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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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What is "mainstream discourse"?

What is "mainstream media"? What's a "mainstream movie"?

The table is funny

Thanks—always happy to share some wholesome holiday joy.

It's a common thing on Reddit/Twitter/Quora/TikTok etc. that people complain Taylor Swift's dating-history-too-white, but give her a few gud-girl points back for having black love interests in her videos, such as Lover. Or where "white couple" or variations thereof are regularly used to pejoratively describe Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. Or where people (the majority not low status East or South Asian men, who tend to have short lifespans on social media when they talk about such things before getting mopped) complain that white girls in general usually date white guys. Or see a previous Motte discussion about an ad that got massive backlash for featuring a white blonde couple with four children (albeit father not depicted).

Or see the first NPR article that came up for me upon a search, in which the participants bemoan "the data suggest some uncomfortable stories about racial preferences in online dating," "it's glaring how much everybody prefers white guys and doesn't respond to black men and women," "I am annoyed for the black women who seem to be clearly getting discriminated against by these online picture-scanners," and "This just really gets in my craw, because it becomes a problem for the Asian women — Am I just loved because I'm part of an ethnic group that's assumed to be subservient, or do I have actual value as an individual, or is it both? — and it's a problem for men who love them — Is my husband only with me 'cause he's a creepster who makes certain assumptions about me and my race, or can he legitimately be attracted to me as an individual?"

but this isn't how the vast majority of people in the real world think about these pairings. You will never meet anyone who cares that a white man and white woman are together.

Yeah, must be just a few crazy kids on campus.

Blacks, and those who simp on their behalf, often complain about domains such as universities or corporations being too white or white adjacent, despite blacks already receiving massive affirmative action benefits.

As such, that does not necessarily make their feedback as legitimate as those who Notice race patterns, or sex-race patterns, in other areas of life.