Posts by Anarkat@hackers.town
(DIR) Post #AN3pVMbcqyoGhJ3HbE by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-08-30T17:32:09Z
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@heluecht that's in individual concern, not a societal concern. @valhalla @clacke @ilja
(DIR) Post #AN3tFkTIkl8Htny4xM by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-08-30T17:45:14Z
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@heluecht in a society founded on empathy, this matters.For clarification, I'm referring to purely material benefit to society, from a capitalist perspective.@valhalla @clacke @ilja
(DIR) Post #AN4HqkNeR7Q8X3Gni4 by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-08-30T16:35:38Z
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euro privilege is realprivilege is, at its core, an ingrained insensitivity or impediment to comprehending abuses or trauma suffered by other people without that privilege whose lived experiences are too far removed from the experiences of those with that specific privilege.I am privileged in some ways, and marginalized in others.
(DIR) Post #AN4HqlJ4zbMFPA8fDs by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-08-30T17:11:45Z
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@cy I never said that. You see that I also claim to be privileged. I understand what you mean. I'm often frustrated by my own insensitivity, when I realize that my own privilege is getting in the way of me understanding what someone else is trying to explain to me.There is not one ounce of blame. It is as neutral an explanation of what privilege does to people as I can find.
(DIR) Post #AN4HqmDnaijCF4fxdA by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-08-30T20:01:39Z
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@cy I never said I gave myself privilege. I said that I have it. I'm not beating myself up over it. I'm stating observations about power dynamics.I don't think it's true that, because I'm already working to end bigotry, that there's no more need to change.I change when I understand things I didn't understand before. This change isn't something that is imposed on me, but something that I accept as part of growth, as part of understanding people who I lack the shared life experience to base that understanding on.When someone explains something that I didn't know before, they are not making me less me by guiding me to understand that thing. they are giving me more tools to decide how I want to solve problems.When the thing that someone is explaining, trying to help me understand, is how my privilege affects them, how I affect them in my behavior, and how we both relate to larger systems through privilege or lack thereof, that person is not taking any part of me away, or blaming me for that thing. they're teaching me something, so that I can use that information to make more informed decisions.If someone tells me that something about the way I engage with the world is harmful to them, and I don't want to cause harm, then it's up to me to understand how they are affected by that thing that I do, and decide for myself what there is for me to do to change it.
(DIR) Post #AN4Hqn76H6xp0aY7pQ by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-08-30T20:22:11Z
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@cy Sorry, I'm not addressing your points well. Have had a rough start to my day. Got around 5 hours of sleep, then woke up and drove 2 hours, fueled by adderall and caffeine.
(DIR) Post #ANDEtyW7mXrjnyiicS by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-03T00:55:12Z
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Have a long essay on the internalized toxicity of "shitposter" culture floating around in my head.
(DIR) Post #ANDEtzBFJel7rVxYiO by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-04T06:02:35Z
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I consider "shitposting" to be a kind of stream-of-consciousness way of engaging with the world. Bringing internal thought processes external, with minimal filtering.But bringing internal thought processes external doesn't only work one way.It works both ways.When you have a whole group of shitposters, in a shitposter echo chamber, bouncing ideas back and forth at each other, they are individuals building up a mutual view of the world. They share the things they think about the world, and if it's close enough to someone else's view of the world, they become integrated together.In the same way that the shallow internal thoughts are processed and externalized with minimal filtering, the shallow external inputs of other people are internalized with minimal filtering.At a basic level, it's a kind of skinner box. Press the button, get reward. Shitpost a good zinger, get a lot of likes, I'm a good person because other people like what I'm saying.But all of this is subconscious. It's following urges to chase good feelings, and avoid bad feelings.Since these posts and responses are engaged with as though they were integral to the thought processes, they are also related to as though they were integral thought proceses.Good thoughts feel good. Good happy feelings posted