The Consoomer Menace

YeahOkayCool said:
DON'T ASK QUESTIONS; JUST CONSOOM POAST AND THEN GET EXCITED FOR NEXT POAST
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Can one spread something on a piece of poast?

Anyways...
I think this is a good time to remind everyone that people from different countries will sometimes misread what you mean, because their unspoken assumptions are different from yours. And conversely, that you will sometimes get the wrong idea, when reading something by a person from a different culture.

This "if you believe that something is true then you must want to put a gun to my head and make me agree with you" mindset is one I've encountered a few times online. I don't know where it comes from, but it seems like a serious cultural disconnect. That's not how we do things in the Anglosphere.
 
The OP does have a certain... aggressiveness to it, and I think that sets off mental alarms in our libertarians, who have witnessed prior efforts to limit what people can say or do or, yes, consume by people convinced they were fighting a moral blight. In short, you're critiquing a social issue, but they hear it and see the first step toward attempting repression to eliminate said issue.

That said, I would like to see YOC's response to my last post to him. Because to me, an important thing to ask is "What does it mean to produce?" The father of the friend mentioned in the OP is remembered as saying the state of "Consumer" and "Producer" is mutually exclusive: a Producer is too busy producing to consume, a Consumer is too busy consuming to Produce, and then defines producing as "Create or change something". "If you don't know which you are, you're a Consumer" is stated in the quote.

To go back to my example, my Dr. Who SI fic has resulted in people professing to be pulled out of depression, or to being inspired toward their own creative works (including non-fanfic, I was once told), as well as other emotional reactions. In short, I changed something in them, if just for that moment, with what I admit was a fun little "plot bunny" that hopped into my brain and made a warren. Would that count as a "Producer" action, or am I still a "Consumer" because my work is rooted in a brand and I get no financial reward from it? Or, as was put by the friend's father above, am I a "Consumer" still simply because I'm asking this question?
 
I don't think that being a 'consoomer' is related to a lack of production, but rather a lack of productivity. Mindless consumption of material is a bad thing in my mind; but only if it is truly mindless. For example I don't like football, it bores the piss out of me, and it always will. I think it's a mindless boring tedium and most people will literally 'consoooooom' it ala the meme. But it does for a small number of people mean more than just that consumption and can be inspirational. Combating mindless consumption shouldn't start by combating the material people consume, but rather the mindset that lets people fall into this numbing cycle of continuous consumption.
 
Senor Hortler said:
I don't think that being a 'consoomer' is related to a lack of production, but rather a lack of productivity. Mindless consumption of material is a bad thing in my mind; but only if it is truly mindless. For example I don't like football, it bores the piss out of me, and it always will. I think it's a mindless boring tedium and most people will literally 'consoooooom' it ala the meme. But it does for a small number of people mean more than just that consumption and can be inspirational. Combating mindless consumption shouldn't start by combating the material people consume, but rather the mindset that lets people fall into this numbing cycle of continuous consumption.
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Just so you know, I'm pretty sure people are still selective as to what they buy

Though they do fall into franchise traps of a sort, they will keep watching the next movie even if they don't really like it



Or they will only like it because it's part of the franchise or continuation

I stopped watching MCU or DCEU or Star Wars or anything new or live action these days.
 
Big Steve said:
The OP does have a certain... aggressiveness to it, and I think that sets off mental alarms in our libertarians, who have witnessed prior efforts to limit what people can say or do or, yes, consume by people convinced they were fighting a moral blight. In short, you're critiquing a social issue, but they hear it and see the first step toward attempting repression to eliminate said issue.
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If they see every critique of a social issue as a call for state action, then they are just plain paranoid. Social conservatives are pretty explicit about what we want to ban or regulate using state power. I should know.

On that note, here what I could say: the state cannot legislate virtue. It can create an environment where it's easier to be virtuous by prohibiting things like hard drugs or porn. But it cannot make you virtuous. In the first place, every single individual's form of flourishing is different, so it's impossible to impose one way of life onto the whole of a people. This is even harder in pluralistic societies, where the values people hold are not shared by the wider community and society is divided into several factions.

