site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I stumbled upon your forum

This is completely off topic, but whenever we get a newcomer I'm always intrigued, since we don't advertise too much (at all). How did you end up finding us?

We should ask the pseudo-communist. He was genuine. How did you find us, @MillardJMelnyk?

I‘ll also note that the harsh moderation pushed him away (He‘s also obviously been downvoted for disagreement, but I‘m just wasting my time complaining about this, and it‘s not the main factor).

I‘ll also note that the harsh moderation pushed him away

The Motte is a debate site and he wasn’t remotely interested in debate. At best, he was interested in, “accept all of my assertions and let’s discuss the implications” but prefaced that with insults and demands. He was quite clear in his last message that he regards talking to 99% of people as a waste of time and his usual MO was to turn up, start an argument, and listen for anything interesting in the shouting.

Oddly, the poster he reminds me most of is Hlynka. Hlynka employed the same refrain of ‘oh, I can’t tell you, you can only choose to see it for yourselves’ and by his own admission thought of himself as a shepherd nobly taking it upon themselves to lead us poor lost sheep to the true way.

Well, if he‘s really not interested in debate, let him leave, don‘t ban him(or threaten to ban him). Call it keeping the moral high ground. I don‘t see anything wrong with ‚starting an argument‘.

But bottom line, I think millard or hlynka are reasonable people, who should not be banned for their overconfident tone.

Well, if he‘s really not interested in debate, let him leave, don‘t ban him(or threaten to ban him). Call it keeping the moral high ground

I don't see how not enforcing against blatant rule violations is keeping the moral high ground. The rules are right there on the right sidebar, and he refused to follow the ones around things like speaking clearly or being no more obnoxious than necessary or proactively providing evidence, despite being given ample opportunity to do so. Letting the forum be polluted with the type of content that the forum was specifically set up to prevent seems to be immoral, if anything, in making the forum worse for the rest of the users who use this forum because of the types of discussion that is fostered by those rules being enforced (though I'd argue that there's no real moral dimension to it regardless). I don't know if Millard is a reasonable person, but he certainly did not post reasonable comments and, more importantly, posted comments that broke the forum's rules in a pretty central way.

Those rules are so vague they can apply to anyone. And when you‘re facing a hostile community, they apply to you.

The ‚they‘re obviously not interested in debate‘ talking point is an absurd, but very common justification for censoriousness. Just dumping the responsibility for one‘s negatively- coded actions onto the victim. Here or on reddit, you hear that every time an OP doesn‘t cave immediately to the social consensus. To the stake with OP! He „has been given ample opportunity“ [to repent].

Maybe I started this off on the wrong foot. I too miss hlynka. I was on the mod team when his problems started, and none of us wanted to have to kick him. I think his case makes it clear that this is not an inevitable consequence of bucking the local consensus, because he would post the same ideas sometimes productively and sometimes unproductively. He also didnt claim to be treated unfairly, and often the opposite. This makes a lot of sense given his general approach, and I dont like you claiming it on his behalf

I have no ideological affinity to hlynka, quite the contrary, since he was once the most pro-censorship of all the mods of this place, and I think they should ease up on it.

More comments

The ‚they‘re obviously not interested in debate‘ talking point is an absurd, but very common justification for censoriousness

It may be petty, but I made one of the very few comments to engage with his claims without going into unsaid implications/communism generally, and he didnt respond.

Im pretty sure I do understand what hes asking for and didnt make a bigger response because its largely pointless, and he really wasnt very clear about what he wanted. The top level was just enough for me to be unsure, and I had to read quite a few of his responses to know, and hes being condescending to everyone for not knowing it right away. I still wouldnt ban someone for one thread like this, and he wasnt: he was warned and then self-deported.

That‘s not evidence of anything. He had like 50 responses, he can‘t be expected to respond to all.

How interesting the discussion he was trying to have is, is really beside the point.

If you threaten to shoot me and I leave I did not ‚self-deport‘ of my own free will. If you threaten to put me in jail and I cop a plea I did not willingly go to jail. The man was bargaining in the shadow of the law.

More comments

Those rules are so vague they can apply to anyone. And when you‘re facing a hostile community, they apply to you.

I don't think those rules are that vague, except by stretching what "vague" means to such an extent that all rules everywhere can be declared "so vague they can apply to anyone." If you don't think that his comments were pretty obviously unkind and failing to make reasonably clear and plain points, on top of making extreme claims without proactively providing evidence, then I don't take your judgment seriously.

The ‚they‘re obviously not interested in debate‘ talking point is an absurd, but very common justification for censoriousness.

I don't care if he was or wasn't interested in debate. What matters is that he was posting text that wasn't conducive to, and actually quite deleterious to, debate.

Right, I disagree that "his comments were pretty obviously unkind and failing to make reasonably clear and plain points, on top of making extreme claims without proactively providing evidence" and 'deleterious to debate'. So at least take out the 'obviously's and 'blatant's.

Else I'd have to report an "attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity." (illustrating the point about the rules applying to whoever we choose).

More comments