#online discourse is also driving me nuts

[valkyurii]

a while back i was joking with a friend about how many hours i have in elden ring and i said that those numbers would likely double after the dlc releases and it’s been nearly 3 weeks and i’ve barley touched the game 🫠

[redheadbigshoes]

so I follow a blog and the person reblogged something about online queer discourse and the OP happened to mention bi-lesbians and how people come after their throats. i don't get why people can't treat bisexual AND lesbian as two different identities. it feels like such an online thing since this doesn't happen IRL as far as i know. unsurprisingly a non lesbian i know doesn't have a problem with the term "bi lesbian", even tho they are bisexual. somehow they do not see the term "bi lesbian" as also bisexual erasure.

do people just ignore what the word lesbian means? do people just not like the word bisexual? why are people so afraid of using the correct definition of words? as someone who cherishes history it just drives me nuts. am i thinking too hard about this? you don't see gay and bisexual men having their identities mixed into one, but you see it with lesbians and bisexual women. it smells so much like misogyny. i wish people would have better critical thinking skills.

People should be going after their throats lol they deserve that.

People don’t treat lesbian and bisexual as two whole separate and unique identities because people don’t see both labels as that. Because people are biphobic, transphobic and lesbophobic. And yeah this is a very online discourse because those people are not in touch with real life.

A lot of bisexuals (not all of them) don’t have a problem with that label because most of the times it doesn’t affect them as much as it does when it comes to lesbians. First is that the ones who support that label/don’t care about it are probably also chronically online to not notice how problematic that label is. Second is that usually the consequences of that label for bisexuals is not treating bisexuality as a whole identity and people thinking they’re deep down straight or homosexual. When it comes to lesbians the worst consequence for us is corrective rape because it makes people think we’re deep down attracted to men.

A lot of people use the argument that “if lesbian used to be an umbrella term before then it can be used now” which they’re mentally incapable to understand the only reason the lesbian label was used as an umbrella term was because of bi erasure and biphobia. They’re contributing for their own prejudice and they’re too stupid to notice that.

You don’t see the same discourse as much with gay and bi men because when it comes to bi sapphics and lesbians it is rooted in misogyny. People don’t want to recognize and accept lesbians are not attracted to men at all.

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

I remember fics booming during long Sherlock hiatuses back in the day.

True, but tumblr was still extremely popular at this point. Not saying it's dead now, but the porn ban definitely had an impact. I also think the outrage at the writers (insane and idiotic as it was) kept it in the mainstream. Back in the 2010s my mom knew about the drama surrounding Moffatt/Gatiss and the queerbaiting allegations. She didn't even watch the show, she heard about it on Pinterest of all things. Hell, the only reason I watched the show was bc I saw a thread here in like 2013.

We have a few people who are mad at the ending of go2, but it's nothing compared to the hubbub around things like Sherlock or SPN. The internet thrives on discourse, so it's not as interesting to others outside the fandom.

There's also the matter of internet etiquette and how, over the years, fans have come to expect consistent content and pay authors little to no mind. But that is a whole 'nother can of worms. I expect the go2 fics will become more popular over time, and I hope the lack of engagement isn't too discouraging bc I do really enjoy what I've read so far.

Hmmm. Yeah, this reminds me of what I talked about like last week or so with all of the tumblr polls I've seen asking how long people have been on here saying that the vast majority of users have been here for at least a decade. Sherlock's prime definitely lined up with tumblr's prime (I only watched it because an irl friend was blogging about it on here lol). I didn't come here until 2013 and was pretty blissfully unaware of the discourse for about a year, but I have heard from other fans that the online fan situation around that show started to get nuts right after s2 in 2012. Outrage does drive engagement, whatever that may look like. I think the ending of Sherlock s2 was perfect material for fanfiction with everyone wanting to know how Sherlock survived the Fall and how John would react upon his return, too. There were soooo many Post-Reichenbach fics, it was an entire genre. And then with s3, there was a flood of fix-it fics with people's anger over Mary, and exploration of her villainy.

You're right, gomens s2 doesn't have that same effect because it's pretty obvious that this is being written like a classic love story and everything is going to be resolved in the third act. There's no mainstream backlash. The only people who are angry about it, from what I've seen, are people who apparently don't know how basic storytelling works and are really pissed at Aziraphale (that's another reason why people might not be reading fics tbh), and those big mad over the kiss because, "it's ruins ace rep" and blah blah blah. But those people are in the clear minority. Some people may not feel the need to read fic because they trust all will be well in the next season and they just have to wait. Basically, the source material satisfies them enough that they're not seeking out fic in the same way they were after s1's homoerotic ambiguity.