What could the state do to limit consumerism? Well, changing the economic system to make saving money easier. Putting an age limit on smart phone use, such that people under the age of twenty-one cannot get exposed to those tiny blue screens and become addicted to them. Limiting, if not eliminating, intellectual property and breaking up giant media conglomerates to promote a freer market in media. All of these things are possible political solutions.

CarlManvers2019 said:
I stopped watching MCU or DCEU or Star Wars or anything new or live action these days.
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That's pretty good. First step to not being a consoomer is recognizing the vacuousness of modern corporate products. Most of them are designed to appeal to Chinese people anyways.

Random Username said:
I like consooming my phone. If I didn't have it I wouldn't be here.
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You'd be happier if you didn't do it as often.
 
The Name of Love said:
If they see every critique of a social issue as a call for state action, then they are just plain paranoid. Social conservatives are pretty explicit about what we want to ban or regulate using state power. I should know.

On that note, here what I could say: the state cannot legislate virtue. It can create an environment where it's easier to be virtuous by prohibiting things like hard drugs or porn. But it cannot make you virtuous. In the first place, every single individual's form of flourishing is different, so it's impossible to impose one way of life onto the whole of a people. This is even harder in pluralistic societies, where the values people hold are not shared by the wider community and society is divided into several factions.

What could the state do to limit consumerism? Well, changing the economic system to make saving money easier. Putting an age limit on smart phone use, such that people under the age of twenty-one cannot get exposed to those tiny blue screens and become addicted to them. Limiting, if not eliminating, intellectual property and breaking up giant media conglomerates to promote a freer market in media. All of these things are possible political solutions.
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...If you're advocating the government banning smart-phone use for anyone other than criminals who've lost some of their rights due to their crimes, you have no business calling yourself a small-government conservative.

That's incredibly statist and controlling. I say this as someone who doesn't even have smartphone service. I use a bloody flip-phone, and if I'm blessed enough to have kids, they'll not be getting smartphones for at least the first ten years of their life.

This is very nakedly you trying to impose your personal preference through the power of government in an unjustified way, and is antithetical to small-government conservatism.
 
LordsFire said:
...If you're advocating the government banning smart-phone use for anyone other than criminals who've lost some of their rights due to their crimes, you have no business calling yourself a small-government conservative.

That's incredibly statist and controlling. I say this as someone who doesn't even have smartphone service. I use a bloody flip-phone, and if I'm blessed enough to have kids, they'll not be getting smartphones for at least the first ten years of their life.

This is very nakedly you trying to impose your personal preference through the power of government in an unjustified way, and is antithetical to small-government conservatism.
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You remind me of those libertarians that booed Austin Peterson because he wanted to ban selling heroin to children.



Limited government statism is statism. Nothing will be good enough for you.

Also, you claiming I want to “impose my personal preferences?” That’s a major claim you need to back up. I suggested it as a way to combat consumerism in our culture. That’s not a personal preference, that’s an objective moral good! To insist that my morality is the result of subjective preference is to commit the anti-conservative fallacy. It’s also the same as calling me a liar, something I don’t appreciate.
 
The Name of Love said:
You remind me of those libertarians that booed Austin Peterson because he wanted to ban selling heroin to children.



Limited government statism is statism. Nothing will be good enough for you.

Also, you claiming I want to “impose my personal preferences?” That’s a major claim you need to back up. I suggested it as a way to combat consumerism in our culture. That’s not a personal preference, that’s an objective moral good! To insist that my morality is the result of subjective preference is to commit the anti-conservative fallacy. It’s also the same as calling me a liar, something I don’t appreciate.
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The principles of small government conservatism, hold that it is only the government's business to get involved, when your sins directly harm another.

If you want to be an alcoholic, the government doesn't stop that. If you start beating your spouse or kids while drunk, then the government steps in, because you have committed a crime by directly harming somoene else.

Having a smartphone under the age of 21 is not directly harming anyone. This is why I am saying you have no business claiming conservatism. You are so blatantly over-reaching the power of the government, it's ridiculous.

