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 -
Did the Right lose the terminally online by emphasizing consuming rather than communing?
Leftists (especially LGBT-focused) congregate in highly socialized communities where every small action toward The Cause is socially reinforced. You find this on Twitter and Discord. While there’s a fair amount of complaining typical of online spaces, leftist spaces are unique in saturating their mutuals in compliments and praise. There’s an oversaturation of positive feedback, and negative feedback is seen with suspicion. Anything from an uncreative tweet, a poorly conceived thought, an unlikely empowering experience, whatever is usually met with
pats on the backsnaps (sensory issues!) and goodboyspersons. While this oversaturation leads to an over-sensitivity, not to mention some bad behaviors and creations, it also means that the online community forms strong bonds and is only associated with positive emotions.In contrast, Right-oriented spaces are less keen on compliments and engage in more stressful catastrophization. They consume too much news and complain too much about the news. Culturally right online spaces are more socially stressful and have less bonding. They are critical of the liberal-coded heaping of compliments and empathy, and consequently miss out on a lot of the power and energy that’s present in Leftist spaces. There’s also an optimism deferential, with Leftist spaces generally more optimistic despite performative lamentation, and Right spaces more pessimistic, at least since ~2018.
This is a poor example, but imagine watching Contrapoints versus Jordan Peterson. This is a poor example by necessity — the Right does not have any counterpart to Contrapoints. You can watch Contrapoints and come away without any argument or evidence — but then you would be missing the point; the point is that you’re having an endearing and charming parasocial relationship with the person, and the outfit changes and odd social contextual changes simply work to increase the emotional affect, like a dozen playdates in video format.
There’s a phenomenon online where hobby spaces get “taken over” by more progressive mod teams in a variety of domains but especially terminally online spaces (video game modding, illustrations, speedrunning, etc). We see this on Reddit too. One possible reason for this is the uniquely reinforcing culture of online Leftist spaces. Someone becoming a mod on an otherwise unknown speedrunning discord community is something that would be praised in these communities and an earnest mark of reputation. And maybe they are right to do so — in any case the effect is that these small positional advancements can be a source of continual reward for the Leftist enjoying their quasi-lovebombing, while at the same time advancing the cause day after day.
I've long thought that while the thrust of the criticism "The Left Can't Meme" is true, the smug certainty of that criticism has become overblown. When the Left memes, people listen, even if they, like ContraPoints, aren't funny.
I'm starting to accept that there just isn't a place for people like me who think the left has to be opposed strongly and swiftly from within mainstream politics. From the reception of my previous comment, I'm gathering that people here don't tend to believe that Trump can be that person in mainstream politics. If not Trump, then who? If all of the shenanigans pulled by Biden et al over the past three years can't be held to account then where are we as a culture?
I guess I'm feeling defeated. Once again the establishment gets to tell the story exactly the way they want to tell it.
That's a terrible line of thought. «If not Putin then who?!» for 20 years straight is how Russia got into this mess. Authoritarians like to exploit the sense of existential anxiety, the limbic, system-1 dread: it makes the electorate desperate to hold tight to the closest semi-viable thing they can feel, let it even be a straw; and then the aspiring Führer's only remaining task is to always be close. It's not a hard one too. The second part of Putin's formula is «never swap horses while crossing the stream». The stream never ends.
Trump's no Putin or Xi or Erdogan or even Orban, but he's certainly circling the same attractor.
That's availability bias. The fact that the person in this category you remember the most was terrible doesn't mean that such people are, in general, terrible. And your caterory is pretty weird anyway. Exactly how do Trump and Putin get put in the same category?
No, this is not availability bias, this is calling out a crude rhetorical trick with an obvious example, and also a reasonable heuristic. A platform based on the purported indispensability of some clearly unexceptional man makes him suspect beyond his other shortcomings. There always is a «then who», often a step away from the Great Leader. In Putin's case, Medvedev had been portrayed as a bumbling liberal seat-warmer, but he had presided over arguably the most prosperous and nicest period in all of Russian history, and one of the less contentious military triumphs. Why would he deserve less credit? If he deserves equal credit, why would it be catastrophic to stick with him instead? (And yes, of course he was a seat-warmer. That's part of the point).
There are meaningful similarities in presentation, if nothing else. However, I am referring to the fact that «If not Trump, then who?» is literally one name-swap away from the slogan Если не Путин, то кто? (If not Putin then who?) which was, in this exact form, the symbol of faith of nascent Putinism.
In fact we could say that Trump is worse than Putin a priori, if we leave Putin's consequences out of it. Trump's only unique selling feature now is his brand, and even that's not clearly positive because a) half the country loathes him and b) he has not converted his appeal into a competent team and network that'd allow him to pursue his policies, and is clearly satisfied with toothless adulation from the rallies and online fandom. Everything he has done (like appointing Justices) would have been done by another Republican in his seat. I believe that from a red triber's perspective, DeSantis is unironically a better bet, because he's not that despised and is a savvier operator, while sharing many of core ideas of Trumpism.
I don't want someone elected president who is a poor leader. There's an extremely fine line between a great leader and a Great Leader and you'd have to be better at articulating the difference before I'd seriously consider that a claim that someone is the latter to be anything but a boo light. (And if by "Great Leader", you mean "a lowercase great leader, who is divisive", I'll laugh.)
This is a poor argument. Similarity of slogan proves nothing.
And you can't have a slogan "one name swap away" in another language because your ability to word the translation differently gives you an extra degree of freedom when doing comparisons.
Trump is not despised in a vacuum. He's despised because any red who had a noticeable chance of winning and took too many red positions, in the age of social media and leftist control of conventional media, would be equally despised.
And this is the political equivalent of the heckler's veto. It makes no sense to oppose someone because his opponents hate him.
I testify that this translation is exactly word for word, and the phrasing is not tortured into this form in any way.
Even I know that it can be phrased using the word "whom", or have the word order changed.
That would fall under torturing the phrasing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link