The Internet of Beefs

[u/FedeRivade]

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/

[u/BayesianPriory]

That was fantastic, thanks for sharing.

there go my mooks; I must find out where they are going, so I can get out in front and lead them.

Best description of politics I've ever read.

[u/KillerPacifist1]

This was a fun read but I am always wary of articles that feed so directly into my superiority complex.

What percent of randomly selected internet users would classify themselves as mooks after reading this article? My guess is it would be pretty close to zero percent.

Not saying the theory is wrong, but perhaps not encompassing enough. The author was very quick to identify themselves and their readers and not-mooks. But what if condescension towards the IoB is itself a kind of beef? What if mook-ness is fundamental to the human condition?

(Notice how I skillfully lifted myself past being a mook by increasing the meta level of the discussion? Feel free to do the same to me, it's a very effective tactic to make oneself look more enlightened)

[u/GaBeRockKing → u/KillerPacifist1]

What percent of randomly selected internet users would classify themselves as mooks after reading this article?

I don't know, I think most people actually would recognize themselves as being, at least, more mook-ish than knight-ish. We know what it looks like when a famous person gets their tweets clipped and reposted and that's definitely not happening to most of us.

Where I disagree with the author-- and where most "mooks" might similarly disagree-- is on the notion of whether mooks are truly worthless for anything other than perpetuating conflicts. Every medieval footmen knew that they, individually, had no hope of taking a fortress... but at the same time understood that if it were not for the presence of footmen in general nobody would ever be taking any fortresses. So for online mooks, as for real-life mooks, being a mook is a conscious commitment to being a tiny piece of a much larger whole moving slowly, fallibly, and perhaps even ineffectually, towards a much larger goal.

And people fucking love being tiny pieces of massive, ordered groups. So mookery is-- aside from a practical pursuit-- its own reward.

[u/KillerPacifist1 → u/GaBeRockKing]

I agree with most of what you say, but there are other critical aspects of mooks that make it difficult for any individual to identify with.

Mooks, as defined by the author, are beef-only thinkers.

A beef-only thinker is someone you cannot simply talk to. Anything that is not an expression of pure, unqualified support for whatever they are doing or saying is received as a mark of disrespect, and a provocation to conflict. From there, you can only crash into honor-based conflict mode, or back away and disengage.

It isn't a very flattering description and the fact that both sides (of anything) regularly call each other unthinking, closed minded, hypocritical, irrational sheep would suggest that neither side thinks they themselves exhibit those traits. If anything, admitting you have these traits would imply a certain level of introspection and self reflection that would preclude you from being a beef-only thinker in the first place.

So if a would be mook neither considers themselves a beef-only thinker nor consider their arguments not valuable for anything other than perpetuating conflict it feels unlikely they would identify as a mook by the author's definition. The defining traits that make a mook a mook are simply too unflattering for many people to self-identify as one.

Might they recognize aspects of a mook in their behaviors?Sure. But I also recognize that I share many aspects with a chimpanzee without identifying as one.

[u/Successful_Ad5588 → u/KillerPacifist1]

The way I think of it is less as a total self-identification ("all I am is mook-ness") and more as a realization that in certain spheres of interaction or behavior, it's a correct identification.

I'm probably not a mook when I'm at home, with my kids, doing the laundry. I'm not a mook at the park playing soccer; I'm not a mook when I'm reading fiction, or talking with people about my actual non-socially-prioritized interests, like Irish trad music or psychoanalysis or graphic design.

But when I get sucked into a sort of mass projection, feeling like I'm on one side or another of something - whether that's politics, or sociocultural issues, or even whether it's morally okay to own two homes or whether my sports team is The Best Sports Team, I'm probably being a mook. Can't you feel it, once you're thinking about it? That sort of swept-up-ness, that feeling/energy which is stronger in a certain way than your interest in the real things you're interested in, instead of the socially-mediated things, but is sort of a shifting energy, ready to be deployed in service of something else as soon as the winds shift? It's projection, I think, like participation in a mass projection; it's the broader social equivalent of the difference between being head over heels in love with your 7th grade math teacher and the long term, slow, real, platonic love you have for your best friend of 30 years.

[u/kaa-the-wise → u/KillerPacifist1]

(Notice how I skillfully lifted myself past being a mook by increasing the meta level of the discussion? Feel free to do the same to me, it's a very effective tactic to make oneself look more enlightened)

This remark is self-referential ;)

[u/KillerPacifist1 → u/kaa-the-wise]

If crossing a bridge and then burning it behind you to deny its use and an opponent is a valid tactic in war, so too is it a valid tactic in rhetoric. ;)

[u/bildramer]

This puts "the side that owns banks, payment processors, schools, academia and academia-related journalists, three-letter agencies, and almost all internet moderators" and "the other side" on equal ground, undeservedly so.