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 -
Elon Musk has suspended a slew of liberal journalists and pundits from Twitter. It is, as Benjamin Braddoc puts it, a red wedding for the liberal establishment. I initially believed that he was just the "controlled" opposition of the deep state, obviously he's stepped on way too many toes for that. This imo underscores an important truth to the ultra principled who believe in free speech absolutism and neutral institutions, the overton window won't shift the other way just to punish the "heretics" who've assailed this sacred virtue. Social media, our Frankenstein, has made it insanely easier for mob rule to influence culture (not that it wasn't already).
I still don't believe we're witnessing complete course reversal, but this could just be the first legitimate W for the right.
EDIT: It looks like he's lifting the suspension.
Definitely the biggest W for the right since Trump. If Elon can succeed in bringing "the press are regime shills, institutions are all controlled by progressives, progressives only care about who/whom" to the mainstream, then a lot of the hard work is done. All these institutions have going for them is credibility. Once it's gone, it doesn't come back.
I'm amused by the implication that "these institutions" have any credibility at all.
It illustrates just how deeply embedded in the secular progressive bubble the average mottizen is even if they might identify as otherwise
At risk of mod intervention: does your "Mottizens are secret socialists" view even matter here? We all know that Congress is one of the least-popular things around, and yet, you'll notice that the institution continues to exist and has not been abolished in favor of an autocracy. You can probably get enough Americans to admit that they hate the media, enough to occupy every square inch of Capitol Hill, and yet it's probably not going to force the entire corporate media landscape out of business in a week. It doesn't matter how "Fake and Gay" something is, so long as it has inertia.
What does it practically mean for something to be un-credible? Maybe once upon a time, that meant the thing would lose, in rough order, trust, profitability, mindshare, and power. Nowadays, a social faux pas is just as much an opportunity for defenders to rise up as it is for critics to come out. The NYT will continue to be an entity whose lifeblood is money, regardless of how many "normal" Americans they turn off. Same with all other corporate media.
Sure, most people aren't so disconnected from reality, as you allude to. Doesn't matter, the people who set the tone of the national conversation are the ones least-connected to reality, whatever silent-majority-salt-of-the-earth Americans who make up the "real world" don't.
EDIT: Another thing: I sympathize with the idea you're getting at, that maybe all of this doesn't really matter, but as I've tried to point out in this comment, the few-and-insane sure seem to have more timeline-steering power than most people could ever hope to do. Writing for the Paper of Record is a small seed of changing the minds of the people who have the power to re-order society, to shift great monies around for whatever project they want to see, to possibly destroy the world. I said this in a thread about HBD, that it really doesn't matter, but on the other hand, for those who believe in it, it sure as hell looks like the people who hold the levers of power are poised to drive America off of a cliff--and given the sheer political, military, cultural, and economic power of America, that might as well be tantamount to driving the entire human race off of a cliff. So, this is to say that it doesn't matter, and yet it does at the same time.
First, it's not that the motte is full of "secret socialists" it's that the motte is overwhelmingly secular, progressive, and politically left wing. Yes, there is a difference. More specifically my view is that atheism is the default here. Being college-educated is the default here, A belief in the fundamental correctness of; "Science!", progress, identity politics, elite theory, external loci of control, Marx's model of class consciousness, Hegelian opprossor/opressed dynamics, and so on is the default here. Accordingly, anyone who doesn't already buy into all of these assumptions faces an uphill struggle if they want participate in the discussion.
Well this is the 64,000$ question isn't it. One of the core cultural differences between "Red" and "Blue" America is how they think and talk about questions of "authority", letter vs spirit of the law, and similar issues. I know what being credible or (un-credible) means to me. I know what it means when I talk to my friends, family, and co-workers in meat-space, but it's equally clear that what it means to me is very different from what it means to most of the users here. The simple answer from my perspective is that "credibility" is the quality possessed by an "authority", and that someone becoming (or being) un-credible is analogous to loosing one's authority. However because of the issue I observed above about shared assumptions, or rather the lack there of, this probably ought to be unpacked a bit. The traditional conservative definition of "an authority" is the combined qualities of being listened to and believed, both being necessary requirements. Someone who is listened to and not believed is not credible nor are they an authority, and vice versa. Hence the classic formulation of the "appeal to authority". You might not trust me but you can trust so-and-so can't you?
The thing is that the model of authority I have just described is substantially different from the one that is typically used here. The average Mottizen seems to view authority and credibility as things that are bequeathed or imposed society's elites rather than as emergent properties. See @The_Nybbler's line about "The NYT has credibility because they are among the definers of credibility" above, or Scott's long-form posts in defense of Fauci (either removed or retitled at some point because I can't seem to find it atm) and on Bounded Distrust for examples this in action. The difficulty from my perspective is that the whole idea of there being a "definer" or "arbiter" of credibility outside the people being spoken to comes across as complete nonsense because I do not share the sort of underlying assumptions listed above.
At risk of mod intervention myself: The less charitable interpretation of both @The_Nybbler and Scott's posts is that it doesn't matter whether Dr. Fauci and/or the NYT have been demonstrated to be liars, we need to trust them because that is what intelligent rational well-educated people do, and you wouldn't want to be mistaken for someone who is not intelligent, rational, or well-educated would you? To which my impulse is to reply with an eye roll. My ego/perception of my own self-worth is apparently not as wrapped up in being perceived as intelligent or well-educated as theirs are.
It is not that we need to trust them; I don't. It is that in denying what the New York Times says or what Fauci says -- no matter how much evidence you bring to the table -- you are reducing your own credibility and not affecting theirs at all. You're an "anti-vaxxer" or "lol a Faux News listening Drumpf supporter". And yes, authority and credibility are imposed; perhaps credibility should be emergent, but it is not. Anybody with power and authority will act as if Fauci and the NYT are telling the truth; if you act otherwise you will either need to find other cover for your actions, avoid judgement of them, or be penalized for them.
Reducing your own credibility among whom exactly? What's so bad about being a "Faux News listening Drumpf supporter"?
I get that you as an ambiguously gay Manhattanite who has chosen to spend their entire life immersed in a progressive environment believe this, but I don't think that history bears it out. Defeat is inevitable until it is not. The captain's word is inviolable until the mutiny.
What credibility the NYT has comes from people like you. You talk a big game about not trusting them but talk is cheap and your actions say otherwise. You could walk away at any time, why don't you? Simply put, I don't see much of a difference between you and the Soviet-era party apparatchik who nods along to the latest news in Pravda even when he knows it's a lie because he values his status within the party more than he values the truth. Ironically, being a practicing Catholic, I'm probably more inclined to sympathize to that position than a lot others in the rationalist diaspora, but don't pretend that isn't the choice you've made.
LOL. I think you have me confused with someone else. I'm neither ambiguous, gay, nor a Manhattanite.
And even if the mutiny succeeds, every hand turns against the mutineers. Your mutineers can't win unless they defeat the entire Admiralty and the state behind it as well. And they can't.
So walk away from my job and become what, a subsistence farmer in Iowa until the BLM (the government agency, that is) decides the land I'm using is too environmentally sensitive for farming? How does that reduce the NYTs credibility?
I don't nod along. But my not nodding along doesn't hurt them; sometimes it hurts me.
No, I don't think I do
Are you familiar with the history of mutinies? Forcing the admiralty to the negotiating table is actually a more common outcome than one might expect. It turns out that de facto control of a capital ship is one hell of a bargaining chip. Spithead, Gibraltar, Invagadon, Kiel, just to name a few.
Or, as our previous conversations have covered, there are plenty of decent tech and legal jobs in places like Hunstville, Orlando, and Fort Worth. Your rejection of them as beneath you is on you.
Yes you do, you're doing it here, and then you try to paint yourself as a victim for doing so, because victimhood complexes is what progs do. I notice that you never answered my question. What is so bad about about being an "anti-vaxxer" or a "Faux News listening Drumpf supporter"?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Like Scott once said:
Kolmogorov Complicity is still complicity.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I doubt that Mottizens would overwhelmingly vote for US Democratic party or UK Labour (or equivalent in other countries)
Most of issues debated here are issues where existence of God/Supreme Being/Great Architect/Intelligent Designer is not relevant at all. When was the last time you saw here atheist/religious debate in the noughties style?
If only ;-(
When people here talk about Marx and Marxism, they mean in 99% cases "cultural Marxism" other than anything that Marx or anyone folowing him actually said and wrote.
