#in many ways theory can only provide /so much/ nuance before it becomes unusable. that's the way language naturally works.

[uncanny-tranny]

Theory without interacting with your fellow man is defective. In order for you to have a rounded sense of politics and what your community needs, you must strike the fine balance between theory (i.e., empowering yourself to understand the way ought to work) and actual interaction with others (i.e., understanding how the world actually works).

Theory without human connection is incomplete and human connection without theory is aimless.

#politics #studying theory alone is how you get people who say there is only one experience for [x] group to have for instance #in many ways theory can only provide /so much/ nuance before it becomes unusable. that's the way language naturally works. #in order to actually USE theory you have to apply it - either that or you have to seriously consider how it would look in /your/ community #i've probably made a point like this before but fuck it we ball #the last sentence is a bit nuanceless (this is a word now) but it's the overall idea of what i mean

[kennyrobots]

answer in the form of an answer, part 21.

Would an immigration ban that targets Muslims make the country safer? Your answer: No Answers you’ll accept: Yes, and we should enforce one | Maybe, but we shouldn't enforce one | No Importance: Very Maybe it's the frequency illusion at work here, but the last three(ish) questions I've answered have a helluva political bent to it. (NOTE: At least, from the time of the original question...answering. Not sure if or how much OKC's redesign messed with the layout of these questions, in relation to each other.) Personally, I'm curious as to the actual efficacy of these questions, vis-a-vis actually getting people to answer their true feelings on here. Like, what's to stop a person from answering the PC way, but acting IRL contrary to what they're claiming? Yes, I'm aware that answering privately is a thing that exists, but still. In a very odd way (specifically the devil's advocate-y way I force myself to see all sides of an argument, even if the underlying premise is ridiculous) (kids in cages - that's kinda indefensible, y'all), I almost sorta respect the folks that say "Yes", because I think they're being truthful, and God knows my dumb ass loves authenticity. I do wonder about the folks that say "No", though (like myself, full disclosure). Of those folks that SAY "No", how many of them actually MEAN it, and who's just showing off? Genuinely curious. yeah - the redesign messed with a LOT of things, much less the order in which i answered questions. like, right now, the site’s...it’s not “unusable”, but damn, it used to have so much more functionality. like, right now there’s no real way for me to just browse potential matches (or even users in general) like i used to do - i’m basically stuck with either whatever random poor soul ends up foisted upon me in the discover tab, or whoever the site’s algorithms deem worthy of showing me in the questions tab, and the prerequisite for THAT is that i have to enter a question and answer to see who responded in kind. (also, there are 5K+ questions on this godforsaken site. i am literally going to die before i get to the finish line.) (just did the math - assuming they do not add any more questions in the intervening time (which ain’t likely), and assuming i stick to my two-questions-per-day schedule (which IS likely), it would take over 7 YEARS to post everything. so yeah - me dying is literally likelier than finishing this stupid fucking project. i feel like i should regret starting this, but fuck it - i’m already here. might as well keep going.) ANYWAY. i have a tendency of reading through all of a person’s questions whenever they pique my interest, because 1) as someone who writes a lot of fucking words, it would be both hypocritical and irresponsible of me to not read someone else’s lot of fucking words (even if being seen as hypocritical is not even a thing for me - i am openly hypocritical, because in the course of the whole “exploring the depths of my mind” thing, it’s become necessary for me to hold two or more conflicting opinions at the same time, just to be able to see as many sides of an idea as possible, and i don’t need things like “cognitive dissonance” slowing me down), and 2) as a result of plumbing the depths of my own mind, i’ve become interested in what comes out of the minds of others, especially on a dating site, where the express goal is to LITERALLY get to know another person. (an adjacent thought about this that i had while taking a shower today: some common advice vis-à-vis online dating is to not care so much about being liked, so that you don’t experience the feel-bads that accompany putting in so much work for so little return, but...that’s also the entire point of online dating - to be LIKED by someone. obviously, that’s greatly oversimplifying things, but still. something that struck me that i’ll probably flesh out in a later post.) (also, i use “vis-à-vis” a lot.) (unsure if that’s actionable in any way - again, another thing that struck me.) ANYWAY. obviously i’m an outlier, putting an explanation with every answer i’ve provided, but i’m both delighted when someone else puts an explanation in their answer (because then we’re allowed to go beyond the parameters of the question and the provided answers, which, no matter what, are limiting in-themselves), and saddened when i scroll through someone’s profile, and see that their questions are as barren as their main page. (like, i get that the advice is to keep it short and pithy, but man. y’all don’t have ANY supplementary thoughts about the question? no wonder y’all suck at conversation.) (here’s what i mean by the whole “limiting in-themselves” bit: aside from just expressing my insane personality, the thing i like having a blank space to provide an explanation is that it allows me to move beyond the question and answer itself, a lot of times in ways that surprise even ME, and I’M the one that’s writing it. without that option, you’re kinda just stuck with the options they give you, and i actually complain about that a number of times in my explanations, where there’s either not enough or too many answers given (normally the former), and that the actual answer’s somewhere in-between what’s there. i see that most people are okay with this, and, sure - that’s their bag. but then it leads to things like the above, where either an insane person or an HONEST person would answer in the affirmative, vis-à-vis (damnit) an immigration ban.) (or a stupid person - we ought to be inclusive, after all.) (i’ve actually thought about this in the context of “open-world” video games - while we (the royal “we”) marvel at how much there is to do, how you can do “anything you want” in the game, soonandsoforth, it’s STILL limited by what the developers INTENDED for you to do. sure, there are such things as exploits and outright cheats that allow you to do things that weren’t EXPRESSLY intended by the developers, but you’re still limited by the framework in which the game was developed. in other words, let’s say you wanted to play a session of GTA online in which you were a normal person that went to their banking job each day, and just had a normal home life, and maybe played golf on the weekends, because, y’know - BANKERS. in THEORY, i guess you could do that (i actually don’t know what you can and can’t do in GTA online, seeing that 1) i’ve never played it, and 2) i have no interest in doing so, because online multiplayer? yuck and no thank you), but you can only do that insofar that the developer - unknowingly or not - put the tools for you do to so in the game. if they didn’t? you’re shit outta luck - go blow up a car or rob a bank or whatever else you’re allowed to do in there.) (”why are you playing GTA online to be a normal person?” great question, and for no particular reason other than “why not?”, i suppose.) (just not a fan of being unnecessarily limited like that, is all.) (or are you in the habit of obeying even the unwritten rules all the time?) NEXTDAYEDIT: so actually, there’s a quote within a vox article that kindasorta sums up all that i tried to say in the preceding quite nicely: “ But mostly, this framing is misleading because, like pretty much any generalization of what goes on on a platform or in a subculture or within a generation, it completely erases the nuanced beliefs that actual individuals have.“ and THAT’s what i’m ultimately getting at, with my jumbo-sized word salad - by limiting yourself to the answers provided, without providing any additional context or explanation in the space that’s LITERALLY there for you to do so, you take some nuance out of the online dating conversation. (ONCE AGAIN, unsure if this is actionable in any way - just something i can’t unsee, is all.) (maybe the point is to actually talk about these things when you reach out and start conversations with folk. ...i guess.)