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The group chats that changed America

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Re: The group chats that changed America

#71

Post by e40 »

wat10000 wrote: post #47
dang wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the reply. My reaction, like most moderation comments, was shallow and limited in scope to what I know about forum dynamics. If you come out swinging with Nazi references, you're turning the knobs to 11 from the start. That's not compatible with the kind of discussion HN is going for. It's particularly troublesome when the thread is new, because threads are so sensitive to initial conditions. Also it's n…

“Concentration camp” is not necessarily a Nazi reference. The British invented them and the current US administration is reinventing them.

Agreed. We had them in the US in the 40's for Japanese Americans.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#72

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

dmonitor wrote: post #26
neilv wrote: post #7

[flagged]

You should interpret "not being able to posit your idea" as your idea losing so hard in the marketplace that people refuse to even consider it.

The right is winning elections and your side is not. Maybe consider stop being alienating liberals long enough to build a coalition that wins elections?

Eventually the Democrats are going to recognize that hardline "if you're not with us, you're against us" progressives are costing more votes than they're worth and show them the door.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#73

Post by e40 »

dang wrote: post #37
e40 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think I have ever disagreed with you dang, except in this case. The comment seemed thoughtful to me.

I appreciate the reply. My reaction, like most moderation comments, was shallow and limited in scope to what I know about forum dynamics. If you come out swinging with Nazi references, you're turning the knobs to 11 from the start. That's not compatible with the kind of discussion HN is going for. It's particularly troublesome when the thread is new, because threads are so sensitive to initial conditions. Also it's n…

Hey, we appreciate you, dang. More than you probably will ever know. That this community is still what it is... it blows me away, and it is in large part due to your vigilance. Thank you.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#74

Post by fyrabanks »

slibhb wrote: post #54
marcellus23 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, virtually everyone is anti-woke I am not a fan of a lot of the tenets associated with "wokeness", but this is just totally wrong.

None of the very left people I know would describe themselves as anti-woke...but they all make it very clear that they find wokeness (or whatever you want to call it) ridiculous.

This is fairly anecdotal.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#75

Post by bilbo0s »

slibhb wrote: post #49
ajross wrote: post #29

This tracks with my experience here, watching tech thought leaders. Obviously Andreesen went very hard right, as did Musk, but just in general the tech elite suddenly and surprisingly turned Trumpy over the last few years; Ackman being a really good case study. Note that pg himself took a fairly surpising reactionary turn in right about the 2020/2021 timeframe this article describes. A guy who'd always been a left-ce…

[flagged]

Your comment is actually an example of the echo chambers left and right wing people live and breathe in.

Out in, "what the F are you idiots doing with our economy"-land. There are exactly zero people who give a mosquito's dick about Woke DEI Trumpanzees or whatever.

These are issues important to elites. We tend to live in an echo chamber here on HN, so we think it's important to the guys working as hired hands during the day and the walmart stock shift at night.

Let me tell you, out here in flyover country, no one working at Taco bell cares about what you care about. Woke, anti-Woke, digital privacy, owning the libtards, stopping the right wing conspiracy, they don't care about any of it. There's a lot of pain out here, and they're way too busy to even worry about that useless crap.

We had an election in Wisconsin recently that the right wingers sailed in with millions on millions of dollars to try to win. Ended up losing handily. Why? Because they talked about a lot of things that, while they may have meaning outside of opioid country, don't mean a whole lot inside of it.

I just don't think elites get it. And that's dangerous.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#76

Post by slibhb »

fyrabanks wrote: post #74
slibhb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the very left people I know would describe themselves as anti-woke...but they all make it very clear that they find wokeness (or whatever you want to call it) ridiculous.

This is fairly anecdotal.

Ah you're right next time I'll do a study before posting my opinion on the internet.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#77

Post by vuggamie »

doom2 wrote: post #14

HN seems loathe to have any meaningful discussion about or reflection on how and why notable SV figures seemed primed to embrace the Trump/MAGA right (see, for example, quote in OP from Chris Rufo). I don't think it was simply being repelled by the left, as Andreesson has stated before, but an earnest rightward turn. Also, after articles like these, will calls for "viewpoint diversity" finally apply to conservatives…

Like all other forums, public and private, HN has an ideological filter. I'm as surprised as the next person that the HN ideological filter turned out not to be permissive enough to discuss the downfall of the free society that fostered its creation.

