The Alt-Right Playbook: The Card Says Moops

[Mezentine]

Ian's latest is up, and its an excellent dive into right wing hypocrisy, especially (of course) in the alt-right online. It can be incredibly satisfying to point out contradictions in their arguments or politics, but that's often missing the deeper point that they don't really care about presenting any sort of ideological consistency and that they actually use it as a smokescreen. And also that its more of a learned behavior than even a deliberate tactic emerging from chan culture.

 

[ldcommando]

Bubble boy

 

[EdibleKnife]

Great episode! That Daily Stormer Playbook article is quite enlightening.

For those who haven't seen the series before. here's the starting point:

 

[Kitsunelaine]

Yup. I see this happen a lot, even on this forum. People really need to be more aware of when it's happening and decide for themselves whether it's worth engaging with somebody who doesn't care about what they believe or whether they should just report them.

 

[TalonJH]

I'm happy to see that we are still getting threads about the Alt-Right playbook and Innuendo Studios. Another great video.

 

[Eidan]

I feel like the big takeaway of all of these videos is just "Never engage with the alt-right".

 

[El Bombastico]

I feel like the big takeaway of all of these videos is just "Never engage with the alt-right".

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Waits for the inevitable "civility" and "discourse" people to show up.

 

[corasaur]

I feel like the big takeaway of all of these videos is just "Never engage with the alt-right".

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they're necessary because the alt-right often doesn't identify itself openly. they're a primer in what it feels like when you're conversing with someone whose goal is to drag the conversation into the gutter while pretending to want to talk.

 

[mael]

Yup. I see this happen a lot, even on this forum. People really need to be more aware of when it's happening and decide for themselves whether it's worth engaging with somebody who doesn't care about what they believe or whether they should just report them.

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But charity?

 

[marrec]

Sincerity is necessary for reasonable discussion. I do like the idea that "chan" style board produce emergent ironic fascists... but I do take issue with some of the conclusions.

It's rather easy to identify insincere people on 4chan and reddit, but on... for example... ERA, it's much more difficult. It is, however, much easier to understand the totality of a single person's beliefs on something like ERA... which makes me wonder why the trend is still toward assumptions of insincerity rather than assumptions of ignorance.

But charity?

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Is necessary for rational discourse yes. You don't go on 4chan or reddit (or twitter for that matter) looking for rational discourse.

 

[mael]

Is necessary for rational discourse yes. You don't go on 4chan or reddit (or twitter for that matter) looking for rational discourse.

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So you agree that it is inherently applied contextually?

 

[marrec]

So you agree that it is inherently applied contextually?

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I agree that you should engage contextually, if you choose to engage then the principal of charity should be the default until explicitly proven otherwise, unless you are engaging without sincerity or performatively.

Not because you should always assume that the other person is a rational good actor, but because your argument will be served better by assuming the best of their argument.

Otherwise you eventually devolve into this:

 

[spam musubi]

This is perhaps the best video in the series yet. It gets to the heart of so many people online. (and also why that "charitable arguing" thread was bullshit, btw)

 

[mael]

I agree that you should engage contextually, if you choose to engage then the principal of charity should be the default until explicitly proven otherwise, unless you are engaging without sincerity or performatively.

Not because you should always assume that the other person is a rational good actor, but because your argument will be served better by assuming the best of their argument.

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Shitposting someone who act in badfaith is a better use of anyone's time than acting like they are dead serious about everything they say.
They don't care whether or not what they say is true, there's ZERO reason to care more about someone's argument than the person who is pushing a shitty position.
I'm never going to take seriously anyone defending the word salad out of Jordan Peterson's brain when they clearly don't give a shit enough to properly follow what they claim to believe for example.
If you think that's worth your time, you do you though.

Otherwise you eventually devolve into this:

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I have no idea why you felt the need to screenshot this when a direct link would have sufficed and if you seriously think not taking known bad faith actor at face value is the same as this contextless screenshot...well...

 

[Orin_linwe]

I feel like the big takeaway of all of these videos is just "Never engage with the alt-right".

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Broadly, yes.

But in the context of day-to-day discussion, these videos are more about reminding "people on the left"about the option of swiftly calling out and shutting down troll-argumentation.

Part of "being on the left" (or "being progressive") is largely about stifling your preconceptions. Or at the very least not give into your immediate irritation, and hear other people out.

The alt-right has intuitively understood that the most effective strategy to counter people who make a conscious effort is to dismiss the entire basis for conversation and argumentation.

