Comments on: There Are Rules Here

By: There Are Rules Here | Neoreactive

There Are Rules Here | Neoreactive — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 14:47:33 +0000

[…] There Are Rules Here […]

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 16:30:16 +0000

Alternatively, riches give people the delusion of self-sufficiency. That one’s a rather old observation, actually.

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By: drs

drs — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 16:19:33 +0000

I wonder what you think Sweden’s fertility rate is, and whether you’ve looked it up recently.

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By: jaimeastorga2000

jaimeastorga2000 — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 01:51:41 +0000

Furries and bronies have strong communities?

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By: Nornagest

Nornagest — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 00:09:09 +0000

Cookie monster got me again. That was me.

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 00:08:41 +0000

I think you’re right, and I think there’s a couple of angles to that. It works as a filter: if you can survive in this fantastically hostile desert for a week, you need to have your shit together or at least be accepted by a group that has its shit together, and any group can only tolerate a certain proportion of slackers (Burning Man jargon: “sparkle ponies”) before it implodes. That keeps the ratio of possible defectors low without needing to enforce strong norms against specific forms of defection. (Possibly the strongest Burning Man taboo is against men wearing nothing but a shirt [full nudity is fine], which speaks volumes about what doesn’t need to be tabooed.)

But I think the other angle to it is that shared suffering forms a social bond all by itself, and all the moreso when it’s a form of suffering that most people haven’t experienced. This is basically how initiatory ordeals work, but Burners get it just by being there: if you meet another Burner, you can assume right off the bat that you have that in common and stuck through it anyway.

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 23:59:29 +0000

It’s about rules, just not explicit rules.

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By: John Stoner

John Stoner — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 23:06:45 +0000

This brings to mind Burning Man. It’s less about following rules (the rules there are mostly common sense stuff like ‘don’t drive your car over five miles an hour in this very dusty environment in our city designed for walking and biking.’) But there’s the hardship aspect. You gotta go to the desert, bring all this water and stuff, survive a week, not injure or kill yourself, and do something artistic. And no one makes you do it, but if you’re obviously a ‘tourist’ people will give you shit.

There are different ways to demonstrate commitment.

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By: David Friedman

David Friedman — Sat, 03 Jan 2015 23:05:16 +0000

“And the burnt fools bandaged finger
Goes wobbling back to the fire.”

Rudyard Kipling, “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.”
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm

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By: Phil Goetz

Phil Goetz — Tue, 30 Dec 2014 19:47:00 +0000

Perhaps bronies and furries have such a strong community partly because they are so persecuted.

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