Arguments can be made back and forth about drugs. A smart phone is nothing more than a tool, and a legal adult damn well has the right to own one.
 
LordsFire said:
The principles of small government conservatism, hold that it is only the government's business to get involved, when your sins directly harm another.
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No, that's J. S. Mill's Harm Principle, a principle founded upon some very un-conservative premises. You are not a conservative of any kind. You are a libertarian.
 
The Name of Love said:
No, that's J. S. Mill's Harm Principle, a principle founded upon some very un-conservative premises. You are not a conservative of any kind. You are a libertarian.
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Conservatism and Libertarianism have extremely common roots, and one of the political left's greatest accomplishments of the 20th century was getting Libertarians to align with them.

The burden is still on you to justify why legal adults should be disbarred use of smartphones, and why that is a 'reasonable' use of political power.
 
The Name of Love said:
Limiting, if not eliminating, intellectual property
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That will do nothing to limit megacorporations and would in fact actually advantage them over little folks. Yes, right now our copyright laws are kinda fucked up and in some ways favor corporations, but if you just go and eliminate them entirely? You utterly remove the capability for small producers of content to even BEGIN to profit off their creative endeavors while enabling large corporations to make money off their efforts with absolutely no effort on their own. Right now, if Disney came onto a site like TS and grabbed up someone's original story and made a movie out of it, they would be on the hook for millions of dollars of royalties and in all sorts of legal troubles. Without copyright, they could literally take a story from anyone anywhere, make a movie out of it, and keep all the money, while the original creator of the work sees nothing and has no legal recourse. On top of it all, the megacorp has ALSO now limited the potential return for the work, as the original creator can no longer make a movie and expect to profit from it. Further, Disney could write their own sequel to the story and that effectively undercuts any sequels the original author might try and make and profit from.

The abuse of copyright against small timers by corporations is a very recent issue due to the ease of distribution on the internet and the rise of the "critique entertainment" that Youtube effectively enabled. It is an unusual problem and not one that has been well addressed yet, but that is mostly due to Youtube's inane method of handling copyright claims, not an inherently flaw in the law itself.
 
LordsFire said:
Conservatism and Libertarianism have extremely common roots, and one of the political left's greatest accomplishments of the 20th century was getting Libertarians to align with them.
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No, conservatism and libertarianism don't have "common roots." Conservatism is rooted in the philosophies of Edmund Burke and Joseph DeMaistre. Libertarianism is rooted primarily in the classical liberals like John Locke and the Levellers, anarchists like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Lysander Spooner, and Georgists like Albert Jay Nock and Frank Chodorov. Though there has been crossover between the two, they come from very different political traditions. Libertarians actually have more in common with anarchistic socialists than with conservatives, and it wasn't until the advent of Frank Meyer's and William F. Buckley Jr.'s fusionism that libertarianism started being associated with the right wing.

Conservatism is statist at its core. It holds that the state is a natural institution that acts for the common good. This stands in stark contrast to classical liberals and libertarians, who hold that the state is man-made institution created through a "social contract."

S'task said:
That will do nothing to limit megacorporations and would in fact actually advantage them over little folks. Yes, right now our copyright laws are kinda fucked up and in some ways favor corporations, but if you just go and eliminate them entirely? You utterly remove the capability for small producers of content to even BEGIN to profit off their creative endeavors while enabling large corporations to make money off their efforts with absolutely no effort on their own. Right now, if Disney came onto a site like TS and grabbed up someone's original story and made a movie out of it, they would be on the hook for millions of dollars of royalties and in all sorts of legal troubles. Without copyright, they could literally take a story from anyone anywhere, make a movie out of it, and keep all the money, while the original creator of the work sees nothing and has no legal recourse. On top of it all, the megacorp has ALSO now limited the potential return for the work, as the original creator can no longer make a movie and expect to profit from it. Further, Disney could write their own sequel to the story and that effectively undercuts any sequels the original author might try and make and profit from.

