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PaperclipPerfector  28d ago (text post)   27150 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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It's like we have become allergic to actual news or something. Why is every topic here now a snoozefest.

Here are a few suggestions. Pick up the ball and go

  • Conventional war in Eastern Europe

  • Genocide in Middle East

  • Unprecedented invasion of America

  • Unsustainable price increases in Western world

  • Canadian retroactive 'Hate Speech' laws

  • Lady flashing her tits at the Times Square portal

  • Lomez getting doxxed and turning out to be handsome, but also Jewish

  • Milei singing in a superhero costume

  • Eurovision being even more Satanic and odd than usual

  • Lizzo at the Met gala looking like a chicken nugget and being physically carried around by white attendants

  • GME and AMC popped 100% again for some reason

  • JK Rowling might get arrested for calling a man a man

  • Literally just pick a topic that's not obtuse guys. We're all collectively losing the reason to visit.

  • -15

I don't know if there are any metrics but from what I can tell most conversations and activities happen on the weekend (The number of comments seems to routinely double after Friday from my casual observation). Probably because people have jobs and family and stuff. What a surprise, people with interesting and intelligent takes have real world responsibilities... the Motte isn't a place you can make a living off so, of course, you're not going to have people here full-time to discuss all topics that could be discussed. If you aren't going to engage in the comments you could just wait for the monthly quality posts and save yourself the time and just read those instead. You're going to have more lively conversations on X because of the simple fact of X having a much much larger userbase, to the point where people can make a living just talking about political stuff. It also has a lot of low-take, crap opinions on there.

Personally, I do think there is some merit to having some low-level fruit for discussion, which is why I made a post about the recent viral man versus bear question. In the grand scheme of things this viral question has almost no real-world consequences compared to say half the items on your list but why did that post generate a good amount of discussion and a lot of these you just posted about hasn't (yet)? Because I made a post about the topic. I also took some effort to put a spin to it, did a little bit of research, gave my opinion, posed a question, and gave multiple angles of possible discussion points, and it got a decent amount of conversations going. The more information you give on the topic, the more chance there is something in it that someone might be interested in to respond to.

In general, the posts I've seen get the most responses have one of these things going for them:

  1. There is an opinion/fact that someone disagrees with so they post to argue against it - essentially a controversial opinion. These are the ones that routinely get the deepest conversations because it's an argument/debate. It's also the most difficult to engage in with long term.
  2. There is something in the post that triggers a related topic with a similar line of thinking or a different way to analyze that particular topic
  3. There is a new perspective that is so profound to a reader that they feel obliged to respond to it.
  4. There is a question for people to respond to.

Also there are some guidelines about culture war posts:

Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

I don't think it takes that much work - just post a link to the article with the topic you want to discuss, quote a few relevant lines, then give your opinion and ask a question. If you want a particular type of discussion/insight put in more effort so there is something for people to respond to. What particular about these topics do you want to hear people's take on? High-level discussion requires some effort, otherwise, how would the responses be any different than the average comment on the news site, Reddit, YouTube, X, or any other discussion platform with low-level reactionary comments?

Personally, I'm not interested in philosophical musings, anything about AI, or ratsphere inside-baseball (isuch as anything about Aella), all of which make up a substantial number of each week's postings. I'd love to see more focus on current events to balance the Washington Post and Reddit shoving the woke perspective down people's throats.

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