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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
In a "what the fuck even is this timeline" update: Anderson lee Aldrich, the Q Club shooter, is apparently non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, and already had an Encyclopedia Dramatica article detailing his career as a 15 year old "professional hacker", calling him a pedophile, and describing his absent father as an MMA fighter and porn star.
I'm feeling very vindicated in my impulse to hold off conclusions... but I would think that, given my biases, wouldn't it? The real test would be a tragedy that looks at first glance to fit my biases perfectly and allows me to cathartically Boo Outgroup. I suspect that differences in media ecosystems have that less likely... but I would think that too, wouldn't I?
Plus obvious, audacious narrative updates in real time.
And our first echo shooting, as usually happens in the immediate wake of a highly publicized mass shooting. No apparent political/CW element, disgruntled employee.
More seriously than my last comment, and especially because this is an incident where the political valence has thrashed around wildly and this latest reveal has it seeming to favor “my side,” I want to take this moment to decry the state of our politics, where the best thing that can happen to a side is some random lunatic wearing the enemy's colors committing some telegenic atrocity.
Yes, I've said before, it could be worse! We could be cheering on “our side's” lunatics when they take enemy lives as trophies, and so dive headlong into Hobbesian brutality. But that doesn't mean that the reverse is healthy, either.
It does not seem right to me that we should be handing over the direction of our culture to homicidal maniacs. Of course, it doesn't seem right to ignore them, either, but there's a proper response and it's not how we're looking at these incidents: we're looking for some excuse to rise up and say “I told you Those People couldn't be trusted! Come on, let's get 'em!”
And if such excuses are pivotal in deciding the course of history, (happening the right amount of time before an election, for example,) I can't help but wonder how many for-want-of-a-nail alternate timelines we're generating, where some bystander looked this way instead of that and did/didn't so prevent some well-avenged atrocity from being committed.
It further has me wondering exactly how many of our own deepest values are themselves entrenched emotional backlashes to random but viscerally-felt effects, rather than – as all but the most stalwart of reactionaries would like to hope, at least in some cases, at least a little – the result of genuine moral improvement.
I feel like looking down that path too far leads to madness, so I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.
This is happening because incentives. We now have established that "hate speech" is an exception to free speech everywhere but the upper courts and The Motte (for now). Only one side can effectively wield this hate speech exception, so when an event like this happens we get each side trying to blame the other. While the left might lose a smidge of credibility when the facts turn against their narrative, the right will be subject to ever encroaching bans and censorship. The right, therefore, will collectively sigh with relief when it turns out the latest murdering lunatic didn't watch Tucker Carlson. However, this ratchet only goes in one direction (Elon Musk notwithstanding), because the hate speech exception almost exclusively applies to right wing values and beliefs only. The activists, whether by Machiavellian cunning or just authoritarian instinct, see an indirect (but obvious) causal link between the utterences of their ideological opponents and these types of mass shootings, and they see an opportunity to cast a wider net for the hate speech exception. This strategy been working quite well for them, and the right doesn't really have a counter.
It's really bad news when one of these shootings really does turn out to be some gun-toting Trump cultist, and I am relieved when it is not. Because when it is, the ratchet will move again, with more institutions enacting incremental bans and censorship of ever more ordinary right wing views and opinions, because their words are literally killing people. It doesn't happen everywhere all at once, but is rather just a slow grinding down of free speech. Once these rules were established, the game to disown violent radicals on your own side, particularly if your on the right, and to try and pin it on the other side, is the correct and only sensible move
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link