You're totally right that fans have gotten worse to content creators in recent years. They want a constant stream of free fic and art without having to, god forbid, hit a heart button or kudos button. I've been in fandom spaces for a long time and that's definitely worsened over time, although I'm lucky that some fans have been nice enough about my gomens fics to make art/translations/etc. But that's for my s1 stuff and I know that's certainly not the case for everyone's fics. I hope the lack of engagement isn't too discouraging, too, but I completely understand if it is for some people.

[speeedyquick1245]

I really don’t understand the logic of edelgard fans who act like this. Like they’re so butt hurt about people that dislike edlegard and then they act so godamn annoying by doing shit like trying to stalk, “debunk” and belittle posts from years ago, and then wonder why no one likes them and edlegard. This is just pathetic behavior. Like I’ve been in so many fandoms are this point and I’ve seen takes that make you want to rip your hair out and scream with how bad they are. I’ve seen ships I hate become the fandoms favorite to the point where it’s unavoidable and unbearable. Thing is being a part of a fandom means meeting other fans/people and just like irl not everyone disagrees or gets along. And just like irl you do have still the choice and responsibility of being a mature human being.

Go crazy with block! (Well if your not on twitter at least…. I heard of some new changes but idk if they’re actually implemented yet or not.) Be petty and block them even if they just said just one thing you hate! It’s your online experience. You can curate it! Want to vent about how bad a specific post/take that you hate is? Vent about it privately with your best friend or sibling. Want to vent about a group of shippers/popular fandom opinion that drives you nuts? Use critical/anti tags and do it!!!

And I know these kinds of fans say they’re only looking for ahem “friendly debate”. But that’s bull shit. I think with when you want to have friendly debate you go in with a mind set to some extent also accepting that what you believe is also open to interpretation and argument. Also You got to want and like to listen to other opinions as well if you want friendly debate. However these kinds of fans go in with firm belief that their opinion is only right/correct and they want to prove it no matter what. They don’t want to listen, and they only others to admit there right.

idk this is just sad behavior, it seems like to me what this person likes and enjoys has become something that they hate. Like I prefer Dimilix and sometimes it does get annoying on how much more prevalent Sylvix is in fandom. But just because I like Dimilix more doesn’t mean I’m going to spend my time thinking about how much I dislike sylvix. That’s a waste of time. No it means I’m going to just channel that energy into obsessing over more Dimilix fics/content. It can be cathartic to vent about how much you hate something but ultimately you should spend more time on positive content of the things you love.

sorry for this reblog that turned into this long vent. 😅 I’ve been very removed from the 3h fandom and discourse now for a while. I still do enjoy the game but people like this made me leave. I suppose the surprise of seeing people act like this even now just brought the frustration back. @fireemblems24 You responded to this troll very well and I loved your azure moon review when I read it in the past. And as frustrating as this person is, I’m glad they at least gave me the opportunity to reread your lovely review.

Azure Moon Review

My final review! I saved the best for last.

FYI AM, CF, VW, and SS were all my first route since I played them back-to-back one "in-game" week at a time.

Before I started playing, I was the least interested in Azure Moon, but to say it came back with a vengeance is both a pun I'm proud of and an understatement. If asked to rank all four routes, I'd struggle choosing #2-4, but #1 I'd write as easily as my own name - Azure Moon. AM takes the best advantages of what Three Houses excels at while minimizing its weaker areas, uses 3H's narrative structure to the best advantage, and avoids issues other routes run into. It's not without fault, though, so I'll start with those first.

Like Crimson Flower, Azure Moon bit off more than a Fire Emblem game can currently chew. The genocide of Duscur is not given the attention, resolution, or weight it deserves. Like Fire Emblem Elibe series's genocide of Sacae, it takes an incredibly serious topic and uses it as a background tool for plot and character backstory rather than treating it with the seriousness such topics demand. With Duscur, things get even stickier and ickier because one of the "good countries" rather than the war mongering one did it. At this point, I think FE should quit including genocide in its storylines unless they hire the Tellius team to write it.

Permadeath also kept AM from living up to its fullest potential. AM has the most tightly knit group of characters, but those bonds are limited in their narrative potential because of FE's (in)famous permadeath feature. This forces the plot to revolve around a small handful of characters and has hamstrung the storytelling throughout the franchise's history. It's felt the hardest in AM, though, because of how intertwined the cast is.

