Even on reddit, there's no escaping Basil vs Haus discourse.
The funniest part, to me, is that Haus implicitly agreed with Stonetoss about voter ID being good. Then got mad when someone pointed this out.
> Haus implicitly agreed with Stonetoss about voter ID being good.
That's the worst part IMO. Being incorrect is counterproductive! If you can steel up your argument, you can and should do it. If a link is only as strong as the weakest chain, then you better make damn sure you have strong chains.
Haus seems more concerned about *appearing* to oppose Stonetoss than *actually* opposing Stonetoss.
I mean Stonetoss seems to be an objectively bad person, at least for signaling purposes if he says the sky is blue, most people should argue against him.
I don't know the full context, but I'm guessing they wanted to make it clear they detest Stonetoss even if they agree on voter ID. Stonetoss is a neo-Nazi comic maker but desire for voter ID is basically a center-right position.
Speaking as not-an-American, it is absolute insanity that one is able to vote without proof of their identity or citizenship, because that just seems like it would make votes extremely easy to fake (unless, of course, this particular vulnerability is by design)
I have not seen any counterargument to not requiring voter ID that would not also be solved by "just make getting an ID easier"
The general counterargument is simply that it's not necessary. Voter fraud from people voting multiple times is easy to catch and what exactly is the threat model one is dealing with otherwise? It hasn't been a problem in 100+ years in places like Australia. It's basically a non-issue in the way that many characterise it as a problem.
To register to vote in the United States you have to prove you are a citizen using either a state-issued ID or your unique federally issued Social Security number. Once you are registered to vote you are given a voter registration certificate that identifies you and gives you a unique voter ID.
The controversy around voter-ID laws is about presenting further identification at the polling location and which forms of ID are considered "acceptable" at that polling location. Usually these secondary identification laws are more strict than voter registration requirements and tend to disenfranchise certain populations more than others.
Most people who are interested in stricter voter identification laws are not interested in making getting an ID easier. Most people who are interested in making it easier to get an ID are not interested in stricter voter identification laws.
stonetoss's author has also penned explicit nazi material (like, 'doing the hitler salute' explicit) that isn't stonetoss. And plenty of stonetoss comics dabble in stuff like holocaust denial. He's not 'just a libertarian'.
> Bureaucratic procedural inaccuracy
Oh man, I'm going to have to remember this one. What is this even supposed to mean? I guess they think of facts not as something that might actually impact your conclusion, but rather a form you fill out when trying to convince people? Like how an RPG needs some sort of progression system, so the developers just sort of stick one in half-heartedly? So in the case of radical politics, the conclusion is already reached, but people might expect some sort of facts to buttress it, so you lazily throw some stuff in a form. It's just a "bureaucratic procedural error" because it doesn't actually matter. Your form doesn't need to have *correct* information; it just has to be filled out.
It is my impression that, much like freedom of speech, people tend to care about arguments when they can't simply rely on overwhelming numbers.
At the end of the day, it often makes little difference if after an exchange 80% of the people agree with you because they are on your side instead of because of you being right. I think anyone who has gotten downvoted for posting objectively true stuff on Reddit can attest to that.
Hah I'm seeing that in action right now.
/r/neoliberal has been really really upset to learn that Stalin was expecting the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to likely be broken from the start. You can see them explain this in the AskHistorians thread.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4oq3fz/why_did_stalin_not_believe_hitler_would_betray/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=neoliberal&utm_content=t1_la2b6ea
>Stalin did not expect Hitler to keep to the agreement indefinitely, what was a surprise (to him at least) was that Hitler attacked so soon, while the British were still in the fight. The Germans were trying to avoid a two-front war, hence the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in the first place. From Stalin's perspective, it appears that it would then be somewhat implausible for the Germans to launch their attack on the USSR while their flank was exposed to the British. What was not counted on in his thinking here is the idea that it was not truly going to be a two-front war, assuming the Germans could force capitulation within the first year.
I had no idea about that until the drama had started with someone else but I'm apparently one of the very few people willing to go "Huh, interesting. I guess Stalin was slightly more intelligent/less friendly with Hitler than my previous belief that they made the pact thinking it would hold." So of course just like Basil is a Nazi, I'm apparently a Stalin apologist along with the few others willing to update their beliefs despite repeatedly saying multiple times that Stalin was a terrible guy who committed multiple atrocities just because I believed historians.
At the very least though, [I did get someone to admit that they weren't even bothering to listen](https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1dn7cbe/discussion_thread/la2z4y9/?context=3&utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=neoliberal&utm_content=t1_la396bp) so that's a plus, proving arguments are soldiers right there.
> /r/neoliberal has been really really upset to learn that Stalin was expecting the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to likely be broken from the start. You can see them explain this in the AskHistorians thread.
Looks like one guy is really upset not the whole sub? You're getting upvotes not downvotes
It was multiple people (but I did block a few, like the one dude who just straight up said he didn't bother listening) and a lot more negatively received early on. I kinda managed to flip that around though by harping on the point over and over again that historians back my claims up.
I also admittedly did not respond well to it. I always thought much better of NL, not as much as here but better than the rest of Reddit. To me I've always felt really passionate that telling falsehoods about someone or something downplays their awfulness.
