At one point Mori asked “do you think the Internet should perch like an angel of conscience on your shoulder?” My response is — sure, why not? The internet is just other people…

- Noah Berlatsky

To which I noted,

I in no way want to get comfortable with the suggestion that listening to what other people claim to think is “the right thing” on an Internet forum necessarily bears the slightest resemblance to the best course of action.

Well, now we have a real crime for Reddit to react to, and the “mainstream press” like The Atlantic are gleefully skewering it for its reaction:

The amateur investigators from the site — having served as a kind of unofficial proving ground for theories that made their way to the mainstream media, jumping on the clear photo, despite the Post story that had also spread on Reddit — were tying the FBI photos to a 22-year-old Brown student and this ABC News report about his having gone missing last month. There was pushback, even on Reddit — “Leave the missing guy alone” — but it was too late; the trolls on Reddit had fed an army of all-nighter trolls in the media.

Indeed the Internet is just other people – and this is what other people do. They are undisciplined, they jump on a quick solution to a complex social problem, and they find it easy to blame those who stick out – those not like them – because it feels right.  By and large, people do not serve the truth because it is hard to serve the truth.  They would much rather believe that the truth exists to serve them.

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. – Anatole France

For those who were not misled by the hoopla, I applaud you.

And for those of you affected by the bombing, particularly those who lost friends and loved ones, you have my deepest sympathies.

“Don’t tell me what I must do. The only things I must do are pay my taxes and die.” – Popular twist on Ben Franklin quote

It’s tax day in the USA, and when matters of money come up, the international gripe machine swivels its cyclopean head to focus on those richer than us.  For the delectation of the howling masses, CNN trots out this predictable analysis of Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune, complete with the line “he’ll never have to pay taxes again.”

What? Unfair! We the people, innately born with virtue and made equal by dint of the fact that This Is America, squat in our upside-down condos and lament our fortune.  You know what would really make us feel better? Improving our lives? No; that can wait – what we really want to get into is negativity about one of those who succeeded. Because nothing says ‘a better future’ like denying that it’s possible for people to make it here in the now.

I had a good friend whose interest is supposedly economics tell me the other day, “You know, I don’t have any sympathy for those guys who lose or have to pay billions of dollars and then squeal about it. If they’re making billions of dollars, it’s not like they’re hurting.”  I raised an eyebrow at the paradox here: billions lost is still billions lost no matter what else goes on, and would horrify anyone who actually understood the worth of billions.  (Most of us, as innumeracy reports have suggested, can’t actually wrap our heads around such large figures.)  But this is the sort of thing that folksy popular belief foists upon us – as long as you’re able to keep a roof over your head and food on the table, gosh darn it, you’re doing pretty well, and ought to be ashamed for aspiring to more.

While we might brush this off as the attitude of one who only studies economics as a hobby, this attitude is, alarmingly, to be found in people who really should understand money. Writer Ed McCaffery should qualify:

Tax-law expert McCaffery is a professor of law at the University of Southern California (USC) and director of the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics.

Instead, his article is full of demagoguery. “You heard that right.” “So should we feel sorry for Zuckerberg? Before we start crying, let’s step back a bit.” “The really rich leave wages and the W-2s that go with them to the little people, like us.”

The little people, like Ed, with his degree from Yale and J.D. from Harvard, his four published books, his law firm position, and his professorship. Got it. I’m not going to say he shouldn’t be proud of these accomplishments – I’m saying that he’s going far out of his way to downplay them and blend in with his theoretical audience. I get why they’re bitter, but Ed, why are you bitter? You have all the training and connections they don’t.

Anyhow, buried in that article is this gem:

He is playing what I call Tax Planning 101, simply holding onto assets as they appreciate without paying tax on them.

So, far from this being shady, dodgy, or illegitimate, Zuckerberg is doing exactly what he is supposed to do. The author is the one acting like Zuckerberg is somehow hacking the system.

What is this writer selling, anyway?

In clear, easy-to-understand language, Edward J. McCaffery proposes a straightforward and fair alternative. A “fair not flat” tax that is consistent and progressive would tax spending, not income and savings. And if it were collected at its lower levels through a national sales tax, most people would not have to file a return. A supplemental tax on spending for the wealthiest individuals would make the national sales tax progressive. Under McCaffery’s system, a family of four would pay no tax on their first $20,000 in spending, and 15 percent on the next $60,000. Only the few families who spend more than $80,000 a year would be subject to the supplemental tax. Necessities would be taxed less than ordinary and luxury items. No one would be taxed directly on savings. The estate and gift or so-called death tax would be abolished, for the simple reason that dead people don’t spend.

