I want to fell you about something small and petty that drives me absolutely fucking bonkers.

So there's this thing people do, it's harmless enough, but it also sort of hints at a completely incoherent style of thinking. It is absolutely unfair to judge people by random shit they write casually, after all I write like 3 geeked out baboons stacked atop one and other and yet I am a noble and refined rat.

Nonetheless I'm a judgy shit so I do. Ok so the thing? It's when people use a quote or situation from fiction as a predictor of what will happen in reality. A concrete example from earlier today paraphrased:

p1: I think blah blah thing will happen

p2: Ah but remember men in black? a person is reasonable, people are dumb panicky animals

me: teakettle noises

The causality is utterly confused, MiB cannot be used as evidence, it is written that way because the writer wanted a character to say that. It's possible a writer wanted a character to say that because the writer believed it to be true, but it's also possible that it was included for many other reasons.

screeeeeeeeeee

Anyway, share your thoughts. Also your own ridiculous rhetoric irritations.

54 comments

Lord of the Flies is one of the biggest ones of these. MFer heard about people surviving collectively after a shipwreck, wrote a book about how humans can't do that, and now people cite it like it's a historical document
- I literally was taught this book alongside 1984 and Brave New World. It was like a whole anticommunist book unit
  
  Back when I was taught they did 1984, Brave New World, Handmaids Tale and Clockwork Orange back to back. It was miserable.
  
  What's really funny to me is that all these books are just about how terrible and miserable England is (and I guess the anglosphere more generally re: Handmaids Tale) and then projecting that onto the USSR and communism. Like yes, 1984 is terrifying-- it's about the UK government though, not the fucking Soviets.
  
  Pretty much, Clockwork Orange is borderline unreadable with its made up slang too. Can't believe these books are so highly regarded.
- People always miss the real point of that book: that british "people" are savages
- It's also a crap book. Read it as a kid, it sucks
  
  It's one of my favorite books! :cri:
  But mostly because I like survival/wilderness horror, not because I think it's an accurate portrayal of human nature.
- https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
  There was actually an IRL situation like Lord of the Flies, and the kids handled it pretty chill.
  
  In most disasters, people cooperate and join together to get through it. Even all the shit happening during Hurricane Katrina, people were helping each other with the burger brain property rights fuckwads causing the most problems (i.e. threatening to shoot """"looters"""").
  I think it's white settlers who are incapable of working for the greater good as seen with covid.
  
  Yeah that is what the book is based on.
  
  I think you're thinking of another fictional book called The Coral Island. Lord of the Flies sort of parodies it
  Golding was inspired to write the ‘real’ story of what would happen if boys were stranded on an island – ‘in Lord of the Flies he had written Coral Island in reverse
  https://william-golding.co.uk/lord-flies-coral-island
  
  The book was written a decade before this though.
  
  Oh must be another incident or I am wrong about the order, but I could have sworn it was based on a similar event.
- I am building a hell specifically for people who think Lord of the Flies has anything useful to teach us about the nature of society and cooperation.

54 comments