WhatsTheHoldup
@WhatsTheHoldup@lemmy.ml
- Comment on What's the #1 most butthurt response you've had on here? 1 day ago:
Mathcist
- Comment on Basically 2 days ago:
Oh I’m definitely in alignment! You clearly have a depth of knowledge, apply healthy nuance, and insofar as we might disagree we would be able to resolve it through analysis of evidence.
I was originally poking fun at the lack of nuance in your original description but you’ve more than corrected for it in your follow up comments and i dont think we’re really disagreeing more than that.
I was arguing Jefferson really should be remembered as a hypocrite, someone who behaved differently than he argued one should in the abstract. He dreamed of an imaginary world where all life’s problems smoothly go away without him having to sacrifice much and it all just sorting out on its own.
- Comment on Basically 2 days ago:
I say all this because when I was a teenager I pointed to him a lot as a bastion of progressiveness in America’s founding, and often used him to argue that the US was not founded as a Christian state because he clearly wasn’t Christian. The stuff I learned about him in textbooks and in school conveniently left out the much darker shit he did.
You know what, that’s totally fair. Sorry for being dismissive, I saw the other commenter compliment your informative write up and I immediately felt guilt for being so dismissive.
I think to me I’ve always heard of the founding fathers in the opposite context.
What I’ve heard is the noteworthy part was not that these were a bunch of progressive, worldly, enlightened people who for some reason had these odd backwards blindspots.
But that they were a cruel, racist, sexist, homophobic, religiously extreme backwards people who are noteworthy because in spite of that some of them came up with these seemingly contradictory progressive views for the time.
People were able to intuit out that slavery was bad as an intellectual pursuit while still being insensitive and cruel towards their slaves. This is an unusual thing as people tend to try to justify their evils but here we have at least some societal willingness to try to talk about this and move past it.
Jefferson is not a man to idolize, I will fully agree, but there’s more to his philosophy to be learned than simple psychopathy.
He planned on ending the slave trade, but his actions and many of his writings seem to indicate that he planned on maintaining the system of slavery for his own gain.
Yes. So you keep reiterating the evils he’s done I already agree with. He did self benefit from slavery, he perpuated it because it was convenient to him and he applied a different standard to himself than he did others.
Him being a hypocrite is not what I’m challenging.
Everything I didn’t respond to it’s because there’s nothing to challenge. He did all these things.
What I’m responding to was whether or not he intended for the institution of slavery to grow or shrink after his death.
Everything he’s written says his intellectual desire was for it to “eventually” (meaning when convenient for white people) go away.
Which is kind of the equivalent of turning down the orphan crushing machine to a slower pace. Not even turning it off, just making it slower.
Yes I think that would be putting it in proper context.
This seems to also point to him be hugely racist and believing that he could use black people like cattle to get out of debt cause they were “inferior.” I feel like what you quoted mostly supports what I’m saying. The dude perpetuated slavery for his own personal gain while denouncing it publicly to appear more liberal.
Read through this again with the following context in mind. What you said earlier:
I don’t quite follow, but I personally don’t assume anything about you. I do agree that lemmy, and the internet at large, has become a weird obstacle course.
What assumption I’m feeling is put on me is this idea that I’m not “mostly supporting what you’re saying” when the only thing I want to clarify is what Jefferson’s true intentions (intellectually dishonest or not) truly were.
- Comment on Basically 2 days ago:
I get where you’re coming from and why you typed up 4 paragraphs condemning his horrible actions before we are allowed to acknowledge that he did one or two okay things.
It’s just frustrating that we still live in a such a racist society that you felt like you had to type that up before you could approach the nuance.
I wish we could talk plainly to each other without this underlying paranoid one of us might accidentally come across pro the thing we are obviously very anti.
I for sure agree that it is nuanced, but it’s also rather reductive to just leave it at, “he signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves.”
I specifically said “While there’s no shortage of slave related evils to blame him for this is also the man who ended the trans atlantic slave trade.”
Because I was thinking of exactly all the things you listed.
I don’t like the accusation that I’m being reductive because I’m not restating a history textbook when acknowledging the countless evils he’s done.
I didn’t reduce anything, I specifically acknowledged his evils before giving him credit for ending the slave trade.
So he was outwardly trying to end the slave trade because he had a plan to perpetuate slavery by breeding.
While that is exactly what ended up historically happening, especially due to the invention of the cotton gin, I would appreciate a source that this was Jefferson’s stated intentions.