I don't remember if it was an SSC or lesswrong post but the idea that comparisons draw the two groups closer is something I've taken to heart, so I really despise the casual usage of calling people Nazis (as we see with Haus) or tankie or whatever other awful things because I feel it downplays the actual horrors.
>I'm apparently a Stalin apologist
That's another thing. If your position opposes the mainstream in any way you will get berated for that itself.
Hitler is most probably the most famous vegetarian known today. Good luck with that idea though.
>That's another thing. If your position opposes the mainstream in any way you will get berated for that itself.
That's the thing, my position doesn't oppose the mainstream. It's really well accepted among historians that Stalin was not friendly with Hitler and expected the pact to fall through.
It's literally just terminally online redditors angry that Stalin wasn't maximally evil in every imaginable form.
Especially with people who have a limited grasp of history, it’s entertaining to counter the “any bad person must be 100% irredeemably bad in all ways and nuance is satan worship” worldview by inquiring how they feel about the guy who killed Hitler.
I think you are misunderstanding what is happening in that neoliberal thread.
It isn't "good news" that Stalin was slightly less shitty. That's just a piece of historical analysis. There cannot be any "news" about the past, it has already happened.
It is "good news" that income inequality is not as extreme as people think. That means the present is better than we thought and there is more hope.for the future.
When you give "good news" about the past without showing how it makes the present or the future better it just seems like you are trying to defend Stalin.
No, it is good news to hear when the alternative belief was "Stalin was allies with Hitler". Certainly in a world of being friendly allies with Hitler vs not being friendly allies with Hitler, the second one is better right?
I don't think it should be so controversial to say "Being friends with Hitler is worse than not"
This was my initial read of the situation too, but I think we can go deeper. Lots of people are saying that they prefer the wall-of-text version of the Haus comic. Maybe we should believe them?
My guess is that lots of people in that specific subculture are very uncomfortable leaving moral ambiguity uncommented on. To some extent this is an adaptation to cancel culture. Your fiction can’t be misrepresented if you explicitly write out the thoughts and motivations of all the characters. What are we to make of lemonade man? Does he understand the magnitude of the sacrifice we all must make given the impossibility of ethical consumption under capitalism, or is he simply dumbfounded at the limitless ignorance of the masses?
> My guess is that lots of people in that specific subculture are very uncomfortable leaving moral ambiguity uncommented on.
I think such people flourish in all political subcultures, though perhaps mostly on the extreme ends of the spectrum. And of course there exist exact opposites to Basil and Haus.
In the realm of political cartoons, the archetypal right-wing over-labeler is surely [Ben Garrison](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fd5bcphcod0la1.jpg), while on the left you have, for example, [Martin Rowson](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2019/apr/01/martin-rowson-next-steps-brexit-escher-cartoon), who is probably as leftist as it gets in mainstream UK newspapers. While Rowson does use text occasionally, you probably won't understand half of his references unless you follow him or the topic at hand quite closely.
> Lots of people are saying that they prefer the wall-of-text version of the Haus comic. Maybe we should believe them?
Agree.
It could also be a stylistic preference. If they just genuinely to prefer have more words that's cool too. But it still doesn't change how bad the response was to Basil.
A good conversation would be "I disagree with you, I think having this many words is still a perfectly fine webcomic. In fact, I prefer more words over Stonetoss's limited word usage".
A bad conversation is well, what we got. "How dare you fucking defend a Nazi? You're a Nazi too. You racist hateful fash lover you"
> Lots of people are saying that they prefer the wall-of-text version of the Haus comic
I count myself among one of them and I'm not even left-leaning
Granted that perhaps if I had saw a less wordy version ("wordy" being a gross overexaggeration) first I would have preferred it, but there's nothing wrong with Haus' original
My take on it is that the explicitness adds to the humour instead of detracting from it which of course is subjective
This seems likely. HoD's intended audience is simply other leftists, where wordiness is the norm. She's not trying to break out of her political bubble, while Basil thinks the comic should appeal to a broader audience to make it more effective as propaganda. So I can understand Haus' annoyance, being told she is bad at something she doesn't even intend.
Stonetoss by contrast is more of a propagandist. He's trying to appeal to normie conservatives and moderates to pull them towards the right, which is why he's better at it.
Yeah I totally understand why Haus would be annoyed. Doesn't make the response acceptable, a simple "I disagree, I think having more words is perfectly fine" expresses the same thing without calling your opponent a Nazi.
Yes, I think a lot of controversy boils down to effective propaganda typically has to sacrifice some "purity", because it has to talk to the center (roughly) and invite a lot of different people into a big tent, which pisses people off for whom purity is the most important aspect, who mostly want to preach to the choir, because it is their social life or because they treat the whole thing as a statement about themselves and really do not want to be allies to people they see in some sense immoral.
I love how I read this post today, and just tonight I watched the "Dot and Bubble" episode of the new Doctor Who which (at the end) used silence as a cudgel to impact the audience.
Fantastic episode, but it would have been nothing but a wordy liberal rant at the end if it was Chibnell's Thirteenth Doctor instead of Russell T Davies' Fifteenth Doctor.
I believe some of them (and think some are just being reflexively defensive). But of the ones I believe, I just think they have bad taste.
A ton of anime has copious exposition and makes what could be implicit explicit, and a lot of people like that sort of anime, but I just think they either aren't very discerning art consumers or haven't experienced enough of the alternative to know better. (Or fall in my camp and don't actually like it but merely put up with it because they enjoy the rest.)
Not an anime but I can give you a movie example, Bladerunner. One of the alternate cuts has a voice over narration track by Deckard which completely ruins the ambience and mystique of the movie
I agree they have bad taste, but I also think bad taste has its roots in something deeper in the subconscious. I also feel this way about voice over narration in media - sometimes it’s necessary but most of the time it’s a product of laziness and lack of ingenuity
Surprised that Jeremiah didn't mention Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset which is all about arguments as soldiers who fight on the terrain vs arguments as scouts who accurately map the terrain.
You'd think being shown a good argument on how pro-Nazi comics are more effective than anti-Nazi comics would light a fire under the anti-Nazi folks to do better. But here we are.
I was so confused about the discourse that everyone was talking about but I never saw, so this post was the perfect puzzle piece missing from my Twitter experience over the past few days. Also adds nicely to the book I recently read "the scout mindset". It's posts like these that, although simple, make me feel like I found my corner of the internet.
Ok few comments.
Basil doesn't walk away with a completely clean slate. He was acting like his preference for less words was more objective than it actually is and it's quite possible that some people, for whatever weird reason, love it when comics are long. That was a bit rude the way he worded his point and "fixing" another's person comic with your subjective preferences is something you should try to avoid. I realize the irony in saying this when whether or not such a thing is rude is also subjective.
But Haus? She fucked up, she fucked up a lot. It was an incredibly rude way to respond to someone offering well intentioned (even if not done well) feedback. I understand *why* she felt the way she did, that doesn't excuse her basically calling Basil stupid and then escalating it into saying he and Armand were defending Stonetoss.
But I think the biggest issue here is the internet. Basil and Haus were rude to each other, one person being way more rude than the other but people are rude all the time. The issue is that this isn't just their conversation, it's the conversation of hundreds of thousands of people. Haus and Basil aren't just dealing with each other, they're dealing with ShitEater92 and xxHiddenNazixx at the same time.
What could be hashed out calmly between them stays heated, not just because people have egos and can't accept being seen as defeated but also because they're all being insulted over and over!! That's the nature of internet discourse. If a discussion is large enough, then there's always more than enough assholes on both sides to make everyone feel awful.
And when ShitEater92 is an actual neonazi and xxHiddenNazixx is also a Nazi but pretends he isn't, it's a bit easier to associate the rest with being secret Nazis too. Haus sees Armand come in and her immediate thought is "Ugh, of course it's just another hiddennazi trying to correct some unimportant mistake just so he can say the Nazis are right again". Her thought is inaccurate, but it's been built up from dealing with the multiple hiddennazis!
And the biggest issue with this mistake is that it's self reinforcing. "That person is actually a neonazi just trying to hide it" becomes further evidence for the next person being a secret neonazi.
So two points summed up
1. It's really difficult to have a conversation with person A when person B keeps insulting you. You can know logically they are different people, but it's still hard to keep calm. Twitter is just a bad platform thanks to this, Basil and Haus are both unfortunately subject to that.
2. The existence of bad actors seeds distrust that leads to paranoia. Haus sees secret Nazis everywhere at least in part because she, like anyone else on the internet, has seen actual secret Nazis.
I don't know too much about the specific people involved but if Basil's primary objective really was giving well-intentioned advice he would have sent it through a DM
The fact that he chose to address it publicly in a reply/quote suggests that a secondary objective is to gain attention (i.e. "clout")
is there a non-soldier argument about why stonetoss is a nazi? whether they mean nazi in the historical sense or just as generic badperson
just seems like a sort of shibboleth people are throwing around to show their piety in a comment thread for a post on why doing that is not so good.
[The post doxxing Stonetoss makes a convincing case that he was also the author of RedPanels, a comic that ended with a literal Nazi salute.](https://accollective.noblogs.org/post/2024/03/12/stonetoss-redpanels/) Nazi gets used pretty loosely sometimes, but I think he qualifies.
Even if Stonetoss weren't the creator of RedPanels, there are plenty of explicitly Nazi-sympathizing Stonetoss comics. And many of his (unironic) tweets make it even more obvious. It's just that in recent years he's tried to be more low-key with the super far-right stuff in the comics.
Yeah there's a spectrum from [Jreg memes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxRcIGqZo7E) to Houthi's to Azov Batallion. But hard to know where on that line stonetoss is.
Ok, I couldn't find a good one for the "least nazi thing called nazi" so I just went with the Jreg meme "Nazi is a shorthand for "people we don't like" Obviously his persona in that video is of an actual Nazi but he's just memeing.
The Houthi's have been [literally using nazi salutes unironically](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luBayvKlurQ) (bad source but searching "houthi nazi salute" gives you a lot of... not what I searched for) and Azov Battalion are actual nazis
I would draw the line at the typically conservative respect for law and order vs. lawless violence. And the name of the webcomic comes from one of the first drawing which was about teaching a child to throw rocks at people marching at Pride.
You know back when mass democracy became a thing, very serious people from Condorcet to Hegel worried that people will not vote. If your vote is one in many millions, its expected utility is very low. You can do more for your country picking up garbage in a forest for 1 hour than by voting.
