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 -
It's pandemonium again on twitter .
A tweet by musk about advertising got 70k likes in 10 minutes. To put this in perspective, a tweet he made yesterday about "small talk" got 70k but in an hour.
It's amazing how much people care about advertising.
My positions are: I don't think there is anything the left can do about the Musk threat, which is why I am optimistic. The left had 7 years to go after Trump and largely failed to stop him . https://greyenlightenment.com/2022/11/03/the-regimes-response-to-the-musk-threat-why-im-optimistic/
Second, I think people are over-estimating the implication as far as the government's response is concerned, but underestimating the social impact. I think this is a bigger deal than even the Russian invasion of Ukraine in terms of overall impact on society. As a force of sentiment , musk has raised conservative's odds by 10% or more.
As much as I’m loving the current Twitter drama, it’s hard for me to see Musk’s gameplan here, assuming there is one. Firing half of the workforce (including an unspecified number of engineers) in a seemingly cruel and abrupt fashion, for example, looks a lot like an unforced error. The remaining staff will doubtless be concerned about the security of their jobs and updating their LinkedIn as we speak, morale will be generally low, the PR will be terrible, and there are some indications that he’ll face lawsuits for failing to abide by Californian employment law. Even if Musk wanted to clear out dead wood, wouldn’t it have been better to do it via a bunch of more carefully targeted stealth-firings and budget cuts playing out over a few months at least?
Compound this with the advertisers fleeing Twitter and a bunch of unnecessary antagonistic shitposting, and I’m torn between (i) Elon is undergoing a manic episode and is acting in a disordered and auboptimal fashion, or (ii) his actual intent is to turn Twitter into a dumpster fire and ultimately close the whole site.
I’m aware that (ii) is dangerously close to 4D-chess nonsense, but I don’t totally discount it. It is possible that Musk thinks Twitter is unsalvageable and it’s better to run the ship into the ground with plausible deniability than try to reform it.
But that would involve taking a massive hit to his reputation as a businessman, and there’s no guarantee that whatever replaces it will be any better, which leads me to think (ii) isn’t very likely (also Musk seems to genuinely like Twitter as a forum, which I don’t really understand).
Is there a (iii), where Musk isn’t making any unforced errors, and the mass abrupt firing of staff is necessary? If anyone can help me see it, let me know.
My guess for Elon's mind state is that he bought into "Twitter would be a better place with free speech and the silent majority want it, it's only a small amount of the crazy censoring left who seem to be running things". And I think that might be true, but what's missing is that making Twitter a better product won't actually make it a more profitable product. And now Elon's realizing that and scrambling as advertisers are pulling out.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link