Further details are presumably found in his older article here. While I am no economics professor, I am fairly sure that his grand scheme can be summarized as “disincentivizing spending.”

Zuckerberg, under the author’s tax scheme, would not have been responsible for paying that 1 billion+ USD in taxes due to exercising his stock options.  He would not be responsible for any taxes until he spends money on products, and gets hit with sales tax. Far from making it harder for him to avoid taxes, it makes it trivially easy. As he has no kids, Zuckerberg can – if he desires – spend less than that hardworking family of four that gets taxed because they can’t help but spend 80k a year. For fans of a progressive tax, that is not an improvement.

Disincentivizing spending, like calls for austerity measures in the Chinese Communist Party, makes good theatre – but is more or less the opposite of what you want in behavior from the rich. Rewarding rich people for saving, rather than spending, is going to help the economy? Don’t get me wrong – I personally would benefit from this, in the theoretical case where I become fabulously wealthy: I’m not really a flashy character and was taught from youth to disdain big spending, so even if I made it big I doubt I’d incur the oversized luxury taxes he talks about. But is this really a good plan for the people?

At all levels in decision making we must think about whether we care about our feelings – if it will hurt us somehow to see people flaunting wealth – or if we care about actual numbers and results. McCaffery’s proposal makes it simple for wealthy people to avoid being taxed by curbing their spending – and that in turn harms the economy and removes some of the splendor from life without providing any real benefits.

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. – The Princess Bride

mefloraine
@cinco_bajeena crimes against anime? this calls for…anime justice

moritheil
@mefloraine @cinco_bajeena Hear, hear! The court of Anime Justice is now convened, the Rt. Hon. @2DTea presiding.

2DTea
@moritheil @mefloraine @cinco_bajeena Adjourn indefinitely for tea.

cinco_bajeena
@2DTea @moritheil @mefloraine thank you your honor. If I may geotag the bench?

Erojohn11
@cinco_bajeena @2DTea @moritheil @mefloraine This is why I stay up late

All true, and all good and well. But the real news in the article comes in its last paragraph, hidden away from all but the most determined readers:

- Many students on the “fantasy slut league” list, while not necessarily approving of the name, did not mind being placed on a list of sexually desirable dates.  (See this articulate and nuanced letter by a female PHS senior on why the “moral panic” response is not constructive.) This doesn’t make things okay for those who were not okay with it, but it does mean the league was far from a unilateral imposition on a populace that uniformly resented it. In short, FSL was not tyranny; it was fashion.

- Gossip, while it can be used to destroy people via perceived social value, is hardly the exclusive purview of men. Considering the FSL a gossip aggregator (as the female student urges) rather than a command-and-control center greatly alters the paradigm in which all this sex is happening. (One might argue the real problem here is the obsession with what other people think about your own life, sexual or otherwise, but that is a topic for another post.)

- Karen Owen’s “thesis” equally treated men like disposable sex objects. It, too, got a tremendous amount of attention, both negative and positive. Some argued that if this was how she discovered and explored her own sexuality, who were we to judge her for it? By and large, the media have not given similarly balanced coverage of the boys who attempted to “gamify” human sexuality in order to better make sense of it.  If the spirit in which she made the document matters, then so too should the spirit in which the boys made their document, and recognition of that that is precisely why the PHS senior goes into such an explanation of the intended use of Fantasy Slut League. I would not be surprised if, from their perspective, it was a clumsy attempt to combine two things they love (gaming and sex.) While that does not make it a great thing, it also does not make it a twisted conspiracy to sexually enslave women.

- Modern women typically have a high degree of control over their own sexuality (at least, modern women with the status of PHS students or Duke students – the story is different for women in a place like rural India) and attempts to paint them all as the hapless victims of male lust are arguably as divorced from reality as the idea of a male-run Fantasy Sex League itself. Insisting that a woman is a victim despite her knowing otherwise is incredibly disenfranchising.