Well it turned out people do vote. Why? I think because they treat their politics as identity. It says something about them. And if they would not invest the effort into voting, it would make them a "fake progressive" or "fake conservative".
So the central idea is that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. Otherwise people wouldn't even bother to vote.
There are two ways, for everybody participating, politicians, media, influencers. Either you build a big tent by trying to not piss off anyone. Or you mobilize loyal support on your side by absolutely pissing people off on the other side, so that they will behave badly, which then pisses your folks off. In the recent years, it was largely the second, but I do feel a hint of a New Centrism coming. I think people are getting tired of being angry.
So i think Haus definitely overreacted here and did not handle the situation well, but I also think Basil's initial posts were kind of rude. For the record I actually do agree with Basil's subjective judgement, i.e. I do think that particular comic works better with less text and that Haus' comics tend to be a bit top wordy for my taste. But the way Basil phrased their critcism ("on my knees begging leftist comic artists to stop adding unnecessary text holy shit"), coupled with the edited version of Haus' comic with big red X's, is pretty inflammatory and I totally understand why it made Haus upset. (Really I think the editing was the most egregious part; as an artist I think we tend to be pretty protective of our work, sometimes overly so, but someone presenting an unsolicited "improvement" of our work comes across as very disrespectful.)
Anyways, this is all to say that of course we ought to try and stay calm and rational in an argument like this, but that it's easy to say that when you're not the one whose emotions are being provoked.
But... why use Jean Baudrillard's terminology and use it completely differently? Original:
Lvl 1: telling the truth, the real.
Lvl 2: telling the opposite of truth, the unreal, lying, that is, one could get truth from inverting the statement.
Lvl 3: talking about something that does not exist, so you do not get truth from inverting it. An entirely fictional creation. You get truth from saying this is just basically not a thing whatsoever. People argue how long do elves live and then you point out they don't exist in the real world.
Lvl 4: a narrative that has entirely its own rules with no sort of relationship to reality, not even non-existence, you cannot convert it to truth. This is the hyperreal.
I had not heard of this. It seems related, but also very different. The LessWrong version feels more useful to me, but this situation is perfect for confusion. I'll definitely look more into the original version
Addressing the issue of is the extra text version or minimal text version comic better, I feel they both have advantages. When the joke isn't explained, you have to think a tiny bit to get it yourself. It's generally agreed that explaining a joke makes it less funny. But also, sometimes it's nice not to have to think and have everything spelt out for you. I watch a lot of anime, and anime often has a character internally monologue to explain a joke that didn't need to be explained. In a way it makes the scene less funny, but also it lets me turn my brain off even more. Anime, and excessively text filled memes, are rarely the funniest things I experience. But they are much easier to binge than a "smarter", more artistic format that requires me to think as I experience them.
I dunno. In that particular case, the amount of thinking you have to do to get the joke from just the images is so low that actually reading the text is more effort.
I wish there were a Basil for anime. I watch a lot of anime and I can't stand all of the constant unnecessary exposition, and just generally treating the audience like they can't figure out anything for themselves. So much awkward dialogue that would never be said by real people for the sake of the audience, so many explicit things that could be implicit.
Nearly every anime. [This short video](https://youtu.be/I1XQduS6IfA?si=KldS6ykvkFS_tdHN) parodies the card game genre where a character will explain even the most basic moves.
Saiki K iirc also has a lot of explaining the scene you just watched.
I think the premise that Haus “should” make optimally memeable political comics is questionable. She’s an artist with a brand, which isn’t chiefly political memes, she doesn’t owe people anything. Furthermore Basil making his point by drawing red ❌ on the comic comes off as aggressive. Just write the criticism. If house would have calmly responded with only those two points she’d have won the discussion immediately imo, but here we are.
Yeah I agree. Basil was really rude at the start and Haus responded even worse and then the internet did its magic and made everything a clusterfuck.
"Fixing" someone's comics with your subjective opinions without asking them first is just so impolite. But also calling someone a Nazi defender is also impolite.
Politics completely aside, a lot of people (including myself) feel that comics and art in general are funnier/better/higher-quality when the audience isn't beaten over the head with an explanation of what's going on from moment to moment. The best art and best jokes heavily rely on the implicit. You "get" a joke - you aren't "fed" a joke.
In general I agree but in this specific case the wordy version works better with Haus style and previous stuff. But Basils criticism was about memetic effectiveness
Even on reddit, there's no escaping Basil vs Haus discourse. The funniest part, to me, is that Haus implicitly agreed with Stonetoss about voter ID being good. Then got mad when someone pointed this out.
> Haus implicitly agreed with Stonetoss about voter ID being good. That's the worst part IMO. Being incorrect is counterproductive! If you can steel up your argument, you can and should do it. If a link is only as strong as the weakest chain, then you better make damn sure you have strong chains. Haus seems more concerned about *appearing* to oppose Stonetoss than *actually* opposing Stonetoss.
> If a link is only as strong as the weakest chain, I think you got that one backwards.
I mean Stonetoss seems to be an objectively bad person, at least for signaling purposes if he says the sky is blue, most people should argue against him.
