I agree that a lot of conservative writers undergo "audience capture" and end up pandering to the baser instincts of their readership. But I think one could read the statement “I’m attracted to [some hot button culture war issue] because you can lose your livelihood for speaking out on it.” as an observation about the general state of the culture, not a statement about the specific writer saying that and his position.
Is a successful conservative writer going to lose his livelihood for arguing that sexism is not the primary cause of the underrepresentation of women in STEM? No, of course not: expressing sentiments like that is exactly what's expected of him. Could a random guy not making a living by expressing anti-woke opinions lose his livelihood for doing that? Well, yeah, his name was James Damore.
Just because it isn't brave for anti-woke writers and journalists to tell their audiences exactly what they want to hear, doesn't mean it isn't brave for ANYONE to express anti-woke opinions.
Hmmm. I subscribe precisely because you often say really interesting things I disagree with. Makes me think. There are hopefully enough of us that you keep doing this.
I don’t buy the brave Liz Cheney story, however. She’s going to clean up raising money as the “brave Liz Cheney” and have a sweet niche running her NGO and being on TV a lot. Much better than having to try to wrangle MTG into voting the right way in the House. And, miraculously, the left has forgiven her for being a Cheney and on the wrong side of the Iraq war. Normally they don’t forgive stuff like that so easily. So she will get to go to better parties in DC and NY, where people will tell her she is brave. So much more fun than some angry Wyoming rancher demanding she alienate the nice people in DC by representing him on some toxic issue. I think she took the easy way out.
Very few people who say that they want their views challenged or that they are open to multiple viewpoints are actually being honest with themselves. Humans used to only live in small communities, so we’re wired for ingroup solidarity, not to listen to opposing viewpoints (which could be seen as betraying the tribe).
A big problem I see for Republicans is that as the party increasingly becomes more populist, swapping out college-educated Romney types for working-class MAGAs, there will be a massive brain drain in the party.
I’ve spoken to Sibarium before personally and he is in fact a very intelligent guy. He has had his political views put through the wringer during the 4 years he spent at Yale, including during when the Halloween costume controversy happened, so he’s used to being around people that strongly disagree with him. But I do see how people like him are dying out under the populist wave.
JK Rowling has stood up for women pretty well recently. She isn't even saying anything crazy, just standing up for what she believes and that pissed off a lot of her fans.
Well, maybe this passes a bravery test: Dr. Kathleen Stock.
"We hid in a broom cupboard: my mad day at Oxford with Kathleen Stock
It took police and three security guards to get her there — but this week the gender-critical academic spoke at the Oxford Union. Janice Turner went with her"
This is true unless I'm one of their favorite writers. I'm not afraid to say the things I believe even if my readers don't believe it. For example, on a Substack called "Bentham's newsletter" I'm not afraid to defend utilitarianism and the badness of factory farming!
This is a good point; people can't distinguish bravery from agreeing with them. I remember some idiotic talking head called the 9/11 hijackers cowards. They were many things, but certainly not cowards; they gave their lives for a cause they believed in.
“...But running on vaccine hesitancy contributes to the issue being politically polarized, and can directly end up affecting the decisions people make. I don’t think it matters much for covid anymore, but the next time we have a pandemic, there are likely to be serious consequences of Republicans taking this path, both in terms of policy and what their voters decide to do.”
Are you being brave by claiming the vaccine hesitancy is due purely to the Republican response vs. you know, all the lies Covid Inc pushed on the public? Or are you simply being willfully obtuse?
I don’t think your follower count going up and down proves that people like living in extreme echo chambers. Most people think you are right-wing and they are going to share you with other right-wingers. When you say something left-wing, the audience for that isn’t really there. But those are immediate short-term reactions. What is harder to spot is how many people stick with you because they appreciate quality and honesty and the ability to challenge your own side’s preconceptions. That won’t be visible in the short-run numbers, but it is still real.
As a republican primary voter, DeSantis stance on vaccine makes me less likely to vote for him. Covid Vaccine helps older and unhealthy individuals by reducing their likelihood of hospitalization and given 95% of seniors have taken the Covid vaccine it is just absurd what DeSantis is doing now. As a Harvard Yale educated lawyer, he is not that dumb to make the anti- vaccine argument he seems to be making. Yes, it is perfectly legitimate to raise issues about benefits of Covid vaccination for young men as the chance of Myocarditis seems to be higher for this cohort and they are least likely to be hospitalized. But for seniors and unhealthy individuals, Covid vaccine saved lives. Trump is truly brave to voice an opinion that is contrary to his most vocal base.
Some of the most fun I have is reading the swivel-eyed comments under Bari Weiss pieces that aren't right wing enough. These people are genuinely aggrieved when not fed exactly the views they hold. I think she's consistently quite brave in this respect.
"When I try to rack my brain for examples of writers that I think have behaved bravely recently, not many examples come to mind. According to Unz, Steve Sailer stopped saying nice things about the covid vaccine after getting flak from his readers. There’s Yarvin’s hobbits and elves piece, though I’ve more recently seen him kissing up to pro-lifers. I remember admiring Claire Lehmann for pushing back against her audience on covid issues. So it happens, but writers are so rarely willing to make their audiences mad that it’s genuinely difficult to think of many clear cases. I like to give them credit and a status boost when they do."
Aren't you here just praising people for agreeing with you about vaccines or whatever other opinion you hold, thus falling into "'brave' means 'says things that I agree with?'" Or likewise when you criticize Yarvin for "kissing up to pro-lifers," the implication is that he's only doing that because of audience capture, and it couldn't possibly be because maybe he is actually changing his mind. Isn't that the same criticism as people who accuse Liz Cheney of kissing up to CNN for selfish reasons rather than genuine belief?
Personally, I don't think Liz Cheney is "brave," nor do I think she was pursuing some kind of cynical self-interested play. I just think she had TDS. She just really hates Donald Trump. It's not that complicated. She might not be in Congress anymore, but her TDS definitely did not cost her in any way that I would consider "brave." Likewise, I don't consider people saying contrarian things online to be "brave" pretty much ever. Losing some Twitter followers isn't enough of a consequence to count as "bravery." It just means you're high in disagreeableness. Good for you. Being willing to piss people off isn't praiseworthy in and of itself.
I think one factor you're missing in your perspective is that right-wing dogma is generally correct, at least at this moment in history, and truth is a factor in people's evaluation of one's statements. You'd lose Twitter followers if you started arguing that "2 + 2 = 5," but it wouldn't be because you're saying something brave and true. It would be because you're saying something stupid and false. This is probably how most people that disdain your liberal viewpoints think about them.
If you want to convince people that you're being brave and honest rather than simply contrarian for the sake of maintaining your own intellectual image, you should put more effort into convincing people that your non-rightie opinions are actually true, rather than just insulting the audience for disagreeing with them. You talk about the vaccine a lot, but you still refuse to engage with any vaccine skeptics in any substantive way that I've seen. You just insist that they're bad and stupid. That's not brave in my opinion, it's lazy. Likewise, you did write a piece about abortion, but instead of engaging with the pro-life viewpoint, you just said that it'll be bad for Republicans in elections, plus more insults and stereotyping of pro-lifers, even quoting Jessica Valenti about how dumb and bad and stupid they obviously are. Why would you expect people to respond well to that?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/23/can-things-be-both-popular-and-silenced/
I agree that a lot of conservative writers undergo "audience capture" and end up pandering to the baser instincts of their readership. But I think one could read the statement “I’m attracted to [some hot button culture war issue] because you can lose your livelihood for speaking out on it.” as an observation about the general state of the culture, not a statement about the specific writer saying that and his position.