The portrayal of Dimitri's mental illness has also received mixed reviews. I've yet to see a mentally ill character get universal praise, likely because mental illness is such an intensely personal experience. There are valid critiques like the harm of associating mental illness with violence while others praise AM for not romanticizing mental illness and not giving Dimitri a happy ending because he's "cured" but will achieve happiness and success despite his ills. Narratively, some claim his turn around happened too quickly. Here I both agree and disagree as AM did lay down the proper narrative beats to set up for the plot-turning point for anyone paying attention, but I do think it could've been improved. 

However, AM is still, overall, the best written route. There are many, many subjective reasons this route ended up my personal favorite, but I'm going to stick to somewhat more objective (though still debatable) points. So I could endlessly gush over how the Blue Lions are all my babies, but I won't do that here. And for anyone reading wondering if I see AM objectively the best because of subjective reasons, I can only ask, what came first, the chicken or the egg? (I don't know) The strength of AM's writing let its characters flourish in a way other routes did not. Because of that, did I like them better? Going into this, Dimitri was my least favorite lord - but boy did that change once I actually engaged with the game's writing. Personal preferences are what they are, but there are undeniable aspects of AM that are superior in terms of pure story construction compared to the other routes. 

AM emphasizes what Three Houses excels at while minimizing the weak spots. It's widely agreed that character-writing is one of FE3H's biggest strengths. Every character in Three Houses is both unique and reads like a natural result of the world and situation they lived in. Supports are often engaging and varied, adding layers of interest to even the most minor of characters. 

AM takes more advantage of the characters than other routes. Character conflict and development drive story beats in AM far more than the other routes. Dimitri gets the most fleshed-out and focused-on character arc among the various leads, the Blue Lions have the most connected cast and thus have the highest number of complicated and complex relationships, minor Blue Lions get the spotlight in various chapters (Ashe and Sylvain in the pre-timeskip), and just about everyone has some piece of the overall plot tie-in to their personal arcs (such as Mercedes dealing with Jeritza or Annette with Gilbert). Because it's the most "personal" and intensely character-driven story, AM takes the best advantage of the game's strong suits. 

This character-driven focus extends to the route's antagonists too. The poorly written and cartoonishly evil TWSITD are side-lined and killed off almost by accident. Instead of them, a mindless zombie, or Rhea randomly going evil, Edelgard is the main villain, and is far more interesting. Her dispute with Dimitri is ideological, personal, tragic, and compelling. Because of this, she's humanized in a way the other routes' antagonists are not, making the conflict with her more engaging in comparison. 

It's a pattern AM continues to follow through on - making the best of what's there. AM is the only route that utilized the Flame Emperor reveal and the time-skip. In the other 3 routes, these two story aspects fall flat. No one really reacts to the Flame Emperor reveal or seems to care - even Byleth and the Black Eagles. In AM, it's an emotional highlight that greatly impacts important characters. AM also takes the best advantage of the time-skip, as it's the only route where things actually happened during the 5 years Byleth wasn't around rather than seeming like everyone inexplicably hit pause until Byleth came back.

Byleth also functions as a character and a self-insert well in AM. You, the player, are allowed to express frustration with the cast - unlike elsewhere. There is plenty of romantic teasing with Dimitri, but Byleth also functions just as well as a mentor. It gives the player some choice in how they want to view the relationship while maintaining an emotional and important relationship between the two. Byleth is also a bit more active here than elsewhere, taking direct actions that help flesh them out as a character. 

While all of this is part of what made AM's story so strong, the biggest success AM had was its willingness to engage with negative emotions and take risks.  Three Houses often seems at war with itself - wanting to be both a serious war story where things aren't black-and-white, but also unwilling to make the player question their choices. This results in some odd emotional dissonance and mood whiplash. AM took risks other routes shied away from by prioritizing telling a story rather than making the player feel good. This escalates the conflict and allows for greater character development. 

While far from perfect, AM ended up the best-written route in Three Houses because it uses 3H's narrative structure to the best advantage and avoids common pitfalls other routes fall into. While it may have started out as the route I was the least interested in, it ended up my absolute favorite.   

[megaderping]

I wasn't aware of transphobic comments...

Is anon talking about making Frisk and Chara binary gendered in Endertale?