From the mid-1770s until his death, he advocated the same plan of gradual emancipation. First, the transatlantic slave trade would be abolished.10 Second, slaveowners would “improve” slavery’s most violent features, by bettering (Jefferson used the term “ameliorating”) living conditions and moderating physical punishment.11 Third, all born into slavery after a certain date would be declared free, followed by total abolition.12 Like others of his day, he supported the removal of newly freed slaves from the United States.13 The unintended effect of Jefferson’s plan was that his goal of “improving” slavery as a step towards ending it was used as an argument for its perpetuation. Pro-slavery advocates after Jefferson’s death argued that if slavery could be “improved,” abolition was unnecessary.
Jefferson’s belief in the necessity of abolition was intertwined with his racial beliefs. He thought that white Americans and enslaved blacks constituted two “separate nations” who could not live together peacefully in the same country.14 Jefferson’s belief that blacks were racially inferior and “as incapable as children,”15 coupled with slaves’ presumed resentment of their former owners, made their removal from the United States an integral part of Jefferson’s emancipation scheme.
- Comment on Played (and finished) Call of Duty WWII Single Player. I have mixed feelings. 2 days ago:
Alright fair you are old. Just not because of COD WWII lmao.
- Comment on Played (and finished) Call of Duty WWII Single Player. I have mixed feelings. 2 days ago:
COD WWII is my favorite multiplayer ever.
Yes I’m old.
Your favorite game is the fourteenth entry in the franchise. Calm down with the “old” lmfao.
- Comment on Basically 2 days ago:
I feel like that’s incredibly reductive and it just kind of bothers me every time I see it.
Well, except for Jefferson. His reasons are more rooted in being an incredibly lazy psychopathic rapist
Lol.
While there’s no shortage of slave related evils to blame him for this is also the man who ended the trans atlantic slave trade.
Do you not feel this description of his motivations might be a bit reductive?
- Comment on Tool-Assisted Speedrunning the Boring Parts of Animal Crossing (GCN) 3 days ago:
This is the plot of Click
- Comment on The Outer Worlds 2 Can't Be Anti-Capitalist When It's Charging Us $80 To Play It 5 days ago:
That’s fine. But then don’t pretend you have an issue with entitlement or hypocracy.
- Comment on The Outer Worlds 2 Can't Be Anti-Capitalist When It's Charging Us $80 To Play It 5 days ago:
Don’t like the price a company is asking for for an entirely optional commodity? Don’t fucking pay it. It’s not that hard.
Don’t like the discussion a community is having for an entirely opinionated topic? Don’t fucking comment. It’s not that hard.
- Comment on What grass starvation does to the perma-online 1 week ago:
Since when does Spider-Man takes place in California?
- Comment on Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Now Promotes Microtransactions When You Swap Weapons 2 weeks ago:
That’s why I only play AAAA games
- Comment on Why old games never die (but new ones do) 3 weeks ago:
And yeah, it’s the same old “they really knew how to make * in the past”. Houses, bridges, spoons, video games, whatever. It’s just that the well made ones survive, and the badly made ones don’t.
Idk, there’s certain structures like the pyramids where you gotta give credit where credit is due.
They really knew how to make some shit.
- Comment on ‘Elden Ring’ Movie in the Works From ’Civil War’ Director Alex Garland, A24 3 weeks ago:
You just listed a bunch of animated children’s movies?
If you’re looking for actual examples there’s Silent Hill, Fallout, or The Last of Us.
- Comment on Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible 3 weeks ago:
I get where you’re coming from.
B. The game is a product that they want to sell to more people, adding difficulties sells more
Sure. Not not necessarily untrue.
I don’t see the issue either way
My stances is forced here. I support the artists.
Unfortunately, supporting artists means sometimes you have to disagree with the businessmen when the two groups disagree.
Selling microtransactions and skins and deluxe editions and pre-order exclusive content, etc, etc all “sells more” (or at least makes more money).
If the artists feel for whatever reason adding more difficulties is too much to manage or prevents them from making the experience they want to make, I have to take the side of the artist.
There’s always going to be an argument the product needs to change to make more money, that’s not the art I find super interesting.
Why care what audience it’s conforming to, you’ll either enjoy the game or you won’t?
Because I think of the people who make games as artists and it pisses me off to think of some guy in a suit pressing his fingers into the Mona Lisa and pestering Da Vinci to make her smile and show cleavage so it can sell more.
I get that a business needs to make money, but those should be decisions the artists are in the room for at least.
If it’s A I don’t care, if it’s B I do.
- Comment on Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible 3 weeks ago:
I have to be honest here and say I don’t understand where you’re coming from at all.
Thats okay! Thanks for asking. I’m coming from the place that video games are art.
If games are art, then I choose to support artists, even if they want to make weird or unconventional art. If an artist has a vision which clashes with my own I want them to be able to follow their vision that instead of always conforming to “general audiences”.
