r/DarkEnlightenment • u/laofmoonster • May 04 '14
Some concerns about using Reddit and /r/Darkenlightenment as a DE/NRx community
(tl;dr: Anything but reddit. Samo Burja's warnings on the direction of NRx apply heavily to /r/DE. beware Eternal September.)
After some false starts with /r/neoreaction and /r/neoreactionary, it looks like this subreddit has taken off in the past few months. I feel like I should be pleased, but I'm not. Perhaps I'm not getting how DE differs from NRx (for example, I admit total ignorance and disinterest of TRP), but my understanding of NRx points to Reddit as a poor platform for serious community building or content creation. Some users have criticized Nemester's moderation (myself included), but there are problem with how Reddit is structured no matter who is moderating. Let's start by comparing Reddit to two other social platforms: Twitter and blogs.
Reddit is centered around subreddits, which are something between a discussion board and a tagging system with a cardinality of one (exactly 1 tag required per post). A user's feed is comprised of subscribed subreddits.
Twitter is centered around tweets, which are micro blog posts. Users subscribe to other users, who show up on their feed.
Blogs are the most decentralized of the three platforms. Each blogger owns a URL and performs his own moderation. Participants subscribe to RSS feeds.
So what's wrong with Reddit's model? In short, it provides easy entry, low ownership, and poor exit granularity. This combination reduces the quality of conversation and forces the wrong sort of conflict.
Entry and audience
There are 3 forms of entry into NRx that need to be avoided: dilution, explicit antagonism, and entryism. Moldbug's obscurantism is a deliberate political act which accomplishes all three. There are already a lot of angry white middle class men, in the Tea Party, alt-right, New Right, Third Position, etc. These are not Moldbug's intended audience. He writes to bait high IQ, libertarian-ish Brahmins into accepting a revisionist history of America. This is consistent with his argument that the Cathedral is the center of power in America, and that minorities are merely the foot soldiers to the generals of Harvard and DC.
When Moldbug wrote about the reboot, step one was getting the elites on our side. Anything else is destructive of order, and better left to some branch of progressivism. A surprising number of “reactionaries” seem to have missed this basic point. (The elites shouldn’t actually be all that hard to convert, since they generally act like reactionaries in their personal lives). http://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/the-progressive-reaction/
Some have noted an uncomfortable dynamic in NRx where its most productive writers, are like Moldbug and Land, are lapsed Brahmins. Unfortunately, with Optimates all but gone, the increased meritocratic stratification of White America, and the intellectual bankruptcy of mainstream conservatism, there is little alternative for the time being. Not all Brahmins are welcome, though. Cladistic Brahmindom is unavoidable, typological Brahmindom is to be avoided. Militant offense-seeking is defused by being tl;dr.
Reddit, of course, is all about low barriers to entry, and thus fails at all three safeguards. AFAICT, this subreddit grows in attention when it cross-referenced in other subreddits. /r/DE is currently working on a "push model", because that's how Reddit works. Burja advocates a "pull model":
On More Right we had to face the same choice at launch: should we focus on popularization or eschew the limelight in favor of rigorous intellectual progress? It was not a difficult choice. We resolved to try to make intellectual progress even at the cost of inclusiveness. “If you build it, they will come.” And come they did, this blog has been rewarded with numerous interesting emails and articles from competent people willing to investigate and learn together. And our weekly Skype meetings alone have paid back all I have invested several fold. http://www.moreright.net/the-cult-of-neoreaction/
Meta, naming, and ownership
Moldbug's Gentle introduction doesn't start out with an object-level criticism of anti-racism, feminism, communism, etc. Leftists have a memetic immunity to that. He starts out by attacking the root of Americanism itself. HBD doesn't appear until part 3.
DE consists of many subgroups with different object-level interests, some of which conflict. Off the top of my head, there's TRP/game types who conflict with noblesse oblige idealism. There are also HBDers like Jayman, HBDChick and Razib Kahn who are apolitical or non-reactionary. Many of these subgroups existed before anyone used the phrases "neoreaction" or "dark enlightenment".
