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 -
If it wasn't for her getting arrested, would anyone have ever made the connection? Rich powerful people are known for having massive egos and dangling random loose threads for no reason other than their own egotistical enjoyment.
We're dealing with an account that in a very short time period slightly before public knowledge of the arrest decided to go from posting all the time to not posting at all. Why?
And it's not death, the Worldnews moderation team insisted that maxwellhill is still alive and just not posting for ... unexplained reasons.
The mods posted a DM claiming he is active, but why a DM which is super easy to fake and not an actual public post which wouldn't be faked? If maxwellhill doesn't want people to know the account is still active then why do the DM and let fellow mods reveal it, if they don't mind providing proof they're not in prison then why not just post a comment?
They say he's just a random Mayalasian man who lives there too, but he seems to treat Maylasia as a country he just visits normally
Have you ever once talked about the country you live in as something you're "visiting"?
And they have a birthday right around the same time
Maxwell is Dec 25, MaxwellHill is past Dec 21.
So we have an account with a similar name, many similar interests, that just happens to be really busy and stop posting for years right before Maxwell got publically arrested who shares a similar birthday, refers to his home country as a place he visits, doesn't prove his existence for vague and completely irrational reasons.
If it's not Ghislaine Maxwell, it's a person (a long with the rest of the mods) trying really really hard to be as suspicious as possible and likely has insider information about what is happening to her in order to coordinate stopping posts right then. Because again they could just post a comment if the account was actually still active and not have to share easily faked DMs.
If it was Maxwell and the lynchpin of so many online conspiracy theories, why can’t the powers that be (which surely have access to Reddit or - at worst - Ghislaine’s recovery email) just log in as her and post something?
And besides, you again ignore the entire point. In one of the most expensive intelligence operations in modern history, the most banal, easiest, entry level bulk reposting of links (which would have been botted even back then) was supposedly manually done by a middle aged ultra-rich heiress who knew many of the most powerful people in the world and who was moonlighting as a Reddit powermod and farming karma by reposting (in 99.9% of cases) uncontroversial news stories, the kind of thing any third world teen on a gig work site would have done for $3 an hour and which, in the most sensitive cases, would have been done by 22 year old junior intelligence analysts on their first job.
“Sorry, Your Royal Highness, I’m going to have to interrupt our drinks so I can repost an article about an avalanche in Spain on Reddit for 500 karma because the huge intelligence operation I work for values me not for my contacts and charisma but because I can press submit on m.reddit.com several dozen times a day, a skill nobody else you have access to can do”?
That's only evidence against her doing it mostly as part of an intelligence operation scheme, not evidence against her owning the account.
If some random Maylasian man is apparently capable of spending all day posting random articles for years and years, why couldn't Maxwell also be the type of person to do that? Rich and famous people are not immune to having normal idiosyncrasies like that.
It could have just been a normal account of hers just like it supposedly is a normal account of random Maylasian guy visiting his own country.
There's a shit ton of weird coincidences and connections, including the major evidence of "they suddenly stopped posting very shortly before public knowledge of Maxwell being arrested even came out" that all fall together to point to it being her account, and is disproven in an incredibly simple way that they refuse to do for no good reason, only resorting to an easy to fake roundabout method that doesn't make any good sense to do unless it's for the purpose of faking, and their official explanation contradicts prior comments by the very account in question.
https://coagulopath.com/ghislaine-maxwell-does-not-have-a-secret-reddit-account/
Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.
Even most of the time.
This article makes some really terrible arguments
Not relevant, he's supposed to be Malaysian. How many Malaysian men have the name Maxwell? That they're even trying to use American names and not Malaysian names as an argument is silly, does the author themselves not even believe the "actually they're just a random Maylasian guy!" defense?
Yep the posting correlating with "party times" was actually bad evidence, in part because anyone with a brain knows that scrolling social media on their phone is something plenty do at parties and public events anyway.
So one good actual point that doesn't disprove anything, just dismantles a not particularly strong claim.
The Malaysian man never cared about Malaysia, just US politics. Odd.
Donald Trump didn't even enter politics that much until 2015-2016. He was mostly just a rich celebrity business mogul. And if you know anything about elites, even the literal politicians, they tend to get along surprisingly well anyway. Maybe the writer has no concept of being friends with people of different political beliefs, but it's a common thing.
This is exactly the sort of nonsense I'm talking about! If they're perfectly willing to say "Oh my god the account is still active, just look at this private message" then why are they so unwilling to just make a real post?
What kind of person when providing evidence prefers the super easily faked one of a screenshot of an easily edited webpage over hard proof that the account is still active of just making a single post.
You literally have to believe that the moderators are too stupid to realize how ridiculous that is, and trust that none of them would ever lie to cover up their connections to a sex trafficker. It just doesn't make any sense, the entire thing is made even fishier by the hilariously terrible attempt to disprove it.
Yes, pedophiles would prefer to live in a world where they don't have to hide their pedophilia, even if they're rich and powerful and currently getting away with it.
"Large numbers of people" but can only name a single group, the Worldnews moderation team who is directly incentivized to lie, is making suspicious and contradictory claims already (like come on again, who "visits" a place they supposedly live?) and refuses to provide hard evidence that should be extremely easy to do if their claims were true and the account was still active, instead preferring easily faked and completely unable to be verified screenshots.
Maxwell hill is a location in Malaysia. The posters habits interests and grammar indicate either a British ex pat with connections to Malaysia, or a British educated Malaysian. That could be faked but the name is a Malaysian connection on its own.
Damn he must be really old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukit_Larut
And what connection does he have to this random place anyway with a population of 2 in the country he lives in but also visits? Is he a major head of the local tourism committee or run the place? Weird how someone like that would be so interested in US politics and never anything local to them.
Seems more like they just Google around trying to find some alternative explanation, learn that there's a random place in Malaysia that was once called Maxwell Hill 40 years ago and go "hell yeah let's say the account lives in Malaysia" and that's why there's a weird contradiction with it visiting the place they supposedly live in.
British ex-pats (of which I am one) and some wealthy Malaysian British educated people STILL call it Maxwell Hill to this day. I've been there, which is how I know. I wasn't stationed in Malaysia but it was close enough I've visited (and hung out with said British ex pat community myself). That's not impossible to find out of course, so doesn't prove anything.
But you know him being a retired or semi retired ex-pat of an age close to my own is also not impossible. People born before 1979 do exist here. Indeed to blow your mind. I was born before the moon landing in 1969! I've been on the internet since it was Usenet and Muds.
Its not impossible Maxwell picked maxwell hill as part of her name and the house she grew up in, found out that it was also a place in Malaysia and was still called that by some people based her character on that, dropping hints over time she was Malaysian connected (remember though the Malaysian connection is based in part on posts by maxwellhill), not just a post hoc discovery, so it would probably have to be a deliberate choice by her.
It's not proof. But reading the maxwellhill posts it's either a British educated person with good knowledge of Malaysian ex pat/Brit educated communities or a very good imitation. For me its enough to suggest the Ghislaine connection is less likely. YMMV.
If it is Ghislaine, she was really committed to the bit by making constant small Bri'ish Engrish grammatical errors.
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