[Discussion] The Inconceivable Power of Trolls in Social Media

This is a follow-on to the nearly two year old topic "Trouble at the Kool-Aid Point." The intention is to provide a place to discuss the unreasonable power social media trolls have over women and minorities, with a primary focus on video games (though other examples are certainly welcome).

Did he also lose his quarter-million bucks advance? Because if not, that's a sweet deal for him.

Not gonna lie, this was a pretty good birthday present.

It's good that Milo is losing his book deal and his CPAC appearance.

The fact that *this* is what it took hurts like a dull ache. I can't say I'm surprised, but it's confirmation of what I already knew. You can drive women out of their homes, abuse black women and direct hate mobs at them, out trans people and harass them out of school, put technologists on an honest-to-god hit list, foment a resurgence of anti-Semitism and this is what it takes for Milo to suffer consequences.

It feels like a wholly expected slap in the face. This is his sponsors saying "We gladly profited from your suffering because we agreed that your place in society is to be abused. You are not a person and you should be an object of ridicule."

I want to be happy, but I'm just so f*cking sad that I'll never be seen as human in this world.

Freyja wrote:

It's good that Milo is losing his book deal and his CPAC appearance.

The fact that *this* is what it took hurts like a dull ache. I can't say I'm surprised, but it's confirmation of what I already knew. You can drive women out of their homes, abuse black women and direct hate mobs at them, out trans people and harass them out of school, put technologists on an honest-to-god hit list, foment a resurgence of anti-Semitism and this is what it takes for Milo to suffer consequences.

It feels like a wholly expected slap in the face. This is his sponsors saying "We gladly profited from your suffering because we agreed that your place in society is to be abused. You are not a person and you should be an object of ridicule."

I want to be happy, but I'm just so f*cking sad that I'll never be seen as human in this world.

What's also sad is that conservatives might have made excuses for him or rationalized it away if Milo wasn't gay.

Jonman wrote:

Did he also lose his quarter-million bucks advance? Because if not, that's a sweet deal for him.

I should hope so.

Jonman wrote:

Did he also lose his quarter-million bucks advance? Because if not, that's a sweet deal for him.

His entire book deal was $250K. His advance was likely in the middling five figures.

S&S just said they weren't going to publish the book so it's likely Milo effectively got paid a chunk of money to do absolutely nothing.

Freyja wrote:

The fact that *this* is what it took hurts like a dull ache. I can't say I'm surprised, but it's confirmation of what I already knew. You can drive women out of their homes, abuse black women and direct hate mobs at them, out trans people and harass them out of school, put technologists on an honest-to-god hit list, foment a resurgence of anti-Semitism and this is what it takes for Milo to suffer consequences.

Yeah. It don't say good things about us that this is the where it stopped.

I am going to be glad consequences caught up to him. But it maybe should have happened in, say, 2014.

I mentioned this in Slack but I can't but imagine this is part of a plan. It can't be surprising that something Milo's said as he seemed to ratchet up the intensity of his vileness. I will not be surprised if this is spun into undermining the GOP more directly and bringing more of the white supremacists more fully into the Trumpist camp and away from the dominant parties.

muraii wrote:

I mentioned this in Slack but I can't but imagine this is part of a plan. It can't be surprising that something Milo's said as he seemed to ratchet up the intensity of his vileness. I will not be surprised if this is spun into undermining the GOP more directly and bringing more of the white supremacists more fully into the Trumpist camp and away from the dominant parties.

Eh. I can see him trying to spin it, since that's what he does. I can even see it working on his fans, since that's what they do.

I don't see this as premeditated on his part, though. The reaction today has pretty definitively severed him from both the let's-give-free-speech-a-chance liberals and the anti-political-correctness conservatives. He's radioactive in the national discourse. Trump can brush that kind of thing off, Yanopoulos can't.

I'd rather not find out I'm wrong about this.

That's what I prefer but it doesn't really seem he acts alone. Is there no connection between Milo and Bannon, for instance?

