site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   26183 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The Pitt as a lagging culture war indicator

So I’ve been watching The Pitt with my wife lately.

The premise of the show is to follow doctors and nurses in an ER over a single 15-hour shift, much like the old show 24.

The show has been praised for its accuracy and I certainly find it intense at times.

That being said, I’m halfway through the Emmy-nominated season and while the medical drama part is solid, I’ve been repeatedly struck by the culture war aspects of the show.

According to Wikipedia, development began late 2023 after the writers strike and into 2024. The show premiered in early 2025 and has already been renewed.

It’s good and I’ve enjoyed watching it.

That being said….

There’s a bit of a culture war time capsule effect that shows up from time to time. It’s intermittent but fairly heavy-handed I think:

  • a medical student is lectured on intent vs impact after offering the aid of a social work to a homeless mom
  • a trans woman is treated for a cut and a med student draws attention to the “misgendering” of insurance records. We’re told it’s cool to have fixed this
  • we’re shown the “correct” way to interact with an autistic patient. A sr resident has apparently never done this before and is in awe of a second year “neuro-divergent” resident who helps the patient
  • a 17 year old girl is brought in for an abortion. The doctors commit fraud to make it happen and even talk the kids mom into it

It’s hard to convey from the descriptions but there are two themes I want to comment on.

The first is what is treated as something to joke about vs a Very Special Message. We get jokes about drug addicts with nicknames, jokes about frat boys in car wrecks, jokes about whether a medical student killed someone or just got unlucky. No joking around though when it comes to using terms like “unhoused.”

The other major theme that to me comes out strongly is a vibe of knowing the answers to all these political issues. There’s never any exploration or even acknowledgment of a controversy beyond as an obstacle to be dealt with.

For instance (mild spoilers) the girl coming in for an abortion evidently missed the 11 week deadline. No problem! Doctors will just lie. The mother of the patient isn’t on board but that’s ok the doctors will browbeat her into it and suggest the daughter will never speak to her again if it happens.

Sometimes even the doctors don’t know what to do like in the case of an incel with some violent journaling or a patient who’s been poisoned by his wife—she claims without evidence or corroboration that he’s molesting their daughter and we’re horrified to learn that she might be the one in trouble!

Overall though, the attitude is one of “we know the answers but sometimes society isn’t quite caught up yet.”

Will be curious to see how the tone of shows like this changes having now entered an era of “reckoning” and “post-mortems” of democratic hubris.

Heavy-handedness of the message makes it useful vehicle for spreading non-wokist media literacy. When you are watching it together with friends/family (I watched it together with my wife), you can easily point how gratuitous and ridiculous the messaging is. (See how they wrote the Mr Angry Taxpayer as extremely unsympathetic overweight white male? And his complaint that the staff was preferentially taking in non-serious but sympathetic cases was correct.)

Sometimes I wondered - either the writing team was so blinded out by their politics they didn't notice when overtly woke writing was so illogical it got a Straussian reading, or was there someone in scriptwriting team getting non-woke Straussian takes past the radar.

Incel plot-line was the biggest flag here. Evidence he is an incel planning a school shooting is flimsy - we are told he wrote a list of names girls in his class he hates in his diary - and only part of it shown-on screen is his mother's testimony and interpretation. POV character, Dr Robby points out there is not much legitimate basis for them to do much, but tries to talk with the boy who leaves the hospital. Everyone in the ER acts like a classic bigot about the 'incel', and when the big shoot-out happens, they double up the bigotry. Pushy doctor McKay reports him to the police and everyone else spreads unfounded rumor that the kid is the shooter among the patients, who get agitated. Dr Robby shows some skepticism, pointing out that it is not really justified to arrest people for thought crimes. They have the mother to sign the paperwork for boys involuntarily commitment. Audience should take notice how the whole thing resembles a witch hunt. Later, the suspect returns to the ER, where he is promptly arrested. The writing team pulls a switch which is surprising only if the audience had joined in the bigotry - the boy wasn't the shooter. It was telegraphed almost because there almost always is a twist after such a build-up.

The ER held him for psych evaluation anyway, because the paperwork was signed and they are scared he is a troubled incel who might do something. Robby tells McKay she has fucked up, and McKay 'talks with him', delivering a sanctimonious speech that is mostly about her own insecurities. Nevertheless, everything is magically fixed because later we see a shot of the boy agreeing to talk with therapist. Superficially it validates McKay's actions, I thought it fell flat - given the series had established that boy was guilty of nothing but sulking. Taking some distance from the emotional beats, the plotline as written is about gross injustice caused by suspicions and rumors. Everyone with any life experience knows that half-hour chat with psychiatrist usually solves nothing. Only thing missing is written comeuppance for the ER team.

The second one was the Two Dads. They made so large a point how there was two dads, with neurodivergent doctor launching into emotional rhapsodies how the dads were so happy with their baby, with no word for the surrogate mother. Bu if you watch watch what happens the episode, it is kinda weird because the dramatic medical drama of the episode is how the surrogate non-mother does all the work and almost dies of complications of the delivery. Just because the "dads" could be happy. Meanwhile she is othered as non-mother unperson by the staff while they save her life, who treat only the dads as family who matters, and have no acknowledgement for what she did - the baby is immediately disappeared from her view to be bottle-fed by the "dads", no mention of colostrum. Only one of the "dads" gets some lines reminiscing on their friendship and how she is doing some kind of sacrifice while almost dying. Realistically, the situation would be even more troubling because surrogates usually are not life-long friends of the "dads", but doing it for monetary compensation, with no memories to be reminisce about. If you don't come with strong progressive priors, the practice of surrogacy does not come out looking good.

UGH, I will never be able to swallow watching this kind of shit. What kind of an incel would be school shooter keeps a diary? How OLD are teh script writers? Sure an incel might joke with his Twitter/Discord/4chan shitlord buddies about doing it online, but a diary?

What kind of an incel would be school shooter keeps a diary?

One who is also transgender -- Audrey Hale, whose "manifesto" was more like a diary -- though that wouldn't fit the narrative. Also I don't know if Hale was an incel.

Hale was a girl, that definitely changes things. When I hear, "keeps a diary" I imagine either some one older than boomers or a girl. Also, there's a world apart between a manifesto and "dear diary"

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats