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Confused about what an Intellectual Turing Test is? Click here! Please read, then vote at the end of the post. Feel free to speculate in the comment section about this person’s identity!
1. What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?
If I am entering a new space, I respect the norms of those that have created that space. However, if I am able to I do work to increase the respect for all participants within that space. I work to set an example for newcomers and can instruct junior members of the community if needed.
2. What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?
Like everyone else, I am the product of my upbringing, societal and economic forces, and the legacy of decisions of people that have come before me. But I am not a simple stimulus-response machine. If I see that my view of the world harms other people, I am able to change that. I like to think that I am both flexible enough and open enough to the truth that if someone can demonstrate where I am wrong, I could change my beliefs to make the world better.
3. Explain Gamergate.
Gamergate is nothing new. It’s about misogyny among disadvantaged males. When a man is unsuccessful according to the capitalist standard, he tries to regain status by emphasizing his place in the kyriarchy. In the case of the poor white southerner, he elevates himself by denigrating persons of color. In cases where race is not available to him, he elevates his status as a male be denigrating women. In the case of gamergate, non-traditionally- successful males created a male-only (or at least male-dominated) space around their hobbies where women were permitted mainly as decoration, fantasy object, or reward (compare with professional sports, where women are allowed only as cheerleaders or trophy wives). When women demanded access to their segregated space, the male feels threatened; he can’t have superiority if women are considered equals (or even worse superiors!) so he has to drive them out of his space. In the case of gamergate, this gender-cleansing takes the form of rape and death threats, and other gender-specific forms of harassment.
Thing of Things 
Not even trying to answer #2, huh?
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Come on, mate, make an effort, don’t just take the piss.
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This is a really bad fake. I shouldn’t even need to say why, but for reference: the first two answers are overly generic and seem implausible. The third is just stringing together buzzwords over a pretty junky theory which sounds vaguely radfem except that not even radfems would believe it.
So far, I’ve voted anti/pro/anti/pro/anti. Hoping one of these gets me to break the pattern at some point.
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I definitely find this the least plausible so far. I guess the first source of suspicion for me is that it doesn’t read like it was written by a real human being, though I suppose if it were only that it could be explained by someone deliberately trying to avoid making themselves recognizable. The third answer seems over the top, though I’m a little concerned about making that criticism; it’s not that I’ve never encountered any SJ type who might say similar things, but I wouldn’t expect one of those around here to sound like Twisty (indeed, even Twisty types I’ve observed rarely have so much highly concentrated jargon in a short paragraph). But again, not conclusive; it may be cheating to take into account such local factors. And finally, the non-answers to the first two questions are so different from the answer to the third question. I’m not really sure why that happened, and I suppose there could be reasons a sincere person’s answers would follow that trajectory, but again, it makes me suspicious. Add it all up and I just don’t buy it.
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This feels so fake I think it might be real.
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I’m with you on that… real SJ people trigger Poe’s Law for me all the time.
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Yeah, that was my reasoning, too
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Too much self-made man in the first two ansers, and explaining GG as hierarchical jockeying sounds very NRXish.
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I don’t think there’s anything NRxish about that. It’s a pretty common line, even outside SJ proper, once you remove all the SJ jargon from it. Maybe not about Gamergate specifically, but e.g. the poor white southerner example is pretty common.
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“non-traditionally- successful males created a male-only (or at least male-dominated) space around their hobbies” sounds to me like what Gamergaters believe about themselves. It’s certainly not what feminists believe about them.
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AJD, that’s the exact opposite of my impression. A few of the more openly obnoxious GGers might believe that but no-one I’ve seen try to defend GG at a level that goes beyond “lol ur stupid” emphasizes the gender split among gamers like that. Indeed, I’m pretty sure most eventual GG supporters didn’t really think in terms of gender and other identity groups at all until GG made them feel forced to.
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The fact that most people think this is a terrible fake should prompt the author to do some introspection regardless of which side of the fence they’re on.
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About as unconvincing as it can get, short of inexplicably inserting “#KillAllMen” in the middle of the GG answer.
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Strange. I’d actually put the GG explanation in the upper quintile of SJ discourse in terms of compassion/charity. It’s weird to see an unorthodox position mixed with meaningless applause lights, though (kyriarchy? srsly?).
1 & 2 seem to be mostly unrelated to SJ, but I’d count that as evidence in favor of honesty. If you’re writing a fake, you should provide at least some reason to identify with the SJ movement at large.
