site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   34759 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I guess it’s just a simple case of scarcity. Women tend to either have well-shaped tits that are small, or big tits that are often misshapen and saggy, and of course get increasingly saggy with aging, which most women are terrified of already. Only a small minority of women have the sort of ideal breasts that earn you a Playboy photoshoot, so small that it’s impossible to fill all titty mags only with pictures of them. Hence the sad and pathetic proliferation of bolt-on tits.

...

Why would you assume that the customer base of online sex doll retailers or the set of AI slop producers is at all representative of "average guys"? It's easy to come up with a model where both strongly select on a criterion that could be glossed as "preference for quantity over quality".

In general, that whole blog seems to be in the old genre of "everyone who disagrees with my tastes is falsifying their preferences or a degenerate, and here is some cherrypicked evidence".

that whole blog seems to be in the old genre of "everyone who disagrees with my tastes is falsifying their preferences or a degenerate, and here is some cherrypicked evidence"

Sure, but it's a bit different when it's an [ostensibly-straight] woman writing it, since the criterion of embarrassment would be satisfied in that case. I have no proof (other than hearsay on this very site) that is true in this case, but some of the other things on that blog make a lot more sense in that light (also, no man would claim garages are useless).

I think the sexual pattern matching function men operate on really is as simple as the article (and the stereotypes) make it out to be: big tits, big ass. Those that don't legitimately do have something wrong[1] with them- either they're running female pattern recognition software against male physical attraction patterns and the only socially-acceptable answer that function returns is "a woman with minimal secondary sexual characteristics", or they're running male pattern recognition software against standard female physical attraction patterns and the answers returned are all just "a man".

Now, I do expect some selection effect because the men who are willing to spend big bucks on a sex doll are also likely trying as hard as possible to pick a figure that maximizes "big tits, big ass" in a larger-than-life way... but that's also the assertion being made, that men who claim not to be concerned about it are not telling the truth for whatever reasons.

[1] In the sense that these conditions adversely affect reproductive fitness.

...

All the anime pictures I saw with a cursory look were AI-generated, though. You could make a more persuasive argument that people looking at anime-style erotic art in general have somewhat representative preferences in that department (though even there I would not be sure), but AI art is definitively only appreciated by a niche subgroup, with the modal anime erotica enjoyer being highly dismissive of it.

edit: I performed the most basic of experiments and searched danbooru with tags 1girl standing. The first page had several images that clearly belonged to series depicting the same character by the same artist, but the second page were all singletons. Of the 20 images there, 7 looked to be in the blog's "E cup or above" category, with the remaining ranging from flat to what looks like a realistic average.

...

In any case, are we trying to argue that Keira Knightley, poor thing, has more attractive boobs than a

What a strange choice of topic to break the rule against consensus-building on! Are you asking about my opinion or what I think the general population's opinion is? I genuinely don't have strong preferences (and thus apparently have something wrong with me in your estimation?), but maybe very weakly, in the sense of how I would set sliders in an MMO character designer where I have to express an opinion, they are about equal degrees of too small and too large respectively. If I had to guess the general public's preferences, I would guess they would prefer the swimsuit models, but only because they have less tolerance for the almost completely flat, which is not actually what the thesis is about - if you compared someone with genuinely average or somewhat-below-average cup size, like, idk, Liv Tyler?, I would expect the results to be much more of a wash, and if I weren't on my phone in public I would find pictures of some C-cup swimsuit model I would expect to win.

People are very performative about this, to the point that any public statement about it should be just ignored.

Sure they are, but your sample having to ignore peer pressure is also a confounder. I'm not saying "AI art goes against the tastes of most", but "those who engage positively with AI art are not representative", which is a subtle but important distinction. It's entirely consistent (and similar in shape to what I think is most likely to be the real state of affairs) if: (1) AI art would get an objective average rating of 5/10 from the general population; (2) there is peer pressure to pretend AI art is 1/10 and you are a crass rube if you disagree; (3) 10% of people don't care about being considered crass rubes; (4) those 10% love big tits and to them AI art 9/10 on average because it is an infinite wellspring of them.

pixiv ranking

Funny enough, right now the top 2 pictures are gacha game characters that are completely flat-chested (Genshin's Furina, Blue Archive's shupogaki duo). The third one is also huge, #4 is medium... looking further down the list, similar ratio to my danbooru check. Yeah, I think some cherries were being picked.

...

I suspect there are plenty of men who would rather date Keira in her prime (say Love, Actually / POTC era) than the swimsuit model, though. A great face is even rarer than great tits.

...

definitely not 'movie star' like say, Monica Bellucci or Jennifer Conelly.

It’s quite a coincidence that the women men consider the most attractive (or “beautiful” to be polite) ever, and those two are good picks, also happen to have large... tracts of land.

Something that needs to be said more often is that keira, boobs or not, is just too thin, it's already slightly icky. There’s no point in being that skinny, it’s undesirable and it’s unhealthy, in that order.

More comments

In any case, are we trying to argue that Keira Knightley, poor thing, has more attractive boobs than a typical page 6 British model? (swimsuit pictures)

It's a fair contest.

I've read the article before and it's failed to convince me that amine boobs on anime girls translate to real life preferences in such a way that A<B<C<D<DD<E<F<G<H<... But of course, feel free to write me off as someone who "tries to perform high class boob taste" or "female pattern of attraction".

Maybe not a virus, but a vaccine...

Only a small minority of women have the sort of ideal breasts that earn you a Playboy photoshoot, so small that it’s impossible to fill all titty mags only with pictures of them.

Interesting question - has there ever been a lad's mag which specifically marketed itself with the USP of only featuring breasts without implants?

Score specializes in photographs of women with large breasts, either naturally larger or augmented. Voluptuous features busty women who have had no breast augmentations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Score_Group#Magazines

Marketed with the strap line "All Stacked All Natural".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10_(magazine)

Only a small minority of women have the sort of ideal breasts that earn you a Playboy photoshoot, so small that it’s impossible to fill all titty mags only with pictures of them. Hence the sad and pathetic proliferation of bolt-on tits.

It's not this small, as OnlyFans and PornHub have shown us. It's the combination of well-shaped breasts with a pretty face and a willingness to let a very broad audience associate the one with the other that is rare.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats