On the other side of this duality of blogs I wrote a review of Ruocchio’s first book and mentioned in there that I had started casually watching the “booktuber” island of content. So I eventually bumped into Daniel Greene. His videos looked more like artsy style than depth, but I appreciated a recent review he posted about Ken Liu’s series, it satisfied a lot of the curiosity I had. That first book was part of a big lists of books I planned to get next and the result of having my curiosity quenched was that I decided not to order it. Not because the review was mildly negative, or because I decided not to read it, but with that initial curiosity gone I just don’t feel a priority about it. Sometimes things go in weird way (the order ended up being, Robin Hobb’s third in the first trilogy, Empire in Black and Gold by Tchaikovsky and… Duncton Wood. Plus other non-fantasy stuff. In the list I still have Ken Liu, The Mists of Avalon, The Sword of Kaigen, The Tainted Cup, The Justice of Kings, A Memory Called Empire, The Failures, The Emperor’s Blade… as you can see a few more of youtube-induced curiosity.)

But the topic here is the drama that popped up recently. Literally popped up because it started for me with a video randomly shown (and now gone, apparently). Titled: “I Received a CEASE AND DESIST from Daniel Greene”

I watched that video without knowing about anything else and I had a similar reaction to most of everyone else, I suppose. It was a strongly emotional video and quite damning of Daniel Greene. After that, my feed got populated by other youtubers sharing that general area of interest, showing support to this Naomi King. One of which especially got my attention (also gone now), from this other guy. It got my attention and now I regret of not having downloaded a copy. I know how these things go and I suspected it could have gotten deleted, eventually, but what do I care? The video was simply very good. It was again very emotional and honestly heartfelt, but didn’t stop there. It commented the situation with such a strength and clarity that I thought it sent a very powerful message, that superseded the specific drama. That was important outside of its specific moment.

And now it’s all gone. Everything is gone. All these youtubers are withdrawing their previous emotional reactions and support for the abused side, and now apologizing to the other.

I get it. And I do feel somewhat the same. There is a certain uniformity to these “community” reactions where (for once) I’m no exception. I feel and behave like everyone else. But I do think these erasures of previous comments do not really help, the community as a whole, to move forward and LEARN. The point is that YOU CANNOT (we cannot) level accusations to someone only, a few days later, withdraw everything and apologize. EVERY SINGLE TIME (every time this happens, I’m not implying accusations are usually proven false.)

It’s obviously perfectly fine to correct your stance on some event, while more information is disclosed. This is the basis of everything. But we have to learn to suspend judgment. I know there are implications. I don’t know Daniel nor Naomi, I only watched a few videos. But for some people it’s a big deal, because maybe they joined their discord, are more involved in a community. Those people have to decide whether to continue to support someone who, they find out, is not someone that aligns with their views. So you also HAVE to make a choice.

But the main topic here is not the drama, but the way I (we) react from the very beginning. Naomi’s first video didn’t leave much space for doubt. Daniel’s first response (still up, but may be gone soon), if anything, confirms the negative judgment on him. Now everything turned around. Are we all just wind vanes who turn today in this direction and tomorrow in another? Are we all just slaves to whims?

This is why I think history is important. Why these videos that are published only to get deleted two days later only contribute to these mistakes happening again, rather than learn from them. We need to ANTICIPATE these paths rather than continuously get surprised by them. Pretending ourselves naive and innocent. That’s why I think the video mentioned above by Jackson Dickert CONTINUES to be an important video. Because Daniel is just another guy, and Naomi another woman, and these things will continue to happen, and as a community (in the broader term, not related to booktube here, but as a whole society) we should learn to anticipate the outcomes.

I usually suspend judgement, and I have, innately, a much more indecisive nature. I always have a perception of things being way more complex and, on the internet, involving people that I don’t personally know, I just arrive at the absolute conclusion that I simply don’t have ways to know things well enough to be able to judge them. There is no way, for me, to be sure about anything about the private life of whoever else (like an agnostic stance applied to worldly events). My opinion is IRRELEVANT. But, as already said, sometimes you don’t have the luxury of indecision, sometimes you have to make choices. For me, the empathy I felt watching Naomi’s video still RINGS TRUE. This doesn’t mean that empathy turns into hate toward Daniel, or that I still defend the merit of Naomi’s position. I just think that we all are too fast to cling to certain positions, only to then being too fast again forsaking them and apologize. I see that as way too cowardly, because it’s innately dishonest.