Is a successful conservative writer going to lose his livelihood for arguing that sexism is not the primary cause of the underrepresentation of women in STEM? No, of course not: expressing sentiments like that is exactly what's expected of him. Could a random guy not making a living by expressing anti-woke opinions lose his livelihood for doing that? Well, yeah, his name was James Damore.
Just because it isn't brave for anti-woke writers and journalists to tell their audiences exactly what they want to hear, doesn't mean it isn't brave for ANYONE to express anti-woke opinions.
Hmmm. I subscribe precisely because you often say really interesting things I disagree with. Makes me think. There are hopefully enough of us that you keep doing this.
I don’t buy the brave Liz Cheney story, however. She’s going to clean up raising money as the “brave Liz Cheney” and have a sweet niche running her NGO and being on TV a lot. Much better than having to try to wrangle MTG into voting the right way in the House. And, miraculously, the left has forgiven her for being a Cheney and on the wrong side of the Iraq war. Normally they don’t forgive stuff like that so easily. So she will get to go to better parties in DC and NY, where people will tell her she is brave. So much more fun than some angry Wyoming rancher demanding she alienate the nice people in DC by representing him on some toxic issue. I think she took the easy way out.
Very few people who say that they want their views challenged or that they are open to multiple viewpoints are actually being honest with themselves. Humans used to only live in small communities, so we’re wired for ingroup solidarity, not to listen to opposing viewpoints (which could be seen as betraying the tribe).
A big problem I see for Republicans is that as the party increasingly becomes more populist, swapping out college-educated Romney types for working-class MAGAs, there will be a massive brain drain in the party.
I’ve spoken to Sibarium before personally and he is in fact a very intelligent guy. He has had his political views put through the wringer during the 4 years he spent at Yale, including during when the Halloween costume controversy happened, so he’s used to being around people that strongly disagree with him. But I do see how people like him are dying out under the populist wave.
JK Rowling has stood up for women pretty well recently. She isn't even saying anything crazy, just standing up for what she believes and that pissed off a lot of her fans.
I posted a long analysis of vaccine safety earlier in 2023:
"I didn't see many smoking guns of vaccine danger"
https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1651115795257372673
Well, maybe this passes a bravery test: Dr. Kathleen Stock.
"We hid in a broom cupboard: my mad day at Oxford with Kathleen Stock
It took police and three security guards to get her there — but this week the gender-critical academic spoke at the Oxford Union. Janice Turner went with her"
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/5d0fec18-ffd6-11ed-a364-04e704863f75
sometimes people try to compliment me and call me brave for being unvaccinated and resisting Trudeau
it always makes me feel sheepish because it was super easy to resist the jab when you have nothing to lose
if i had a wife/kids/mortgage and resisted the jab and lost my livelihood, that would've been brave
but people with families to support can't be afford to be brave
This is true unless I'm one of their favorite writers. I'm not afraid to say the things I believe even if my readers don't believe it. For example, on a Substack called "Bentham's newsletter" I'm not afraid to defend utilitarianism and the badness of factory farming!
This is a good point; people can't distinguish bravery from agreeing with them. I remember some idiotic talking head called the 9/11 hijackers cowards. They were many things, but certainly not cowards; they gave their lives for a cause they believed in.
“...But running on vaccine hesitancy contributes to the issue being politically polarized, and can directly end up affecting the decisions people make. I don’t think it matters much for covid anymore, but the next time we have a pandemic, there are likely to be serious consequences of Republicans taking this path, both in terms of policy and what their voters decide to do.”
Are you being brave by claiming the vaccine hesitancy is due purely to the Republican response vs. you know, all the lies Covid Inc pushed on the public? Or are you simply being willfully obtuse?
I don’t think your follower count going up and down proves that people like living in extreme echo chambers. Most people think you are right-wing and they are going to share you with other right-wingers. When you say something left-wing, the audience for that isn’t really there. But those are immediate short-term reactions. What is harder to spot is how many people stick with you because they appreciate quality and honesty and the ability to challenge your own side’s preconceptions. That won’t be visible in the short-run numbers, but it is still real.
