characterās point of view it feels like thereās a lot of unreliable narration going on, or at least you get a lot of stuff from the perspective of a person who grew up in one of the most absurdly totalitarian regimes in literature. Which is to say, it didnāt feel prescriptive most of the time to me.
See also: āprolesā, as in the contempt is baked in to the language, which we know the regime is actively trying to hold in a tight leash.
I donāt think itās a coincidence that the only viewpoint you get is that of a middle class bureaucrat. Itās the assumed audience, and itās where Orwell would place himself as well. The narrative loses a lot of impact if you align yourself with the proles. Winston could live a real life if he really wanted to. I donāt think this point is intended by the novel.
Thatās a problem in itself, donāt you think? Itās all very āFeminists hate sex and they want to erase the differences between the gendersā. Julia gets a taste of freedom and her right place in the world by putting on makeup and girly clothes and having a lot of sex.
Also sheās a flighty moron.
Itās been to long for me to be able to tell if that applies to the general context of Orwellās views (which apparently Iām not sufficiently aware of) or if itās also a significant issue with 1984. In principle having the woman character employ cargo cult femininity in a desperate attempt at self expression shouldnāt be unsalvageabl. Being the only woman with a speaking part and also a ditz less so.
Winston being a self-aggrandizing tit who needs things explained to him a lot so the author can soapbox was the sum of my reaction to the character, that he was also supposed to be relatable beyond the basics of his clash with authoritarianship certainly puts a different spin on things.
I have not read it in ages, but did hear somebody has written something (not sure if book or play or etc) of the book from Julias perspective.
Julia, by Sandra Newman
To be clear, I mean to say that in society where itās life or death to be highly guarded and suspicious of everyone any romantic relationship is necessarily poisoned.
Plus I think thereās a whole thing in the book about things being so restricted that fucking for fun is in itself an act of rebellion and thus another thing your partner has over you if they happen to need to give something up to the authorities.