site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

As @quiet_NaN notes, it's highly unlikely that Wikipedia would be able to sue you over a clone site, or that they'd even want to, given how frequently I see the articles pop up on subject specific wikis that aren't affiliated with the main site. That being said, there are a few problems with this approach. The first one I see popping up is that once you clone the site and make the necessary updates, it will quickly become outdated if you're only focusing on the small percentage of the site with political relevance. Automating the process runs the risk of automating out all the changes you've made.

But there's probably some workaround for that. The real problem is that such an exercise would be utterly pointless. At root level, what is the concern about an overrepresentation of liberal viewpoints on Wikipedia and an underrepresentation of conservative ones? Correct me if I'm wrong, but all I can think of is that it presents a distorted view of reality to the average reader—it may be useful that someone who doesn't know who Taylor Lorenz is but looks her up for whatever reason is aware that she's made controversial statements. At least, it's useful provided the site has a general policy of describing notable controversies. And maybe at some bigger level it can give the impression that conservatives are overall worse people than liberals due to the asymmetry in controversy.

A Wikipedia clone created to rectify perceived liberal bias in the original isn't likely to achieve this end. The kind of person likely to adopt such an alternative isn't the normie you assume is being influenced by this stuff, but the conservative looking to have his opinions validated. Why would anyone without your particular axe to grind prefer an imitation over the original?

At root level, what is the concern about an overrepresentation of liberal viewpoints on Wikipedia and an underrepresentation of conservative ones?

Mostly because it leads to completely inaccurate understanding amongst the public on various scientific topics - HBD, IQ, climate change, transexualism, and crime are big ones that are very important for the public to understand, yet are propagandized into a false consciousness thanks to Wikipedia.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all I can think of is that it presents a distorted view of reality to the average reader

The fact you don’t see this as a major problem is, uh, interesting. Is this some dry humour or something? Am I missing sarcastic tone here?