I did some digging and I do see some rather questionable posts from a few years ago involving gender discourse and the Undertale fandom (including reblogging a post from C/amila of G/litcht/ale fame that really was not comfortable and was pretty transphobic). But then I also saw art of Mew with the nonbinary pride flag posted last year and a reblog of a really cute trans baby godzilla video, so I really don't know if those attitudes still apply. I don't wanna turn this into a callout thing, of course, or condone harassment of any kind. I'm just trying to get a read on things so I can better understand.

I suppose the real important thing for me is if those attitudes still apply, because five years ago is a really long time and people can learn and change their perspectives. But no matter what- I think it's understandable for people to just not wanna support because of those posts, regardless of age. Something being a few years old doesn't mean that people weren't hurt, and it's natural to be skeptical when trans and gender discussions are such a needlessly controversial topic in online spaces.

Case in point: I have had several comments on my Mad Mew Mew video trying to act like the idea of trans coding in Undertale is outlandish.... despite numerous gay, bi, and other such identities existing in UT and DR. Trans identities are challenged and invalidated WAY too much, and it drives me nuts every time.

So like, I get it, 100%. And I think with the UT fandom having so much phobic behavior (the Deltarune subreddit was REALLY bad recently), people are gonna be on edge and extra cautious for their own safety.

But I think if any more discussion of this is to come my way, I'd rather do to in private. Not because I wanna ignore people's concerns- I just don't wanna make this a big thing on my blog because too often when stuff like this comes up, people with less restraint will use it as an opportunity to dogpile when they can just filter out the content creators in question. This isn't directed at the initial anon, who was just giving a heads up- just an unfortunate side effect of social media overall. :(

I used to engage w/ stuff like that on my blog years ago, but I just don't have the energy now. I remember being pretty mad and hostile on my blog a few years ago and it just isn’t something I’m proud of.

[exeggcute]

I have a lot of Thoughts about social media as a major vehicle of political engagement, both on a civilian and administrative level, and most of these thoughts revolve around the nature of digital advertising—my own personal Theory of Internet is almost entirely predicated on digital ads and the algorithms that sustain them, how these algorithms then shape online design, and how these designs shape our behavior as users—but it's a lot to get into and not particularly coherent (at best it's meaningless crap to the average person, at worst it makes me sound nuts lol)

that being said, it's something I've been turning over in my mind for a while now, and the best way I can possibly offer a glimpse into all this is from a statistic I read this morning, before trump even got banned on twitter, that reveals a lot about the way social media is implicitly designed to drive certain behaviors to maximize engagement and what consequences this has on its users and society at large:

Facebook’s own research revealed that 64 percent of the time a person joins an extremist Facebook Group, they do so because the platform recommended it. Facebook has also acknowledged that pages and groups associated with QAnon extremism had at least 3 million members, meaning Facebook helped radicalize 2 million people.

(source)

and there's a lot more that goes into these recommendations than just "facebook is doing it on purpose to spite you" (although, to be clear, absolutely fuck facebook lol), because the very nature of our modern internet revolves around an ad ecosystem that rewards websites for keeping users as engaged as possible, and this engagement-based model has MASSIVELY far-reaching consequences, many (if not most) unintentional. and facebook is just one of countless sites that operates under this system. (with facebook specifically, there are a lot of other factors at play that do skew more deliberate, particularly around the cambridge analytica shit and facebook's own policies with political ads, but that's a whoooole other post lol.)

I don't really have a coherent point, I just think we're so far past critical mass here that the best we can do is try to clean up the fallout of this fucking mess. but even that's not gonna be possible without considering the very nature of the monetized internet and social media, how (imo) using any kind of monetized social media as the basis of official political discourse will always bend towards reactionary thought and catastrophe, even without meaning to, because of the way these sites measure success in terms of engagement (whether this is Good engagement or not) and become successful by maximizing engagement at all costs. I do believe the rise of all this shit is an unforeseen side effect of digital advertising rather than an elaborate conspiracy (in most cases), but it doesn't lessen the responsibility that these sites have to start cracking down on and begin to undo a fraction of the damage they've caused. and for the love of fucking god we cannot let world leaders use social media as their primary mode of communicating with the masses.

