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 -
This is a really condescending way of mocking your outgroup. The rest isn't really better, adding up to a real hand-wringing over how much leftist spaces must suck. Adding a paragraph about how Both Sides^TM of the terminally online have flaws doesn't really make the smears any more charitable.
With the obligatory tone policing taken care of: I think you're making a bit of a homogeneity error. Observing melodrama and overreaction on leftist Twitter is something of a pastime of this sub. The outrage machine is not driven by good vibes and hugs. People have been "literally crying and shaking rn" for years.
You may well be correct to observe that leftist hobby communities are more likely to be positive. I'd credit this not to an evangelist reward cycle, but to evaporative cooling. Leftist spaces are less likely to make people feel uncomfortable enough to leave. Whether this has anything to do with "big tent" politics, inclusive language, microaggressions, pronouns, or the much-maligned hugboxing? I couldn't say.
Free speech absolutism is arguably shooting itself in the foot here. The first message I got upon signing up here was an ALL-CAPS question from an offensive username. As I looked for a report button, I realized, "shit, we don't have a ToS here, do we?" Did I actually have grounds to request deplatforming this guy merely for posting slurs and, I'm told, using a NSFL profile banner? The answer is obviously yes, as he was a walking rule violation, but I wouldn't have even asked myself the question on a more left-wing site.
(If this happens to anyone else, please send a mod message to Zorba. He's confirmed that such accounts will be banned; there's just no report button yet,)
A subset of the right wing has staked out "being allowed to use slurs" as their Gadsden flag. That circle is near-completely contained within the circle of users who value "owning the libs." As long as this is true, sane moderation is going to have a left-wing bias. To some degree, this must go out the window in extremist left spaces. I'm not going to claim ChapoTrapHouse was a bastion of reasoned debate. It's the hobbyist Discords and niche interests that live and breathe on niceness, community and civilization.
If you want to know what the happy, affirming, not-so-para social group looks like for right wingers, go to a church picnic. Maybe Baptists or Presbyterians, maybe LDS. The Pentecostals get up to some absolutely wild group delusions, but they seem to be having a pretty good time with it. This is the power of community, of cohesion--and it comes with its own set of strictures.
As a final note, while Contrapoints really, really isn't my style, I wouldn't call it vacuous. Not in the same way that I'd label something like a mukbang. I'm under the impression that she puts a lot of effort into the scripting as well as the presentation. It's especially an ironic comparison given that Contrapoints and BreadTube were explicitly designed to drive Peterson-style engagement.
I'll stand by the first statement, and qualify the second.
Moving my response to the current CW thread here.
More options
Context Copy link
I’ve check out these spaces, as well as the IRL parallel to the spaces (leftist Unitarian churches in college towns). They switched to snapping from clapping and they would take umbrage with any gendered speech, so they said y’all instead of you guys. A pat on the back would be a no-go especially male to other-gendered. The LGBT-oriented leftist spaces on Twitter and Discord are really this hypersensitive about language, and the point explains how hyper-sensitivity is a corollary to hyper-positivity.
Contrary to being “leftist places” suck, I was concerned I was too hard on right wing places! The leftist places have thriving activism, which for the sake of ideology propagation, means they don’t suck.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link