by other people aren't just other people saying nice things, those thoughts become internally true thoughts. Validation is not processed internally, but sought entirely externally, and integrated as though it were an internal thought, when the individual no longer believes themselves capable of generating positive internal validation for themselves.So then, what about the shitposters' violent reaction to negative stimulus? Someone saying bad things that they don't agree with, that they don't want to think about themselves or the world?This whole process of engagement and integration of ideas serves the purpose of staving off obtrusive negative thoughts; when an individual doesn't feel like they have control over the things that they think, they find ways to externalize that process until they can have some manner of control. It's about having control. I can control the things that I think about the world, and about myself, by making sure that the other people who I engage with and relate to are people who have a view of the world that agrees with what I want to think about the world, and who tell me things about myself that feel good.If someone says something that leads me to not feel good, it feels like an attack. I view of the world which runs entirely contrary to my own desired view of the world.This negative stimulus is reacted to as though it were an internal obtrusive though; it is violently expelled.Now, I'm fairly certain that most social media encourages shitposting to greater or lesser degrees. Engaging with social media in this way doesn't make someone a bad person. It's not bad to use other people's view of the world, to build up our own view of the world. We create mutual understanding of the world this way.Where this turns toxic is when exaggerated perceptions of the way that the world sucks becomes accepted reality. Engaging with the world in this way also makes someone very vulnerable to manipulation.If a hostile actor recognizes how a particular individual or group engages with social media in this way, it is fairly trivial for them to suggest that the world is bad in someway, and that some particular individual is responsible for it. In this way, individuals or whole communities can be subverted to unknowingly act in the benefit of these hostile actors.This happens in conspiracy theorist echo chambers. They went from reality-denying but ultimately harmless nonsense about chemtrails and bigfoot into being weaponized heavily against government orgs and minority communities.These "shitposter" communities also pride themselves on their "open-mindedness" whereby they refuse to take moderator action on an instance level, and insist that it is the right of the individuals to engage with whoever they want, however they want.What this is really about, is following the wishes of their users to not allow other people to control their worldview, recognizing that their worldview is affected by who they talk to, but failing to recognize that other people can control their worldview without their consent, through the previously mentioned manipulation strategies.When a moderator refuses to disengage, filter, silence, or defederate their own community from horrifically toxic communities, for example shitposter.club, or poa.st, that moderator is abdicating responsibility for the impact that the shitty racist sexist ideas have on shaping the worldview of their users.When there is a group of people who are vulnerable to being manipulated into taking on shitty racist ideas and ideology, and someone else claims that it is the other person's "right" to engage with those other people as they see fit, that's clearly bullshit.It's about maintaining control, and not doing things to piss off their users, to prevent themselves from losing power.Because if they cared about their users' well-being, they'd disengage from the shitty racist toxic people, and even accepting the assertion that it's true that they're free to engage with other people as they wish, blocking those shitty toxic communities doesn't take any autonomy away from the individual users because those users can move to a different instance if interacting with shitty racist people is so important to them.The process of shitposting back and forth is the process of establishing a mutual understanding of reality, either of trying to establish a mutual understanding of what the in-group believes, or trying to establish a mutual understanding of what the out-group believes.It's easy for groups who are un-self-aware and locked in this dynamic to be directed towards demonizing outgroups. All it takes is for someone of the outgroup to say something that intrudes on their mutually asserted reality, or for them to be convinced that someone else said something that intrudes on their mutually asserted reality.The point where this turns into a flame war, is where multiple groups who are prone to falling into these patterns of engagement become convinced that the other has said something or believes something which is irreconcilable with their own worldview. If someone else's worldview is irreconcilable with your own, that makes the other person a