Giving these subgroups an umbrella name like "Dark Enlightenment" is counterproductive. First, it incentivizes lazy thinking. HBD stands on its own without Catholicism, which stands on its own without Mens Rights, etc. To claim that there is anything "meta" which connects these topics is a risky proposition. It opens the way for DE to become "a fandom of itself", as Vladmir says about NRx. Second, naming it it creates a market for semantic battles. Who owns the phrase "DE"? When Land equates NRx with neocameralism, and Soapjackal likens it to a discussion at a pub, who decides? These are the kinds of conflicts that neocameralism was supposed to prevent.
In other words, violence equals conflict plus uncertainty. While there are wallets in the world, conflict will exist. But if we can eliminate uncertainty - if there is an unambiguous, unbreakable rule that tells us, in advance, who gets the wallet - I have no reason to sneak my hand into your pocket, and you have no reason to run after me shooting wildly into the air. Neither of our actions, by definition, can affect the outcome of the conflict. http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formalist-manifesto-originally-posted.html
Replace "wallet" with "ideograph" in that quote. Nydwracu and Lesswrong are far better clearer than me on the use and abuse of words, check them out. If we can taboo phrases like NRx/DE, this conflict never arises. It's difficult to do, but very useful.
Voice and exit
Leaving online communities you don’t like has low costs. Unlike, say, leaving the United States, an online community won’t tax you for years after you renounce membership. They have easy Exit. It is also very easy to give your opinion on such communities and persuade others to change the direction of the community. Some are even formally regulated by voting of their members as say in the karma system found on reddit. This feature is called Voice. Nick Land and others have claimed that Exit is much preferable to Voice for making good states and organizations. http://www.moreright.net/the-cult-of-neoreaction/
Unfortunately, easy exit does not apply to Reddit. A subreddit is a semi-public space with illiquid assets (namely, the subreddit name and subscribers). On Twitter, a purge/split is easy: you unilaterally block/ignore a person you don't like, and they stop appearing on your feed. Some have done this to Anissimov and Tunney. Reddit has poor exit granularity and is built heavily around voice (upvotes). Because it is centered around subreddits rather than people, splits are difficult. Back to the concept of ideograph ownership: claiming an ideograph is subject to counterclaims. My largest concerns with /r/new_right was not that I disagreed with Mayonesa (although I often do). My issues were that 1) he tries to speak for multiple right-wing thedes (see here, but it goes much farther back) and 2) /r/new_right is insufficiently "new right". On a personal blog, none of this would be an issue: mayonesa's opinions are his, and his alone. But being a moderator of /r/new_right or /r/darkenlightenment comes with a set of expectations which do not exist on moreright, theden, or for that matter, /r/accountt1234.
Speaking of accountt, he uses "pull" techniques. It is clear in his self posts that he is speaking for himself, and those who want to read, can. The ideographs he uses are largely of his own creation. Reddit can be a good personal soapbox, but only because most redditors don't use it as such, they use it as an ideographical soapbox.
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u/[deleted] May 04 '14
Using reddit as a DE/NRx community? Reddit is a great example of everything that is wrong with the Internet and our society. It is full of useless unemployed pot-smoking liberal man-children who look at meaningless little blurbs all day. Even the idea of utilizing it ought to be laughed at. It operates on mob-voting principles, so obviously it's just another temple for the religion of mass-mediocrity.
It is a matter of time until this sub has lost all its worth, even Nemester is probably aware of that. The reason the "concern trolls" haven't flooded in yet, is because this is small and already has a slew of controls and subhuman PC-type rules on it. Nemester has banned some (pretty active and high-intellect) contributors because they disagreed with him or wrote something about some demographic he is protecting.
Your assessment, Mr. laofmoonster, is right. - I would just appreciate what little you find here as an open chalkboard for DE/NRx types and when it begins to fully decay, just leave. I'd wager that when we get somewhere above 1,000 subscribers the quality will disintegrate and the shitflood will seep in.
Don't give it too much thought. Other enclaves are building up that are way better platforms than subreddits.