I take issue with the way the email attempts to speak for girls just like me. I know that my name has been mentioned on the FSL page. It makes me uncomfortable, but it does not make me a “victim,” as the email labels me. I am not a victim because I know what FSL truly is. It is not a rape group, as the email, perhaps inadvertently, implies; it is a gossip page where Varsity Footballers talk about what happened last weekend and “who got with who.” I do not appreciate being labeled a “victim” by an administration that is not in possession or understanding of the facts.

All this, and reporters everywhere still took it upon themselves to speak for girls just like her.

To me, the takeaway is that the situation for women continues to improve.  Fifty years ago, while gaming culture did not exist, men bragging about their sexual exploits was so common and accepted that it did not occasion comment.  Five hundred years ago, men taking sexual advantage of the women associated with defeated armies was similarly common and accepted (rape was, literally, part of the spoils of war.) Now, in 2012-2013, women are able to calmly make decisions about their sexual future and intelligently use their status to their advantage. It would be unmistakably a step backwards to say the only legitimate response they can have to boys making lists is moral outrage, and it is heartening to see that the women of PHS, if one is any indication, know better.

Here at The Moritheil Review, our policy is to only comment and inform on public drama. Occasionally it happens that buyer’s remorse sinks in, and people who at first wanted to go public later want their personal drama removed.  While we are under absolutely no obligation to do so for matters already public (and the tweets are typically linked, to demonstrate that TMR has faithfully represented their substance), the purpose of TMR is not to cause people anguish.

If you are undergoing some drama and would like to avoid being featured in TMR or indeed any twitter/drama aggregator or gossip site, we highly recommend you switch your preferences to Protected Posting.  In general, tweeting or blogging something publicly will be taken as indicating that you want as many people in the world as possible to see your words, as that is the explicit purpose of non-private tweets/blog posts.

Thank you for reading, and please continue to enjoy The Moritheil Review – bringing you the dorama™.

Hat tip to @moronsister, and trigger warning: language.

 I watched someone spiral into madness on twitter last night. Pretty entertaining and yet horrifying and embarrassing. More con than pro

dogrunes: how can i get someone to realize they’re obsessed with an mmo and they need to stop playing?

dogrunes: Ahaha, will this shit ever stop

dogrunes: there once was a person who loved me. we were very happy with eachother, for months and months.

dogrunes: one day they got bored, and so we played a game. the other person never stopped, and then they chated on me.

dogrunes: and then they fucking lied and said they got over that person, and then this happened again.

dogrunes: so to you, @luneru: fuck you.

dogrunes: you liying, cheating whore. :\

dogrunes: @luneru someone like me? take a look in the mirror, you slut. I guess liying to me so many times makes it really easy to lie to your friends

dogrunes: “waah my job is so stressful waah my boyfriend is paranoid because I cheated on him and I’m doing it again waah shower me with compliments”

dogrunes: @ATField_01 If you want the truth, I helped her try to fight an addiction for MONTHS and she just cheated on me.

dogrunes: btw she left me for someone she constantly complained about loooool good going

http://pastebin.com/9Wg9H61C

I thought some people might want to hear my end. I don’t think anyone who’s known me for a long time would say I’m a bad person. I just make some bad decisions. Anyway, let’s get on with this guy I dated for 20 months online, Randall. Some may know him as Dogrunes, or his previous name Deviryuu. That guy who used to RP, and yes despite him “stopping” thanks to me, he still likes/wants to RP. I bet he is RP’ing right now as I speak, that poor 21-year old. He just likes dreaming doesn’t he?

Ok ok, let’s get to our relationship… I started talking to him on MSN in December 2010. He kept telling me he was going into the airforce next year. In the beginning I found his rp’ing quite disturbing but humorous. But when he actually started talking like a real person, I became interested in him. I don’t know if you guys remember, but that whole airforce thing caused quite a drama mess on twitter. There was a group of people who were set on bullying him and trying to prove that he’s lying about it, and nothing more than a creepy rp’ing pedo. His rp’ing was cybering btw, it wasn’t just “in character” type. And he would start it without asking you whether you wanted to or not.

So for whatever reason, I liked him and wanted to help. Because I thought he was a nice person and didn’t deserve all this bullying. I stuck to his side, and believed everything he said. IMO he was telling the truth, but my point is I defended him. I stopped talking to some people because of this.

