Peter Thiel: the only man who read The Lord of the Rings and deeply identified with Sauron
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@nazokiyoubinbou @Daojoan look, I just report it, not psychoanalyze it. N.b. the same person advocates for the Empire over the Republic because it brought order. Oddly he doesn't *behave* like a fascist IRL AFAICT, but every - *every* RPG campaign he's GMed over 30+ years has followed this imperial decline trope.
@oddhack @nazokiyoubinbou @Daojoan It’s probably at least partially because that makes for a very easy setting for RPGs: a dying empire allows for a highly interconnected, yet diverse world that can have common languages, tools, and trade, yet the power vacuum means you can have enemy factions/big bads rampaging that the party can deal with, and it’s an easy tie-in to something deeper (“by the Gods! So this is who REALLY killed the Emperor!”, etc).
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@oddhack @nazokiyoubinbou @Daojoan It’s probably at least partially because that makes for a very easy setting for RPGs: a dying empire allows for a highly interconnected, yet diverse world that can have common languages, tools, and trade, yet the power vacuum means you can have enemy factions/big bads rampaging that the party can deal with, and it’s an easy tie-in to something deeper (“by the Gods! So this is who REALLY killed the Emperor!”, etc).
@WhiteCatTamer dude, please do not mansplain a person I have known for 46 years to me on the basis of one paragraph of anecdote.
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Peter Thiel: the only man who read The Lord of the Rings and deeply identified with Sauron
@Daojoan The PayPal mafia aren't fans of J. R. R. Tolkien nor „The Lord of the Rings.” Rather, they're fans of Кирилл Юрьевич Еськов (Kirill Yeskov) „Последний кольценосец” („The Last Ringbearer”), which while vastly more benign than its famous aficionados make it, reverses the roles of the good and bad guys.
Peter Thiel was the guy who had René Girard (and several of his colleagues) tearing his (their) hair out until the day he died about how sinister the way Thiel twisted Girard's work has been. It seems likely to me that Yeskov himself feels similarly about Thiel's viewpoint on his work, though I'm unaware of any direct comments he might have made on it.
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@Daojoan perhaps not coincidentally, "Peter Theil" is an anagram for "Hitler Pete"
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Peter Thiel: the only man who read The Lord of the Rings and deeply identified with Sauron
I had this weird thoughts some time ago that people who have deeply dark triad traits don’t interpret novels, the same way as most of us.
Books rely on an intrinsic capacity for empathy and sympathy. I don’t know if people who are severely impaired read the same thing the rest of us would.
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@Daojoan The PayPal mafia aren't fans of J. R. R. Tolkien nor „The Lord of the Rings.” Rather, they're fans of Кирилл Юрьевич Еськов (Kirill Yeskov) „Последний кольценосец” („The Last Ringbearer”), which while vastly more benign than its famous aficionados make it, reverses the roles of the good and bad guys.
Peter Thiel was the guy who had René Girard (and several of his colleagues) tearing his (their) hair out until the day he died about how sinister the way Thiel twisted Girard's work has been. It seems likely to me that Yeskov himself feels similarly about Thiel's viewpoint on his work, though I'm unaware of any direct comments he might have made on it.
He does seem to have a fetish for counter narratives.
But there’s something about him and his emotional and psychological makeup that Tolkien captured with the original dark lord, Melkor.
Tolkien’s characterization of evil is so apt and describes all of the bastards from Silicon Valley. They corrupt and warp everything they touch.
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@nazokiyoubinbou @Daojoan look, I just report it, not psychoanalyze it. N.b. the same person advocates for the Empire over the Republic because it brought order. Oddly he doesn't *behave* like a fascist IRL AFAICT, but every - *every* RPG campaign he's GMed over 30+ years has followed this imperial decline trope.
@oddhack @nazokiyoubinbou @Daojoan
Oh right empire bringing order God anyone with some survey understanding of history could speak for hours on just how shitty that topic is.
The idea the guys from Silicon Valley have is Europe after the fall of Rome. Their own fiefdoms where they rule as God kings.
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@WhiteCatTamer dude, please do not mansplain a person I have known for 46 years to me on the basis of one paragraph of anecdote.
@oddhack Okay, my bad.
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I had this weird thoughts some time ago that people who have deeply dark triad traits don’t interpret novels, the same way as most of us.
Books rely on an intrinsic capacity for empathy and sympathy. I don’t know if people who are severely impaired read the same thing the rest of us would.
MAGA sees novels like Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale as an instruction booklet, not fiction.
The GOP sees George Orwell's books as procedure manuals.
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@Daojoan I fear this is not so. There is a whole genre of "Sauron was right!" fanfiction. I personally know someone who thinks Sauron was right, because he was industrializing Middle Earth (AFAICT). This person isn't even a techbro. But he is convinced the peak of civilization was the 1960s, because we built giant rockets to send people to the Moon, and will never reach those heights again.
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
