Snim
Dave Troy 
Experiment: Ayn Rand, yay or nay?
Yay
Nay
Poll ended at .
Comparing Twitter to Mastodon on this question.
It's Just Jenn 🏳️⚧️@davetroy maybe when I was an edgy 18 year old. 😂
Just Me@Tweetfiction @davetroy or someone with an attention deficit.
Renée
AnnShare the Twitter results here?
@AnnIsHere yes I will
For the love of humanity@davetroy
I think you have your answer. 🤣🤣
I think you have your answer. 🤣🤣
What's sort of interesting about this is that with all the talk of 'decentralization' and the affinity that right-libertarians have for it, Mastodon seems to be attracting a crowd that's fundamentally left-leaning and pro-democracy, with some left-libertarian anti-state sentiment too.
Right now the poll on Twitter is a bit more 'yay' than on here, but that's a function of my followers, too. Will be interested to see where it ends up.
For my part, I think Rand is ridiculous.
alanbirchenough@davetroy Ridiculous and, equally importantly, repugnant.
Bruce Heerssen 
@alanbirchenough Ridiculous and repugnant, yes, but more importantly, dangerous.
LeoBurr@davetroy What label(s) would you identify with today, Dave? I know that back in the day, you identified, if tentatively, as conservative. Legitimately interested in how that may have shifted in recent years.
@LeoBurr uh, you are probably thinking of someone else. I have leaned markedly center-left my entire adult life.
@davetroy Old 1990 Baltimore Sun article reference. Unless either they or I am misinterpreting, which is fair. :)
@LeoBurr well, at that time I was a teenager. And I’ve never voted for a Republican. And I grew up in a town where everybody was a Republican, at a time when the Democrats were flailing. And that piece kind of warped what I said. But anyway, center-left is the most accurate picture of my views.
@davetroy This all tracks. :) I grew up in a very Republican area as well and it took me getting out and meeting other people and learning more about the greater world to even feel comfortable being left, much less being gay. If you asked me in 1990 where I was politically, I’d have said, “I’m in 6th grade.” ;) - Thanks for the candor. 🐻👍🏾
Tom Maxwell
Kyle Memoir 🍉🐧
Natasha Bates
C.D. Lewis
backyardagrarian
Daniel Schwarz @davetroy I think that’s likely due to the nature of the people who are jumping ship from Twitter and looking for an alternative right now. Musk fans and right wingers have to be overjoyed at the prospect of the only big social media platform that was *relatively* responsible being turned into Gab. Is there anything in the Mastodon platform that makes it inherently less interesting for right wingers? We’ll see.
@dschwarz well, Gab and Truth Social are both Mastodon, so I don't think it's the 'technology' itself, rather the 'decentralized network of hall monitors' trope that's being spread could be affecting how these networks form. Meanwhile the Twitter poll is producing a comparable result.
Ted Saves Everything Nay on Ayn Rand, nay on Rand Paul, and Nay on Paul Ryan, those are the first political associations that jump to my mind when I see the name.
Mike Csees@davetroy voting with the nay camp in this poll, at the advanced stage of 60 something, I confess that my views have changed on this over time. I now think Ayn Rand's books are important literature for exploring libertarian ideas, and letting people think through the consequences.
Dannyboyguyman@davetroy I really enjoyed the fountainhead as a teenager, but read atlas shrugged soon after and found it insufferable
@davetroy this was very long ago now, and I'm not at all sure if the fountainhead holds up. I would guess probably not
Peter Backes @davetroy Paul and Ayn
PaulH@davetroy I don’t think the concept of Left and Right leaning Libertarians is faithful to the premise of Libertarian politics, as the foundation principles of the party is fiscal conservatism and social liberalism defined in the old style liberalism of freedom of choice, association, speech, etc. and not today’s democratic socialism.
@PaulH There is a very specific network of right libertarians I’m referring to, and it’s widely used in political science history. If I’m referring to other notions of libertarian thought I’ll note the exception. This is the network I’m referring to.
@davetroy We have a nation of Liberals who aren’t actually liberal, and Conservatives who aren’t actually conservative. We are corrupting the language of politics and that’s helping conflate and obfuscate the lines of communication. Making what is bad, worse.