As time went on, I got to learn about his past and his family. Which is needless to say, a bad upbringing. Of course anyway with a good heart would feel sorry for him. But there was always one thing that bugged me about him, he would never ever ask about me or anything. It was always HIM HIM HIM. This will become very important to know later on. I should of caught onto it then, but I’m stupid.

So he became aware that I liked him, and he said he would ask me out if he wasn’t leaving to the airforce. Yes, remember that sentence well. It was 2011, and it was time for him to go to the airforce. I was sad to see him leave, I would never see him again probably. Couple weeks passed, I found out his father had passed away, his dad had cancer and was in the hospital at the time. Randall knew it was coming soon,  it wasn’t unexpected. He was able to leave back home to attend the funeral. He showed me his airforce ID and his bald head, I really don’t think he was lying about the airforce as much as people tried to prove… Anyway, after that week he was off for family reasons, he had to go back the airforce. Again, I was torn to see him leave.

Another few weeks passed, and he said he was coming home. He got a leave from the airforce for medical reasons, he said he was so depressed and not eating, he was seeing the psychologist there. He came home, and his family wasn’t impressed, they immediately didn’t support this and treated him like shit as usual. I still tried to comfort him through this time, I felt bad he went through all that and his family just made it worse.

There was a lot of drama still on twitter, but he still managed to pull through it. It was almost time for AX I believe. I don’t remember how, but he got a ticket to the Miku concert even. He went to AX I guess to clear his mind. He told me I was the first person to message him when he got off the plane, just remember that.

Anyway, he bought a maid dress and stuff to wear there. Made his “meguca” outfit, that persona he was so proud of later. He continued to message me on msn about what was going on briefly. I was glad he was having fun and stuff. Until he told me he was going to “anime-singled out”. Basically a place to meet other otaku to date. That was when I lost it, I couldn’t believe he just did that. All those months of me supporting him and kinda “hoping” were all gone. I really got mad at him, and didn’t want to talk to him anymore. I felt like a total idiot for supporting this selfish person. Did I mention 90% of his convos are about him? Yeah, that’s how they usually are.

Next day or so, I think he caught on that I actually really liked him, well GEEZ how would you guess that. He asked me out finally, and I agreed to date him. I was so happy at that time, if only I knew what was coming…

The few months were amazing, we got along so well. Oh yeah, when he asked me out, he FINALLY started following me on twitter? After all those months of me helping him lol. But anyway, our relationship was going fine, I don’t recall anything bad happening then. He was caring and loving, etc etc. Unfortunately some people stopped talking me then since we dated.

I made him stop rp’ing, I don’t think anyone would disagree with me about that. I felt uncomfortable with him cybering with random people. I don’t care if it was in character or some shit, why did he think it was ok being in a relationship? It’s almost the same as flirting. So he agreed to stop that, after a while he said he doesn’t care to rp anymore anyway (remember this too).

October 2011 I went to visit him in Bakersfield, it went well. He was basically the same person and everything, we had fun. I’m not sure when it started, but something else was surfacing. His jealousy side. On twitter pretty much became, I have to watch what I say or who I talk to. He would get mad at my followers and what they would tweet to me. Some of these people I’ve been talking to longer than I have him. He wanted me to block them. That was the solution in his mind. Now, he wasn’t following any of these people, he was actively stalking my mentions.

I’ve had a controlling boyfriend before, I started to feel a bit uncomfortable of where this was heading. I didn’t block them or tell them what he wanted me to say. He would then blast them himself, and my followers would be confused and tell him to chill, it was a joke. I didn’t want to lose friends like I did with my first because of my boyfriend. He took this as me “not doing anything”. He didn’t see he was overreacting, and his insecurities would get the best of him. He was on constant fear I would leave him, that alone made the relationship a bit rocky.

The relationship became unhealthy, when I thought it was perfect. I don’t like feeling trapped or being told what to do by someone I’m dating, or being accused of things I’m doing because my boyfriend doesn’t trust or have confidence in me.

