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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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The mods are only human. I haven't dived deep enough to evaluate the merits of your particular ban, but for what it's worth, I've been banned several times. I don't hold any grudge against the mods for that. My bans were generally in the nature of "I got emotional and I started to really lay into my political opponents in an obviously angry and uncharitable way". I do sometimes get annoyed by the fact that I feel that people on this forum often break the "Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity." rule by assuming that social conservatism is good, without actually justifying it. But I don't feel that this happens because the mods are ideologically biased. I think it happens because I think that this forum has more social conservatives posting (though not necessarily lurking or voting) than social liberals like myself, so social conservatives just create more content for mods to address than social liberals do. Certainly there are plenty of snarky posts and consensus-building posts here by conservatives that don't get modded, but I don't feel that the mods are trying to support conservatism, it's just that there are a lot of snarky and consensus-building conservative posts to go through compared to snarky and consensus-building liberal posts, so it's very easy to find examples of the former that slip through the net.

While this forum leans right, I often see posts of mine that are left of the average get upvoted by quite a bit. You might be surprised how receptive you find some people here if you argue for your political opinions plainly and calmly, laying out arguments for why they are accurate and/or beneficial, rather than with anger. I extend this appeal, also, to some of the more snarky and angry right-wingers here: please put aside the emotional fervor and try to just argue for your political opinions plainly and calmly, rather than in a perpetually angry and conspiratorial mode.

Best analysis of the situation I've seen yet

As somebody way to your right, this is encouraging to read.

I agree that the Motte has moved somewhat right over its existence as society has moved left. While the median Mottizen has long been unwoke, some posters have moved to assuming an antiwoke consensus, and that is unfortunate.

But I think that there are some social dynamics that make the Motte appear further right than it is. Every time somebody has collected data on this, it has turned out to be so. If you polled Mottizens on, say, gay marriage, I am confident that you’d find a supermajority in support even if you only polled posters. We socons are more comfortable casually expressing our views than social conservatives were back in the /r/SSC culture war threads, but we’re still a minority.