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 -
How much money should someone need to spend online to have full access to creator content?
In Freddie daBoer's recent interesting post contrasting the intrusive ad model with paid content model I find myself nodding along mostly but I didn't come away completely convinced. This post is mostly my unorganized thoughts after reading this piece. I understand and am sympathetic to the need of professional writers to earn an actually living if we want them to be able to write full time, and a good one at that given their importance as sense makers. And I do think the ad model is quite toxic.
What I mainly have problems with is the extremeness of each option. If this cnbc report is to be believed online advertisers spend around $140 billion dollars a year, divided naively and entirely among the 250 million American adults gives us the very rough estimate of $560 per year. The number feels intuitively close but I think the point stands even if it is off by quite a bit. So if I decide to pay the rate the advertisers were paying for my access to various sites how far does $560/year get me. We can start at a premium daBoer substack subscription at a seemingly reasonable $50/year, Scott Alexander is asking for $100/year and we're already at nearly a fourth of our budget!
The difference is conversion rate. DaBoer, Scott and the NYT are all aware that the vast majority of their ad based readers are not going to fork over for the premium model, the ones that do seem able to easily make up the difference for many writers and content creators but I'm less convinced than daBoer that this is a sustainable solution. I do subscribe to some writers and content creators that I like but I like far too many such that if each put up a $5/month paywall, even with a generous software engineer salary I'd have to start picking and choosing very quickly.
It's more than reasonable for writers to optimize for the total amount of dollars flowing into their wallet each month but we should be aware that this is actually quite bad for readers and the open internet in general. Some of the magic of the internet is that we're able to plug into a global conversation and as more and more paywalls go up that conversation becomes more fragment and trying to follow a thread can become increasingly frustrating. This probably doesn't matter much for pure entertainment content but for sense makers and political writers who at least purport to trying to educate and persuade the general population this could exacerbate the process of creating echo chambers and keeping good arguments away from who most needs to read them.
Think of the children! I still remember a time when I was young on the internet with no credit card. It's all good and well to expect adults to pay their way but much like the poor kids don't have income at all, disposable or otherwise. The internet kids are going to come up in under Freddies paradigm is very unlike the open and free internet I grew up with. I think in many ways for the worse.
Freddie only really touches on the phenomenon from the perspective of someone who is also writing a blog,
Makes some sense from the perspective of someone who floats around and comments on things but works less well for communities like this one where we come together and discuss articles. It's one thing to as a writer choose not to comment on something paywalled to save the money but being locked out of these secondary discussions is a larger cost.
This is perhaps the thing that most frustrates me. I'm the type of person who would rather buy a piece of media I'm only going to consume once than rent it just in case I ever want to return to it. I actually quite dislike the model where I pay someone for temporary access to something.
A potential solution is ads plus a paid membership to remove them, something like how the basic attention token works where you can decide how intrusive to make ads and get paid in the token from the advertiser to be used to forward on to some content creator. You can either endure enough ads to afford access or turn off ads and load your BAT wallet occasionally with real $. Perhaps another option is bundling in the direction the TV networks go. Maybe I should be able to subscribe to the rationalist diaspora a la cart or get them all for $40/month distributed according to how much some central entity thinks they draw new subscribers.
What does the motte think about paywalls and potential alternatives.
I feel already overstuffed with opinions and uneasy with my online think piece consumption rate, and if this article were behind a paywall I would immediately forget it existed. Freddie and the NYT are, of course, entitled to charge for their content, but I will then simply ignore it and feel mildly annoyed when it comes up in a search.
There's a tipping point somewhere. Lately I've noticed having to wade through five page essays interspersed with huge photos and video ads to view recipes online. This freezes up my phone, which is a problem sine I'm mostly looking recipes up at the store to see what to buy. There's likely some level of inconvenience at which I will actually start buying physical printed cookbooks again. Physical cookbooks would come up as a solution before subscribing to a food substack, though I could imagine someone else doing that and it making sense for them. I subscribed to New Masters Academy videos for a couple months, and didn't feel cheated.
There are enjoyable and useful ways to deliver advertising content. Unboxing videos are surprisingly popular. I like to read subscription box review sites, which are full of affiliate links and paid content. This seems fine, since I'm considering getting a curated selection of cocktail mixers or whatever, and the site will inform me of which ones are on offer that month and if there are any specials or not. Often I prefer these articles to those written by the NYT.
Facebook ads seem about right -- they're clearly ads, but are for things I would actually consider buying, and occasionally do buy, and do not feel tricked. Youtube ads are worse, and seem to be getting worse every year or so; I'm not sure if there's a point at which I would pay for Youtube premium, but it's probably good that they provide the option.
If I had to choose between an internet hiding behind paywalls, and an internet full of obnoxious ads, I would probably choose the ads. There was one website where I was trying to read an article about Roundup, and the text kept moving when the ads changed shape, jumping around erratically, and I would lose my place. Eventually I saved it to PDF, which solved the problem. I would certainly not have paid money for the article, and very certainly wouldn't have subscribed to anything for it. I would rather see Freddie's Substack marred by even shady lottery animation than not be able to see it at all without subscribing (which I wouldn't do, because of the automatic renewal and having to remember to cancel aspect of that). But can certainly see how he would prefer subscriptions.
Apropos of cook books:
If you haven't already, all the Kimball produced books and magazines are excellent. Not full of room for expression, but reliable recipes that don't ask you to do a bunch of silly horse shit for no reason, and also don't talk down to you like a child vis. making idiot substitutions or lazy technical choices.
Dude is equally not afraid to say "You must get this weird expensive fungus or don't even bother" and "This sacred cow is dumb, slaughter it".
Refreshing.
old Cooks illustrated and current Milk Street recommended highly.
Thanks, I'll check them out!
My father had several James Beard cookbooks that I remember fondly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link