I met him again in 2012 at AX, it went ok. But it wasn’t great. He was “too tired” to do most things with me. I felt I spent all that money for nothing, yes he helped pay the hotel. Oh yeah, another crucial thing, he was still at home doing nothing at this point. I brushed it off at the beginning, because I thought he needed a break to recover from everything that happened. He did start taking online classes to finish his college or whatever. Because attending real school would bring out his PTSD symptoms. I was glad he was pushing forward, and he did tell me he was aiming to get a good job and make something of himself. Which I soon learned was just all talk…

So let’s go to Tera, this is the monster he blames for everything. We started playing it together in the summer, and it was fine and cute. After a while I think he got bored of it and didn’t feel like playing anymore. But I still wanted to, he continued to play with me, while not liking it. Eventually he quit all together, but I kept playing… With him gone, I had to start socializing in game, because I had no one else to play with now. I became quite close with guild members. Randall noticed I was playing a lot, more than he liked. So he tried to come back and play with me to compensate. Even though he didn’t want to play the game. It didn’t last long, and he got pissed how the people in the guild were teasing me. He made me leave the guild and we joined another, there were some dumb people on there anyway, so I agreed with it. The new guild felt quite unfriendly, everyone seemed to have their own cliques, but Randall said it’s fine, you just gotta talk and ask. But I never felt really comfortable there. So he stopped playing again, and I was alone in this empty guild. I left it to the other one, full of some childish people but at least they were talkative and friendly.

Going to 2013 now, the game continues to get on Randall’s nerves. As I start to become quite close to my guildies on there, and I have fun talking to them and doing stuff in game. Randall kept telling me to uninstall the stupid game, because I was playing too much and ignoring him. Which wasn’t 100% true, I did try to answer him as fast as I could, it’s not exactly a game where you can pause in battle. I admit I did play a lot, but I tried to still talk to him regardless. He would get upset when we were skyping and I didn’t respond to his questions, when I didn’t hear them while playing. He said I became a zombie playing it. Yes, I admit, I am addicted to it. I tried to quit a few times, but I felt a relapse come, because I missed my guild members.

So what exactly happened? Randall became much more possessive and needy, it really turned me off. He tried everything to make me spend more time with him and not the game, he started watching anime with me. He kept telling me how he waited ALL day for me to get home, and I would just hop on Tera and ignore him. This wasn’t entirely true, I came home and talked to him FIRST thing. I would message him for a while and eat. Then boot up the game or whatever.

He wanted me to talk to him, and only him. But I really had nothing to talk about, he suggested things for us to do, but I wasn’t interested. I was just being honest, I’m not a gamer really. If I play a game, it has to have elements I like in it.

I’ve told my mom about Randall of course, his past and everything. She told me to be careful of such people, they can’t be stable. And she was right, he’s not stable. He could get upset over the littlest things. One of them is not paying attention to him, or replying to him RIGHT AWAY. You can’t take 1-2 mins in responding NOPE. He always felt entitled to have my complete attention.

Here’s why it went down really… I don’t like being confined nor will I take being forced to do something I don’t like. I had this already with my first, and I gained a lot of confidence from getting out of that one. Randall would guilt trip you in everything, he forced you to pity him and just go with it to make him stop whining and make him happy. He never ever understood me truly, how could he, he only thought of himself? I was his life saviour, I was supposed to save him from his family. I was supposed to work my ass off, find us a place and bring him to me. And he expected to find a job, without education or experience. He claims Bakersfield is just shit for that, and it would be better somewhere else. It might of been, I don’t doubt his area sucks, there’s nothing there. But the chances of him getting a job would be slim, if anything he’d get a shitty part time job. Basically it would be up to me to have a good job, so we both can live decently. It was A LOT of pressure for me, and I hated him for it, I hated how he just put that stress on me. That’s why I played the game so much, it helped me relax and talk with people who actually asked about ME. And not talk just about themselves.

Even when I talked about my job or whatever, he never cared. I told him I wanted to get my career going, and he seemed all worried about me quitting because then no money or whatever. It’s like he never wanted me to better myself and be happy with what I’m dong. He NEVER EVER encouraged me to go for the career I wanted in life, NEVER. Without his support, I felt more resentful. I found out Randall wants to be a graphic designer, but I’m not sure he understands he needs to work for that. He showed no interest in getting that going. He was just going to move in with me, and get a part time job and waste time basically.

Going back to the game, the guild master actually has a job in the game industry. So he told me he could help me get my profolio going, and anything I needed. I’m not proud of going along with his flirting, even though at first I tried to ignore and told him to stop, since I had a bf. But he became this supportive and helpful person which Randall never gave me. I felt he actually cared with what I had to say, he wouldn’t randomly talk about stuff I didn’t know like Randall. Me and the guy both have the same goals, and we agreed we could even collaborate. I have a lot more in common with him than Randall I soon discovered.