It's pretty effective; both because it doesn't leave much for your opponent to work with, but also because so many young, opinionated "people on the left" have a personality-type that would rather go over a troll-post line-by-line, footnoting every fallacy with appropriate wikipedia-explainer-links, than just telling them that they're idiots who don't matter.

Obviously, the real challenge is to be able to differentiate between strangers with genuine unfamiliarity, and troll-activity meant to make you too tired to care anymore.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's any real separation between these two issues ("how do I appropriately deal with trolls without becoming a hair-triggered opinion-police?").

That's how I see these videos, anyway. The alt-right playbook isn't particularly clever or brimming with finesse. It's just extremely tedious to deal with because of how anarchic it is to open, earnest communication between strangers (which I guess is the fundamental of the Internet).

I see them more as a "hey, remember how dumb and paper-thin troll behavior is? Keep the content of this video in your semi-conscious-mind" rather than "ok, this is how you totally destroy the alt-right by pointing out how they aren't playing by the rules of your domain!".

I guess I see it as a kind of passive PSA for the in-group, rather than a manual for solving wide-spread garbage.

 

[ilium]

This one touches on some fundamental issues, I think it should've probably been the introduction video to the series.

It seems contemporary conservatism has readily taken the worst possible lessons from the postmodern transformation of knowledge - I kinda enjoy the potentially infinite regress of ironic layers here tbh

 

[Kitsunelaine]

Is necessary for rational discourse yes. You don't go on 4chan or reddit (or twitter for that matter) looking for rational discourse.

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The discourse seen on 4chan and reddit is part of what birthed the entirety of online discourse as a whole. It seeps in every facet of the internet because the problems with 4chan and reddit are inheret with the earliest forms of online communication; a part of the growing pains we're still experiencing with the internet as a conversational medium. People have learned to talk online in the ways that they still talk over there, and it is a problem that we see day in and day out that the vast majority of people have yet to grow out of.

Sincerity should never be a given. People need to learn to be smart about how they read what they see online. A lot of reactionaries and disingenuous actors argue what they want you to see rather than what they actually believe and people still do not recognize that and engage with them on their terms. Which is always, always, a bad idea.

 

[mael]

The discourse seen on 4chan and reddit is part of what birthed the entirety of online discourse as a whole. It seeps in every facet of the internet because the problems with 4chan and reddit are inheret with the earliest forms of online communication; a part of the growing pains we're still experiencing with the internet as a conversational medium. People have learned to talk online in the ways that they still talk over there, and it is a problem that we see day in and day out that the vast majority of people have yet to grow out of.

Sincerity should never be a given. People need to learn to be smart about how they read what they see online.

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We see that ALL THE TIME with people having trouble understanding tone through text even!
Even a mere discussion about freaking games become unbearable if you assume everything is at face value.

 

[Kitsunelaine]

We see that ALL THE TIME with people having trouble understanding tone through text even!
Even a mere discussion about freaking games become unbearable if you assume everything is at face value.

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Tone has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Sometimes tone is irrelevant. I can see the argument you're implying-- Don't turn my post into a dogwhistle for people getting "too offended" over "jokes". It does not agree with you. It's describing you.

 

[Deleted member 17658]

Waits for the inevitable "civility" and "discourse" people to show up.

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"But, but.. daryl davis...."

 

[mael]

Tone has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Sometimes tone is irrelevant. I can see the argument you're implying-- Don't turn my post into a dogwhistle. It does not agree with you. It's describing you.

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No, I'm not saying that's what you're saying.
I'm saying even something as mundane as tone is lost through mere text so even if just knowing if someone was making a joke or not can be unclear.
I mean we can't even get tone and we should expect sincerity from everyone online?
chan culture and the boards spawned from before and after is irrelevant to the point I'm saying.

 

[SoH]

Is necessary for rational discourse yes. You don't go on 4chan or reddit (or twitter for that matter) looking for rational discourse.

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I read an extremely well written and seemingly entirely reasonable post on Reddit once. The person stated all their points very clearly with touches of humor and in a very convincing and knowing tone demonstrating a high level of confidence in understanding of said topic.

It was a topic I also happened to be extremely knowledgeable about and had many years of insider knowledge about.

Everything the person said was complete bullshit. It was an entire construction of fiction the person had strung together very convincingly with seemingly no real goal except for invisible internet points and to push some strange hidden agenda.

Rational arguments mean jackshit if you are at the disadvantage of being ignorant to a topic being spit out by a charlatan.