I, too, love seeing cognitive dissonance in action
I don't know the full context, but I'm guessing they wanted to make it clear they detest Stonetoss even if they agree on voter ID. Stonetoss is a neo-Nazi comic maker but desire for voter ID is basically a center-right position.
Speaking as not-an-American, it is absolute insanity that one is able to vote without proof of their identity or citizenship, because that just seems like it would make votes extremely easy to fake (unless, of course, this particular vulnerability is by design) I have not seen any counterargument to not requiring voter ID that would not also be solved by "just make getting an ID easier"
The general counterargument is simply that it's not necessary. Voter fraud from people voting multiple times is easy to catch and what exactly is the threat model one is dealing with otherwise? It hasn't been a problem in 100+ years in places like Australia. It's basically a non-issue in the way that many characterise it as a problem.
There are about 20 million non-citizens living in the US. The ratio of non-citizens to voters in Australia is about 1/10th of that.
How do you know it’s not a problem?
To register to vote in the United States you have to prove you are a citizen using either a state-issued ID or your unique federally issued Social Security number. Once you are registered to vote you are given a voter registration certificate that identifies you and gives you a unique voter ID. The controversy around voter-ID laws is about presenting further identification at the polling location and which forms of ID are considered "acceptable" at that polling location. Usually these secondary identification laws are more strict than voter registration requirements and tend to disenfranchise certain populations more than others. Most people who are interested in stricter voter identification laws are not interested in making getting an ID easier. Most people who are interested in making it easier to get an ID are not interested in stricter voter identification laws.
Stonetoss is a libertarian. He uses as few words as possible, and that leads people with poor senses of humor to read jokes about Nazis as advocacy.
stonetoss's author has also penned explicit nazi material (like, 'doing the hitler salute' explicit) that isn't stonetoss. And plenty of stonetoss comics dabble in stuff like holocaust denial. He's not 'just a libertarian'.
> Bureaucratic procedural inaccuracy Oh man, I'm going to have to remember this one. What is this even supposed to mean? I guess they think of facts not as something that might actually impact your conclusion, but rather a form you fill out when trying to convince people? Like how an RPG needs some sort of progression system, so the developers just sort of stick one in half-heartedly? So in the case of radical politics, the conclusion is already reached, but people might expect some sort of facts to buttress it, so you lazily throw some stuff in a form. It's just a "bureaucratic procedural error" because it doesn't actually matter. Your form doesn't need to have *correct* information; it just has to be filled out.
Nice conceptualization. Feels Scott-esque.
It is my impression that, much like freedom of speech, people tend to care about arguments when they can't simply rely on overwhelming numbers. At the end of the day, it often makes little difference if after an exchange 80% of the people agree with you because they are on your side instead of because of you being right. I think anyone who has gotten downvoted for posting objectively true stuff on Reddit can attest to that.
Hah I'm seeing that in action right now. /r/neoliberal has been really really upset to learn that Stalin was expecting the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to likely be broken from the start. You can see them explain this in the AskHistorians thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4oq3fz/why_did_stalin_not_believe_hitler_would_betray/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=neoliberal&utm_content=t1_la2b6ea >Stalin did not expect Hitler to keep to the agreement indefinitely, what was a surprise (to him at least) was that Hitler attacked so soon, while the British were still in the fight. The Germans were trying to avoid a two-front war, hence the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in the first place. From Stalin's perspective, it appears that it would then be somewhat implausible for the Germans to launch their attack on the USSR while their flank was exposed to the British. What was not counted on in his thinking here is the idea that it was not truly going to be a two-front war, assuming the Germans could force capitulation within the first year. I had no idea about that until the drama had started with someone else but I'm apparently one of the very few people willing to go "Huh, interesting. I guess Stalin was slightly more intelligent/less friendly with Hitler than my previous belief that they made the pact thinking it would hold." So of course just like Basil is a Nazi, I'm apparently a Stalin apologist along with the few others willing to update their beliefs despite repeatedly saying multiple times that Stalin was a terrible guy who committed multiple atrocities just because I believed historians. At the very least though, [I did get someone to admit that they weren't even bothering to listen](https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1dn7cbe/discussion_thread/la2z4y9/?context=3&utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=neoliberal&utm_content=t1_la396bp) so that's a plus, proving arguments are soldiers right there.
Your comments have positive scores and the two people responding to you uncharitably have negative scores. How is r/neoliberal “really upset”?
Can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this.
Because it's been almost 4-5 hours since I made the post and the votes have fluctuated far more in my favor.
It sounds like you jumped the gun by leveling that accusation then?
I was describing the situation as it appeared at the moment and as more votes have come in (and I convinced more people) the tides turned.
I've seen this happen so many times in reddit meta-discourse. After the fact it looks like unnecessary complaining from the outside.
> /r/neoliberal has been really really upset to learn that Stalin was expecting the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to likely be broken from the start. You can see them explain this in the AskHistorians thread. Looks like one guy is really upset not the whole sub? You're getting upvotes not downvotes
It was multiple people (but I did block a few, like the one dude who just straight up said he didn't bother listening) and a lot more negatively received early on. I kinda managed to flip that around though by harping on the point over and over again that historians back my claims up. I also admittedly did not respond well to it. I always thought much better of NL, not as much as here but better than the rest of Reddit. To me I've always felt really passionate that telling falsehoods about someone or something downplays their awfulness. I don't remember if it was an SSC or lesswrong post but the idea that comparisons draw the two groups closer is something I've taken to heart, so I really despise the casual usage of calling people Nazis (as we see with Haus) or tankie or whatever other awful things because I feel it downplays the actual horrors.
