Gaywallet (they/it)

I’m gay

  • 343 Posts
  • 1.14K Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 28th, 2022

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  • That’s just cherrypicking. Yes some people will review bomb. Others will make fake positive reviews to counteract people review bombing a game for being too “woke”.

    In the end the only thing that even could matter is how people in aggregate work - and that’s easy to account for, you just readjust the distribution to be more spread out to get the “true” score of things.

    This video seems more like clickbait than anything. I’m finding it hard to find anything worthwhile to engage with here even from a high level.





  • I’m brought to mind of the concept that any movement must have a peaceful branch for the system to acknowledge and meet demands for change as well as a “violent” branch to drive the opponents to the bargaining table. And within both of those is a need to take care of the community to enable them to continue to protest for change.

    Completely agreed with this concept. I’ve been a big fan of multiple voices advocating for different things. It helps others understand where the center is or where the most agreement is likely to be. You need some people asking for everything in order to push in the direction of change, otherwise the people in charge will think what they have given up is satisfactory (or perhaps even too much).

    I think where these protests will succeed or fail is community coming together to take care of each other, with a safety net so many more people will be able to participate and make their voices heard.

    Yes I think general principles of anarchy apply here in that the more people you can get mobilized around a single issue and the more engagement you can get the more successful it will be. Entirely peaceful protests can drive huge change, but only when the government is a peaceful one who actively wishes to represent the people. The more corrupt and out of touch they get the less they will care about the constituency and the massive prevalence of voter disenfranchisement and a system of corruption which is increasingly run on money in the United States seems to suggest that it falls more closely in that latter bucket.



  • Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.

    I really wish this was in a proper paper, as I wonder how much selection bias is at play here. How is “achieving their goals” measured? What kind of governments are we talking about? What is “serious political change”? I have a lot of serious doubt that nonviolent protests do much against hostile governments. They are absolutely important, and true research has revealed they are much more effective at mobilizing people who agree with the protestors, but the research also shows that violent protests have a larger affect on folks who do not agree with the protestors because they cause actual harm and more forcibly bring people to the table to negotiate. But what exactly is considered violent is a difficult one to quantify and direct physical violence (injuring and killing others) is much less effective than non-human directed violence which is difficult to quantify and to define. Destruction of property, for example, is often considered a form of non-human directed violence which likely has a larger affect on change than human-directed physical violence because no one is directly injured and it creates a direct economic incentive for change to happen.







  • There’s no way for me to really know what’s going on in their heads, frankly.

    What I can tell you, at least, is that I have had some partners respond to this with shock and negative emotions. They often feel that it is somehow invalidating how they feel about me. On more than one occasion I have been described as romantic which is perhaps where this feeling of invalidation is based. I very much enjoy intimacy, I simply do not experience a “romantic” attraction. I still enjoy doing many of the things that are considered normal in what is described as a “romantic” relationship (I use this term because I’m poly, I’m not coupled with anyone, just partners).


  • I’m aromantic and of all the labels I have, it’s the one that often gets the strongest visceral reaction from folks. Many have preconceived notions of what aromanticism is and can be and it’s deeply frustrating. It’s one of the labels I have that I am most hesitant about sharing, because it requires a conversation to explain myself. However, even after explaining myself, I believe many think I am either lying or just cannot believe that the way I view the world is true and instead substitute their own beliefs for truth.