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.

Interestingly, no coverage of a hot-button recent CW issue.

TL;DR: a low-class looking married mom of 2 had an altercation on a playground in Rochester, MN. Her story is that a kid stole from her bag and she alled the kid the gamer word.

Then, a Somali man who was also present on the playground and who then was due for court over a '22 rape this week confronted her, phone in hand and recorded the confrontation. {obviously, multiple instances of gamer word in the video, from both parties}

She called him the gamer word too and flipped him the bird. Cue online outrage, she is collecting donation to relocate.

After this blew up, the rape charges against the guy who made the video were dissmissed. (see bottom of post, links). It's fairly close to a textbook perfect 'scissor' event, seems to me.


The video was amplified by some sleazy music video director and the mom claims they are getting death threats. People who went through his old tweets found..interesting stuff, he is some sort of perv. Needless to say this isn't his first rodeo - he's been chasing view by covering race and other hot-button nonsense online.

A recent development I just found about while writing is, the man who made the video had the rape charges against him dismissed 'in the interest of justice'.(local news link). It wasn't just some silly statutory rape - he and his brother offered shelter to a runaway from the foster system and supposedly raped her multiple times. The two defendants of course maintained it was all made up.

All in all, it's an interesting development. I don't understand how someone can just dismiss rape charges (more detail including a link) like this. I haven't read the court documents though.


Pursuant to Rule 30.01 of Minnesota Rules of Criminal Procedure, the State of Minnesota hereby dismisses the Complaint in the above-entitled action dated August 29, 2022, charging the offense(s) of Criminal Sexual Conduct - 3rd Degree - Penetration under 18 - Use coercion, Criminal Sexual Conduct - 5th Degree - Penetration - Nonconsensual for the following reasons: In the interest of justice.

^^this seems like really, truly bad optics. Is there an innocuous explanation - e.g. the case was really flimsy etc? But if it was flimsy why was the court system keeping it going for almost three years only to dismiss it now. The news article makes it seem the trial was set to begin on May 5.

A recent development I just found about while writing is, the man who made the video had the rape charges against him dismissed 'in the interest of justice'.(local news link). It wasn't just some silly statutory rape - he and his brother offered shelter to a runaway from the foster system and supposedly raped her multiple times. The two defendants of course maintained it was all made up.

Rape charges get dismissed a lot, to the point where it's implausible that they're all being dismissed in the interest of advancing left wing ideas. Pretty good chance this was for the usual reasons rape charges where underclass teenagers are the victims get dismissed as opposed to some sort of more culture-war heavy reason.

It also seems like it should be noted that the mom seems to be a grifter herself.

It also seems like it should be noted that the mom seems to be a grifter herself.

Why? There isn't much known about her. Do you know of anything suggesting she staged this ?

Rape charges get dismissed a lot,

I'll grant you that there's a lot of spurious crap out there, but why dismiss charges

  • one day after a spicy incident hits the internet
  • almost three years after it happened
  • two days before the case is due to go to court (the news article said the trial was to start on May 5)

That seems pretty odd but then I'm not a criminal lawyer. Maybe a pattern of dragging unpromising cases before dismissing them just before they're due to happen makes a lot of sense in the context.

IIRC it's pretty common to drag spurious cases on and on in the hopes the defendant takes a plea bargain and then blink at the last minute. The spicy incident is probably just coincidence.

I am entirely willing to believe that a somali who gave a 16 year old runaway from foster care a ride back to his place from a gas station was not honestly concerned with getting her out of the rain. That is not, however, the legal standard(if I had to guess what actually happened she agreed to go back to his place and have sex with him in exchange for -whatever- and then decided the deal wasn't to her liking, but the DA mischarged it because she told a different story to make herself look better- and it's now revealed the charges are wrong and he was going to win at trial if he just calls the prosecutor's bluff, so they're dropping the charges at the last minute because he did that. That's just speculation but it's the sort of story which is fairly common).

And the mom seems like a grifter because she keeps raising the goal in her fundraising goal.