As I said, if you want to judge other people, then you have to anticipate the outcomes. You need to have doubts. So you want to “doubt” women when they gather the strength to publicly denounce some abuse? Of course not, but then it’s a contradiction. For me, when these twists happen, it’s important to double down on the initial reaction. To UNDERSTAND why it was legitimate. Not because I prefer to persist in the error rather than be exposed to hypocrisy (it would be deciding between two faulty positions), but because reactions have reasons. It is always more important to understand, than to judge.

That’s why deleting all those initial responses isn’t helping. Those reactions are ALL legitimate. Rather than simply apologize and move on, we should instead stay, for once. Not to understand what truly happened with Naomi and Daniel, but to understand how this society is shaped and reacts. It’s important to not just transform it in another field of battle between two factions. It’s important that empathy doesn’t get simply stopped by doubt, or then reversed by more information.

OWN those reactions, even in the light of new information coming up. You can’t constantly erase the past. Every truth stays truthful. Those initial reactions to Naomi’s video stay TRUE. You can’t simply pivot from “Daniel is a monster” to “Oh, sorry, Naomi is the monster.” It’s not a binary war, and truth is never binary either. Things move contextually. Truths are never falsified, in the real world, they are only revealed partial, as more light is cast.

Stand your ground.

[The lives of others come together in fragments. A light shining off a separate story can illuminate what had remained dark. Brains are miraculous; humans storytelling creatures. The shards draw themselves together and make something whole.]

Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff

P.S.
Some context: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1iqs8lv/naomi_kingdaniel_greene_megathread/
Oh, and now I watched Dickert’s second video and he has an on-screen transcript of the previous. So that part is not completely gone, even if I think the video itself was more powerful. “The way I worded this was flat out terrible.” Nah, it was good. May have been imprecise about details, but the message was legitimate and important.
A look at the comments under this video also tells a lot about the “climate” around these things.

Because why not, this video is related. From gossip drama to science, it all comes down to basic epistemology.

I’ve always had a problem with satire. For a mind like mine, made of fundamentals and principles, satire was ever too blurry, hard to pinpoint.

If something like body shaming is universally wrong, why it is generally widely accepted as satire? Even historically, but also in modern times? Maybe you do remember all the controversies about Charlie Hebdo. Where is the line drawn?

There are certain groups of people that are sensible to certain topics. In general you make sure to avoid bringing them up, with a specific audience. But in the case of the internet a message doesn’t simply reach its intended target, it has the potential to reach everyone. So does this mean we avoid everything that can potentially offend someone out there, since everyone is potentially present? Of course not, it’s not even practical.

Something similar happens with “pronouns.” It’s absolutely okay to misgender someone by mistake. But if you then get corrected and refuse to acknowledge it, then you immediately are at fault. This becomes an attack, a deliberate offense that needs a strong response. Not so many people agree here. For some, the content of something said can already be at fault, universally wrong and to be condemned. But for me instead the distinct dividing line is on intent. Intentional, deliberate offense or not.

But intent does not solve satire, where the intent is often to explicitly INSULT. And yet we say it’s fine.

Well, all this until I figured out what satire actually is. It’s now a solved problem.

The way I understand it now, is that satire is not a problem of content. Whether what is being said is allowed or not. Because again, if that was the case you’d end up with too much ambiguity. Ambiguity that instead goes completely away when you realize what satire TRULY is: a contextual message.

That’s why body shaming, that would be unambiguously wrong as content, becomes totally accepted in the context of satire (not fully, it still retains moral implications, but lets say it stays lawful). This because satire doesn’t define a content, but a context. The relationship between who says something, and who’s the target.

Satire defines a message that ALWAYS has a “bottom up” trajectory. This is the line of distinction. It always origins from someone (or a group of people) who are vulnerable, toward someone who holds the power. That’s why, as a society, we accept it. Because it is a category outside judgement, regulated as a form of universal balance: even if a person is attacked, mocked, insulted… maybe even hurt, it will always be someone in a position of greater power. If money defines not happiness but a multiplication of possibilities (if you get ill you can die even if you’re rich, but being rich multiplies your chances of survival), then the satirical power is a power of destabilization for more stability. And if positions get reversed, then even application of rules get reversed.

A thing REVERSIBLE in application, but UNMOVABLE in its principle. It’s specifically one of those absolute “weak makes right” rules.

This is also why a member of the parliament cannot mock and insult another member of the parliament. For satire to apply you need a contextual imbalance of power, it doesn’t work between equals.

That’s why powerful men hate satire, it’s something they cannot control because it is defined outside their reach. Unless relying on active censorship.

Not going for nuance or complexity, here. But I do remember the world is complex.

I do believe that fascism is in the destiny of humanity.

I believe that humanity is a failed experiment, that it has nowhere to go.

I don’t think there’s any pragmatic, real space at this point to avoid this course. (the rightful correction is built as self-defeating, the system built to be unsolvable in its structure)

This is only a process that can be slowed down or accelerated. But I don’t think it’s something like a twenty years of delay possible. More like a few months or a few years. (I’ve been wrong about timings in the past, but not on the trajectory)

For all I care, it’s better to accelerate at this point. May chaos create some anomalies that lead to surprises. Good or not.

(me accepting the acceleration doesn’t mean me participating in it, I’m not movable and my point of observation is absolute. This isn’t about me)

No need to add words to wiggle and nudge two different shapes that weren’t intended to match…

These two are a perfect match.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7213729970

Meanwhile, Elon Musk is endorsing concentration camps.

Yeah, it was a paper launch. But at least it’s a funny one:

The question everyone is asking is why has Nvidia done this? And the answer should be quite obvious, since Covid and then the AI craze. These videocards didn’t sell out because of the demand, but because of lack of stocks. Artificial (perceived) scarcity is what Nvidia uses to keep the prices high. Essentially one giant psyop.

Same as people wondering why the whole game industry is in a terrible ongoing crisis with all the layoffs. Wasn’t it an extremely flourishing sector up to 2019? People blame the Covid bubble, then blame AI. The AI is the correct answer, but for a different motivation. Devs aren’t being fired because replaced by AI. The simple reason is that the whole global economy is a giant joke. The game industry was blooming because of investors. The AI craze is not driven by utility or potential, EVEN in cases where they are justified, it’s once again driven purely by perception and hype.

Simply: all the money that was in the videogame industry rapidly shifted to AIs. Same as just a few days ago the whole tech sector crashed because, once again, the “perception” of a Chinese AI. There’s very little impact on the realities of these circumstances, it’s all a psyop. Although it is a psyop likely outside of anyone’s hands. It’s a capitalist psyop that is ran onto us as humanity. Driven by… absolutely no one.

A Dark God of Nothing.

If I had to buy a new videocard, right now, I’d probably get a 7900 XTX. I’d be absolutely fine with raw performance and I don’t give a single shit about RTX or DLSS.

There’s still a giant problem with AMD videocards and that one model in particular. They have way, way too high energy absorption. Powerful enough, but inefficient.

If AMD is able to improve consistently in that area with the 9070 XT I would gladly make the switch (with the added bonus of not giving money to the spreading cancer that is Nvidia).

Not only that, but if it had some 20Gb of ram for less than 1k price (the old 7900 has 24Gb, I only want something in that range but with acceptable efficiency and power draw), it would destroy Nvidia in general, not just in my own personal case. AMD simply isn’t even trying.

Censorship or incompetence?

I don’t have the information to decide, but this is just a random example that signals the norm of what can be observed, not the exception.

Just a random post, really (and very, very stupid replies, but the content is not the topic here).

https://x.com/BuzzPatterson/status/1881927690028286416

The attention goes to this one, that shows 141 replies.

Yet, only three are shown. There’s a button at the top of the page that many don’t even know exists, but you can sort these replies by “relevancy”, “latest” or “likes”. No matter what you select, only these three replies are shown.

(You can see one of the posts here has another 9 replies to itself listed. You can open that too. There is only one single direct reply. But also more follow it. Even when you expand every single one, the total number of nested replies is only six.)

It could be a simple server hiccup, but I tested a few of these by bookmarking them and checking again after a few days, and the same behavior is shown. It could STILL be a server hiccup that doesn’t get addressed.

It is also again the norm.

The point is obvious. Is this “free speech”? In this case it’s not even merely an algorithm that decides what to boost and what to suppress. This is complete omission. Posts that are supposedly written and no one can actually see and read (or, these are just fake inflated random numbers).

(The more plausible guess is that the network is organized in bigger clusters that only occasionally sync to each other, and only for certain flagged segments, considering that the situation is stable across weeks. Which means that only certain people have access to the real public town square, while most of everyone is limited to an arbitrary limited slice, depending on where you live and who you are. That once again confirms why Musk is so focused on the matter of “merit” while hating the concept of “equality.” It’s all part of the manipulative game. Securing for oneself more opportunities so to boast about the merits of the results. Like Capitalism, it self feeds, it proves itself right by securing the context of the observation. A self preserving machine. Just like cancer.)

