This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
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.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Have the campus protests had any sort of effect on Israel? It seems like no.
For top level posts in the culture war roundup there needs to be more effort and content.
In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:
Come on man. There is no goddamned way that anyone posting here is unaware of the core of the story.
Yeah, they did that - it's right there!
I don't think it's a good post, but it's a fine area of discussion, everyone is already familiar with the basics, and the bar to ride the ride shouldn't be that someone has to personally have a novel take. Adding a paragraph of blather about Columbia or quoting the New York Times would not improve this post.
There are other good reasons to ask for context:
Yeah they sort of did, which is why I half parroted their words.
Some of you seem to very much live in the culture war. You are very aware of what is going on and the latest news. And you also seem to want to replicate that newsfeed here?
I'll admit I just don't get it. If I didn't read this website I'd probably be unaware of a large portion of the culture war. I am not certain I would have known about the campus protests if I had not read about it here on TheMotte. I specifically need the context. I basically live under a rock. I hangout with my family and my neighbors, and we talk about local stuff mostly.
At the same time I don't want a scrolling doomlist of every item in the culture war. That is what twitter and mainstream news outlets are for. I don't visit those websites because I don't want the scrolling doomlist of every item in the culture war. If there is something novel and interesting to be discussed about a particular item, sure, lets have that conversation.
What do you want here exactly? Do you want this to just be a twitter clone (but with indents!) where we write a few sentences to performatively crap on our outgroup? I don't see the point.
I'm generally on board with all of the above and covered a little more on my personal preferences here. Nonetheless, on this specific topic, I just really doubt that there are many people that have missed the occurrence of campus protests in the context of Israel-Gaza. Maybe I am living in a bubble on this one though, I can accept that I might just be wrong. It's definitely true that the encampments have high salience for me locally because I literally ran by one of these dopey things a bunch of times (well, until it came down last week). I just kind of doubt that there are many people that haven't heard about this and don't think it's necessary that the standard for a subtopic be that someone needs to write a couple paragraph intro.
Context is ultimately a suggestion, not required. I happen to think it's a good suggestion, and I also happen to think that people will dismiss the need for it more than they should.
You having personal experience with one of these camps is interesting context! I don't go near a college campus on a regular basis.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't watch the news. My smartphone news feed is heavily curated. I in fact do not leave the home most days because I work from home. My main outside trips are to pick up my kids from school and to go grocery shopping. I am not on Facebook, Instagram, twitter, etc. My reddit browsing is limited to gaming and fantasy fiction subreddits.
There are things I "hear about" in the sense that I might have seen a news headline. That was probably as aware as I would have gotten about Campus protests.
As unaware as I am, my wife is even more unaware. Most topics barely pierce her awareness. Unless it shows up directly at her workplace she usually doesn't know about them. Since the closest person to me is just as unaware I find this state of things normal, and the opposite hyper awareness of culture war issues strange.
More options
Context Copy link
https://xkcd.com/1053/
People get busy, and some of these people for some reason use whatever spare time they have to go on the motte and nowhere else. Earlier this year I got busy with work for 3 months and just didn't have the energy to constantly browse the news so I just didn't during that time. I did come here on the motte a few times to check the quality posts and that's it.
Nobody at work really talks about news/politics except for the most banal topics because it's not appropriate. The campus protest story has not come up a single time at work, or in my family, or with my friends, or in my hobby groups. I am aware of the topic because I have more time now and browse some political content online and it's talked about there, but I could have easily missed it and then I wouldn't have known about it. Or I could've easily just only seen the headlines and dismissed it as another college protest (amongst the tens of hundreds of different protests that's happened in the past decade over literally anything) and then I wouldn't have the context to understand why @Stellua is asking the question. And if I have to do additional research myself to try to understand the context, well I'm only going to do that if the post is interesting, and the post by itself is not interesting to me.
Just to give an example of how the question sounds when you don't have the context:
Have the campus protests had any sort of effect on animal rights? It seems like no.
And you would probably be asking what am I talking about? Well if I link this article here: https://veganfta.com/2024/05/09/activists-protest-animal-experiments-at-the-university-of-arizona/
Then there would be something to talk about, you'd have the context to know what I'm talking about.
It's so easy to assume something is common knowledge when it's really not. I do grant some leeway that the motte culture war thread being political in it's nature you probably do expect most people to have been aware of the story but it's not guaranteed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link