#rhetoric

[bambistjames]

non-writers will never understand the mental illness of writing an entire conversation in your head while doing dishes and then forgetting every word the second you open a blank doc

[bikiniarmorbattledamage]

So this came up a while ago, and it's definitely not the first time that its been noticed that there is a wide disparity between over sexualized, and what people find sexy.

This was again particularly highlighted when Capital-G Gamers got mad that Ghost of Yotei was designed with story and gameplay in mind over sexualization and pandering.

I present to you, memes posted unironically by that crowd:

(This crowd is still mad couldn't Erika Ishii removed from the game, even though they did succeed in harassing a developer into unemployment over a joke.)

The upside of this is, it did lead to some of the funniest actual satire I've seen in a while.

And in case you're wondering, yes Withers Big Naturals is a real mod, and one of the most popular ones.

— wincenworks

Jacob Geller: Nebula | YouTube | BlueSky | Website Recommendation: "The Best Looking Game Ever" Lady Emily: Nebula | YouTube | BlueSky Recommendation: The Evolving Relationship of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy

[gothamcitypublicworks]

Last time I heard from a specific transfem mutual before her blog vanished mid-chat, she was sleeping in her car and using Tumblr to fundraise for groceries and a mechanic visit because she got kicked off META and attacked in the shelter.

She might be dead.

That death would be social murder.

Sorry about your blog though.

[rynli]

Harry works on his resume

[iamthedukeofurl]

I feel like the Hbomberguy plagiarism video has a lot of really good lessons about building an argument. Like, the thesis of the video isn't just "Plagiarism is rife on Youtube", although that point was certainly well made, it was specifically about James Somerton, who isn't mentioned until about halfway through the video. Before then, Hbomb goes through several creators who are already widely discredited as plagiarists, and in each section he introduces concepts that are later incorporated into the final takedown of Somerton, but each section also stands on it's own. Like, he starts with Filip, the game reviewer, which he uses to introduce the format of how he will discuss and expose plagiarists. Specifically, the graphic of displaying the source material while the plagiarist's voice plays, and marking up said source material every time the plagiarist changes some wording slightly. This is the method that Hbomb uses across the entire video. With Illuminaughtii, Hbomb introduces a few major concepts 1) The idea of Insufficient citation. Illuminaughtii "Cites" her sources by putting a plaintext pastebin link in her video descriptions with no indication of how each source was used. Technically, her source is CITED, but not in any relevant or useful way. She has a big list of stuff she read, and a random youtube link in there happens to be the source that she stole 90% of the video from. 2) He introduces the profit motive behind this approach. Putting out a lot of content very quickly is how one builds an audience, and therefore an income, out of making stuff on youtube. Plagiarism of this sort is a way to produce content very quickly and build a following. The Internet Historian section introduces two new concepts:

1) The behavior of an exposed plagiarist, taking down and reuploading videos with minor changes, awkwardly trying to insert credit without admitting guilt. 2) That the plagiarists are stealing not just research, but STYLE. Previous sections go over how the plagiarists are reusing the same words, but this section oozes over how much of the final product's quality was the result of how well the source material was written. TIH didn't just crib the notes from the Mentalfloss article, he created a video heavily dependent on the original author's skill as a writer. When TIH tried his own hand at presenting the same set of facts, it came out much worse. So that when the time comes for the Somerton takedown, Hbomb has already laid the groundwork to bring these concepts back. Somerton takes down and reuploads videos when he's caught, he declares this his video is "based on" work by somebody else without providing proper citation. He's not just stealing research done by somebody else, he's taking their insights and talent as a writer and regurgitating it as his own, and he's doing so to churn out a vast wall of content that he can financially benefit from, and he doesn't need to tell you why this is important, because he's already done so. He already convinced you that Illuminaughtii hiding a line in a pastebin didn't excuse her plagiarism, so you don't need to be told why Somerton saying his video is "Based On" somebody else's book doesn't excuse it.

[hexpatient]

ive only had a few comments/tags like this thankfully, but i have seen a few from mental health professionals on my posts. and they do this thing where they make a comment that they probably think is a corrective one, because they probably think that they are the best source of what actually goes on in psychiatric treatment.

my post that said "refusing to consider that mentally ill people ARE acting rationally is one of psychiatry's main violences" got a tag saying basically "actually yeah we modern psych professionals usually do assume patients are acting with reason". which is a really wild thing to say. (please do not track down and berate this person)

i have not been every single mental health patient ever, however i have been me, and um. the idea that i was acting rationally simply was not an option to my therapists and psychiatrists for 9 years. it was absolutely not considered.

psych professionals obviously think they are a good and authoritative source on what psychiatry does, however its more like psych professionals are a good source on what psychiatry claims it does. like i have heard all this lip service and rhetoric before about respect and dignity and patient rights and so on. the problem is that it is absolutely not followed through in reality. the problem is that its not true. <- the problem. words do not speak louder than actions.

[shit-hdb-would-say]

I do fully unironically believe they are doing this to prevent communists and anti-war activists from organizing on their platform though. This is one of the only large websites that has a significant communist/anarchist presence and also no mandatory algorithm that can be easily used to dissuade users from finding each other. The way people do political discourse on here is by going into the notes and looking at other people's reblogs. As much as the discourse side of this website sucks shit sometimes it's also home to some pretty elaborate and interesting conversations. Some real grade A class consciousness type shit (and grades B, C, D, and F, but 90% of everything is crap).

Where the fuck else are you gonna go for that shit? Huh? Reddit? Fucking, the Nazi shithole formerly known as Twitter? Sure ok there's bluesky and shit if you're a New York Times subscriber, and Mastodon/Fediverse if you're the type of person who runs Linux, and Threads if your soul is made of polyester, but who the fuck is going there? Are you going to go to fucking Discord? Is the revolution going to be run by fucking Discord mods? Or are you going to retreat to Substack? Are normie meme enjoyers who want to turn their brain off and scroll going to see your agitprop there, do you think?

Listen, if the US government could do PRISM under Obama, going to a couple social media sites and saying "stop having there be communists here Or Else" under the current regime is not particularly far fetched to me. "Take steps to prevent these Violent Extremists from Discussing Terrorism" = disrupt the people having directly anti-establishment conversations, sharing and generating political theory, etc. Fracturing subversive movements has always been FBI's strategy and this does it swimmingly. Make sure people can't talk to each other, make sure there's more confusion and repetition and crosstalk, disrupt the way information flows.

Even if this wasn't actually something the government told them to do and they're just dogfuck shitheads, you couldn't have designed a better way to torpedo one of the major arteries of the online left. Just nuke the biggest public-facing clearnet site where people actually talk about that shit. I'm scunched about it