But there’s an even more general consideration to make. If this is the worldwide “public town square”, what’s scary is that the rules are UNKNOWN. The rules that explicitly regulate “free speech” are not simply a private property, but regulated with hidden mechanisms that you have to trust. Imagine participating to a sports match, and the rules are only known to the referee, but unknown to the players.

Yes, other social platforms also have the same problems, but they also do not claim explicitly to represent free speech, nor to be the source of correct information with the intention of replacing all other media, and even less declared to represent the absolute “truth.”

It should be obvious, without differentiation of judgement or political affiliation, that this is not free speech, nor correct or fair information.

On BlueSky, the number of replies listed is the number of replies you find.

EDIT: I’m checking the same link several hours later. I can still see the one reply with the other nine count under it, but the other two replies in the picture above are now missing. And I see a brand new one. So now the total count of visible comments has gone from three down to two, the shown count is instead now 142. The Schrödinger social, what you write both exists and not.

Clarifying, picking up some things I wrote on a forum.

If you saw the Nazi salute and thought “he did that because he identifies himself as Nazi”, then you’d be wrong. I don’t think he subscribes to the ideology.

“Reducing” it to fascism would be an oversimplification because that’s not the intent. But one part of the intent was to anticipate that it would be interpreted that way, and exploit it. The true intention was for that salute to be a BAIT.

The problem with Nazi is that they aren’t a secret society with secret gesture to signal each other, but that they are proudly so. Musk doesn’t need to send some kind of hidden signal, it would have no purpose. If you follow what the narrative is right now you can see it’s all about laughing at those who interpreted the gesture as a Nazi salute. Again, if it WAS a Nazi salute then he wouldn’t need to disguise it. Because Nazis aren’t shy about their intentions.

The reason why I have no doubts about this is because it follows PRECISELY a well known pattern. There’s nothing smart and new about any of this.

This has been going on for months, reposted by Musk himself countless times. All the slogan about “legacy media fake news”, all the Trump Derangement Syndrome. It’s all perfectly codified and reiterated OVER AND OVER. It’s THE playbook.

It has a wikipedia page.

“The term has mainly been used by Trump supporters to discredit criticism of him, as a way of reframing the discussion by suggesting that his opponents are incapable of accurately perceiving the world.”

Incapable of accurately perceiving the world here means that his gesture CLEARLY means “from my heart, I thank you”. If you see in that a Nazi gesture, it’s because YOUR MIND GOT DERANGED, by the also well known Woke Mind Virus.

You see Nazi EVERYWHERE. Because YOU ARE CRAZY.

The “Proud Boys” example is an especially explicit one. Trump says something, it’s immediately picked up as a proof to accuse Trump of openly supporting Nazi, only for Trump side to interpret it in a different way.

It’s pure, well tried, gaslighting.

You have to realize how many times these types of “double” messages have been reposted on X by Musk in the past weeks.

The Nazi gesture is precisely his own way of fabricating THE SAME THING. The same thing HE KNEW would be interpreted in a way by one side, and in another by his own. He precisely planned his own “proud boys” moment.

The point in all this is that if you accuse Elon Musk of being a Nazi, then you accuse him in a way that DOES NO HARM. Because he doesn’t believe himself so and because you’re firing a toy gun he himself pushed into your hand. The whole “gamer” thing is instead something that got out of his hands and actually HURT him. Ironically if you think about it. Ironically if you think how Asmongold himself laughs at the fact of having “feelings” about being or not “good at videogames.” Something so ludicrous you wouldn’t expect this hurting anyone. Yet it hurts Musk, because HE BELIEVES he’s good at games. That’s part of his own INTERNAL identity, that he also projects. As I said, you would be wrong thinking he projects a lie, because he instead projects something he truly believes.

