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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   4363 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 04, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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This might be a topic better suited for the culture war roundup thread, but here goes:

The red tribe largely considers AR-15's a status symbol. In part this is because building/customizing AR-15's is a popular hobby for high IQ red tribers with a bit of disposable income, and no doubt this plays a role in the way both side talk about assault weapon bans.

So, what's the blue tribe equivalent of that phenomena? I'd say it's travel, except travel doesn't seem to be any kind of culture war flashpoint. I'd also say pet ownership, except that high IQ hobbies associated with pet ownership(dog training, for example) are probably associated with the red tribe more than the blue tribe. The closest thing I can think of is what I'd call fruity literature- novels or short stories with lots of superfluous gay stuff shoved in or outright centered around homosexual themes.

I'm not so sure about the premise that red tribe sees an ar15 as a status symbol, they're not really that expensive, one can be had for a couple hundred bucks which is within reach for basically any gainfully employed American so long as they can get past the legal hurdles. Blinging one out may be a kind of conspicuous consumption that is right coded and sends some kind of red tribe virtue signal. As a parallel to that I think you're looking in the right direction with pride type stuff. I'd say the ar15 of the blue tribe is probably something like drag queen story hour. Red tribe is vaguely against drag shows in general but is aware their critique of the general concept is not popular enough so they contain their push back to only against these less defensible(but still defendable) incarnations. And this push back induces even more demand for it from the opposing tribe.

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