JohnBierce

...The vast majority of guys I know who have been in a lot of fights (me included) are quite happy never getting in a fight again? Like, there's definitely a few weirdos and dudes with anger issues who love fighting, but the shine wears off pretty damn quick for most people, and they'd rather avoid the fight in the first place? I really don't think real-life arenas and duels would work the way this guy thinks.

(I used to work as a bouncer in a bar, haven't been in a fight since then, I prefer keeping it that way. Also, fair notice, I wasn't actually a very good fighter- I was the average-sized, unintimidating bouncer, my job was to head off fights before they happened, so the bigger bouncers and bartenders didn't have to intervene, and I was good at talking drunks down. I wrestled a decent number of drunks when I had to, but that did not an impressive fighter make, I'd suck at Colosseum fights, lol.)

This is arcane, eldritch knowledge my mortal brain cannot comprehend.

My web guy can probably read it just fine, though, thanks for sharing!

Oh damn that's actually pretty good, I'm sad I didn't get the joke. (Lots of jokes sail over my head. I'm very literal much of the time, hah.)

I was in the States, so I was more at risk- but I'm a huge science nerd, enough that Yudkowsky's anti-science crap tossed up a BUNCH of red flags for me, and convinced me to start seriously researching the Rationalists and looking for critics.

Yeah it's interesting to see which of the regulars from Reddit transfer over or not. Took me months, and it was researching for this essay among old Sneerclub posts that inspired the switch.

Yeah being a full-on support group sounds EXHAUSTING. But we definitely already fulfilled that role to a small extent for a small number of people, especially back on Reddit where this space and rationalist spaces were more porous?

And I'm all for just cruelty to the eugenicists, neoreactionaries, and other nasties of the Rationalist movement. They have MORE than earned it. Something something Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance something something.

Thank you!

I actually have some thoughts about that topic as well- could be an interesting thread! (I personally think that we are, at least to a small extent, similar dynamic-wise to the cult survivor networks that help their friends and family escape the cult they themselves escaped- after all, a huge number of us are former Rationalists or, like myself, narrowly escaped their gravitational pull. Kinda puts a weird twist on our relationship to the Rationalists. Doesn't make us immune from transitioning from "unkind critics" to something worse, especially if we were to start brigading or something else awful, but I think has some valuable social lessons for the group?)

Yeah, I thought about bringing his ideas up more as examples (definitely seen him pop in Sneerclub a few times), but I've got no idea if he would want to be even more prominent in this conversation than he already is. And the post was already more than long enough.

Hah I wish I could say I was still a teenager when I almost got sucked in, but...

And yeah, the internet was so much more fun back in the day.

I mean, a lot of that fiction is just really good! Frankly, the rationalists tend to miss the point so hard, hyperfocusing on the cool gadgets and missing the commentaries on civilization, society, history, human nature, etc. Don't let their awful beige California ideology ruin your fondness of some genuinely entertaining, thought-provoking literature.

Pretty much how I feel. Genuinely considering starting a lemmy instance or something to take over for the subreddit for my books.

I spent a lot of time on r/SneerClub back in the day, I know to keep things NSFW, hah! And I'll check out MoreWrite, that sounds fun!

And the archived copy is totally fine by me, who knows how long Reddit will survive?

Thanks!

Hi, I'm John Bierce, cheesy fantasy novelist (both in the sense of writing cheesy books, and in the sense of being full of the literal dairy product), and I was on SneerClub (using various accounts) since around... 2019, 2020? I've missed it since it fled Reddit, especially with all the rampant, stupid AI hype and TESCREAL bullshit running rampant right now.