People can think I cheated, but really this guy was giving me something that Randall never did. With Randall, it was all about him him him. Ask anyone who’s talked to him or met him, they will agree with this. Yes, he does care about his friends and people who are close to him. But he will rarely ask about you, it’s will always be about him, and his music games.

I didn’t uninstall Tera because I didn’t like the idea of something I like doing being taken away. I was tired of being controlled, tired of being told to block people. He was trying to change me the whole time, and he won’t even acknowledge it. He will never agree to being controlling, but ask anyone who’s been in the middle of it, and they will agree.

Hell his “good friends” don’t even like him much, the friend he would message on steam about our relatonship problem, said he was annoying. It just tells you something. But what do you expect? He’s the type to ask openly on twitter for people to give him money or games…

He’s an attention whore, because no one in real life gives a fuck about him. He was clinging onto me to save him, I was his escape. And he hates me for taking it away. He doesn’t care about losing me, he doesn’t give a fuck about that. He just cared that his escape was taken away.

In the end, that’s how it feels. How would you like having the pressure of that with you? I thought I was dating a man, not a child. I felt the relationship wasn’t going to work because what good is a relationship where I am the one giving everything, while he does nothing but play games all day?

He’s not ready for a relationship, period. He needs to get his shit together on his OWN. I tried to help him do this, but he’s just stubborn and pulling it the lazy way. Why should I work so hard, while he just slacks off? It’s not even fair.

I honestly don’t care what he’s saying to people, or copy-pasting in logs. He could of saved our relationship if he tried to think why I was doing these things, if he tried to understand me. Instead of just focusing on himself not getting attention, and I was just an addict. There’s always a reason to WHY people are addicted to things. He wanted me to just shower him with love and attention. He expected I’d be fine with his loving attention. Which I did love, but not getting anything out of it left me feeling stressed and trapped. I felt I had his life, his happiness on my back. My happiness didn’t matter, long as he was. I told him I was depressed many times, but he never seemed to care about that or try to understand that.

He thought me just knowing he loved me was enough to make me happy… And it does help, but it doesn’t help me through the stress of my job or trying to get my career going. Especially when he demanded all of my time to him. It just wasn’t fair, not at all.

I’m sure if he reads this, he will deny everything here. That’s how dense he is, and selfish. He can call me a monster, but he didn’t truly care or help me through my stress, so I had to do it myself. His problems were always more important in the end.

Also I am not playing victim, I admit the lying and hiding things from him weren’t right of me to do. But I still did and do love him regardless, that’s why I tried it again with him. It was good in the beginning, but it soon fell flat once I started doing my own thing again. He never acknowledged why I did it, other than me “being bored of him” and addicted. I cope with stress by indulging myself in things I like doing, and ignoring it. Especially since there was nothing I could do here about it, he wasn’t going to change. Eventually he found out what I was doing with this guy and dumped me.

Of course none of that was right, but who would blame me when this guy actually was giving me the support I needed without asking anything in return? All Randall could say in the end was “how could you do this to me? What did I do to deserve this?”. If he tried to understand me, and help me through my stress and depression it would of worked… Well, I hope this lengthy as hell pastebin explains it. He never gave me a chance to explain, he never cared what I had to say, how I felt, nothing. It was about him, and his happiness, whether he denies it or not. That’s all.

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/k3oll6

[8:18:40 PM] deviryuu: I c a n t
[8:19:08 PM] deviryuu: Trust me if I could go home I would already be home fapping
[8:23:52 PM] deviryuu: ;>
[8:24:36 PM] Hen: Wat
[8:24:44 PM] deviryuu: Well its true.
[8:25:39 PM] deviryuu: maybe you can help later OHOHOHOH jk ;_;
[8:28:06 PM] deviryuu: w-ewll maybe
[8:30:30 PM] Hen: WhA–well
[8:30:38 PM] deviryuu: well
[8:33:15 PM] deviryuu: ;3
[8:38:44 PM] Hen: ……
[8:38:45 PM] Hen: Well
[8:40:05 PM] deviryuu: Well?
[8:40:53 PM] deviryuu: ~?
[8:45:17 PM] Hen: Well that escalated quickly.
[8:45:28 PM] deviryuu: It hasn’t even!
[8:48:35 PM] deviryuu: deviryuu rubs shoulders.

mr_mortified @dogrunes http://vocaroo.com/i/s0IHzsDuoILb

Perhaps the one constant about public breakups which are subsequently aired in blogs is the incredible, powerful desire people feel to not be labeled “a bad person” by society. I’m not a bad person; she’s a cheater. I’m not a bad person; he’s emotionally unavailable. I have reasons for what I do. I suppose it’s partly because society does sometimes come around and say: You are a bad person – literally, in the case of public arguments like Koji Oe’s. But what society wants is at best tangential to the real issues.