threat to be attacked and defended against.So, what of mastodon queer shitposter culture in particular?I consider this community and mindset to be a reaction to a lot of socially-induced trauma, around failing to communicate, to be understood, and in being accused of being a bad person, and feeling like a bad person so much as a result of external factors.These people, having been pushed out of their communities over and over again for their identity, for other people not understanding them, now establish for themselves a space to share with other people, who understand this shared trauma, and who have this shared mode of engaging with other people, who understand this shared trauma.They bounce shitposts back and forth at each other and build a mutual understanding of the world through this exchange of ideas.Then, if/when this shared understanding of the world, of how to use language, diverges from what other people think is acceptable, and someone in the out-group points out how the way they engage with other people is hurtful or harmful or perpetuates harmful ideas to people outside the in-group, this itself can be very triggering.After a lifetime of being accused of being bad for who they are, of other people interpreting things that they're saying as bad, of failing to be understood, they think that they've finally established a place where they're free of that, and yet it returns once again.They've now formed an entire identity around saying things that they don't mean, indirect language, and being understood in what they actually mean through a shared understanding of interfacing with each other feels good, because it feels good to be part of a community.A lot of this is taking on a rejection of sincere expression of intent and language, in favor of a cynical one, where no one says what they mean, the actual intent of the meaning of the members of the in-group is a shared secret, in order to protect themselves against the hurt and pain of not being understood. They reject sincere expression, and say things that they don't mean, to ensure that, if someone else doesn't understand what they mean, it's because it's intentional, and if someone else does understand what they mean, it's because they're a trusted member of their community.And then being challenged to say what they actually mean, that feels bad. It feels like a rejection of their identity.These are people who are building up their own language, which is intentionally obtuse and opaque to outsiders. These are people who are linguistically isolating themselves in order to defend themselves against the pain of being isolated against their will.These are not people who are unreachable. These are people who have been hurt by society, who have been excluded and alienated from communities. We're all a bunch of traumatized children, trying to sort through a world which is constantly contradictory and painful. With this in mind, trying to inoculate one's self against that pain and confusion, by claiming ownership of it, makes a certain kind of sense.Understand the individual, and you can understand how to reach them.We're all just people, trying to protect ourselves from trauma.Please be nicer. There's a scared child inside all of us.unrelated: This is what the hackers.town character limit looks like.
(DIR) Post #ANDEu0J580cZM6dKZE by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-04T06:05:41Z
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I'm calling out @onan @eris
(DIR) Post #ANDEu1U6kV2F0aneOO by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-04T06:15:07Z
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Ultimately, when shitposters get really mad, they probably aren't even engaging with whatever it is they're being accused of, or feel like they're being accused of. At that point, they're not fighting against what the other person is actually saying, they're fighting against what they think the other person is saying. We all do this to greater or lesser degrees when we're upset.What they're actually afraid of is losing their community, either from being Canceled, or from the community falling apart, or from someone central to the community being ostracized, causing the community to fall apart.They're afraid that the way that they've finally found to meet one of their basic human needs, social connection and mutual understanding within a community, is under threat.Understand that when you're directing vitriol at other people for things that they've said, you're weakening your own message, and the primary message that is going to be received is "you're bad and should feel bad" and this is interpreted, cognitively, as an attack, equivalent to a physical attack in perception, to be defended against.Step back, reassess. If someone is interpreting something you're saying as an attack, the intent of your message isn't getting through.Assess. Understand. Redirect. Re-engage.But don't try the same thing over and over.By doing that, you're going to drive the subject to dig in deeper in their beliefs, to shield themselves from the pain .You're not going to make the world a better place by making someone else's life worse.