TLDR: imagine one of those memes with the dominoes getting bigger and bigger, and on the small side it says "pay-per-click/pay-per-impression advertising," and on the giant side it says "the president of the united states inciting far-right violence on twitter"

[hugewoman]

I guess I should welcome new followers, which I haven’t ever really done before! There are more of you than I expected to ever see. I’ve never had my comments on a post stolen by tras before either so I feel a little bit like I’m moving up in the world lmao

I’m so thrilled and delighted to see so many lovely radfem and terf faces on my timeline and I hope to eventually follow back all of you. To those of you that are crypto have no fear, I’m in the same boat as this is a sideblog and I want you to know I would never do anything to jeopardize your anonymity and safety online. That’s one thing I take very seriously

It can be tough having a lot of discourse on your dash, we’re a very verbose group. (I personally try not to do a lot of back and forth reblog dog the same posts over and over again cause that drives me nuts lol) there are some people whose opinions I dearly respect that I just can’t follow bc it makes my dash too hectic, so I understand if you ever need to take a break and unclutter

it can also be especially challenging seeing how dishonest and malicious the type of people who were up against can be. But we’re in this together, and uplifting each other comes before trying to argue with people who are never going to listen or learn anyways. Sometimes you just have to ignore and block the ones who are too deep in the kool-aid and hope they eventually have a change of heart

And finally, if you’re new, welcome to radblr!

[annasellheim]

I have not done this kind of post in a while. This is not a post about what's going on with me, but a post about problematic discourse in the online mental health community.

Source.

The above comic is from the artist Margaret of @lastplacechamp. It is literally the only comic about self care that I've ever seen that I actually like.

I will not post images here, but the majority of self care comics really rub me the wrong way. For those of you unfamiliar, "self care," is a term that is popular in the mental health community that essentially means doing actions that take care of yourself which will ultimately aid in your mental health. It is a topic that is popularly portrayed in comics, and I have been irritated by every iteration I've seen on the topic.

My issue with the discourse on self care is that virtually all of it is about taking a time out from the stressful aspects of one's life and is talked about in a universal way. Common examples of this are taking a bubble bath (see above), eating comfort food, staying in bed for the day, relaxing by watching television, etc. These acts of self care are not problematic in themselves. Sometimes you need to disengage, take a break, and chill for a day. The problem is that these are all the kinds of examples I have seen portrayed online. Because these are practically the universal forms of self care discussed, the aspect of doing these things in moderation is lost, and seeing them consistently over and over reads to me as people forming habits of avoiding one's issues. This compounds stress because you are not dealing with it and makes your problems worse in the long run.

The reason I love the comic above is because it is shows a combination of both taking a moment to decompress, but also shows the author actively combatting their problems (I am not sure of their gender so I am usinggender neutral pronouns). If you follow Margaret on Instagram you know that the source of their stress is their job. You see them addressing the problem by trying to find a better job. It also shows them taking the night off to relax by listening to a Harry Potter podcast. It is a mix of self care methods, and both are important. It also specifically applies to Margaret, which is also important. I think that doing work that is specific to the author for issues on mental health are far more productive and relatable to the larger discussion in mental health that the bullshit, "everybody experiences this," comics that are EVERYWHERE (to be fair I may be biased).

But, tldr: Margaret is actively working towards solving the cause of their stress, which is vital to ultimately solving it. The culture of avoidance I see on social media drives me NUTS, especially since the majority of the audience is teens and people in their early twenties  dealing with anxiety that can be led astray by these messages.

I'm not sure how to end this besides saying a major way to improve yourmental health is to confront and deal with issues that are hurting you (assuming it's in within your control). Another way to practice self care is to do basic maintenance like going to therapy, exercising regularly, eating well (one of my major issues), taking meds if needed (and you have access), etc.

Okay, rant over. I might do a comic on this for my Everything's Fine book that I hope to make one day, maybe.

Thanks for reading!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Charlie Stross's CCC talk: the future of psychotic AIs can be read in today's sociopathic corporations

Charlie Stross's keynote at the 34th Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg is entitled "Dude, you broke the Future!" and it's an excellent, Strossian look at the future we're barelling towards, best understood by a critical examination of the past we've just gone through.

Stross is very interested in what it means that today's tech billionaires are terrified of being slaughtered by psychotic runaway AIs. Like Ted Chiang and me, Stross thinks that corporations are "slow AIs" that show what happens when we build "machines" designed to optimize for one kind of growth above all moral or ethical considerations, and that these captains of industry are projecting their fears of the businesses they nominally command onto the computers around them.

Stross says we should be especially worried about machines designed to command ever-larger slices of our attention, without regard to whether we're made happier through this process (after all, you can make someone pay attention to you by driving them nuts, something that's often easier than pleasing them.