What can the reader conclude from this? What life lesson; what hope for tomorrow? Maybe it’s not so good to try to change others, even for the better. It appears that dogrunes and luneru each tried to change each other – and failed.

In keeping with TMR policy, everything shown here was posted on the public profiles of dogrunes and luneru, and a review of their twitter feed will show that people were actively encouraged to go to these links.  

halcy: I want a snack

moritheil: Your hand throbs as you raise it to your face. Your other hand struggles against it. You gag, spittle flying, as it rams your throat.

moritheil: With horror and sudden clarity, you realize: you are what you eat.

halcy: @moritheil This isn’t a Kafka book!

(But are we truly safe in assuming that about our lives?)

Omonomono’s points:

- Art is unrealistic; this does not make it unenjoyable

- This is a trend that continues across multiple genres, from ancient Egyptian art to modern superflat

Myst1ord’s points:

- Verisimilitude is important to creating enjoyable art

- Purple hair, nekomimi etc. do not break suspension of disbelief and therefore there is no inconsistency in railing against excessively unrealistic or caricaturized art, but not railing against these things.

Drmchsr0′s point:

- Anime girls are often dressed to evoke the virgin/whore dichotomy – and not in a constructive, edifying manner.

This discussion started with reference to the loss of a Neil Gaiman script for Dr. Who.  Thousands of users posted on reddit to pressure the person who found it (or rather, their roommate) to “do the right thing,” and the subsequent trumpeting by some that this somehow “vindicated” the moral authority of the Internet was sickening.  Let me be clear – I do think that in this case returning the item happened to be the right thing to do. But that is a happy coincidence.  I in no way want to get comfortable with the suggestion that listening to what other people claim to think is “the right thing” on an Internet forum necessarily bears the slightest resemblance to the best course of action.  I find equating the right thing to do and the popular thing to do to be morally dangerous. (Cf. slavery, the oppression of minority religions and minority ethnicities, violent homophobia, the cutting of the rose, etc. – all popularly accepted by society for thousands of years, but to me, morally unacceptable.)

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. – Anatole France

Now, with respect to the comments at Noah’s site:

Peter is right in that my statement is not about the generation of moral principles but rather in the idea that one should not ascribe a higher moral authority to the government, to the state, to the corporation, to a board of directors, or indeed to any man-made amalgamation of individual moral actors. Having numbers does not make them automatically more morally correct than an individual making a moral decision. (The critique of modern law as judicial shamanism, for instance, is a structural observation based upon how the ritual of law is constructed around making it appear more impressive, as if that spectacle makes it more morally correct.)

If we say that the state does not properly have the authority to tell you which god to worship, then I take a half-step further and posit that neither does it have the right to dictate your ideals, to tell you good or evil. Of necessity, it makes purely practical judgements like, “People are not permitted to steal things or we will lock them up,” which are to some degree useful for the functioning of society, but we should not confuse them with moral judgements.

Peter also says,

We simply try to muddle through, creating the best world we can — deploying not principles, but what Charles Taylor called “inspired adhoccery.”

I would restate Peter’s “ad hoc” statements thus: there exists a moral axis and a pragmatic axis, and as moral agents we are perpetually brokering an uneasy peace between the two. To be perfectly moral would require infinite resources, or at least the ability to act as if there were infinite resources – a disregard for the pragmatic side of things. To be perfectly pragmatic would require infinite moral flexibility, or effectively an outright lack of morality.  (This level of abstraction, incidentally, derives from the “postmodern” half of my explanation of my stance as “postmodernist-existentialist.”  Peter notes correctly that I differ from Sartre in at least one significant place despite calling my reasoning existentialist.  I believe even Sartre used meta-level principles for moral reasoning in No Exit, but that is a discussion for another time.) I submit that to not perfectly cleave to abstract principles is a different order of things from never attempting to stick to principles in the first place.  That, I believe, is where the real danger of doing what is most comfortable rather than what is moral lies.  Call it a throwback to my days in science: that which is never measured is never properly observed, and that which is not observed, we cannot really make clear statements about. How can you monitor your own moral progress without having some kind of measure?