As to the rest of your comment I already said first thing accessibility options are good so I’m not sure what you missed there.
- Comment on "You can't just have Geralt for every single game" says his voice actor, and if you think The Witcher 4 making Ciri the protagonist is "woke," then "read the damn books" 3 weeks ago:
The problem with Ghostbusters (2016) didn’t have anything to do with having an all female cast
That’s what I just said.
If women arent the ones greenlighting these movie, directing them, or even writing the script, how could they possibly be the problem?
I listed a bunch of actually good “woke” media. They were made by a trans and black creators but if you want examples of women being funny look at Veep, the Good Place, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec, etc.
The problem as I pointed out is a predominately white male board member of business grads who feel having an all female cast is all they need to market a movie, so they can skip giving a shit about the product.
it was more about the timing of the jokes, the lack of slow quiet scenes to build atmosphere, and the effects being crappy unmemorable CGI
Because Sony can’t make a movie to save their lives. Look at Morbius, Kraven, Madame Web, etc.
There was a time in the early 00s/10s where society said “any representation is good representation”.
Movies like Black Panther and Get Out were inherently going to do well because they catered to an audience demand that had been long underrepresented.
Nowadays there are actually good movies. We dont have to settle for bad representation. If you want a horror movie that’s an allegory for not transitioning you can watch it, if you want a vampire movie where the vampires are an allegory for racism and white exploitation that’s in theaters right now.
Spotting background character 1 and 2’s gay kiss in Disney’s reboot of Buzz Lightyear feels a lot less exciting to me.
When a bunch of white board members decide to make a movie “for women” and resurrect a dead IP and start forcing a script, that will be inherently more shallow than going to Amy Poehler and asking if she has an idea to pitch.
This is why Marvel succeeded in giving Ryan Coogler a higher degree of creative control for Black Panther than Sony did for any of the female cast in Ghostbusters.
While I’m enjoying diverse films like Sinners and I Saw the TV Glow, if you’re more interested in Disney’s live action remake of The Little Mermaid, or Disney’s live action remake of Snow White, go right ahead and watch it. I’m not saying you can’t.
But the idea you have to “support it” is nothing but marketing. I don’t think you’re really supporting diverse stories, I think you’re supporting corporations who exploit diversity and intentionally rage bait the worst racists imaginable for free marketing instead of investing the areas that you point out would make the movie better.
- Comment on Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible 3 weeks ago:
Accessibility options are good.
Agreed.
Not everyone is a god gamer with the reflexes of a 14-year old hopped up on Adderall and Red Bull. Some people just want to enjoy the story and the atmosphere of a game and it should be normal for us to let them.
Not everyone just wants to enjoy the story. Some people want a challenge which requires the reflexes of a 14 year old hopped up on Adderall.
Why should every single game be changed to suit your specific play style?
Instead of demanding their games change, maybe you could just accept its okay some audiences have different likes than you and just play the ones that cater to your style?
- Comment on "You can't just have Geralt for every single game" says his voice actor, and if you think The Witcher 4 making Ciri the protagonist is "woke," then "read the damn books" 3 weeks ago:
Imo there are two types of “wokeness”.
There is a diverse inclusive story by someone with an underrepresented experience who partially lived that story and has a unique perspective and ideas.
And then there is a “diverse” story constructed by an all white male board of execitives who think “wokeness” is trendy.
Movies like I Saw The TV Glow, Parasite, Sinners, etc are fantastic “woke” stories coming from the former group.
The latter group comes up with stories like “Ghostbusters but all women” or “Oceans 11 but all women” which I think should rightly be criticized.
- Comment on Just finished Hogwarts Legacy, it was enjoyable but could've been better. 3 weeks ago:
My character was straight up an actual poacher cause the best way to make money is selling creatures to that lady in Hogsmeade.
- Comment on After a lengthy legal battle and billion-dollar loss, 'Fortnite' is back on iOS 3 weeks ago:
I mean…do we want to tear it down?
Pretty sure we do.
Some things are for you, other things are NOT for you. Letting both exist is an option.
So you agree it’s good Fortnite now exists on iOS? Apple users get more options?
- Comment on No we can talk here 3 weeks ago:
Then credit the author.
The author was plagiarized by copying the genes of two parents. Credit the parents.
That way people who enjoy it can know where the author came from and may wind up reading his parents books.
- Comment on What techniques do bad faith users use online to overwhelm other users in online discussion and arguments? 4 weeks ago:
No one should be told they’re purity testing for criticizing the democrats.
Purity testing would be saying someone can’t be an ally in criticizing the democrats with you because they’re an enemy for voting for them.
