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 -
On iPhones as a status symbol--
Quick preamble: Not sure if there is a formal name for the phenomenon whereby someone supposedly intelligent and/or scientific declares certain human behavior to be illogical or irrational, often with an undercurrent of smugness or contempt, when said behavior can fairly obviously be explained away in logical/rational terms. For example, I've read in more than one pop psychology/economics book that consumers are irrational when they pay attention to celebrity endorsements, because a move star has no professional expertise in whether say a particular make or model of car is any good. Yet celebrities have personal brands to protect, and rationally one expects the most famous ones to have teams perform some level of due diligence on what they are endorsing. Furthermore, expensive endorsement deals signal a basic level of liquidity and financial strength in the brand, which in turn means it's less likely for what it sells to be crap, given that will in turn dilute the brand value, etc. You don't typically pump and dump by signing multi-year branding deals. Then there is the reality that fans of a particular celebrity tend to align with them in tribal identification and values/preferences in general, so there is reason to believe that say a machismo star will like the same type of cars as a machismo fan, etc.
So when I encounter a behavior that doesn't seem rational, I generally assume I'm missing something under the surface rather than conclude that people are simply stupid. Well, here's a behavior that doesn't seem rational, and I'd like to understand what I'm missing:
iPhones are seen as minor status symbols--they're not Rolexes or Porsches, but still have what I consider to be outsized gatekeeping power relative to their cost. In particular, at least here in the US, younger people make a big deal out of blue/green bubbles, as the latter signals someone who does not have an iPhone. Beyond cosmetics, iPhone intentionally makes communication with Androids more difficult by refusing to integrate with RCS, which does complicate communicating with non-iPhones, but this complication is more a problem for the Android user than the iPhone user (e.g., picture Android sends iPhone is fine, but the reverse is low-res), since the lack of integration is largely unidirectional.
But the problem is iPhones really aren't a very useful signal in terms of conspicuous consumption, because they have a huge price range. For anyone looking, Walmart is about to sell the SE for $99, and the 11 for $199. Of course, plenty of Androids can be bought for even cheaper, but plenty are also premium phones costing the same as any iPhone, in particular the Samsung Galaxies and Google Pixels. Phones also look more or less identical in recent years, especially when you wrap a cover around it, so it takes effort to tell whether you have the latest Pro Max or the standard from a couple of years back. And to be honest, among women I know (who literally ALL have iPhones), at least half own ones that are 2 or more years old, and like a quarter have cracked screens. This doesn't exactly scream affluence.
Signals are useful when they are harder to fake. It's hard to fake being tall, so height (in real life) is often used as a proxy for a man's worth. Many also often anchor on Ivy League degrees for the same reason. When signals are easier to fake, people tend to place less value on them--you automatically assume the inbound message featuring a beautiful woman to be a bot, that people will look worse than they do in their Instagram. A Rolex (might be counterfeit) is less trustworthy than a Porsche (might be leased), which in turn is less trustworthy than a penthouse apartment or a mansion in SF.
So why do people seem to rely upon iPhones and blue bubbles so much, when it's so cheap and trivial to "fake"? Obviously all the Reddit/Twitter posts about women rejecting men when they find out their numbers are green bubbles are not representative of all, but it's prevalent enough to be part of the culture, and at some point the masses consciously or subconsciously adhere to that default.
The only thing I can think of is that buying iPhone is less about whether you have money, and more about whether you conform to the norm. When you own one, you signal that you accept that is what you are supposed to get, and that can be helpful in filtering out weirdos who post thousands-word essays on the internet about how buying one is so irrational.
But the products aren't better. The Mr Beast burger isn't a better burger than a (ew) mcdonalds burger. Makeup endorsed by a random celebrity isn't better makeup than what people usually use. There are a lot of ways to do things that have partially-correct motivations yet are still wrong. The due diligence is usually only a bit above 'is this a popular product and not literally sex-ponzi-mlmcoin', and sometimes not even that. Is it 'rational' to buy Gwenyth Paltrow's Goop products? Purchasing those partnered products is in a broad sense, a mistake, and "is the heuristic rational or not" is ... kind of irrelevant, because the products themselves are generally worse, and more expensive, than the alternatives.
