It’s pretty good show. Most of the discussion involves social media researcher and Fordham professor Alice Marwick and Helen Lewis of the New Statesman. Those of us in the Google+ Hangout pop in briefly with comments and questions.
FWIW, I appear only briefly in the show proper, but I have a somewhat longer (and a bit more coherent) comment in the ten minute “online only” portion that immediately follows the show (and which is also on this video).
It was a somewhat strange, if educational, experience, my first appearance on TV. (The next time I get webcammed into a show, I won’t reflexively look down at the laptop while talking.) It all went by really, really quickly. Weirdly frantic behind the scenes as the producer tried to slot us all in.
The comments on the video on YouTube nicely illustrate the problem we were discussing; that is, they are a rancid pile of misogynistic shitlordery.
My favorite comment is this one from Urhoboman5 about Rebecca Watson:
At 5;30 that chick has a youtube channel. Just type in rebecca feminist and you’ll find it. Interesting how most of her videos are voted down. Sometimes as much as 80% negative because the stuff she says is pure nonsense.
That’s right. He actually thinks that the fact that her videos are targeted by downvote squads proves that she’s wrong to talk about harassment. She’s harassed by dudes who don’t like her talking about harassment so therefore it’s “nonsense” for her to talk about harassment. Brilliant.
This is rich: I see the sneering Boobzers are out in force. No matter; puerile feminists, philosophical amateurs, and politically correct zealots generally do dislike Rand – they see her as “immoral” or other such nonsense. As one might expect, they generally have not read her works.
Have you noticed a lack of reading on the part of the commentariat here? A lack of a sense of history? A lack of examination of moral philosophy?
Because I haven’t. Maybe it’s just that I’ve been here longer, but I suspect it’s more a case of narrow-minded ideology inducing blinders on you. Because, for all that I have my disagreements, and dissonances with people here, it’s not that I think them ignorant fools who refuse to see the truth. That’s your schtick.
I assume they have come to their conclusions from some sort of reasoned position. We talk about it. They persuade me, or they don’t. I move on.
You come in, declare The Truth, and then obsess when people tell you they disagree, and why. You don’t respond, and then you pretend that the brilliance of your wit has vanquished all foes.
Idiot. If you are playing to a larger crowd, then you are a fool on top of that. Because this is the crowd. The MRM, and the misogynists of the world, the Rooshes and the Elams don’t read the comments. r/mensrights don’t. John the Other doesn’t. Toysoldier reads them only to mine them for things to misrepresent; somewhat like a semi-erstwhile blogger named Varpole who was going to expose Manboobz for the den of vile misandry it was.
But that failed. It failed because the larger crowd didn’t come. You took your writing to the world and it yawned. You couldn’t get the serious response you craved, so cravenly you came back to this place you had scorned; the place you had so loudly renounced, and you socked.
Then you whined. Then you came back and socked again. It got you the conversation the vapidities of AMB couldn’t. And it got you your ass; handed to you on a plate. So you ignore the people who spanked you, and now you pretend to be above us, for we are lowly amateurs at the game of philosophy; unlike you, devotee of The Great Objectivist.
Never mind her hypocrisies, her love of Loeb and Leopold, her fawning over the murderer of a child who used crude taxidermy to fool her parents into giving him money for a corpse, which he tossed about the town like so much recycling. Nope, you don’t care, because she tells you that you can be Gordon Gecko, that greed is good and it’s every man for himself and no one ever ought to help anyone.
This, you think, is brilliant.
Never mind the Kantian questions. Never mind the misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s “superman”, never mind the dismissal of the underlying questions of ethics, and human inter-relation. Nope, it’s, “Fuck you Jack, while I get mine” (because it’s pretty plain that a petty bureaucrat in a corporate office isn’t really someone who, “has it all”).
Good luck with that. You’re gonna need it. Because Rand isn’t about people. She’s about greed. She’s about being selfish, and putting the self above all else. She’s about the present, not the future. She’s about being an infant in grown-up’s clothes.
@pecunium
“Have you noticed a lack of reading on the part of the commentariat here? A lack of a sense of history? A lack of examination of moral philosophy?”
Yes to all of the above. The only thing you offer is marxist, critical theory. Since true capitalism saw everyone in the west prosper the marxists realized the only way to destroy these societies was from within. Marxist critical theory attacked the foundation of society. Criticize the traditional family. Criticize Christianity. Criticize white men. Criticize whiteness. Criticize traditional western art. Criticize western values. Criticize any western tradition. Criticize normalcy.
You’re a mouthpiece for marxism. Nothing more.
@ pecunium
You might also try, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” but Jared Diamond, though I disagree with the argument he makes in the preface, the rest of the book is pretty compelling).
That is rich. There is nothing compelling about it, and he is so stupid, many other anti racist blast him for his Euro-centric viewpoint and arguably arguing a very racist viewpoint. All the while going back from New Guinea, to live in Western Civilization again, because that is what “egalitarians” do.
You are as damp a rag that people use to wipe piss with around the toilet seat.
“This, you think, is brilliant.”
You seriously need to stop raping the “comma” [slur removed –DF]. You don’t seem to know how to use it.
God you are stupid.