>I'm apparently a Stalin apologist That's another thing. If your position opposes the mainstream in any way you will get berated for that itself. Hitler is most probably the most famous vegetarian known today. Good luck with that idea though.
>That's another thing. If your position opposes the mainstream in any way you will get berated for that itself. That's the thing, my position doesn't oppose the mainstream. It's really well accepted among historians that Stalin was not friendly with Hitler and expected the pact to fall through. It's literally just terminally online redditors angry that Stalin wasn't maximally evil in every imaginable form.
Especially with people who have a limited grasp of history, it’s entertaining to counter the “any bad person must be 100% irredeemably bad in all ways and nuance is satan worship” worldview by inquiring how they feel about the guy who killed Hitler.
Because veganism is so antiethical to what Hitler stood for. People pointing that out aren't doing for good faith reasons.
I think you are misunderstanding what is happening in that neoliberal thread. It isn't "good news" that Stalin was slightly less shitty. That's just a piece of historical analysis. There cannot be any "news" about the past, it has already happened. It is "good news" that income inequality is not as extreme as people think. That means the present is better than we thought and there is more hope.for the future. When you give "good news" about the past without showing how it makes the present or the future better it just seems like you are trying to defend Stalin.
No, it is good news to hear when the alternative belief was "Stalin was allies with Hitler". Certainly in a world of being friendly allies with Hitler vs not being friendly allies with Hitler, the second one is better right? I don't think it should be so controversial to say "Being friends with Hitler is worse than not"
This was entertaining, and I enjoy how it confirms my decision to stay out of shit like that.
This was my initial read of the situation too, but I think we can go deeper. Lots of people are saying that they prefer the wall-of-text version of the Haus comic. Maybe we should believe them? My guess is that lots of people in that specific subculture are very uncomfortable leaving moral ambiguity uncommented on. To some extent this is an adaptation to cancel culture. Your fiction can’t be misrepresented if you explicitly write out the thoughts and motivations of all the characters. What are we to make of lemonade man? Does he understand the magnitude of the sacrifice we all must make given the impossibility of ethical consumption under capitalism, or is he simply dumbfounded at the limitless ignorance of the masses?
> My guess is that lots of people in that specific subculture are very uncomfortable leaving moral ambiguity uncommented on. I think such people flourish in all political subcultures, though perhaps mostly on the extreme ends of the spectrum. And of course there exist exact opposites to Basil and Haus. In the realm of political cartoons, the archetypal right-wing over-labeler is surely [Ben Garrison](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fd5bcphcod0la1.jpg), while on the left you have, for example, [Martin Rowson](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2019/apr/01/martin-rowson-next-steps-brexit-escher-cartoon), who is probably as leftist as it gets in mainstream UK newspapers. While Rowson does use text occasionally, you probably won't understand half of his references unless you follow him or the topic at hand quite closely.
> Lots of people are saying that they prefer the wall-of-text version of the Haus comic. Maybe we should believe them? Agree. It could also be a stylistic preference. If they just genuinely to prefer have more words that's cool too. But it still doesn't change how bad the response was to Basil. A good conversation would be "I disagree with you, I think having this many words is still a perfectly fine webcomic. In fact, I prefer more words over Stonetoss's limited word usage". A bad conversation is well, what we got. "How dare you fucking defend a Nazi? You're a Nazi too. You racist hateful fash lover you"
> Lots of people are saying that they prefer the wall-of-text version of the Haus comic I count myself among one of them and I'm not even left-leaning Granted that perhaps if I had saw a less wordy version ("wordy" being a gross overexaggeration) first I would have preferred it, but there's nothing wrong with Haus' original My take on it is that the explicitness adds to the humour instead of detracting from it which of course is subjective
This seems likely. HoD's intended audience is simply other leftists, where wordiness is the norm. She's not trying to break out of her political bubble, while Basil thinks the comic should appeal to a broader audience to make it more effective as propaganda. So I can understand Haus' annoyance, being told she is bad at something she doesn't even intend. Stonetoss by contrast is more of a propagandist. He's trying to appeal to normie conservatives and moderates to pull them towards the right, which is why he's better at it.
Yeah I totally understand why Haus would be annoyed. Doesn't make the response acceptable, a simple "I disagree, I think having more words is perfectly fine" expresses the same thing without calling your opponent a Nazi.
Yeah, she overreacted on Twitter. I've overreacted on Twitter too so I have some sympathy for this human failing.
Yes, I think a lot of controversy boils down to effective propaganda typically has to sacrifice some "purity", because it has to talk to the center (roughly) and invite a lot of different people into a big tent, which pisses people off for whom purity is the most important aspect, who mostly want to preach to the choir, because it is their social life or because they treat the whole thing as a statement about themselves and really do not want to be allies to people they see in some sense immoral.
I think there's also a matter of art quality. Higher quality art is more effective propaganda, but it's also just... better.