 

[Kitsunelaine]

No, I'm not saying that's what you're saying.
I'm saying even something as mundane as tone is lost through mere text so even if just knowing if someone was making a joke or not can be unclear.
I mean we can't even get tone and we should expect sincerity from everyone online?

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Sometimes jokes are bad. When you're called out on them and your response is an argument about tone you're admitting you have no defense for your bad joke. At that point it doesn't fucking matter whether or not you are sincere. It matters whether or not you give a shit about what you're saying. And if you make a tone argument you're saying you don't. And you become the kind of person this video is talking about.

Not only that, but you are insulting a person's intelligence by assuming they didn't understand you were "joking" as opposed to taking legitimate issue with the things you were saying even if you were "joking" about them.

I despise people who do that.

 

[Neece]

I really love Ian's video series but I really wish he had more strategies and playbooks on how to deal with the alt-right playbook. He is awesome at describing their playbook and showing why you should avoid falling into the traps, and on that level alone, his series is useful and important, but I'm still waiting for a series from him that will go a step beyond highlighting what the alt-right playbook is.

I remember listening to the interview he did with Thomas Smith on the leftist podcast Serious Inquiries Only and even he pointed out that all of his videos basically end with "dont fall for the trap" and people ask him all the time "well what do we DO" and he doesn't have concrete answers yet. He says he's doing research and coming up with a list of practices to deal with the right. I'm hopeful we can get some good stuff on that front.

Still, another great video from him.

 

[Kitsunelaine]

I really love Ian's video series but I really wish he had more strategies and playbooks on how to deal with the alt-right playbook. He is awesome at describing their playbook and showing why you should avoid falling into the traps, and on that level alone, his series is outstanding and important, but I'm still waiting for a series from him that will go a step beyond highlighting what the alt-right playbook is.

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He says, literally in the first video, that his series is not about solutions, because he doesn't have any; it's about diagnosing the problems. It's a disclaimer for the entire series.

 

[Neece]

He says, literally in the first video, that his series is not about solutions, because he doesn't have any; it's about diagnosing the problems. It's a disclaimer for the entire series.

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Right. I was saying I hope he creates another series that goes beyond that. In the interview I posted, he says he has researched that because he knows people want it.

 

[Kitsunelaine]

Right. I was saying I hope he creates another series that goes beyond that. In the interview I posted, he says he has researched that because he knows people want it.

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I just think it's weird taking issue with someone for not providing something they admitted they don't have from the onset.

 

[mael]

Sometimes jokes are bad. When you're called out on them and your response is an argument about tone you're admitting you have no defense for your bad joke. At that point it doesn't fucking matter whether or not you are sincere. It matters whether or not you give a shit about what you're saying. And if you make a tone argument you're saying you don't. And you become the kind of person this video is talking about.

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There's nothing nefarious about someone making a joke that needs a specific context and someone being new missing the context being baited by it.
The infamous "shot yourself in the foot" joke post is a good example, someone having to explain that joke is not being disingenuous. It's just context being missed.
If even that kind of shit can happen, people being willfully ambiguous to try to win arguments like in SmiteOfHand's recent post can absolutely happen and it should be expected.

My point is the fact far more mundane misunderstanding with nothing nefarious behind happen all the time when discussing through text so there's no reason to expect this disconnect to never be weaponized hence why we shouldn't treat bad faith actor like they're acting in good faith.

 

[Neece]

I just think it's weird taking issue with someone for not providing something they admitted they don't have from the onset.

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Well even he doesn't think it's "weird" but cool.

 

[Mauricio_Magus]

I love these videos so much.

Mayonnaise Boy lmao

 

[Kitsunelaine]

There's nothing nefarious about someone making a joke that needs a specific context and someone being new missing the context being baited by it.
The infamous "shot yourself in the foot" joke post is a good example, someone having to explain that joke is not being disingenuous. It's just context being missed.
If even that kind of shit can happen, people being willfully ambiguous to try to win arguments like in @SmiteOfHand's recent post can absolutely happen and it should be expected.

My point is the fact far more mundane misunderstanding with nothing nefarious behind happen all the time when discussing through text so there's no reason to expect this disconnect to never be weaponized hence why we shouldn't treat bad faith actor like they're acting in good faith.

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Sometimes context isn't required for a joke to be bad. If your joke is bad with or without context and you repeatedly say it without context it's your fault if people are upset because you keep making the joke that's bad. At that point it's maybe time to stop making that joke.

