site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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.

12
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In case you spent the day under a rock, Trump has been reinstated on Twitter after winning a poll by Elon Musk. Not kidding.

I'd like to keep this open & not push the discussion in any direction, so I'll keep this short.

Predictions? What does this mean for Twitter? Elon? Trump? Social media? The country? The world?

This will likely accelerate the Left's attempts to move to a more pro-censorship platform. They also might pressure advertisers to boycott Twitter.

I've seen the left going gaga over Mastodon in response to Musk helming Twitter. Suppose it's a good time to be that company.

More and less in different ways.

There's no way to actually stop someone from speaking (including "dangerous" speech), but they can choose to be on instances that are not federated with instances that tolerate this speech (more power within their fiefdom).

Seems like exactly how twitter was before the Elon takeover, except you can't get kicked out of the entire network, you might just have to make an account on a different instance.

Though I doubt you could get a small number of instances. That would require a lot of computing power, and mastodon is hard to monetize.

That last bit is the real reason I don't see mastodon taking over. No ads means you'd have to charge up front, or a subscription, or something. Normies seem willing to endure leftist signaling, but we've never seen them chomping at the bit to pay for it.

I suppose someone could fork the client and change the protocol, but it's not really a mastodon instance at the at point.

I am imagining reddit-style jannies

Then you lack imagination. There will presumably be some with much stricter mods.

But they'll end up splintering in a series of inevitable purity spirals as these things are wont to do.

Normies would probably end up on whichever one the most celebrities end up on (or their particular favorite if they have one).

More comments