I’d call this one a differentiated, but very weakly SJ-aligned position.
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Off topic: Ozy, is there any way to subscribe to comments on a post on your blog without commenting? I’m finding these discussions really interesting, and right now I’m incentivized to comment myself even when I don’t have anything useful to say just because that’s how I can get notified of new comments.
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I actually think that while it’s not at all a typical SJ position, the author is expressing their honest beliefs. Somehow the language feels less artificial than in failed attempts at imitating SJ, although the author could have put more effort in elaborating on this position.
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This one, now, would actually gain in credibility if it described the author as autistic. Though I would still expect, eg, a more responsive answer to question 2.
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If this is a fake then it’s more like a parody than a fake. If it’s real…. Ugh. The (small, not in control of my actions) part of me that wants to vote for Trump wants to do it out of spite for people like that.
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I actually found this one really difficult to tell, mostly because the first two answers tell me nothing.
The GG answer feels like when Scott Alexander likened women in gaming to cultural appropriation. It could be written by an SJ who reads a Slatestarcodex and similar. In the end I voted Anti-SJ (before reading comments), thinking it is written by a reactionary who actually thinks gaming should be a male space, even if rape and death threats aren’t ok.
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This seems like a pro-sj pretending to be an anti-sj pretending to be a pro-sj. That is, it is a bad fake, in a way that makes it look like a parody of a bad fake. I can’t see someone who is a) anti-sj b) reads ozys blog and c) is making an honest attempt to mimic an sj writing this.
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This one doesn’t feel quite right. It seems to me like an ASJ parody of SJ beliefs, which is what we are testing for. In particular “disadvantaged males”, “the male feels threatened”, reads like someone imitating a racist by talking about “the blacks”. Hate speech tends to be terminology or meaning, both usually indicates a parody.
Leaving my current scores:
1: ASJ, certain
2: SJ, certain
3: SJ, unsure
4: SJ, unsure
5: ASJ, unsure
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I’m so happy that you’re doing this Ozy! This is going to be very humbling for some of the contestants. Would you consider making this a regular feature of your blog, maybe a quarterly excercise?
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Also humbling for some of the judges :).
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Absolutely.
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This one seems to have made people angry, though I’m not sure why. It’s arrogant and condescending, but no more so than #3.
The first two answers seem honest, if generic, though I don’t know that I could answer the second question with any degree of specificity. The gamergate answer seems like they were cribbing from a section of a text about “racism without racists.” Which I guess means they’ve at least got access to the information. so… plausible?
I’m still voting fake though. The first and third answers don’t seem like they were written by the same person.
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Terrible fake. A bunch of buzzwords, but no SJW vitriolic passion. Plus, the answers are way too short for any SJW who has been given a venue.
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A lot of the ones that scream “fake” to me so far feature incredibly vague and bloodless answers to 1 and 2, then an answer to 3 that seems like a mash-up of a non-GG anti-SJ person’s view of GG and an anti-GG’er’s view put through Google Translate.
In this case, 1 and 2 are explained without any jargon, but then “kyriarchy” pops up, and the use of “space” in that fashion … but also it talks about “male status” … but then it refers to capitalism? (Which is a weird interpretation … the stereotypical GG basement nerd is doing better by capitalist standards – computers cost money, after all – than by old-fashioned “get girls and punch other men in the face” masculine standards).
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“Space” does get used in answer 1. But saying that if they entered a new space, they “can instruct junior members of the community if needed” … that comes off as really strange.
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This is a tough one.
It’s short, which is a pretty good strategy for a fake.
The answers are something that a writer who identifies as SJ might plausibly think, although #1 and #2 aren’t in as much depth as I’d hope. The questions are open to interpretation, so they leave room for pretty short answers. #3 uses a lot of jargon in ways that don’t immediately set off my BS meter.
It’s weird that #3 has so much jargon and #s 1 and 2 have almost none. I’d normally expect somebody who thinks the way the author of #3 does to use more SJ jargon in #1 and #2.
(Ps – I have nothing against jargon and love it. It’s a risky but high reward strategy for a fake to use it, because it’s easy to get it wrong but adds some verisimilitude if you get it right. I’d expect a real essay to use it only if the writer does naturally.).
So on balance, I think fake, but I’m not super confident.
tl;dr: What argleblarglebarglebah said in comment #3
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Anti
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