...What percentage of Mottizens do you think voted Obama? I would guess at a number north of 75%.
More options
Context Copy link
I know it's been a while since @tracingwoodgrains has done one of his surveys, but if we take them at face value the most common political affiliation on the motte is Democrats, followed by various 3rd parties. Mottizens voted overwhelming for Clinton in 2016 and gave a slight majority to Biden in 2020.
I disagree.
Look around. It might not be obvious to you because it's the water you're swimming in but from the outside it's not to notice.
Well, in the last days, this space is mostly dedicated to Elon Musk and his Twitter escapades. What is the religious/biblical perspective on this current event? How could this issue be even explained in Biblical terms?
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
How is this a W? What part of banning liberal journalists is a W? Was their credibility somehow based on not getting banned from Twitter?
They (PMCs) are declared class ennemies of technocapital and kulaks. Evil being done upon them is a political good if you are a kulak or a technocapitalist.
Principles and rules might have held back such moves before but they violated the compact that made those principles and are therefore free game.
What was the compact?
Don't conspire to systematically silence your ennemies using informal power when they're right. Pretend the constitution is more than paper.
I can list the violations but you know them. And now we even have hard evidence of the ill intent behind them.
If you censor for expediency, and refuse to play the game of the marketplace of ideas, you don't get to use it as protection after that. It's dead.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You're acting as if being ruled by PMCs changes the reality of their class interests. But it doesn't. Money doesn't even have much to do with this, it's corporate holdings and the public v. private status of the corporations you should be looking at.
Technocapital is aristocrats, men of skill, not of prestige. Elon and his programmers, Twitter HR and CNN journos. These people are much closer to each other than the other group in thinking and political interest. They are the same or allied classes.
Most live under PMC rule but PMC they are not, there's a reason the journos fucking despise the "cryptobros" for instance, or why Zucc and Dorsey have their culturally libertarian instincts kept in check by the system.
More options
Context Copy link
Not Gates; Gates grew up rich, just not AS rich.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes.
There is no such thing as credibility any more for the chattering classes; only popularity. And you can't be popular if no-one can see you.
And yet, their publications will go on to be cited as reliable coverage in the halls of government, academia, etc. They'll be given a more favorable look as historians look back. The people who support them will still do so and the people who hate them won't. Not really seeing how much they lose if they can't cultivate a twitter persona.
Gee, I guess they’re really silly to be so upset about it then.
That's like asking why someone with good healthcare coverage would care if you punched them. That it doesn't impact the rest of their life doesn't mean you didn't do something wrong to them.
This is not to argue the bans are unjustified, I have no opinion on that right now, only that this logic does not hold at all.
You said you didn't see how much they lost by losing a twitter persona. Being punched is painful or frightening, hence an actual loss.
Why would it be a loss?
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
Streisand effect says otherwise. I hadn't heard of any of the banned journalists until my timeline was flooded with people talking about the banned journalists.
Are you going to start following them on Mastodon (or on Twitter when they return in a week), or will you forget most of them in a month's time?
I feel like so many invocations of the Streissand Effect are like that meme that's structured like 'Awareness + ???? = Profit'. Being kicked off a platform of immense visibility is surely at counterwinds with the small bump of notoriety you receive for a week.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
When someone high-status like Elon Musk tweets "That is because The New York Times has become, for all intents and purposes, an unregistered lobbying firm for far left politicians," it hurts their credibility.
But he's not a neutral figure anymore - the left sees him as an idiot and the right as a daring truth-teller.
This idea that he's hurting them only works among the people who don't have an opinion on the left-wing part of the mainstream media, but trust Musk as some objective truth-teller. How big is this group supposed to be?
More options
Context Copy link
No, it hurts Musk's credibility. The NYTs credibility is unassailable.
To echo what I said to @pointsandcorsi, I an amused by the implication that the NYT has credibility to assail.
I think it illustrates how different our worlds are, you're always here acting like "Epstien didn't kill himself" and "the NYT are a bunch of partisan hacks" are whacky, out-there, Alex Jones-tier takes when in my experience they are the popular consensus. I know you live in Manhattan but every time you make one of these comments I find myself biting back the urge to ask if you've actually met anyone who isn't a registered democrat or under the age of 70?