He traces the original sin of attention-optimizing autonomous artificial life-forms to the advertising-driven web, which grew up in the dotcom bubble, and suggests that perhaps paid media built on something like microtransactions would have had a better outcome.

I think that this is a causality error, though. The dotcom boom was also an economic bubble because the dotcoms came of age at a tipping point in financial deregulation, the point at which the Reagan-Clinton-Bush reforms that took the Depression-era brakes off financialization were really picking up steam. That meant that the tech industry's heady pace of development was the first testbed for treating corporate growth as the greatest virtue, built on the lie of the fiduciary duty to increase profit above all other considerations.

Thanks to the work of Thomas Piketty, we know that the collapse of regulation was driven by the accumulation of capital into fewer and fewer hands, meaning that power was weakly consolidated with the wealthy, who used that power to push for more wealth accumulation and more power.

All this to say that if the web had been built on direct transactions through micropayments, the slow AIs of the corporate world would have still figured out how to toxify the web and the discourse that ran over it. If clicks were worth direct money (as opposed to indirect money, paid through ad brokers), the same forces that optimized for attention-grabbing to attract eyeballs would have just optimized for microtransaction grabbing.

At the same time, the consolidation of power in a few winners' hands has meant that attention-hungry corporations like Facebook and Google are increasingly able to use law and regulation to prevent public interest groups or competitors from making tools that give you, the user, more control over your online experience, the ability to subvert their algorithms' gaming of your attention without having to sacrifice the social connections and utility that the companies deliver. The early web lived in a dynamic between attention harvesting tools and attention defending tools like popup blockers; that's a much more fraught proposition on today's web.

Stross's overall point, though, is an excellent one. The artificial lifeforms birthed by finance capitalism and technology are taking over, and they are consuming our political and deliberative processes.

https://boingboing.net/2017/12/29/llcs-are-slow-ais.html

[redheadbigshoes]

drives me nuts when ppl are like “why are you focusing on lgbt dis/course when there are real problems?” as if lesbophobia isn’t a “real” problem when it’s served up under a progressive or harmless guise. also i can care about anti-trans legislation and peoples casual lesbophobic/biphobic bullshit like it doesn’t have to be either/or 🙄

It does! The saddest thing is when that comes from another lesbian… like they’re not noticing at all that they’re trying to ignore lesbophobia? You must be extremely chronically online to not care at all about lesbophobia and SA of lesbians (as a lesbian), because if you’ve ever faced fear or harassment or anything negative for being a lesbian in real life you wouldn’t be trying to ignore and silence people wanting to talk about lesbophobia.

I don’t know what’s up with these people trying to compare worlds problems as if we couldn’t talk about more than one thing at once…

But what most pisses me off is that it’s like they want me to stop talking about it as if I’m not talking about things and sharing my opinion on my own blog lol. If you don’t like the type of discourse I bring up here then you leave, that simple, I’m not going to stop bringing up issues and sharing my opinion because I’m hurting someone’s feelings. It’s my blog and I do whatever I want.

[brainstatic]

If it's one thing I hate in online political discourse more than anything, it's political charts. The ones that show left and right on an x-axis and authoritarian and libertarian on the y-axis. There are other more complicated ones, and it seems like the more complicated they are the more arbitrary and therefore meaningless they become. Grouping things into clear left and right is simplistic, but it can be a useful shorthand as long as everyone knows what you're referring to (e.g., in America we can safely call being for gun control left wing even though it's not an issue in any Western country and Republicans were for it 40 years ago when Black Panthers started walking around with assault weapons.) These charts and associated tests also weigh every issue equally. One showed UKIP as center-right, because while wanting to rid the UK of anyone whose family came to Britain after the Battle of Hastings moves them to the right, they're also against corporatism, which pushes them back to the left. And so a bunch crypto-fascists become moderates on the chart. But the authoritarian-libertarian divide drives me especially nuts because it's completely subjective. Everyone with any political beliefs struggles with the paradoxical, maybe even hypocritical twin desires to shape the world in their own image while being free of the will of others. How can we pick which label fits on which side of that tug-of-war? Maybe you're an authoritarian for believing public schools shouldn't be allowed to make kids recite the Lord's Prayer, maybe you're a libertarian for giving the kids the freedom of religion. Most libertarians I've seen have no problem, say, insisting everyone conform to their idea of gender. They also tell us that being chained to a job you hate because you're afraid of losing their health insurance makes you more free, because something something free market. Our whole modern concept of libertarianism was cooked up by robber barons to convince people that corporate freedom and personal freedom were the same thing, and as capital goes unrestrained then you will too, somehow, theoretically. If you watched the Libertarian Party Convention last year, and I highly recommend that you do so you don't make the mistake of ever taking these people seriously, you'd notice they have particular disdain for the Civil Rights Act. They think of it as an imposition of the state on businesses, and I guess technically it is. If the Libertarians god forbid ever get a president, I'm sure black people will enjoy the freedom of driving around for three hours looking for a restaurant that will take them. In the libertarian view, the freedom to oppress is the greatest freedom of all. Some of the more complicated charts go far as to specify social and economic issues. I have yet to find any clear definition of what the hell this means. As far as I can tell a social issue is any issue that tends not to affect straight white men. Abortion is considered the ur-social issue, but having a baby drastically changes your economic situation, so it's definitely a matter of economics. Drug laws are social I guess, but going to prison for ten years certainly harms your lifetime earning potential. Immigration is a perfect intersection of everything, it has obvious economic implications while drawing on all our ideas of race, nationalism, language, and citizenship itself. I didn't mean to let this go on for so long but these goddamn charts never seem to die and I think it's important people give serious thought to what they believe, why they believe it, and how making these little D&D alignment charts devalues all of our messy humanity while empowering pious hypocrites.

