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 -
I'm still wondering what got Amazon hooked to a billion dollar disaster. After all initial (imo misplaced) optimism, analysts are finally coming out and saying the quiet part out loud: it is not the ground breaking masterpiece they need it to be. Even HoD is performing better and is better received. Both are prequels to very popular IPs, but Rings of Power should be pulling enormous numbers given how expensive it is, and how extensive its marketing was. Despite worsening performance with every episode, they just renewed it for season 2. This wasn't a small and calculated risk, they literally staked the future of their whole studio on this show. What made them think hiring subpar writers, rewriting lore, rewriting characters of one of the most popular fantasy IPs while simultaneously drafting off of the brand was a good idea? It feels like the motive isn't even to make money but solely to push an agenda, but who would do that? Given the sheer scale of the project, I just cannot believe any studio would be so careless as to commit such a serious misfire.
Image you lived in a society that forgot how electricity worked. You still have all this stuff that uses electricity, and you have some memorized rituals around how to get the lights to turn on. But the rituals are... weird. They've drifted away from the mechanical acts of completing circuits, and become quasi-religious as to the spiritual significance of bringing light into this world. And nobody understands any longer which parts of the "turn on the lights" ritual are load barring or not. They mostly just blame the person for being immoral if the lights don't turn on for them.
This is more or less how I perceive the state of the media right now. They have no concept of the human condition. Of theming. Of universal human truths. They have no capacity to actually imagine a character's inner world. These are dead and hollow things writing about other dead and hollow things. What does an NPC know of the human condition? They aren't human.
So these projects lose money. Everyone hates them. The non-creative executives want to fix it. But they can't. We're 2, maybe 3 generations into the wanton destruction of our culture. It's dead and hollow things all the way down!
Every now and again they can rustle out a boomer to churn out one last, heartfelt, comprehensible script. Apparently the Top Gun sequel wasn't totally shit? And Tom Cruise actually cared about it a lot, worked really hard to have it made, and infused a ton of heart and sincerity into it? Plus real planes, really flying, giving the movie a feeling of, I donno, being real?
As an aside, Tom Cruise might be weird as fuck, but that mother fucker knows how to make a fucking movie. Sure, he's no Stanly Kubrick. But in a world of complete and utter drek, someone autistically repeating the steps movies used to take to be good, whether he understands what he's doing or not, comes off like a savant.
From time to time you'd read about some college stripping more and more of the western canon out of their liberal arts programs. And where they lead, everything else followed. It's dead and hollow things, studying the narcissistic pabulum written by dead and hollow things, churning out their own shallow nonsensical dead and hollow scripts. There is no path back anymore. It could take 30 or 40 years to reverse course if we began seriously focusing on rebuilding our culture today. We won't.
Cruise sold out a long time ago. I wish he would quit the big budget movies and go back to his early career work which had great characters.
Yes cruise in a franchise makes a bag. But things like Risky Business was better.
Magnolia is my favorite Cruise performance.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link