I love how I read this post today, and just tonight I watched the "Dot and Bubble" episode of the new Doctor Who which (at the end) used silence as a cudgel to impact the audience. Fantastic episode, but it would have been nothing but a wordy liberal rant at the end if it was Chibnell's Thirteenth Doctor instead of Russell T Davies' Fifteenth Doctor.
I believe some of them (and think some are just being reflexively defensive). But of the ones I believe, I just think they have bad taste. A ton of anime has copious exposition and makes what could be implicit explicit, and a lot of people like that sort of anime, but I just think they either aren't very discerning art consumers or haven't experienced enough of the alternative to know better. (Or fall in my camp and don't actually like it but merely put up with it because they enjoy the rest.)
Can you give any examples of anime like that?
Not an anime but I can give you a movie example, Bladerunner. One of the alternate cuts has a voice over narration track by Deckard which completely ruins the ambience and mystique of the movie
I agree they have bad taste, but I also think bad taste has its roots in something deeper in the subconscious. I also feel this way about voice over narration in media - sometimes it’s necessary but most of the time it’s a product of laziness and lack of ingenuity
Surprised that Jeremiah didn't mention Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset which is all about arguments as soldiers who fight on the terrain vs arguments as scouts who accurately map the terrain.
I probably should have stuck that in somewhere, given that I've hosted her on a podcast before!
You'd think being shown a good argument on how pro-Nazi comics are more effective than anti-Nazi comics would light a fire under the anti-Nazi folks to do better. But here we are.
I was so confused about the discourse that everyone was talking about but I never saw, so this post was the perfect puzzle piece missing from my Twitter experience over the past few days. Also adds nicely to the book I recently read "the scout mindset". It's posts like these that, although simple, make me feel like I found my corner of the internet.
Ok few comments. Basil doesn't walk away with a completely clean slate. He was acting like his preference for less words was more objective than it actually is and it's quite possible that some people, for whatever weird reason, love it when comics are long. That was a bit rude the way he worded his point and "fixing" another's person comic with your subjective preferences is something you should try to avoid. I realize the irony in saying this when whether or not such a thing is rude is also subjective. But Haus? She fucked up, she fucked up a lot. It was an incredibly rude way to respond to someone offering well intentioned (even if not done well) feedback. I understand *why* she felt the way she did, that doesn't excuse her basically calling Basil stupid and then escalating it into saying he and Armand were defending Stonetoss. But I think the biggest issue here is the internet. Basil and Haus were rude to each other, one person being way more rude than the other but people are rude all the time. The issue is that this isn't just their conversation, it's the conversation of hundreds of thousands of people. Haus and Basil aren't just dealing with each other, they're dealing with ShitEater92 and xxHiddenNazixx at the same time. What could be hashed out calmly between them stays heated, not just because people have egos and can't accept being seen as defeated but also because they're all being insulted over and over!! That's the nature of internet discourse. If a discussion is large enough, then there's always more than enough assholes on both sides to make everyone feel awful. And when ShitEater92 is an actual neonazi and xxHiddenNazixx is also a Nazi but pretends he isn't, it's a bit easier to associate the rest with being secret Nazis too. Haus sees Armand come in and her immediate thought is "Ugh, of course it's just another hiddennazi trying to correct some unimportant mistake just so he can say the Nazis are right again". Her thought is inaccurate, but it's been built up from dealing with the multiple hiddennazis! And the biggest issue with this mistake is that it's self reinforcing. "That person is actually a neonazi just trying to hide it" becomes further evidence for the next person being a secret neonazi. So two points summed up 1. It's really difficult to have a conversation with person A when person B keeps insulting you. You can know logically they are different people, but it's still hard to keep calm. Twitter is just a bad platform thanks to this, Basil and Haus are both unfortunately subject to that. 2. The existence of bad actors seeds distrust that leads to paranoia. Haus sees secret Nazis everywhere at least in part because she, like anyone else on the internet, has seen actual secret Nazis.
I don't know too much about the specific people involved but if Basil's primary objective really was giving well-intentioned advice he would have sent it through a DM The fact that he chose to address it publicly in a reply/quote suggests that a secondary objective is to gain attention (i.e. "clout")
is there a non-soldier argument about why stonetoss is a nazi? whether they mean nazi in the historical sense or just as generic badperson just seems like a sort of shibboleth people are throwing around to show their piety in a comment thread for a post on why doing that is not so good.
[The post doxxing Stonetoss makes a convincing case that he was also the author of RedPanels, a comic that ended with a literal Nazi salute.](https://accollective.noblogs.org/post/2024/03/12/stonetoss-redpanels/) Nazi gets used pretty loosely sometimes, but I think he qualifies.
Even if Stonetoss weren't the creator of RedPanels, there are plenty of explicitly Nazi-sympathizing Stonetoss comics. And many of his (unironic) tweets make it even more obvious. It's just that in recent years he's tried to be more low-key with the super far-right stuff in the comics.
Yeah there's a spectrum from [Jreg memes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxRcIGqZo7E) to Houthi's to Azov Batallion. But hard to know where on that line stonetoss is.