[rodrigohyde]

A Trip Down Cynical Lane With The Watch Snob

A Tough Nut To Crack

I am looking for a travel watch with a world timer function. Looking for one which is slightly casual/sporty with a water resistance of 5 ATM. My budget is 2000 USD, although I can wait it out and push it to 3500 USD as well. I know there aren’t many options at this price for a ‘mechanical’ watch, but no harm in asking.

Since I live in India, I am looking for one which displays one of the Indian cities [doesn’t have to display a major city in every timezone though]. It’s 5 hr 30 mins ahead of GMT. There are watches by Vacheron [Overseas World Time] and De Bethune [DB25], both of which are way out of my budget.

Related: Can't Decide On A New Timepiece? The Watch Snob Has Some Advice

As you have clearly discovered, this is a rather tough nut to crack. Mechanical multi-time zone watches generally content themselves with the ability to show a second time zone, only in full-hour increments and the addition of half-hour or fifteen minute increments requires considerably greater complexity and cost. In your price range I am afraid there are not a great many possibilities – in fact I can’t think of a single true Cottier-style world time watch anywhere near that, that also offers the functionality you seek. Given the increasing importance of your illustrious sub-continent for mechanical watchmaking perhaps the dearth of choices in this price range, is something someone will at some point address.

The only partial solution I can suggest is a wristwatch with a hand for a second time zone and – here is the key feature – an inner rotating bezel; the Bremont Alt1-ZT is an example. After resetting to local time upon arrival at your destination, you can use the inner bezel to read off home time to any offset you like.

Of course, if you were willing to accept something in a quartz watch, there are any number of them which will happily show you the time in every time zone there is for about a tenth of your minimum budget or less. Time zones are always an amusing thing to see watch brands struggle with – all it takes is one impulsive decision on the part of an attention-seeking despotic government and lo and behold, we have a new time zone which renders every attempt to make a comprehensive world time mechanical watch obsolete at a stroke.

Best Bud’s Birthday On A Budget

I stumbled upon your blog while searching for watches, and I decided to send you a message in hope I'll get an answer for my question.

My friend's birthday is near, and I wanted to offer him a watch. But I absolutely have no knowledge when it comes to watches. So I was hoping you could help me with some suggestions.

From what I could see on your blog, you always opt for big brands. But as I'm a 22 years old who just recently started working, I can't afford anything for more than 200 Euros . My friend has a Casio Edifice and a Lotus .

I read your query with some amusement. A Casio Edifice and a Lotus … one assumes you mean a Lotus watch but I like to think that you might have meant the flower, or possibly the car. Either would be an interesting juxtaposition with the watch, though perhaps less informative in terms of your chum’s tastes.

In any case, at $200 and under there are actually a number of interesting choices – nothing with any pretensions to haute horlogerie, you understand, but then you probably don’t know what that means anyway . From Casio we have of course the legendary, world-renowned timepiece extraordinaire known to all and sundry as the G-Shock, which has the glorious distinction of being the only wristwatch in history to have been tested by being repeatedly thrown out of a fourth floor bathroom window .