The NYT has credibility because they are among the definers of credibility. The truth doesn't matter; if you go against the NYT you're automatically wrong, among anyone who counts. Think of it like the BATF and machine guns. Sure, you know that a shoelace isn't a machine gun and I know a shoelace isn't a machine gun, but if the BATF says a shoelace is a machine gun it is, and anyone with a shoelace is liable for prosecution. And the prosecutors will prosecute and the judge will go along and so will the higher courts and no amount of pointing out that it's a shoelace will save you from jail time. And to add insult to injury, if and when all this commences, all those law-n-order conservatives who agreed that indeed a shoelace was not a machine gun will say "Well, what did you expect? You knew a shoelace was a machine gun, BATF said so." They don't actually believe a shoelace is a machine gun, but they believe in institutions and the institutions said it was.
Same with the NYT. What they say is truth will be taken as truth, by anyone who matters. Even if it's patently ridiculous.
Somehow I suspect that it is hyperbole and not what you actually believe, but I am not really sure.
Why? He doesn't seem to be saying anything unreasonable.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is, to a large extent, self-referential. The NYT is always credible within the "mainstream" narrative because the NYT is a core part of the network of institutions that sets that narrative. But I've got scare quotes around "mainstream" because the NYT and allied outlets simply don't represent any sort of board social consensus anymore. They represent the official line of establishment Democrats, with space occasionally given to more extreme leftist positions to keep activist groups on-side. Their function is to align elites within these spaces and sell Blue Tribe normies on what those elites want.
Republican politicians and other explicitly right-wing public figures and organizations can already almost entirely ignore the NYT, because none of their supporters care what it says. Only 14% of Republicans and 27% of independents have confidence in mass media to report accurately (source).
The danger for "mainstream" media in Musk's Twitter takeover is that Twitter has deep reach among Blue Tribe normies. Musk is going to allow 'unapproved' narratives to spread to and among them, and these narratives will in many cases likely outcompete those coming from above. This could have the effect of seriously undermining the ability of Blue Tribe elites to sell any large constituency on their views, with obvious electoral consequences.
More options
Context Copy link
If that were actually true, then nobody would doubt the credibility of the NYT. But there are plenty who used to find them credible and no longer do. Whether Musk will cause more people to lose credence in the NYT remains to be seen, of course, but their credibility most certainly is not unassailable.
There are people who will tell you on a survey they doubt the credibility of the NYT. The next day they'll be credulously repeating whatever it is they read in the NYT and sneering at "Faux News".
Are you seriously asserting that nobody doubts the credibility of the NYT, or that they have not caused at least some people to lose trust in them?
Nobody who is anyone doubts the credibility of the NYT (obviously "deplorables" or "MAGA republicans" do), and the NYT (and mainstream media in general) has gained trust over the past few years even as they've gone more off the rails. For some reason COVID got everyone who was wavering back in the fold and then some.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The problem is the right has been completely unable to actually create a right-wing alternate to the NYT because there is no audience for that among the Right - it's all DailyWire/Brietbart pushing out the sensational stuff or the day or it's money-losing magazines being propped up by rich donors. There is the WSJ, but it seems unwilling to move beyond its place focusing on business news.
The actual problem is 90% of what the NYT is reliably truthful, even to an ardent right-winger.
I suspect actually that the right has been unable to create a right-wing equivalent of the NYT because that sort of centralized top-down narrative setting is a holdover from an earlier era. The natural means of narrative formation and spread today is social media. Traditionally structured media outlets can't hope to produce narratives as memetically fit as those honed on Twitter, so largely just write sensationalist stories built on top of those. It's not just the right; this describes younger media outlets on the left as well. Even the NYT itself is not immune to this. One now regularly sees echos of Twitter discourse in is coverage.
(All of this is why establishment journalists were so eager to place themselves or their ideological allies in positions that allowed them to influence what ideas could spread on social media, via "trust & safety" councils, official labeling of "misinformation," etc. and why many seem to be practically unraveling in response to Musk getting rid of these things.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
So was Pravda's. Now its name is synonymous with propaganda
Pravda was always synonymous with propaganda. There is no news in the Truth and no truth in the News.
More options
Context Copy link
Pravda's name was always synonymous with propaganda. Even inside the Soviet Union.