Milo just resigned from Breitbart.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C5NnXjzWMAEY_Y-.jpg)

That has to be the worst press release to announce that you have a terrible masthead.

Edwin wrote:

That has to be the worst press release to announce that you have a terrible masthead.

It actually took me a minute to realize what I was seeing there.

I look forward to whatever abomination of a website Milo comes up with to serve his adoring fans. NOT!

This could go in a couple of different threads, but I'll put it here:

How Technocratic Hyper-Rationalism Has Birthed Right-Wing Extremism

Within the universe of Bay Area startup culture, the Elon Musks are the heroes. They seem to have a broad, sweeping vision of the future. But their true pedigree is measured how they manage to amass massive wealth behind their ideas — their ability to do. They believe they have the necessary tools to game reality. Their thinking is built on top of a hyper-commodified religious devotion to the transformative powers of scientific rationalism and a faith in the sanctity of numbers. This kind of thinking obviously also has a special resonance in the world of videogames, which are made up entirely of rules and systems. But it permeates our culture across many different planes.

Lately their sort of hyper-rationalist thinking has also resulted in some truly bizarre political commentary, like the now-infamous “Trial Balloon For a Coup?” Medium article from several weeks back by Google engineer Yonatan Zunger or the even more infamous “game theory” twitter rant from political strategist Eric Garland.

These math dorks present their cases that they have some sort of keys to unlock the secrets of a highly complex and confusing political realities by crunching the numbers in the right way. Yet unsurprisingly, they are consistently unable to conceive of the truly bizarre and disturbing current reality. The sort of class of technocratic math dorks Zunger or Garland belong to might be able to function within the bubble of Silicon Valley tech culture or the culture of Washington political insiders, but they don’t actually have any insight into what most people in the real world experience and how those things manifest themselves on a broader human scale, because their lives are lived incredibly insulated from these experiences.

Our popular culture has become so steeped in a deeply cynical sort of practicality, where many of us are able recognize the contradictions and hypocrisies of modern society, but we also cynically accept that we can’t really do much of anything about them. The awareness of this incremental progress being largely the result of a long-term collective struggle becomes completely erased and co-opted. By making displays of bigoted behavior as the ultimate embodiment of evil we have a built-in justification for moving selfishly within the system because we’ve displaced our shame of our own cultural complicity with the destruction our way of life causes onto a convenient scapegoat.

This, it turns out, opens the door for people to use bigoted language we have deemed “too far” as a show of power and dominance. People like Milo Yiannopoulos are the end point realization of this thinking — a reality that sustains itself off of a fantasy world completely insulated from any awareness or understanding of the collective struggles of the past. A reality completely nurtured by the self-fulfilling fantasies of hyper-rational objectivism. Instead of technocratic liberals being motivated by some faint glimmer of empathy or awareness for the power struggles of the past and present, the “alt-right” has come to understand them as simply weak and submissive “beta cucks”, controlled by the irrational manipulations of the deficient. In this view, that’s the only reason the privileged technocrats can’t stay true to the principles of their hyper-rationalist reality.

Edwin wrote:

That has to be the worst press release to announce that you have a terrible masthead.

Jeez, it looks like the logo from some terrible 80's prog-metal band.

I assume in the spirit of MIlo's trolling nature, 4chan and the like...

Spoiler:

That logo is *supposed* to resemble someone bent over on all fours

..or...is that just me 0_o

I hope when he walks outside today at 5 pm, the tires on his car are flat as well. He deserves to have the worst day possible. Why? I don't know. It's not like he deliberately harasses trans people.

pyxistyx wrote:

I assume in the spirit of MIlo's trolling nature, 4chan and the like...

Spoiler:

That logo is *supposed* to resemble someone bent over on all fours

..or...is that just me 0_o

Can. Not. Unsee..

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

I assume in the spirit of MIlo's trolling nature, 4chan and the like...

