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 -
Finally we're seeing the extent of the damage of the Kanye controversy
In the span of a month, Kanye West has destroyed his empire
yup..YeezyGap.com redirects to gap.com
What I don't understand is, how is his wealth being calculated here? Wouldn't Kanye's wealth be a roughly monotonically increasing function , that being his income from his endorsement deals? Losing said deals would not mean he has to forfeit accumulated wealth, just that he stops making any new wealth? So either he was never worth $2 billion or this decline is somehow based on some extrapolation?
From the Forbes link, it looks like an extrapolation : https://www.forbes.com/profile/kanye-west/?sh=515edd0c56f1
That seems misleading to say someone is worth something but it's not actually realized
To add, it shows how the mere accusation of racism or antisemitism is the left's superpower. It forces the accused to go on the defense and presumes some guilt. Any nuance or misunderstanding on the accused goes out the window. You can destroy someone's reputation this way even if it was a mistake. As popular as anti-woke sentiment is on twitter ,like Rogan and Musk, it does not matter if the people who hold the levers of power are still, by in large, woke , and and you have to literally be a self-made millionaire to survive said accusations without being completely destroyed career-wise or reputationally. Someone can argue "what Kanye said was really egregious" but people have been cancelled, banned for less and it does not change the automatic presumption of guilt.
I don’t think of a superpower as requiring the target to hang himself.
Kanye made himself pretty clear in a public forum. Where’s the nuance and misunderstanding?
What is considered racist is always changing. Something as innocuous as making an ok-sign hand gesture has now been deemed racist. https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/okay-hand-gesture. Also, just being accused of racism can be as bad as being racist.
Yes, your thesis is clear. How does Kanye back it up?
He didn’t get tripped up on the euphemism treadmill. There was no ok-sign invoked. Getting on the “cancellation is soooo arbitrary” soapbox seems like a stretch.
David Shor was fired for merely tweeting a study that went against the narrative of BLM . How are you supposed to anticipate something like that.
I'm going to echo @netstack and say that again, this doesn't really address the point. I certainly agree with you that things like David Shor's firing, or the "OK" gesture being labeled white supremacist, are insane overreaches and well worthy of criticism. They are horrible, and the people advancing those ideas should be laughed out of the marketplace of ideas.
However, like @netstack I don't think that they are particularly relevant to the object-level point about Kanye. For his entire life (he was born in 1977), it would have been considered bad to go on a rant about the Jews. This is not some new and capricious facet of cancel culture, this is the crossing of a very well established boundary in polite discourse, one which Kanye should have known full well about.
You are certainly welcome to disagree with that, but in that case an argument of "these other outrageous things happened too" is not going to be persuasive as it isn't really relevant. A more relevant (and thus persuasive) argument would be something like "here is a public figure who recently angrily ranted about Jews and got away without consequences". Better still would be multiple such examples, because they would show more clearly that the examples were due to different norms and not because a single person somehow flew under the radar. But bringing up cancel culture overreaches that are completely unrelated to anti-Semitism isn't going to really cut it, at least not for me personally.
Agree...I think he knew. Maybe Kanye thought he would be able to get away with it owing to his fame and popularity, or be able to explain that he meant Jews in an abstract sense , but evidently not .
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link