As a republican primary voter, DeSantis stance on vaccine makes me less likely to vote for him. Covid Vaccine helps older and unhealthy individuals by reducing their likelihood of hospitalization and given 95% of seniors have taken the Covid vaccine it is just absurd what DeSantis is doing now. As a Harvard Yale educated lawyer, he is not that dumb to make the anti- vaccine argument he seems to be making. Yes, it is perfectly legitimate to raise issues about benefits of Covid vaccination for young men as the chance of Myocarditis seems to be higher for this cohort and they are least likely to be hospitalized. But for seniors and unhealthy individuals, Covid vaccine saved lives. Trump is truly brave to voice an opinion that is contrary to his most vocal base.
Some of the most fun I have is reading the swivel-eyed comments under Bari Weiss pieces that aren't right wing enough. These people are genuinely aggrieved when not fed exactly the views they hold. I think she's consistently quite brave in this respect.
"When I try to rack my brain for examples of writers that I think have behaved bravely recently, not many examples come to mind. According to Unz, Steve Sailer stopped saying nice things about the covid vaccine after getting flak from his readers. There’s Yarvin’s hobbits and elves piece, though I’ve more recently seen him kissing up to pro-lifers. I remember admiring Claire Lehmann for pushing back against her audience on covid issues. So it happens, but writers are so rarely willing to make their audiences mad that it’s genuinely difficult to think of many clear cases. I like to give them credit and a status boost when they do."
Aren't you here just praising people for agreeing with you about vaccines or whatever other opinion you hold, thus falling into "'brave' means 'says things that I agree with?'" Or likewise when you criticize Yarvin for "kissing up to pro-lifers," the implication is that he's only doing that because of audience capture, and it couldn't possibly be because maybe he is actually changing his mind. Isn't that the same criticism as people who accuse Liz Cheney of kissing up to CNN for selfish reasons rather than genuine belief?
Personally, I don't think Liz Cheney is "brave," nor do I think she was pursuing some kind of cynical self-interested play. I just think she had TDS. She just really hates Donald Trump. It's not that complicated. She might not be in Congress anymore, but her TDS definitely did not cost her in any way that I would consider "brave." Likewise, I don't consider people saying contrarian things online to be "brave" pretty much ever. Losing some Twitter followers isn't enough of a consequence to count as "bravery." It just means you're high in disagreeableness. Good for you. Being willing to piss people off isn't praiseworthy in and of itself.
I think one factor you're missing in your perspective is that right-wing dogma is generally correct, at least at this moment in history, and truth is a factor in people's evaluation of one's statements. You'd lose Twitter followers if you started arguing that "2 + 2 = 5," but it wouldn't be because you're saying something brave and true. It would be because you're saying something stupid and false. This is probably how most people that disdain your liberal viewpoints think about them.
If you want to convince people that you're being brave and honest rather than simply contrarian for the sake of maintaining your own intellectual image, you should put more effort into convincing people that your non-rightie opinions are actually true, rather than just insulting the audience for disagreeing with them. You talk about the vaccine a lot, but you still refuse to engage with any vaccine skeptics in any substantive way that I've seen. You just insist that they're bad and stupid. That's not brave in my opinion, it's lazy. Likewise, you did write a piece about abortion, but instead of engaging with the pro-life viewpoint, you just said that it'll be bad for Republicans in elections, plus more insults and stereotyping of pro-lifers, even quoting Jessica Valenti about how dumb and bad and stupid they obviously are. Why would you expect people to respond well to that?
I did a long analysis of covid vaccine dangers to younger people this year: "I didn't see many smoking guns of vaccine danger:"
https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1651115795257372673
There's something particularly pernicious about bravery debates https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/18/against-bravery-debates/
Legitimately cannot wait for trump to die