Uh, Im not sure you've built that spectrum correctly
Ok, I couldn't find a good one for the "least nazi thing called nazi" so I just went with the Jreg meme "Nazi is a shorthand for "people we don't like" Obviously his persona in that video is of an actual Nazi but he's just memeing. The Houthi's have been [literally using nazi salutes unironically](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luBayvKlurQ) (bad source but searching "houthi nazi salute" gives you a lot of... not what I searched for) and Azov Battalion are actual nazis
I would draw the line at the typically conservative respect for law and order vs. lawless violence. And the name of the webcomic comes from one of the first drawing which was about teaching a child to throw rocks at people marching at Pride.
You know back when mass democracy became a thing, very serious people from Condorcet to Hegel worried that people will not vote. If your vote is one in many millions, its expected utility is very low. You can do more for your country picking up garbage in a forest for 1 hour than by voting. Well it turned out people do vote. Why? I think because they treat their politics as identity. It says something about them. And if they would not invest the effort into voting, it would make them a "fake progressive" or "fake conservative". So the central idea is that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. Otherwise people wouldn't even bother to vote. There are two ways, for everybody participating, politicians, media, influencers. Either you build a big tent by trying to not piss off anyone. Or you mobilize loyal support on your side by absolutely pissing people off on the other side, so that they will behave badly, which then pisses your folks off. In the recent years, it was largely the second, but I do feel a hint of a New Centrism coming. I think people are getting tired of being angry.
So i think Haus definitely overreacted here and did not handle the situation well, but I also think Basil's initial posts were kind of rude. For the record I actually do agree with Basil's subjective judgement, i.e. I do think that particular comic works better with less text and that Haus' comics tend to be a bit top wordy for my taste. But the way Basil phrased their critcism ("on my knees begging leftist comic artists to stop adding unnecessary text holy shit"), coupled with the edited version of Haus' comic with big red X's, is pretty inflammatory and I totally understand why it made Haus upset. (Really I think the editing was the most egregious part; as an artist I think we tend to be pretty protective of our work, sometimes overly so, but someone presenting an unsolicited "improvement" of our work comes across as very disrespectful.) Anyways, this is all to say that of course we ought to try and stay calm and rational in an argument like this, but that it's easy to say that when you're not the one whose emotions are being provoked.
This seems a perfect match for the simulacrum levels model (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/simulacrum-levels).
But... why use Jean Baudrillard's terminology and use it completely differently? Original: Lvl 1: telling the truth, the real. Lvl 2: telling the opposite of truth, the unreal, lying, that is, one could get truth from inverting the statement. Lvl 3: talking about something that does not exist, so you do not get truth from inverting it. An entirely fictional creation. You get truth from saying this is just basically not a thing whatsoever. People argue how long do elves live and then you point out they don't exist in the real world. Lvl 4: a narrative that has entirely its own rules with no sort of relationship to reality, not even non-existence, you cannot convert it to truth. This is the hyperreal.
I had not heard of this. It seems related, but also very different. The LessWrong version feels more useful to me, but this situation is perfect for confusion. I'll definitely look more into the original version
Addressing the issue of is the extra text version or minimal text version comic better, I feel they both have advantages. When the joke isn't explained, you have to think a tiny bit to get it yourself. It's generally agreed that explaining a joke makes it less funny. But also, sometimes it's nice not to have to think and have everything spelt out for you. I watch a lot of anime, and anime often has a character internally monologue to explain a joke that didn't need to be explained. In a way it makes the scene less funny, but also it lets me turn my brain off even more. Anime, and excessively text filled memes, are rarely the funniest things I experience. But they are much easier to binge than a "smarter", more artistic format that requires me to think as I experience them.
I dunno. In that particular case, the amount of thinking you have to do to get the joke from just the images is so low that actually reading the text is more effort.
I wish there were a Basil for anime. I watch a lot of anime and I can't stand all of the constant unnecessary exposition, and just generally treating the audience like they can't figure out anything for themselves. So much awkward dialogue that would never be said by real people for the sake of the audience, so many explicit things that could be implicit.
Yep. I enjoy the style at times but usually it's both cringey and wasting time.
Do you have any examples of anime like that?
Nearly every anime. [This short video](https://youtu.be/I1XQduS6IfA?si=KldS6ykvkFS_tdHN) parodies the card game genre where a character will explain even the most basic moves. Saiki K iirc also has a lot of explaining the scene you just watched.
I think the premise that Haus “should” make optimally memeable political comics is questionable. She’s an artist with a brand, which isn’t chiefly political memes, she doesn’t owe people anything. Furthermore Basil making his point by drawing red ❌ on the comic comes off as aggressive. Just write the criticism. If house would have calmly responded with only those two points she’d have won the discussion immediately imo, but here we are.
Yeah I agree. Basil was really rude at the start and Haus responded even worse and then the internet did its magic and made everything a clusterfuck. "Fixing" someone's comics with your subjective opinions without asking them first is just so impolite. But also calling someone a Nazi defender is also impolite.
Politics completely aside, a lot of people (including myself) feel that comics and art in general are funnier/better/higher-quality when the audience isn't beaten over the head with an explanation of what's going on from moment to moment. The best art and best jokes heavily rely on the implicit. You "get" a joke - you aren't "fed" a joke.
In general I agree but in this specific case the wordy version works better with Haus style and previous stuff. But Basils criticism was about memetic effectiveness