Your chum appears to have nothing in their possession that emits that seductive siren song known as ticking and may I commend to you, therefore, the ever-delightful and reliable wristwatch known as the Seiko 5, which has started many an unsuspecting watch enthusiast down the royal road to financial and mental ruin. Generally available online for less than one hundred dollars, and capable of running for many years without any human intervention.

Or you can do as many who love watches have done when trying to decide between two watches, and just buy both – one of the beauties of the Seiko 5 and the G-Shock is that for two hundred dollars, you can do that and still have enough left over for a bottle of something to celebrate.

Is It Hip To Be Square Again?

I honestly find your column entertaining, but I miss your thoughtful cynical answers recently. My wife and I are thinking to buy watch for our daughter who will soon enter into college for communication and also photography. She loves square watches and sometimes happily wears my wife's JLC Revero or Cartier Tank in certain occasions. But she wears none for her daily and let her Citizen Eco Drive Square collecting dust on her table. If we have to find a decent budget friendly square watch to "substitute"  for the Reverso or Tank for her daily use what is Snob recommendation? Thank you and we appreciate your recommendation.

Cynicism for its own sake is a mere pose which exists only to inflate the ego of the writer, and to persuade those who prefer stereotypes to thinking that the writer is sincere. It is a plague of discourse on the internet that to be rude by default denotes authenticity, and that to be thoughtful and measured shows at best spinelessness, and at worst, an undisclosed conflict of interest. I have always been, and remain, more than happy to deplore the deplorable but rewarding reader stupidity with attention, and shoddy watchmaking with the same, has over the last few years increasingly seemed to me to merely encourage the very same idiotic and unapologetically unthinking discourse and watch design which we would all be far better off without.

Also, the NOMOS Tetra is a very nice watch indeed and is, in fact square. It is an under appreciated model from the firm, and underexposed; should your daughter abjure the Eco-Drive for not being mechanical, the Tetra should fill the bill nicely.

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from Style channel http://www.askmen.com/style/watch_snob/a-trip-down-cynical-lane-with-the-watch-snob.html

[unheimatlich]

I’ve Got a Fever

Like Derrida, I choose not to start at the beginning, or even with the archive.  It’s pretty ingenious, this construction at the outset of the lecture.  In addition to suggesting the need to look back to the etymological roots at the heart of the word archive itself, a pretty brilliant rhetorical move in and of itself with metaphorical or literal applicability to all sorts of historical considerations – the idea of tracing things back to the roots prior to the genesis of the object of inquiry proper --  it also serves as a semantic reminder and marker that language itself matters within the inquiry.  Clearly Derrida is less interested in the nuts and bolts, mechanical process of archival work than he is in conveying a broader sense of the stakes of the archive itself, as well as its relationship to memory and annihilation. Like Foucault, Derrida locates the idea of the archive in relation to power and politics.  However, Foucault’s interest lies in the discourse of power that he locates in the archive, with its inclusions and exclusions and omissions, deliberate or otherwise, as decisions that shape official memory and cultural history, and with the gaps and the fissures themselves as significant in shaping those and in supporting or challenging power as these inclusions. Although Derrida is likewise concerned with power and politics, in his Freudian look at the archive these forces are expressed distinctly.  Rather than serving the interests of power abstractly, Derrida situates the archive within its original historical formulation, as a site of privilege contained privately but with limited public access, administered by the Archon. Writing as he was as the turn to the digital was underway, one can’t help but think about his suggestions in light of the implications of digital spaces – at once haunted and ephemeral, equally abstract and eternally circulating, trapped in and apart from time as we know it. With the introduction of email and databases, Derrida already predicted what subsequent digital theorists gave made of online archives and resources as a prosthetic memory – and with the common slippages between “memory” and “storage,” as computer scientists use the terms.  He is pondering what the exteriorization of memory might look like.  Equally, by framing his remarks in Freudian terms and in relation to Judaic ideas surrounding thought and identity, he not only reveals a way to consider the archive as part of a continuum of human thought and a component of the formulation of human identity that is Cartesian, but even more so as imbricated in the always occurring annihilation that defines human existence in the Freudian sense of the death drive.  When e characterizes the archive in relation to the death drive, for some reason that reminds me of Benjamin’s theses on history and what he sees as the stakes of history.  If I’m left with questions rather than answers, I have to believe this is because Derrida is interested in pushing us into the aporia, in getting us to think about rather than to “make sense” of these things.  Returning to the frame wherein Derrida introduces his ideas, I’m reminded that I don’t get to start at the beginning, either.