while i was out

In my opinion neutrality is the only good you can be nowdays, after watching both sides for a while you realise that no sides should be taken but both sides leant towards, planting you roughly in the middle, not fully but roughly.

Or is that just apathy? I feel like it might just be apathy because over time I have distanced myself and not cared for it. Yeah that's apathy, much happier this way pal.

Yeah! Woo!

I've written three (with this being the third and a half of) responses to this thread. I lost the first big one on accident and the others evolved into writing therapy because there's no one else to rant to or at least no one I'm willing to bother about these things when I mostly just wanted to bitch. The second one I wrote because I couldn't sleep and I feel like I could sleep now so I'll try that. Frickin' fricks (not you guys). Posting so I can post like how I wanted to originally.

You know, sometimes I do ask myself the question "am I radicalised?" and it's a good question to ask to keep yourself in check. Or better, I am curious to examine my motives (because we frequently lie to ourselves), why I am really into the things I believe and I follow certain people. I used to be more apolitical than most of my peers, and even if I am more left leaning socially (because the new generations will be more progressive but also I score higher in openess), I never got into politics before, never had robust opinions the way most of my friends do, mostly naive, didn't know what to vote, etc. I was totally of, minding my own business. Then gamergate happen, still was an observer and not really participating, but of course there would be reaction and videos would flow on my feed, and I'd be curious about these cultural wars I was totally unaware of. But when I started observing what's going on, it made totally more sense to me to go with the more rational individuals rather than the emotionally driven mob. It just happened naturally and I didn't have any political motive, just it made more sense to me at the present times. Now, does that make me a radicalised person? I know I still have a foot on reality and I am not going to go out and do something wild. I know also that it's less probable as I am already grown up without the teen angst of the youth, when I was introduced to this side of the cultural wars, I was over 35 years old. It could be perhaps different if younger people suddenly start watching anti-woke youtube as they are just forming their personalities and are seeking desperately for an identity. But then again, they talk about the slippery slope, how these young people will be radicalised and become "nazis" and so on, but hold on a pickin moment here? Isn't this the same that happens with young people radicalised by the far left? Simply young people seeking for an identity, finding it in far left ideologies, joining Antifa and so on? But of course this is masked, because you think "oh but they are just fighting for social justice, that's a good thing!". While, 99.9% of society, left or right, will agree that something is wrong if they see a young man with a swastika in his chest for example. As a society we wholly agree and denounce the actual far right, but on the other side we have something that is similarly identitarian in nature, attracting young people, but masked under the niceness of social justice. And generally I am not against social justice, I am against the dishonest game that is being played here.

And my other issue with all of this is who these people call alt right or far right nazi. Just about everyone! The "worse" people I have watched videos of (and I am not a real fan of these people, just happened to watch some of their videos back in time because I was curious to hear what they say) are maybe Ben Shapiro and Stefan Molyneux. These are two examples of persons that people on the left consider horrible human beings. Why? What have they done? They just voiced their opinion. Yes, people can find some old clip/twitter post where someone at some point said something and be like "Hey, look what Stefan or Ben advocates for, the piece of shit!" but if we want to play this game there are plenty of tweets of leftists and feminists saying absolutely horrible things (sometimes radical leftists say even more horrible than the points they claim about the "alt right" person. Whenever Ben said something to the effect of "there are only two genders", some radical feminist joked about wishing male genocide for xmas). Then again, these are the "worse" examples of the people I've watched (I know there are real white supermacists there, but they are fringe, nobody gives a shit and I don't even bother to listen to them). And these are just personalities, Ben seems like a so called conservative pundit, while I think Stefan is like the individualist contrarian, maybe having some great idea about himself that he projects through the videos, so maybe his contrarianism stuck gold to the present cultural caustic issues. The problem is that much more calmer rational people, like the Weinstein professors for example (who are quite on the left), Jordan Peterson who wants to have the discussion and help young people, a lot of other more rational, less conservative and not pundity people are been demonized as alt right. Even people like Dave Rubin or Joe Rogan who some people consider milktoast (it blew my mind when John Carmack said he goes to Joe Rogan and there were one or two people who considered this a sin, because their justification "Joe is a horrible horrible piece of shit!", say what?). Or maybe the justification is that they are pushing the alt right even if they don't realise it, so this is dangerous and they should be called out for it. So there is this thing that some ideas are sooooo dangerous, that they have to be cancelled, and here we have the dominating cancel culture and the justification for it. We name someone we want to shut down a horrible horrible human piece of shit, so that we justify the mob to go destroy this person and feel good with themselves. And I know they say cancel culture comes from both sides, but honestly I've seen far leftists being much more nastier and purposed to use the power of the cancel culture to fire people from their jobs or worse, I've seen so many examples now (and I do doubt that I am seeing the examples because maybe I watch "alt-right" youtubers pointing out these examples, but maybe they don't point the ones from the right?) that I am not convinced that there is not a big problem from the left. It still actually blows my mind when you see leftists claiming they are against freedom of speech. How things have fallen?

