site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

List of alleged ex-FBI people working for Twitter.

Quite a lot of names. 16 directors or managers. All hired since the '16 debacle.

Reminds one of the Chinese demand for CPC members being in company management.

Is it random ? Or does this support the claim Twitter is uniquely important in the information landscape as a place where journalists get their stories and hang out.

same thing with fakebook. it's mainly for child exploitation, drugs, kidnapping, stuff like that. Given that twitter is 100% public, unless you make your profile private, just assume anything you tweet will be read by FBI

fakebook. it's mainly for child exploitation, drugs, kidnapping,

No. Facebook was good for creating a social network graph of much of the world.

I presume it can and does facilitate those things, but that could have hardly been the primary objective.

just assume anything you tweet will be read by FBI

We hope so.

There's nothing more fun than dropping sinister, oblique hints about offline conspiracies when talking to people who are known to have an FBI file.

he's saying "trust and safety people at facebook are for combatting child exploitation, drugs, kidnapping", not "facebook is for that"

exactly

I was sure it was meant to be a joke.

Btw, to be a good catcher of %x% means you needs to understand %x% MO, become a %x%!

Also you can legally watch materials forbidden to others.

If 'trust and safety people at facebook' are anything like the trust and safety people over at twitter, it could go either way.

Takes one to know one situation.

/images/16708592693026352.webp

this clearly is not him saying anything about children being sexy. pedophiles might say things like "children are cute and independent and have personalities and deserve to make choices and love just as much as we do. oppressing them is bad". this is a statement about how a baby crying and exaggerated porn sounds, after being distorted by layers of walls, to him, sound similar. it is not the kind of thing you'd say because you're a pedophile or to signal pedophilia.

like, where in that message does it relate 'having sex' to 'with children'?

also just for context several motteposters (including me), often right-leaning, probably some that you like, have said much, much worse things than that on rdrama - as jokes!

  1. Stereotypical porn sounds are nothing like a baby crying. Baby crying is the worst sound known, it demands attention.

To spell it out for people on the clock, sadistic porn featuring children might sound like a baby crying, for the reason that it's sadistic and involves harming small children, hence the crying.

2)

it is not the kind of thing you'd say because you're a pedophile or to signal pedophilia.

And what kind of thing is that?

What do pedophiles do to signal that they are what they are ?

Is it musing about how kids should have access to sex apps used by adults ?

Wondering aloud, in public, about the age of consent ? Advocating for a lower age of consent ?

3)

probably some that you like, have said much, much worse things than that on rdrama - as jokes!

I'd be surprised. But you're free to dig some up.

this clearly is not him saying anything about children being sexy.

No, he said that on his other account that he scrubbed apparently:

And yeah, apparently, that image can't be uploaded.

/images/16708666196986835.webp

Ah, here's the image file it won't upload in the first one:

/images/16708664599802046.webp

Chalk it up to your bias and/or blatant hostile misconstruction. To me he's clearly talking about the man being hotter because the man is demonstrating care.

Agree I don’t think twitter hiring a lot of FBI is anything that weird. What’s weird is how color coded and blue tribe the FBI seems to be now. Red tribe seems the FBI as having declared war on them.

Now that the FBI is explicitly labeled a different tribe than Musks it seems as though their assumed to be against him.

yeah, pre-2008 the FBI was solidly red it seemed

They're cops. They're still gonna be solidly red.

The FBI are not police (except FBI Police, but that's a whole 'nother story).