Well even he doesn't think it's "weird" but cool.

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I can disagree with him on this. I can understand wanting solutions in general but expecting them from someone who's said they don't have any is weird to me.

 

[mael]

Sometimes context isn't required for a joke to be bad. If your joke is bad without context and you repeatedly say it without context it's your fault if people are upset because you keep making the joke that's bad. At that point it's maybe time to stop making that joke.

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Good thing I'm not talking about these cases though...
e: heck the video references this explicitly with the actor expecting people on the left to think that "he's kidding" and the other endorsing the horrible opinion.
The very fact that someone can be mistaken between an offensive joke and real opinion IS the issue and why taking everything at face value doesn't work.

 

[ZeroDotFlow]

You can't really win a fight against the alt-right from an argumentative standpoint. However, there's a trick I've learned in how to identify and deal with people trying to drag arguments down with them or trying to use more 'subtle' alt-right plays.

The counter is citations. You have to be willing and ready to cite articles, studies, references and more. Why? Because this is how you can quickly get them to expose themselves either through the things they cite or their attempts to tear down your sources.

I've encountered many not-so-subtle people trying to pull these tricks on many tech forums I frequent. The moment you bring out citations, the smarter ones will disengage from the argument altogether and stop responding. The less so ones will either attempt to cite things that are easily disproven, use studies that are literally fake or attempt to argue that your sources contain a liberal bias.

 

[Kitsunelaine]

Good thing I'm not talking about these cases though...

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There's nothing nefarious about someone making a joke that needs a specific context and someone being new missing the context being baited by it.

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It's just context being missed.

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My point is the fact far more mundane misunderstanding with nothing nefarious behind happen all the time when discussing through text

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If it isn't, you're bad at making your point and should probably spend time revising it and making it more clearly stated. These things can be missed if worded clumsily. It's why I'm so horrible with all of my post-posting editing...

 

[mael]

If it isn't, you're bad at making your point and should probably spend time revising it and making it more clearly stated. These things can be missed if worded clumsily.

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You're being willfully obtuse to the point I'm wondering if you're not trying to prove my point by example.

 

[Neece]

Sometimes context isn't required for a joke to be bad. If your joke is bad without context and you repeatedly say it without context it's your fault if people are upset because you keep making the joke that's bad. At that point it's maybe time to stop making that joke.



I can disagree with him on this. I can understand wanting solutions in general but expecting them from someone who's said they don't have any is weird to me.

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If you can understand wanting solutions in general then I don't get what is "weird" about my post, which acknowledged everything you're apparently trying to correct me on, but also added that I hope he is coming along with a solutions series, which he said he was researching and working on in the interview from February 2018.

Also...

expecting them from someone

Didn't say I'm expecting them from this series. I said I'm hopeful that he will create a separate series. Again, based on HIM saying he is researching solutions because people have asked him consistently about solutions.

If that still seems weird to you then *shrugs*. I disagree.

 

[Kitsunelaine]

You're being willfully obtuse to the point I'm wondering if you're not trying to prove my point by example.

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I literally just asked you to clarify your point in case I was misreading it. That's far from "wilfully" obtuse. That's just basic miscommunication, dude.

 

[Deleted member 6230]

I really love Ian's video series but I really wish he had more strategies and playbooks on how to deal with the alt-right playbook. He is awesome at describing their playbook and showing why you should avoid falling into the traps, and on that level alone, his series is useful and important, but I'm still waiting for a series from him that will go a step beyond highlighting what the alt-right playbook is.

I remember listening to the interview he did with Thomas Smith on the leftist podcast Serious Inquiries Only and even he pointed out that all of his videos basically end with "dont fall for the trap" and people ask him all the time "well what do we DO" and he doesn't have concrete answers yet. He says he's doing research and coming up with a list of practices to deal with the right. I'm hopeful we can get some good stuff on that front.

Still, another great video from him.

Click to shrink...

Honestly "don't feed the trolls" is a mantra I live by in dealing with the alt-right. It's really all you need

 

[Vonnegut]

Listen, kid. If that's what the card says, then that's the answer.

 

[mael]

I literally just asked you to clarify your point in case I was misreading it. That's far from "wilfully" obtuse. That's just basic miscommunication, dude.

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This is my point.
Basic miscommunication through text is the norm of online discourse to the point that you can not be sure if someone is serious about a post or if he didn't just communicate poorly (or there is a missing expected context or whatevr).
So there is literally zero reason to consider someone expressing an offensive opinion to do so in good faith by design.
And this vid is about the right weaponizing this specificity of online discourse which everyone should have seen coming.

