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 -
Economically: There's a lot of money based on his personal brand, and he just dramatically reduced the value of the latter. I find it reasonable that the market would react accordingly.
Practically: "I'm going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE" (henceforth, "his words") aren't acceptable to - rough approximation - anyone, and he hasn't issued retractions or showed signs of backing down in any way (which would have been nice, I do like his music). The straightforward conclusion is thus that anyone would stop associating with him. Which includes people with a lot of money and power. Hence the reaction.
Morally: To misquote an old guy, his words lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, so I don't know what he was expecting.
Regarding your "old 4chan trick": as a preamble, the fact that it's called an "old 4chan trick" tells me all I need to know about whether the people behind it were genuinely interested in collaboratively discovering truth through discussion (hint: hahaha; and to follow the rule on speaking plainly: not at all). Anyway:
if white people had been persecuted since before the first Crusades in 1096, yes, I think the reaction might be similar
if you go through Wikipedia on "Racism against Black Americans" and switch "black" and "white", and if the resulting text were historical fact, yes, if we lived in that world then again the reaction might be similar.
But we don't live in either of those two alternate realities.
Who says I find the market response unreasonable? Adidas for example is responding to market forces. It's the market forces that are the problem. On the contrary, I find it to be a useful quantifier for demonstrating the market cost of criticizing Jews.
There is a gigantic market cost to criticizing Jews. At the same time, there is a giant market benefit to criticizing white identity- with Jews themselves often investing the most money and influence in signal-boosting those criticisms of Gentile culture within popular culture.
This behavior of influential Jews- wherein they invest heavily in patronizing all manner of criticism Gentile culture, history, and morality, and then act hysterically when any measure of criticism is directed towards themselves, is on full display for everyone to see. You can do what Fridman did and just invoke history to try to justify the behavior. And you can try to justify it, but there is no longer any room to deny that this behavior exists and is a powerful undercurrent in the culture war.
I must admit I'm not seeing the distinction, if you're intending any, between market response, market forces, market cost, etc.
What I mean to say is if someone says "I'm going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE", this will piss people off, and they'll stop doing business with that person. Which part of that do you think should not be happening?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link