The abuse of copyright against small timers by corporations is a very recent issue due to the ease of distribution on the internet and the rise of the "critique entertainment" that Youtube effectively enabled. It is an unusual problem and not one that has been well addressed yet, but that is mostly due to Youtube's inane method of handling copyright claims, not an inherently flaw in the law itself.
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Disney already takes original stories from everywhere and profits from them. How many stories from fairy tales and mythology have the taken and made into movies? Aladdin, the Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves... the list goes on and on and on. So, it's kind of pointless.

On top of that, I don't think profits from copyright are actually legitimate. They are a form of rent-seeking. Companies can just sit back on their laurels and bathe in the profits passively, without making anything new. That's why you have Disney making a bajillion sequels and live-action remakes to older properties. Copyright doesn't incentivize creativity, it stifles it! Furthermore, copyright laws never apply to the little guy because the little guy usually doesn't have the money to copyright a ton of different things. Larger corporations will always have the advantage because they can use their large numbers of copyrights to censor you.
 
The Name of Love said:
No, conservatism and libertarianism don't have "common roots." Conservatism is rooted in the philosophies of Edmund Burke and Joseph DeMaistre. Libertarianism is rooted primarily in the classical liberals like John Locke and the Levellers, anarchists like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Lysander Spooner, and Georgists like Albert Jay Nock and Frank Chodorov. Though there has been crossover between the two, they come from very different political traditions. Libertarians actually have more in common with anarchistic socialists than with conservatives, and it wasn't until the advent of Frank Meyer's and William F. Buckley Jr.'s fusionism that libertarianism started being associated with the right wing.

Conservatism is statist at its core. It holds that the state is a natural institution that acts for the common good. This stands in stark contrast to classical liberals and libertarians, who hold that the state is man-made institution created through a "social contract."
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...What country do you live in? Because American conservatism, IE 'conserving the principles on which the nation was founded,' absolutely is not statist.
The Name of Love said:
Disney already takes original stories from everywhere and profits from them. How many stories from fairy tales and mythology have the taken and made into movies? Aladdin, the Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves... the list goes on and on and on. So, it's kind of pointless.

On top of that, I don't think profits from copyright are actually legitimate. They are a form of rent-seeking. Companies can just sit back on their laurels and bathe in the profits passively, without making anything new. That's why you have Disney making a bajillion sequels and live-action remakes to older properties. Copyright doesn't incentivize creativity, it stifles it! Furthermore, copyright laws never apply to the little guy because the little guy usually doesn't have the money to copyright a ton of different things. Larger corporations will always have the advantage because they can use their large numbers of copyrights to censor you.
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Have you ever actually been involved in much creative production? The most basic form of copyright is automatic. As in, all it takes is proving you created the thing, and you can sue people who've copied it. I mean, I suppose this could have changed since I last looked into it, but as a writer with some original material, this is a concern of mine.

Now, there's much more in-depth levels of filing for copyright control obviously, but this is not something that 'the little guy' is incapable of making use of.
 
CarlManvers2019 said:
I remember watching one movie from him, he apparently approved of SJWism on the basis that it will get a wider audience or its a completely normal thing for businesses to do
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Movieblob? Hah, the guy love Eugenics, wants to liquidate the 'mayo ghouls' and thinks he's a big brain card carrying member of the futurist society despite being a semi functional autist living in his brothers basement and selling crockpots on the internet to fund his insane drink and eating habits.
 
LordsFire said:
...What country do you live in? Because American conservatism, IE 'conserving the principles on which the nation was founded,' absolutely is not statist.
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American conservatives have, historically, been in favor of most of, if not all of, the policies I list. Or are you saying people like Anthony Comstock and Phyllis Schlafly aren’t American conservatives?


LordsFire said:
Have you ever actually been involved in much creative production? The most basic form of copyright is automatic. As in, all it takes is proving you created the thing, and you can sue people who've copied it. I mean, I suppose this could have changed since I last looked into it, but as a writer with some original material, this is a concern of mine.

Now, there's much more in-depth levels of filing for copyright control obviously, but this is not something that 'the little guy' is incapable of making use of.
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You can’t sue people who have more money than you. So if Disney really wanted to steal ideas from the Sietch, they could do so with impunity.
 
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