In the end I suspect my differences with Noah might be theological more than descriptive: is there such a thing as morality, independent of social feedback and pragmatic goals? I say yes, as long as we believe and set it apart; law, for instance, is not morality. Noah, if I read him correctly above, says no. If you don’t allow that morality exists as a separate conceptual thing, then perhaps the distinctions I am drawing become meaningless.

I believe they have meaning, though.

1. bythebooks – Broken Wings : Tomoko Tane (Trinity Blood ED)
2. Orange – Oath Sign : Lisa (Fate/Zero)
3. bythebooks – Feel So Good : Supercell
4. Mystlord – Katamari on the Rocks – Katamari Damacy
5. sebz – Karakuri *insert Buddhist swastika* Burst : Kagamine Rin and Len
6. sebz – Sweet Drops – PUFFY (Usagi Drop OP)
7. Orange – Title Nante Jibun de Kangaenasai na : Miyuki Sawashiro (Arakawa UTB)
8. bythebooks & Razzyness(‘s recording) – Cendrillon : MikuXKaito
9. Jun – Romeo and Cinderella (Vocaloid)
10. Mystlord – Hanaji : Kobayashi Yuu (Maria Holic OP)
11. sebz – Rin Len Romantic Night : Kagamine Rin and Len
12. Anya – Kimi no Naka no Eiyuu – Minami Kuribayashi (Gundam AGE ED)
13. bythebooks – Meltdown : Asami Shimoda
14. Orange – Why Was This Happening : Hatsune Miku
15. Caraniel – Lonely in Gorgeous – Tommy February6 (Paradise Kiss OP)
16. Jun – Blue (Vocaloid; Yuyoyuppe, Draw the Emotional)
17. Mystlord – Paradise Lost – Minorin~~ (Ga-Rei Zero OP)
18. sebz – Panda Hero : GUMI
19. Anya – The Eternal Soldiers – Loudness (MazinKAISER SKL OP)
20. sebz – Bye Bye (Kimi to Boku OP) : 7!!
21. bythebooks – Light My Fire : KOTOKO (Shana III OP)
22. Caraniel – We Fight Together – Namie Amuro (One Piece OP14)
23. Mau – Ryu – Sound Holic (Touhou/ Youmu’s Theme)
24. bobbierob – Modokashii Sekai no Ue de – Makino Yui (Welcome to the NHK ED)
25. Starburst – Hana No Iro -Nano.RIPE
26. Mystlord – Sousei no Aquarion (Sousei no Aquarion OP)
27. Anya – Core Pride[UVERworld & In My World [Rookie Is Punk’d] (Ao no Exorcist OPs)
28. bythebooks & Hyadain – Hyadain no Kakakatakataomoi-C (Nichijou OP)
29. bobbierob – Watashi no Koi wa Hotch-Kiss – HTT (K-ON INS)
30. Mau – Border of My Life – Sound Holic (Touhou/ Yuyuko’s Theme)
31. Caraniel – Toki ni Ai wa – Okui Masami (Revolutionary Girl Utena Movie)
32. Anya – Gecchuu! Rabu Rabu?! – Mayumi Gojo (Futari wa Pretty Cure ED)
33. bobbierob – Ready!! – 765Pro Allstars (Idolm@ster OP)
34. Mystlord – Zzz – Sayaka Sasaki (Nichijou ED1)
35. bythebooks – Memoria : Aoi Eir (Fate/Zero ED)
36. bobbierob – Tsubasa wo Kudasai – HTT (K-ON INS)
37. Anya – Detarame na Zanzou – Gran Rodeo (Blassreiter OP1)
38. Mystlord – Neko Miko Reimu
39. bythebooks – Marisa Stole the Precious Thing
40. Anya – Touhou Sweets
41. Moritheil – Tomorrow – Shimokawa Mikuni (Full Metal Panic OP)
42. Anya – Kimi ni Fuku Kaze – Shimokawa Mikuni (Full Metal Panic Fumoffu! ED)

Woohoo karaoke!~☆ ♪~(´ε｀ )