Elon Musk and Trump are similar in this aspect. Back in 2020, before the election, when Trump was asked if he would recognize Biden’s victory if it were to happen, he didn’t say “yes”, or “no.” He said “we shall see.” If he then had won that election, nothing weird would have happened, as if there are two alternative time lines going on in parallel, where you “repurpose” the past as you see fit. After he realizes he lost the election, he picks up the phone to tell his minions go find proofs of voter fraud. This is not to “fabricate” those proofs. This is not to start a lie of manipulation, accusing Democrats of wrongdoings. In his mind the idea of himself losing to a guy like Biden is IMPOSSIBLE. So, in reality, either he wins, or there has to be a fraud if he loses. There’s no third alternative. If he wins, then reality is conformed to his mind shape. Fine. If he loses then it’s immediately PROVEN that Democrats have cheated. He BELIEVES that they cheated because there’s no other rational option on the table (of his mind). When he picks up the phone to tell his minions to go do their job, it’s because he BELIEVES there HAVE TO BE PROOFS of that cheating, since the cheating happened beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The problem with these deranged people isn’t that they are cynical liars, but that THEY BELIEVE THE LIES THEY TELL.

EDIT: There’s a video that explains all this really well and eloquently, but it’s in Italian and I’m not sure the automated subtitles would be enough. He goes by quoting Hannah Arendt on fascism, saying that it becomes irrelevant what’s true or not. In this case the “truth” behind the salute is completely irrelevant because its function is to “measure Musk’s strength.” It was a test of his strength and control over his people. Musks himself says how you should “read” that gesture, therefore the function becomes drawing a line between who supports him and who’s against him. Doing so, he reinforces the identity of his side. His people are called to defend him, so emptying out internal debate and finding unity in opposition to the enemy. The goal is sending the signal, declaring what it means, and then measuring the response as an act of fealty: you are with me now, you are my people.

EDIT2: Considering, up to this point, the weak, sullen reaction from Musk on X, I’m now less certain that it was something deliberate and planned ahead. But I still can’t make a real rational case on how it could not have been.

And here we are again, sigh…

This time too I have another excuse. This is again not directly about Elon Musk, but all of you out there, paying attention to the obvious, irrelevant part, and ignoring the important one. This is why “they” keep winning, and why their opposition continues to fall clumsily into traps that should otherwise be obvious.

From my point of view there’s no chance that “the salute” was the result of some autistic or “socially awkward” behavior. You don’t go to those kind of events improvising. I think Elon Musk played in his mind that exact moment many, many times. To the point of obsession. And if you followed, like I’ve done, his behavior online for the past few months, you’d understand that he’s sent plenty of “dog-whistling” types of messages. Way, way too many times, and always perfectly targeted to be a product of randomness and mistaken intention.

But in the exact same way, you’d be WRONG thinking that one was a FASCIST salute, intended that way. This is where you fall in the trap and react precisely in the way he predicted you would. If out there the debate is wholly about the act being or not intentional, what I’m saying is that the act IS intentional, but only to drive you then to the wrong conclusion. You slip right into the trap he deliberately set up.

Same as everything he has done up to this point, including the recent “Kekius Maximus”, that salute is meant as a pure act of trolling. That’s what it is. You can see how he deliberately emphasized the gesture as coming from his “heart”, because he was first and foremost sending a signal to his own party. To set the context and anticipate the outrage. On the other hand the deliberate gesture has the sole effect of ENRAGING his enemies. Because that’s what happens in his mind. He has calculated that the gesture would cause no harm on his side, no new enemies because he drove explicitly the meaning by “preparing” the alternative reading. He set the stage, a trap triggering ONLY for the haters. And yet he knew how much he would PISS OFF all those who were already against him.

So the moment you get pissed off, is the precise moment when he starts laughing because he predicted your behavior, all wrapped up in an event that will have no other consequence than driving more support to him. You just got gamed. You all got angry and unable to do a thing about it. The pure essence of trolling.

There is a regularity in what he’s doing, or at least a descent down the same pattern: a complete erasure of scruples as long he gets closer to his goal. This lets him once again focus everything on himself and distract from other recent controversies. Enrage the haters so that he can reinforce his own tribe with a renewed sense of unity. He’s drawing more and more the core matter to pure belief: either you are with him, or against him. In or out. That salute works perfectly because of its obvious double face and function: those on his side will read it positively, and those against him get successfully trolled. A complete win.

Those like Elon Musk don’t look at Mussolini and Hitler out of a desire to bring back fascism. Because those like him don’t want to live in the shadow of another man. If he looks at fascism it is because he wants to SURPASS IT. To go beyond.

And this is the part that even makes sense. Because if you clean the table of all morals and scruples, and your intention is solely make humanity multi-planetary, no matter the costs or the rationality of it, it may well be true that a fascist state is the shortest path to that goal. Why not.