The oligarchs will not lose their freedom or power and they won't fight (or even inconvenience themselves) to preserve yours. Next time you're reading a blog or a biography of a tech billionaire, remember that they got their wealth from wage theft and they will keep their power by destroying yours.

The only law tech companies -- and the oligarchs that own and control them -- have to obey is allegiance to Trump. No other law will be enforced.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#78

Post by mindslight »

dang wrote: post #40
mindslight wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a straightforward reference that shouldn't be controversial to anyone looking to substantively discuss what is happening to our society. I know there are a lot of true believers and bots that want to shout down uncomfortable truths which makes for flamewar, but if we let that prevent good faith discussion then we might as well throw in the towel because that reality distortion field isn't going away. I thought t…

Looking it at again the next morning, I think I just misread your opening sentence. Sorry! (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43823347 ) On the other hand, other people would probably have misread it in the same way, so the point still applies, just not as much, and probably not enough to justify my mod response. This may be a little embarrassing, but I don't read people's comments very closely. There isn't ti…

Well, thank you for looking again! I'm curious how you interpreted it? I thought about swapping around the two parts of the sentence to put the familiar context first, but thought it landed better the way I said it.

On the original topic, because I will acknowledge that my comment did have several bits of dry tinder in it - the sin of my lead in sentence was that it was irreverant. It would have been inappropriate if it were responding to another comment. But I think there has to be more leeway in initial comments so that there is a chance of moving past the politicized pit of arguing about whether something even exists, and towards a less-widely-shared but larger understanding such that we might actually do something about it.

I think the fundamental problem here is that we as a country now have something that can be straightforwardly referred to as a concentration camp. There are probably other terms that are more technically accurate, but not so much as to forgo the cultural touchstone of what we're actually really close to.

I'd say you are in a similar position to maybe 2016ish or so (my own mental timeline is a bit hazy), when the tide had just started to turn against the prevailing "woke [0] brigade", and insightful but not-completely-defensively-worded comments would get jumped on by a bunch of reasonably-phrased but inflammatorily-framed comments, making it seem like the original comment was starting the flamewar.

[0] I personally hate this term like others hate "concentration camp", but it's awfully hard to argue against its current utility, regardless of how far from its original meaning it is.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#79

Post by amanaplanacanal »

slibhb wrote: post #54
marcellus23 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, virtually everyone is anti-woke I am not a fan of a lot of the tenets associated with "wokeness", but this is just totally wrong.

None of the very left people I know would describe themselves as anti-woke...but they all make it very clear that they find wokeness (or whatever you want to call it) ridiculous.

I wish when people use the term woke they would say what they actually mean. I suspect they don't because they don't want to be seen as racist, sexist, homophobic, or whatever. What do you mean by woke?

Re: The group chats that changed America

#80

Post by roguecoder »

slibhb wrote: post #54
marcellus23 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, virtually everyone is anti-woke I am not a fan of a lot of the tenets associated with "wokeness", but this is just totally wrong.

None of the very left people I know would describe themselves as anti-woke...but they all make it very clear that they find wokeness (or whatever you want to call it) ridiculous.

The "left" is huge and diverse (which people don't know because left-wing thinkers don't get the adoration and amplification right-wing thinkers do in this country.)

I am guessing you are referring to Marxist-Lennonists, or even Tankies. Folks who believe that only class oppression is worth fighting, and that the solution is centralized authoritarian regimes with left wing people in power. Those folks are generally anti-liberal, despite being on the left, and deny any history that would complicate their politics.

Alternatively, you might know neoliberals, who believe in the power of capitalism to address social problems and deny any history that might complicate their politics.

Or you might know Syndicalists, who believe unions are the path to worker's political power, and who deny any history that might complicate their politics.

Etc.

If you know one "very left" person, you know one very left person.

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