 

[Kitsunelaine]

This is my point.
Basic miscommunication through text is the norm of online discourse to the point that you can not be sure if someone is serious about a post or if he didn't just communicate poorly (or there is a missing expected context or whatevr).
So there is literally zero reason to consider someone expressing an offensive opinion to do so in good faith by design.
And this vid is about the right weaponizing this specificity of online discourse which everyone should have seen coming.

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If you don't think you have the capacity to miscommunicate you aren't engaging in an honest discussion with someone. If someone is asking for clarification as opposed to taking a conclusion and running with it that's the point where you give it to them. And hey, I might even be guilty of the former in this very thread.

 

[mael]

If you don't think you have the capacity to miscommunicate you aren't engaging in an honest discussion with someone.

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And this is why if I'm wondering if you're not intentionally trying to prove my point by example because I'm never saying anyone is lacking the capacity to miscommunicate, literally the opposite.
Because we all have seen at least dozen of examples of a miscommication online basically spoiling a joke, we shouldn't expect anyone to be clear when they're communicating on controversial topics and there is zero reason to expect someone to not be trying to use that zone of ambiguity to their benefit.

 

[Kitsunelaine]

And this is why if I'm wondering if you're not intentionally trying to prove my point by example because I'm never saying anyone is lacking the capacity to miscommunicate, literally the opposite.

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The way you're proceeding in our conversation is acting as if you haven't miscommunicated; in response to someone whom you think isn't getting your point and is asking for further clarification. If you believe everyone miscommunicates, this is the point where you have to achnowledge you may have done so in this thread. It's no good if you don't internalize it.

 

[Shiloh]

I feel like the big takeaway of all of these videos is just "Never engage with the alt-right".

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One of his points was that people recognize they're dealing with this type of person and stop interacting. So they feel they have "won" then argument.

It's a tough subject.

 

[Mulciber]

Oh man, I love his videos. I recently went back and watched them all. The video game ones are good, too. About to pop this on! Thanks for the heads-up.

 

[Opto]

Honestly "don't feed the trolls" is a mantra I live by in dealing with the alt-right. It's really all you need

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Really it should be a more active "slap the troll in the mouth" action.

 

[mael]

The way you're proceeding in our conversation is acting as if you haven't miscommunicated; in response to someone whom you think isn't getting your point and is asking for further clarification. If you believe everyone miscommunicates, this is the point where you have to achnowledge you may have done so in this thread. It's no good if you don't internalize it.

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You have to be missing the point on purpose at this point.
And you seem rather hung up on assigning blame about mundane stuffs as well.
So I'll follow this vid's advice.

Really it should be a more active "slap the troll in the mouth" action.

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Isn't that why antifas are a thing?

 

[onadesertedisland]

I refuse to communicate with them. There is nothing to gain. They are either virulent trolls, ignorant to a fault, or simply full of hate and rage. They are a minority, but they're a really fucking loud one on the Internet.

 

[Kitsunelaine]

You have to be missing the point on purpose at this point.
And you seem rather hung up on assigning blame about mundane stuffs as well.
So I'll follow this vid's advice.

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See, here's the thing. I don't like the assumptions you're making about me. And I do believe I'm engaging honestly here, despite your accusations. So I'm going to establish a baseline here so you can see where my own conclusions are coming from. They may be wrongly formed, but we can't get to that conclusion if they aren't mentioned in the open.

So this is your original post.

We see that ALL THE TIME with people having trouble understanding tone through text even!

Even a mere discussion about freaking games become unbearable if you assume everything is at face value.

Click to shrink...

When I see that, a dozen red flags pop up in my head. As that point is currently stated, it could be set alongside posts lamenting the level of offense someone may or may not feel in response to something that's "clearly" a joke. When I think about how horrible gaming discussion is ("a discussion about freaking games!"), I think about how often people in the gaming community make disingenuous defenses of things they or someone else have said, based on an appeal to "It was a joke" or "You missed the context" or "He didn't actually mean that" or "you took the tone too seriously" or "you're just a snowflake".

When you say, "it's horrible if you assume everything is at face value"-- You're making those arguments, or arguments aligned with those arugments. So that's the context I took your post (and subsequent) posts in.

 

[Opto]

Isn't that why antifas are a thing?

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Well I mean as an online tactic and somewhat figurative sense. Tell them to "shut the fuck up, incel brat" and then ban or block them.