More so inside the Soviet Union than in America, though.
More likely to find a Pravda believer on the faculty at Yale than in Moscow.
More options
Context Copy link
Among who, though? Looking back on the USSR everyone wants to say "oh yeah we knew the whole time," but I call bullshit. I bet a sample of American opinions on NYT is similar to Soviets about Pravda in 1955. And when the NYT falls, whoever writes about it will do so in the same manner.
As Amadan has alluded to, it's one of those "those who know" kind of things. Sure, you can argue that a preference cascade happened and everyone flipped their opinions from what was clearly the opposite, but I personally choose to believe that the actual heart-of-hearts sentiment was indeed the opposite of what was publically-permissible to say pre-1991.
More options
Context Copy link
There were some naive people who took it seriously, but the disparity between propaganda and what your eyes saw was far, far greater than anything NYT ever wrote until the late Obama age decline.
Everyone else was simply afraid to speak up, because you had a permanent record* you couldn't check or dispute and were you known for saying stuff like that, it'd have ended noted there.
And your children would have zero hope of getting into university, and were you to persist and became an actual dissident, only the worst jobs would be available to you. If you persisted for years and were good at it - eventually the state would stop treating you like others and encourage you to leave the country.
*I'm assuming that they had, given it was done in satellite states.
More options
Context Copy link
Don't just "bet" on things that conveniently fit your worldview when you don't have an accompanying historical knowledge of the times.
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
We'll see who wins. They way your reply is written, it's ambiguous, to my readings at least, who you are saying has hurt whos credibility. I think you mean Elon hurt the NYT, but frankly it goes both ways. To the sorts of people like my in-laws who swear by neoliberal propaganda, Elon hurt himself by opposing the neoliberal media establishment. Elon's "approval rating" has been dropping. Is that even a real thing? Does it matter? Who knows! But you don't goto war with the neoliberal media establishment and come out unscathed.
I'm reminded when Trump went to war with the machine. Everyone, myself included, loved how Trump got the media to beclown themselves. Expose their naked hypocrisy. And yet at the end of the day, most of his policies were stymied, and they still made him a one term president. In all the ways that mattered, they won. Credibility be damned.
It's hard for me to expect this fight with Elon to go much different. The media will build this unquestionable narrative that Elon has gone insane, that Twitter is harming people, it will be taken off the app store, he'll declare bankruptcy, he'll lose controlling interest in SpaceX and Tesla, and the neoliberal establishment will take them over and shit them up same as they have everything else. That they will have further burned their credibility among non-NPCs doesn't matter. A boot on your face does not require you to believe in it's moral integrity.
The media won against Trump in the end, but it cost them some amount. If they win against Elon, it will cost even more. Eventually they won't have enough left to burn.
With numerous assists from Trump himself, who repeatedly made life for his supporters much harder than it had to be.
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
Their credibility is self-sustaining. It's taught in the schools, repeated in the media and by government agencies and innumerably "reputable" NGOs and other international organizations. If something that goes against the narrative on Fox News or in the New York Post it's false -- just ask NPR, the New York Times, any given college professor or teacher, etc. All Musk can do is move Twitter to the "not credible" category with the New York Post, Washington Times, Fox, etc.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not sure all they have going for them is credibility. Many of them are monopolies. Many of them have the ties via informal business relationships or regulatory capture to strangle all competitors in the crib. Many of them are government agencies, so "monopoly on violence", etc, etc.
And even with the media, the degree to which they are loss leaders/propaganda outfits funded by nonsense advertising budgets cannot be understated. CNN doesn't get $628m in ad revenue because of their ratings. Nor is it the default channel at airports or government lobbies because of it's clear quality. It's the neo-liberal regime scratching the back of it's propaganda outlets. Literally 2 people in the world could be watching CNN of their own free will, and the ad dollars would still flow, because it's about maintaining the legitimacy that the ad spend relationship gives CNN and the company advertising.
All of that is correct, but credibility is what keeps the government institutions (e.g. CDC) alive. If your average GOP voter believed that 3/4 of government agencies need to be dissolved, things would look quite a bit different.
CNN isn't doing great, but their reputation still has a long way to fall.
It's credibility huh? I thought it was our tax dollars that are extracted from us under threat of being thrown into a rape cage.
Short term yes, long term not as much
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