@PaulH you’ll want to take that up with the parties themselves. At root the issue is sociodynamics versus ideology. Sociodynamics always takes precedence.
@davetroy I’m not disagreeing with you on that. I’m simply stating that the usurping of the terms for whom ever’s “branding” purposes corrupts the language and thus its ability to communicate ideas. McConnell identifying as a “conservative” for instance. Agree or not with conservative politics, McConnell is no conservative. Any person identifying themselves as “liberal” who wants to control speech. Not a liberal the way my generation defined it.
HiFi@davetroy Ayn Rand died on welfare (yes oversimplification), thus proving her entire lifetime of bullshit to be just that- bullshit.
Jim Stewartson @davetroy 🤔 tough call here…
Jonathan McAreavey
Esther Schindler@davetroy Yay, but with many reservations. There are elements in her stories that resonate with me, but not the parts that others use to justify selfishness. There's a scene in Atlas Shrugged, for instance, in which the gone-wrong scientist talks about the joy of encountering someone better than him, and getting to look up to another.
flexghost.@davetroy I voted three times. Just like in the midterms.
Justice💙
frumpburger@davetroy I voted Nay but I actually think there’s a place for Ayn Rand (and admit to enjoying The Fountainhead and We the Living in my early 20s), but, like, as literature written by someone who was very much a product of her own experiences and trauma and not as a viable or sophisticated political philosophy.
@frumpburger @davetroy Many of us went through an Ayn Rand phase, often during college. That's an age where most of us believe that answers can be simple, with clear black-and-white right/wrong.
Fiction gets away with that. Real life, not so much.
@frumpburger @davetroy there’s a place for any fiction but using her fantasies as the basis for policy or for altering specific programs is nonsense.
CaptBobbers@davetroy
As an American, the only thing I get out of Rand's entire existence on this Earth is scaring reactionary Republicans by filling them in on her views of abortion...
@davetroy Republican politicians LOVE to quote Rand... until you quote her back to them.
Angie is drawing@CaptBobbers @davetroy And imo she’s making the right arguments here. It’s really good. Thanks for sharing I hadn’t seen this before.
@angelaguyton @davetroy
They HATE talking about her views on abortion. Ayn Rand might as well be Jesus Christ to them... and you can tell by how much they quote mine her work and lectures.
Not saying she and her philosophy of Egoism was correct or good, it's not. Just that there's a lot more to her work than "government bad, taxes be theft." If memory serves, she really didn't like organized religion or deity worship either.
@CaptBobbers @angelaguyton @davetroy They’re about power these days and not process or values, so they’ll cheer anything that makes them feel their prejudices have been endorsed.
Tina 
@CaptBobbers @davetroy @ElDiabloRoboc This may be the *only* thing I agree with Ayn Rand on… the ONLY thing
Deborah Rose@davetroy Ayn Rand was a sociopath, so that's an easy vote.
Thomas Austin- I went with ;Yay', as it couldn't be otherwise.
Not that I've read her books; nor was she on my school curriculum, but I shall continue to blast her quotes out, as I see fit.
aynrandlexicon.com
myrmepropagandist@davetroy Aren't those books just for precocious tweens?
@futurebird and the Republican Senators and CEOs they eventually become.
BennieKara@davetroy this is pretty conclusive! Glad it’s not just me that is naying! 😆
@davetroy https://giphy.com/gifs/hulu-cbs-sabrina-the-teenage-witch-3o7TKwmnDgQb5jemjK
I hope this is the right GIF - weird label. I searched for ‘No!’ Copy & paste doesn’t always work with giphy.
It’s a firm No for me on ‘Ayn Rant’ The Soviet Union sucked and so does her alternative. 🙅🏻♀️
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Shrikant Joshi@davetroy Ayn Rand is the IRL equivalent of the subreddit /r/im14andthisisdeep but for 20-25 year olds...
Alan@davetroy nay, but 2112 is a bop
David Hooper@davetroy AS is worth a read, just because it gets mentioned so much and it's nice to be part of that conversation. But some folks act like it's a holy book or something – it's not. And it needs a good edit. Should be 10% of the length.
Hugh in YYC@davetroy
Rand. Eewww! Yuck.
Rand. Eewww! Yuck.