dropit_sphere

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

I successfully turned my mom from someone who often needed computer help, into someone who was pretty self-sufficient, when I told her that "The solution to any technology problem will only have two ingredients: Google and pain. If you have access to the first, you can solve anything provided you're willing to endure enough of the second."

dropit_sphere

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

>These are still minor concerns, simply because there's so few immigrants here. But it will have to change, because of demography. And no, 500+ won't help, it's simpe math. Even if every women in child-bearing age had 1 more kid than now - because of a demographic hole from 90s - the number of kids born will drop to record low in next decade.

I am not Polish or anything close to it, but I would imagine that most Poles would have a hard time getting excited about this. "Our culture is dying, but it's OK because we can bring in some third-worlders to keep the population numbers up!" does not exactly inspire jubilance.

Thinking about these two (fertility problems and anti-immigration sentiment) juxtaposed makes me wonder if they're connected. As an American, would I be as up-in-arms as I am about illegal immigration if I felt part of a strong, successful, viable culture that was by and for me? Probably not.

One other thing: that Saudi Arabian kids know who Shakira is is not a sign that Western culture is winning---at least, not the good parts. The parts I care about are things like Christianity, the rule of law, and, candidly, people who look like me. I feel like sort of a provocateur writing this, but it would have been an entirely unremarkable statement two hundred years ago---and I suspect the Poles are channeling something like it. WTF do they care about Shakira?

dropit_sphere

11 tahun yang laludiscuss

>You aren't trying to say then that the colonial powers assumed control of Africa to stop rape?

We should be thankful that they didn't. Who knows how they would have screwed it up?

No, the mechanism is a happy accident of nature, that people take care of the things they own. A country with a bunch of rape going on is a disorderly, unsafe country, which is bad for business. It may grate against your idealism (as it does mine!) that the right things often come about for the "wrong" reasons, but I think the parties concerned would greatly prefer it to the wrong things happening for the "right" reasons---as things are now.

dropit_sphere

11 tahun yang laludiscuss

You're gwern, so if you said you'd read enough to say you understand his writing, I'd believe you.

But someone reading the Baffler article will not have the same understanding you do---and worse, they'll think they do.

dropit_sphere

11 tahun yang laludiscuss

I'm not really interested in defending the subreddit. I am attempting to add a dash of reality: hate speech cannot be eliminated by clamping down on any particular subreddit. There will always be somewhere on the internet for people to express hateful, offensive views.

Of course, that's exactly the kind of thing a misogynist would say. And you could make a case that just because you can't stamp the stuff out entirely doesn't mean you have to let it happen on your servers.

dropit_sphere

11 tahun yang laludiscuss

This is what this account is for, after all, so:

I am a regular poster on r/theredpill(which was recently "honored" by winning the bigotry category---but with low toxicity---in a recent sentiment analysis of reddit comments). There is a lot of what someone might call "hate speech." Some of that doesn't really deserve the title and is just "truths that polite society omits;" some reflects genuine, generalized anger against women.

The subreddit has grown like a rocket. There are multiple backup plans for where to move the community in case the subreddit gets shut down. In short: there is something there that draws people, for better or for worse.

One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, etc.