Spoiler:

That logo is *supposed* to resemble someone bent over on all fours

..or...is that just me 0_o

Can. Not. Unsee..

That's 100% absolutely gotta be on purpose.

Gremlin wrote:

This could go in a couple of different threads, but I'll put it here:

How Technocratic Hyper-Rationalism Has Birthed Right-Wing Extremism

Within the universe of Bay Area startup culture, the Elon Musks are the heroes. They seem to have a broad, sweeping vision of the future. But their true pedigree is measured how they manage to amass massive wealth behind their ideas — their ability to do. They believe they have the necessary tools to game reality. Their thinking is built on top of a hyper-commodified religious devotion to the transformative powers of scientific rationalism and a faith in the sanctity of numbers. This kind of thinking obviously also has a special resonance in the world of videogames, which are made up entirely of rules and systems. But it permeates our culture across many different planes.

I think this definitely deserves its own thread. I've been bothered by this for a while now. It's part of the divide in the US, to be honest. You can tell someone who lives in a red state that it "all works out" and it isn't something they can hear when their life is changing rapidly. If your way of life is dying, your friends and family are literally dying, and the answer is that in 10 years no one will have jobs and we'll all have free time to do art... That's not a message that resonates with people who don't truly understand where we're headed. Nevermind all the side-effects of rushing towards that future without taking steps in between to prepare society.

Like I said, worthy of its own thread, IMO.

garion333 wrote:
Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

I assume in the spirit of MIlo's trolling nature, 4chan and the like...

Spoiler:

That logo is *supposed* to resemble someone bent over on all fours

..or...is that just me 0_o

Can. Not. Unsee..

That's 100% absolutely gotta be on purpose.

I wouldn't have noticed it without it being said, but now I know that's gotta be intentional. Up there with GG logo looking like someone being bent over too.

DSGamer wrote:

Like I said, worthy of its own thread, IMO.

Hmm. We've sort of got a thread for that already: Now is the winter of our discontent. I'll post it there. (And if you want an even narrower discussion this one aspect of how society is confronting the massive changes in front of us, we can spin off a third thread if we need to.)

...wait, he's British?

The Brits were thrilled to get rid of him. Now I think he has to go back because he might be here on a work visa.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh...

...can't you put him to work cleaning sewers or something...

I'm afraid that should he ever Come into close proximity with Katie Hopkins, the two of them will physically merge into one larger super-troll.

pyxistyx wrote:

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh...

...can't you put him to work cleaning sewers or something...

I'm afraid that should he ever Come into close proximity with Katie Hopkins, the two of them will physically merge into one larger super-troll.

Well, Katie Hopkins is a woman, so I would assume, by default, Milo would stay at least 20 yards away at all times.

alt-right: Child Rape, Yes. Star Wars, No. Kinda eager to hammer one of those untermenschen with that.

Milo was taken down by a 16-year-old Canadian girl.

Vox wrote:

Julia closely follows political news from her home in Canada, with a deep interest in American politics. She has been particularly alarmed by the recent rise of Yiannopoulos and others like him. So as soon as she heard Yiannopoulos would speak at CPAC, she was appalled.

Then an old moment popped in her head. She remembered hearing an obscure podcast, in which Yiannopoulos defended the idea of “13-year-olds” having sex with “older men,” arguing that child molestation provided a “sort of ‘coming of age’ relationship” for teenagers.

Her memory was right. She found the July 2016 clip.

She didn’t think she’d have much luck spreading the news herself with her small Twitter following, so she contacted a conservative outlet to get the story out. She figured a liberal outlet would have less credibility among CPAC followers.

She landed on the previously not-very-well-known conservative blog Reagan Battalion, which, after a bit of back and forth, tweeted out the video — leading not just to CPAC canceling Yiannopoulos’s speech, but to Simon & Schuster pulling his already controversial book deal and his resignation from Breitbart.

LOL. Love it.

I'm super glad they chose to hide the girl's identity though.