Someone put a coin in my hand and said “heads is genocide, tails is genocide in a different way” and I really cared about not doing genocide so I asked “can I choose none” and they said “you can walk away, but then the coin will be flipped randomly”.
If you walked away from that coin flip and left the consequences to chance, I really don’t have a lot of patience hearing you judge me for all the burden and anxiety I put on myself researching which option was worse so I could make the least worst choice.
Walking away seems the easy choice here. You didn’t stop the genocide, you just washed your hands clean of it.
Criticizing me for choosing, instead of being an ally, saying “that was a tough choice, but don’t give up **here’s what we can do next” is useless.
Instead of saying we should stay home and not vote, suggest something we can do. The endless criticizing of powerless people just trying their best in a shitty situation is why you’re being accused of purity testing.
- Comment on What techniques do bad faith users use online to overwhelm other users in online discussion and arguments? 4 weeks ago:
This is the perfect example of the purity test OP was talking about.
Two people who couldn’t be more clear in their comments how disgusted they are by this obvious ongoing genocide, but yet completely powerless to do anything about it.
One person wants to use the little power they have to steer the country as far away from genocide as they can, and the other who sees that the game is rigged and wants no part in the government claiming their consent.
What’s unfortunate is that you’re directed all you anger at each other since neither knows how to direct it at the people in power.
Democrats give Palestinians no better chance of fighting another day, that just give liberals a license to pretend the genocide isn’t happening.
“Democrats” are not a monolith. Criticize the democrats all you want when they deny the genocide, but when we have candidates saying the following, it does feel like you’re being overly pessimistic about what allies you actually do have available to you inside this broken party:
“As we speak, in this moment, 1.1 million innocents in Gaza are at famine’s door,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her speech Friday. “A famine that is being intentionally precipitated through the blocking of food and global humanitarian assistance by leaders in the Israeli government.”
“If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like,” the New York Democrat added, “open your eyes.”
- Comment on What techniques do bad faith users use online to overwhelm other users in online discussion and arguments? 4 weeks ago:
genocide is not something you negotiate away.
Genocide is not something you stay at home for and hope it goes away on its own.
You don’t get to claim the ally if all you did was nothing.
OP criticized people who stayed home (choosing to hold on to their purity) instead of voting for the candidates least likely to perpetuate futher suffering.
Going “oh no this trolley problem is so terrible I refuse to even look at the lever” is prioritizing your own moral superiority over the people tied to the trolley.
- Comment on What techniques do bad faith users use online to overwhelm other users in online discussion and arguments? 4 weeks ago:
I believe that’s “whataboutism”?
- Comment on I'm a console gamer so, Why the hate on the Epic Games Store? 4 weeks ago:
Not OP but your very first sentence was
It’s very simple, valve is a gamer company.
It’s not “whataboutism” to directly respond to your point and try to argue they aren’t a gamer company.
I do agree with you overall though that Epic can suck it.
- Comment on Industrial Light & Magic's Chief Creative Promotes AI Slop During His TED Talk 4 weeks ago:
Yeah that’s exactly what’s happening.
Look at comments above like
may you get the future you are hoping for
A lot of people aren’t interested in learning about AI as it stands today they’re worried about the future.
They see massive corporations trying to replace artists.
If the output is “good” they might just succeed, if the output is “slop” then they can dream of a market solution where consumers band together to look at AI ads/art as lazy and artists get to keep their jobs.
If someone hates AI because of power politics, they’re not trying to speak objectively about it, because that objectivity is perceived to support the tech billionaires who are trying to push AI so hard.
- Comment on What techniques do bad faith users use online to overwhelm other users in online discussion and arguments? 4 weeks ago:
Great answer.
the “somewhere elses” all have their own fucked up problems, like algorithms that optimise for combativeness, and corporate control of various debates
I think keeping this in mind is key. When corporations have full control of these debates we realize maybe we’re wasting our time trying to appeal to their algorithms and should just build a new space without it.
Inherently the new space will be a little smaller and reach less people, but we value that because it gives us a bit more room to speak.
- Comment on What techniques do bad faith users use online to overwhelm other users in online discussion and arguments? 4 weeks ago:
I think that’s a bit of a false dichotomy.
I never intended to imply you only have to consider this one thing, but I think if a good faith comment exists, it’s one that respects the human on the other side of the screen they’re talking to and assumes good intent.
As human beings in good faith we give the benefit of the doubt and when someone crosses that line well then we do the calculus on how to respond without being a pushover
I would agree with you there are certain bad faith comments out there that aren’t worth responding to in good faith and that’s the scenario OP was trying to point out.