“Never mind the misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s “superman”, never mind the dismissal of the underlying questions of ethics, and human inter-relation.”
You know nothing of Nietzsche or philosophy, slave morality piss pot.
@David Futrelle
Nice image Manboobz. The symbol of the average American man in 50 years time. You must be Micheal’s Moore’s illegitimate son.
Ah, now the Feminist men have shown who they truly are and what they truly stand for.
Of course it is best interest of Feminist to keep men down. Real men are dangerous.
yeah, nothing like the raw power of getting all pissy and indignant on the internet.
bawl harder, babby.
Sun, what you say is so interesting and well-written to boot. Do go on.
I propose a new idiom for things that are incapable of mixing (ie, “like oil and water”): “like trolls and blockquotes.”
Wow, sun. That was… a hot mess. WTF?
NWO:
I thought according to you, this wasn’t true capitalism we were living under. Some arglebargle about gas prices.
Katz: “like MRAs and coherent thought.”
“like Steele and clever new catchphrases”
“like Tom Martin and hair”
@cloudiah
I dunno, Rand acolyte has a special place in my heart
@Shadow, Excuse me? You’re just a jester’s fool.
@Everyone, Horshack died. RIP, Ron Palillo.
What an ugly little troll.
Shoo, fool, shoo.
-Ayn Rand, noted Marxist.
Truly, you have shamed me 🙁 *mutters under breath* Vile m-feminist
“You know nothing of Nietzsche or philosophy, slave morality piss pot.”
Watch out, we have a badass over here.
Seriously, dude, you don’t get to say that one knows nothing of Nietzsche when you’re trying to be badass on the INTERNET. For one, the guy was against applied science. Guess what? A lot of the stuff you take for granted as you posture about how “Manly” you are? Some of it through applied science. Now, obviously certain theories get debunked, new developments occur and intellectual revolutions happen, but basically you’re trying to be an Ubermensch when you are pampered by “soft” things from the get go.
(To be fair, it’s been a while since I studied Nietzsche, but there are parts where he says, in no uncertain terms, that many ways of “modern society”, including science, make men “soft”)
Basically, dude, you’ve obviously only read an excerpt of “Thus Spake Zarathustra” (and/or maybe “Twilight of the Idols”) and think that you know everything about everything.
TL;DR: It’s funny when an Ubermensch who claims to know Nietzsche postures like Sun does.
I’ve always despised Ayn Rand.Also, Nietzschean philosophy is a complete joke. He too was wrong about many, many things.
The greatest western philosopher since Sokratis was none other than Thomas Hobbes. Ironically he is particularly disliked by amurcans and equally hated by the left and the right.
I was at work thinking today about Varpole’s declaration of his Objectivist ideals. It completely destroys most of his complaints, esp. about things like women expecting men to pay for dates.
If, after all the Prime Duty of a person to look after that person’s interest (as that person sees it) then a woman trying to get her date to pay isn’t being Misandrist, she is, Objectively, deciding it’s in her interest to see is she can get another person to pay.
One could argue it would be immoral her to not make the attempt, as she needs to know if the person she is dating is morally strong enough to stand up for himself. She might, quite reasonably, not want to further date a person to whom she isn’t morally superior. In a more limited sense she could argue she is making him pay as a recompense for her time. The more interesting he is to her, the lower the bill. Not so much because her present time is valuable, but to inhibit those whom she finds tedious from attempting to further waste her time in the future.
This is, of course, the underlying failure of Objectivism. If one is being truly, Objective, one can’t object to someone else treating oneself as means to an end. Because the real root is that the Randian Objectivist isn’t being objective about the world, but rather reducing all other people in it to objects.
Sun… What were you calling yourself before?
Because while I recognise the fetishist devotion you have to reviling my idiosyncratic, and somewhat archaic, use of commas, the rest is unsupported.
I’ll give you half marks if you can figure out what my complaints are with the preface to Guns, Germs, and Steele.
Then again, I’ll wager you don’t have any understanding of Diamond’s stature in the actual academic community, nor how I assessed it; none of which is relevant to the issues of the arguments in Guns, Germs, and Steel, which it’s obvious you either failed to read, or failed to comprehend, if you see it as a paean to Eurocentrism/racism.
As to Nietzsche… ooh, I’m all atremble that your frothing rants are aimed at me because you pretend to think I don’t understand him, since; as you know, your good opinion mean the world to me.
Then again, which world it is? The Physical world? The Dharma? The Vedic World of Unpayable Debt to our parents, society, and the Gods; which we will only be able to expiate by having offspring; rearing them and dying?
Perhaps is the Kantian World of rigid order, and unbending adherence to Rule, or the weakly Kantian World, where there are ways of modifying Rule to make it actually something we can enjoy.
Is the corrupt world of the flesh, which needs the Blood of the Redeemer to let us leave and enter Paradise?
What about the world of Dreamtime?
Teach me, of great and munificent sage! I am waiting with bated breath, tense in sinew and eager of heart! I throb for you!
/sarcasm /scorn
Ayn Rand AND Nietzsche! This one is obviously the most brilliant of all 20something white males, to have discovered these underground philosophers. Must be the first 20something white male to do so!
I, being a hipster philosopher, like Nietzsche’s ideas better when they were original (Max Stirner).