site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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.

23
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I never go on twitter. Like, at all.

Well you could go and see comments on AI-related tweets. Very often it's some cartoonish beg-mid level furry fetish coom pronouns-in-bio type artist, a politically involved one to boot, who's using /ic takes about soul and tech bros, and what's especially hilarious, who rails against «caputalist ethic inherent to tech assholes» while protecting his tiny patreon turf from the deluge of post-scarcity imagery. It's just an unthinking, cuckoo-like, instinctively self-serving attitude, something beneath human dignity in my book. I think I can find a few even starting here. (One hilarious find: pro-Ukrainian coom artists canceling their Russian peer for being pro-war and drawing Genshin's Venti Wagner style; artists are snakes and their intuitive sense for policing networks is uncanny). I mean folks like this and this and this and so it goes all over the place (it's not universal though. Counterexample: this guy). Goofy NSFW is the bread and butter of art scene. I didn't try hard here, it's really ubiquitous.

What I'm getting from this is that you don't like porn art.

I'm okay with porn art. I just don't see the point of having humans spend their lives on learning to do it, and to the extent that they go into Luddism to defend such a career choice, I believe they're selling out their essential humanity. I do not care to protect this incredible niche for aesthetic expression; if they have extra libido that somehow needs a release in the form of pictures, they can do it without getting paid. Otherwise they can use it on their partners or maybe wait for robo waifus. In the general case you know as well as I do that coom art is almost purely driven by market demands and not some self-guided aesthetic development, it's just a way to earn a living.

I originally wanted to learn how to draw so that I could make my own art for my video game projects. So I should be the exact target market for AI art, right?

Right. Exactly.

Which makes me think that your value system is even more alien and deserving of deeper oblivion than those of natural artists. Maybe it's a blessing that you won't apply this tech to more efficiently make games that send some message and influence other people's views.