Is this all propaganda (self-doubting again) about this big problem with the far-left because exactly I was watching those youtubers on one side of the echo-chamber? I guess one can say the same about the left pushing the idea of some scary white supermacy domination on the internet. But I'll tell you something, I am not convinced. I might try to watch the video. I see people on the comments being like "Oh,. I used to be radicalized too but I came back to the good side, thank you!" and I am puzzled. Because the way the cultural wars and the political polarisation is right now, IF, If I ever realized that the whole "alt-right" (and be alt-right in quotes I mean most youtube independent creators I might watch but don't even consider them so) is just a big conspiracy theory,  if I was convinced I was duped and there is nothing wrong going on the left, then my next move would not be to switch sides and be like "Now I am all for what these leftists say, the others are the bad guys". IF you could twist my mind so hard, I would just be like "You know what? I just quit!!!". That's why there is something puzzling me here. It happened with another youtuber, contrapoints. She appeared out of nowhere and then people started praising her like the second coming of Jesus. I don't understand this phenomenon actually and it would be interesting to understand (Aydin Paladin made an analysis but it's still hard to grasp what's going on). The way people reacted with contrapoints, all the shamy "OMG, I was totally red pilled and now I am totally blue pilled, you saved my life!!!" was so weird. And I did tried to watch one or two videos of her (I'll try more at some point) curiously to see if she can transform me, what's the magic that she is doing? Her videos are a bit jarring and long. But I haven't found a convincing argument (and I will try to watch more at some time) that red pills my red pill into a blue pill (have a second flip of mind where I thought these "alt right" youtuber made sense, to suddenly realize they don't make sense, and all the leftists now do make absolute sense,... no I never had this experience, and how could I when the lunacy is still here).

I expanded a lot here and not knowing where it's going. In a nutshell, I do have the doubts whether I am in the slippery slope to radicalisation (and self examination like others simply being newly informed of the cultural wars) when started watching these "alt-right" youtubers. I don't consider most (if not) of the people I watch to be dangerous radicals, and even if it's be proxy (they don't know it, but they are enablers) what does it mean? Then every idea is radical if we think like this. And so the leftist ideas too. And while I have noticed videos in this so called breadtube (people on the left growing on youtube, trying to "save" young people from radicalization, like contrapoints for example), I don't think they have presented a convincing argument to flip my mind into "OMG I was truly radicalised or enabled it, all the thing the alt-right youtube says is full conspiracies, the left is absolutely fine and fighting the good fight, but the far right is growing and it's dangerous". At best, if they ever flipped my mind, I would be like "You know what? Fuck politics, I'll go back to geeky hobbies and forget all these!!!"

Geeky hobbies. My classic old good identity. Coder is my only identity I said once. Geeky hobbies. Ohh,.. but wait! They invaded our hobbies. It was through gamergate afterall that I followed this so called "slippery slope", another alternative view in these nasty cultural wars, met some interesting people (on youtube not real life). And what they do? They go in one community and start saying it's toxic and need to be cleaned. Then outcasts form another community. They do happen to be the ones with the contrarian pro-Trump, anti-woke, pro-free speech even if it's ugly. I wouldn't be able to escape now even if I avoided anything on the internet that is political and focused on my own special interests.

So, can't escape. Stopped watching a bit most youtube videos on the past (I think most youtube individual creators on the anti-woke (you know, the Sargon of Akads of youtube) originally got into because it was the new cool reactionary thing, like with atheism being the new "let's debunk God and mock religious people to project how more intelligent we are", so it's again the cultural wars made some people pop up, not because they are far-right in belief, but because they are contrarian and saw how things have flipped upside down, "so the new cool thing is to not be a leftist today, because some of them are crazy". Maybe I watch few of them that I think are more serious and researched and were invested before this whole thing. And nowadays I avoid twitter more. Tweets are like drink shots of conflicting emotions. Jarring to your mental health to read tweet after tweet, what he said, what she said.

Sorry for the big post..

Sorry, I just use leftist or far left just to point out a certain group of people who act like that (on the internet but also on universities, trying to cancel non-PC people). I am reluctant everytime I type left/far left. I don't know how to describe that there are certain people who are dominating academia/media and create a climate of fear of others to talk out. And you might say "would you want to not make people afraid of saying horrible things?". Actually yes, but usually most of the time it seems like the things someone said where people freak out are nothing so terrifying, nothing as horrible as they make it, yet people will be demonised and lose their jobs. It's an organised mob, who deliberately seek to do so (in our space, you see it in gaming sites like resetera for example).

Anyway,. people point out that it's not far left, it's right that dominates just because we are in the present time with Trump and Brexit. But that's what people voted now and tomorrow they might vote more to the left like a pendulum swing. Maybe next time people will vote more to the left, who knows. Also, I don't mind regular discussion about social safety nets and taxation. I don't even have strong opinions in these issues. But the discourse has dominated from groups like radical feminists and social justice warriors that act in ways I denounce. It just happens that these groups are align with the left (maybe I call them far left) and I don't have another name for that. I might look mad to the world (because it's hard to come with words to describe the situation, it's more complicated than that), but it's not just all these good left leaning people (in fact some people on the left, left the left, walking away and so on, because of the radicals in it) and only the bad alt-right guys are the only danger (and people will throw just about everyone under the alt-right label). I don't see it like this. I see some serious problems with the left (and that's why people are fed up and vote for Trump and Brexit imho) and if I was in love with the left, I would still fight these people! I would be disgraced of what to be on the left or to be pro social justice has come to be, how disgraceful most of these groups have become. As I said, I don't have conservative leaning, more liberals once but that's mostly because my generation was more liberal than previous generations, even if political I am still not very defined.

WB GRUG, haven't seen you since 2019.

I guess it would be:
- only ever post in Wads & Mods and Doom Editing (maybe Eternity Engine and demo subforum too)
- don't even visit other subforums, pretend they don't exist. Don't even read those subforums. Even dannebuninga (or Ribbiks) once said he hid 'Everywhere else' with a userscript or something like that, in response to some guy that complained he was banned from that subforum.
- if you find an offtopic post in the allowed forums, leave the thread. Wait till offtopic discussion dies if you want to participate.

I didn't quite get the quoted post though - maybe he recommended to stay away from DW instead?

Yooo Joe Ilya, how you been?

Cuz life bro... and Doom Eternal