Kind of reminds me of The Rationality of Literal Tide Pod Consumption
Also, this doesn't affect your iphone point, but the $99/$199 iphone is tied to a phone plan ("starting at $35"/mo?), making it not that cheap.
I think you're conflating two different product selection strategies, here.
While maximizing value is a good strategy, it requires investigating every product on the market, which is a huge investment of time (a very precious resource). Another strategy, filtering out the absolute worst with the minimum effort, and going with any of the remaining options does potentially involve paying a premium for a worse product in exchange for time savings, but it's not obvious that his is an irrational move.
In addition to status for visible brands, celebrity endorsements do signal that the product is not the literal worst. To take Gwenyth Paltrow's make-up as an example, I'd be reasonably sure that they contain relatively low levels of skin permeable poisons (at least ones that have an acute effect). Beyond that, if that assumption is violated, they probably have enough money to pay out in a lawsuit.
Those are things I can't be sure about for random things off amazon (or worse, bought in bulk off alibaba, though this would be a probable way to maximize value for my money).
Celebrity endorsements are a strictly less-useful filter for 'the absolute worst' than just googling the industry and picking the most popular product, though. So that doesn't really make sense. Also, i'm pretty sure people who are moved by celebrity endorsements already knew of several 'not-literal-shit' products in the industry the endorsed product is in.
Sure, but it requires slightly more effort (that is to say, more than literally none).
The filter when you go from no effort -> some effort seems to be roughly proportional to when a website goes from no payment -> some (that is to say you lose about 80% or so).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
McD has its own celebrity endorsements, including collaborations with Saweetie and BTS in recent years. For a fairer comparison, whatever white label burger chain MrB is built on top of, I would guess that the quality of the MrB version is higher than the no-name version. Now, I'm willing to concede that the MrB version tacks on a price premium that may or may not make it less of a deal vs. the no-name, but it'd be like how some Porsche model is built on top of a Volkswagen, but even if it costs a lot more as a result, the product should be higher quality because Porsche has a brand to protect so can't just deliver a Volkswagen with a Porsche hood ornament.
I also wonder if we're mostly agreeing with each other very loudly. I realize a celebrity endorsement doesn't magically improve the underlying design and manufacturing of goods and services. I'm mainly pointing out that a general statement that "people are irrational to become more favorable toward one product or service over others by virtue of a non-professionally-aligned celebrity endorsement" is overly simplistic, incomplete, and sometimes flat-out wrong.
Fun take. Maybe Tide should advertise that it's adding trace amounts of estrogen to its pods. That'd shut down any status boosting element among boys.
True, but I assume anyone buying the $700+ iPhones are also on the hook for phone plans starting at $35/mo. I didn't look into the offer closely but the link's commentators referenced something about the phone becoming unlocked after 1-2 months, so anyone really pinching pennies would only have to overpay by maybe $20 or so if they can otherwise find a provider that only charges $25/mo.
I need to push back on this, because, while I'm no expert, I assume Porsches haven't been built on the same steel/frames/bodies as Volkswagens for decades, unless you count the Cayenne and Panamera models. If anything, the 911 was probably the point at which Porsche's engineering started to diverge from the Kafer et al. To build better sports cars and race cars(!), you need to start with more bespoke underpinnings, and the rear-engine VW frames were likely not enough for Porsche come the 1960's or 70's (especially with their front-engine models like the 924).
If anything, you could have used Maybach as your automotive example--those were practically just gussied-up Benzes, and they failed to take off for likely the very reason you point at. (In fact, the Maybach nameplate was recently revived, but now more akin to a trim or special edition of the S-Class.)
I was thinking of the Cayenne. You could dismiss it 10 years ago but not now. It's their most popular model in NA in the most recent quarter!
But I admit I don't know too much about this. I just used it because I was talking about Rolexes and Porsches :D
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Perhaps the most egregious example, a white cotton shirt that says "Supreme" across the front is not any better at 'being a shirt' than one pulled from a five pack of Hanes I got from Wal-Mart.
The price is all based on the logo, which is itself only a signal. And its a signal that reads very differently depending on who receives it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link