(DIR) Post #ANGtX2zeG77fr8Uca0 by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-06T00:35:16Z
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ApLNOgBsQo
(DIR) Post #ANHckktepn4hiobLtY by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-06T00:32:23Z
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The core of my philosophy comes down to a very simple idea; that individuals can be reasoned with.This idea seems to make people very upset.A null hypothesis is where you take an idea, find its logical negation, and work through this idea logically to find its contradiction. If you can prove or at least argue that the null hypothesis doesn't make sense, you have a pretty good argument for the validity of the base hypothesis.alright, so I'm going to take the null hypothesis of "individuals can be reasoned with" which is "individuals can't be reasoned with"let's assume that this is true. If individuals can't be reasoned with, then what is the purpose of a community, of a society? Well, if a person who is a danger can't be reasoned with, to convince them to stop being a danger, then the reasonable solution is to use violence and force to negate their ability to be a danger.So then, the purpose of a community or society is to defend against enemies, and protect individuals within the community from harm.We operate from this assumption, ourselves assuming that people outside the community are unreasonable, and if they determine that the members within the community are a danger, they cannot be reasoned with to be convinced otherwise.If other individuals and communities who become convinced our own community is a danger, and they cannot be reasoned with, then the only reasonable response is to defend and counterattack this other community as If the other community knows this, then it makes no sense for them to do anything other than to attack our own community, because if we take it as a given that individuals can't be reasoned with, and our own community is perceived as a threat to another community, then what other recourse would that other community have to resolve any problem than to attack ours?It's a tautology. We're under attack, so we have to defend ourselves with force and violence because our enemies can't be reasoned with, because they don't think we can be reasoned with, so they see no choice other than to attack us for whatever reason they think we're a threat to them.Look around and consider; this sure does sound a lot like how our society already operates, doesn't it?Our society fucking sucks. This way of engaging with other people doesn't fucking work.If it doesn't work.If people can be reasoned with? then maybe we can engage with other people like they can be reasoned with, and maybe eventually they'll believe that we can be reasoned with.I'm tired of fighting.I'd rather talk.
(DIR) Post #ANJZvJPnPuZZvhvVIW by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-07T08:02:54Z
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@alrs what if amateur radio through wires.
(DIR) Post #ANLTIcSoRwyGJ0QLmy by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-08T05:46:50Z
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this is not what a healthy society looks like.This is what a collapsing society looks like.I push back against the void.Join me.
(DIR) Post #ANNjRPvWQ01HbzzP2O by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-06T21:59:16Z
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any of us could, at any moment, stop and walk away.From the poorest of the poor, to the worst of the ruling class.There are different things holding people back from doing this, but that doesn't change the fact that, at the most basic level and for most people, it's a possibility.Accept that it's a possibility, and think of the things you're doing as a choice in contrast to this possibility.What makes living your current life better than walking into the woods?
(DIR) Post #ANNjRkTE2OrZKJubLc by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-06T23:33:01Z
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@woozle true. It's a good exercise to remind people that all the things that we rely on in society aren't necessarily only accessible via capitalism. Taken individually, all of those things are solvable problems.It then comes down to solving those problems.
(DIR) Post #ANTmuzlp82hIYyFkHY by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-12T02:33:41Z
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The toughest wall I constantly slam my face against is a toxic culturally ingrained idea of self-reliance.Having a job and a car doesn't make you self-reliant. It makes you codependent with capitalism.Don't fucking fool yourself.
(DIR) Post #ANc4Bv5TRKIn86bKc4 by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-16T05:39:26Z
2 likes, 1 repeats
I ordered a small flashlight with a really "warm" (orange-ish) color temperature to it, with the specific purpose of being a nice small bedside flashlight to use as a nighttime light. The way that I plan/expect to use it is mostly in the "candle" mode, where it gently flickers like a candle.It doesn't stand on its tail very well because it's just a little oddly shaped so I've been contemplating different ways to get it to stand on its own.I think the one that I'm going to go for is so fucking silly that I definitely have to go for it.I want to get a brass candlestick holder, and figure out a way to mount it. It would be the best thing. Get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, in a nightgown with my weird LED candle in an old-timey candlestick holder.
(DIR) Post #ANc4BvbjVO6ek9h5tY by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-16T05:54:57Z
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Now I'm stuck between "buy an actual brass candlestick holder on ebay" and "3d print a flashlight holder that looks like a brass candlestick holder"I'm not sure which one would be more bonkers for the aesthetic.
(DIR) Post #ANc4koddPPqPGQDeeu by Anarkat@hackers.town
2022-09-16T06:13:18Z
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@cy too much work for a brass candlestick holder that looks like it was 3d printed.If that's the direction I'm going, why not a brass model of a 3D printed gundam? Maybe for big laffs, a flashlight holder that's a brass model of a molotov.