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 -
FIRE's new lawsuit challenging the Trump admin's deportation policies over speech is pretty interesting. The press release is pretty convincing too IMO. It's not the government's job to be deciding what is and isn't "acceptable" speech outside of the obvious dangers like the true threat limitations we already have.
One thing that also concerns me when it comes to censorship efforts from the government is the chilling effect it places on speech and voiced opinions. People here legally can agree with the Government Approved Viewpoint all they want, but you're screwed if you dissent.
This is especially concerning when American politics can shift so much. Government Approved Viewpoints in the Trump admin might not be the same Government Approved Viewpoints from the next president. Criticize Israel today? Bad speech. But maybe the next administration says praising Israel is the bad speech instead. At this point you might as well be saying that you simply don't get to have or voice an opinion of any kind in the country, even if you're a lawful resident who doesn't commit any crimes.
And there are lots of great people who are lawful residents/vistors to the US. Even many celebrities! People like Keanu Reeves, Celine Dion, Ryan Gosling, Hugh Jackman all essentially told to not have any opinion on anything ever in case a future admin decides their opinion was a bad opinion.
Also FIRE so far has also been an interesting insight into what principled beliefs look like. Often on the internet I'll see from both left and right wingers an excuse that it's ok to violate their claimed principles because "the other side did it first" (even though interestingly enough they often can't seem to agree which side did it first, reminds me of something else), but at that point it's hard to say it's a principle if it's abandoned so readily.
Meanwhile FIRE has been pretty consistent in criticizing both the left and right, and even defending their opponents right to speech. It's like the early ACLU protecting the rights of KKK. There are times where I think they overreach on their criticism, I believe that strong free association rights of private individuals and groups are just as fundamental to free speech as the speech itself and restrict more to government actions but even then I still respect that they're consistent.
The most locally concerning precedent being set in immigration cases is the requirement that all social media be set to "public". This is essentially leaning towards the abolition of internet anonymity.
I don't see how one classifies "social media" in a way that doesn't include a place like Reddit, TheMotte, or MetalArchives, or my comments on BleedingGreenNation about Nick Sirianni, or the comments from Carolinian politicians on NudeAfrica. No more usernames, everything must be posted publicly.
And while they might only be talking about Facebook or instagram or Twitter initially, and during the visa process they probably won't be extensively cross-referencing non-public information to figure out your anonymous usernames, let alone utilizing stylistic analysis or correlating personal information to doxx you, the catch-22 is potentially really bad: if you lie on your visa application, you have now committed a crime.
And if they want to get rid of you, all they have to do is utilize the various methods available to a government to doxx you, find the comments you made on BloggingTheBoys about how Jerry Jones needs to get his head out of his ass, and boom, they have you.
Redditor is a unique designation, in that hating redditors tells me instantly that you are, in fact, a redditor. I'm not aware of any similar grouping of humans. Chris Rock might rail about the difference between "Black people and Niggers" but he clearly understands himself to be in the former category. Jews might mock their own foibles, but so does everyone else. Only Redditors complain about Redditors.
Nobody makes fun of weebs more than other weebs.
Huh, interesting. I mostly hear weebs made fun of by Asian girls who want to complain about fetishes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
During the Furry Wars of the 00s it was a common understanding that people who were really obsessed with hating furries were probably furries themselves, or at least felt the call of the fur in some way.
...What were the furry wars?
Starting in 2000-2004, the furry fandom became visible to people outside of the fandom to a much greater degree than before. This also coincided with a lot of social media sites with a large focus on pointing out and sneering at people they thought were weird, with the most famous being SomethingAwful.
This went about as well as a house on fire.
I don't know much about the SA-internal side of things, outside of there just being several purges of people suspected of being furs from their forums (tbf, SA purges people from the forums as a fundraising effort, or just because Lowtax thought it was funny). But from the furry side, it was pretty common for fairly small furry spaces to just randomly get swarmed by twenty trolls out of the blue.
Some of this was tongue-in-cheek or self-deprecating. But a lot of it was just point-and-look-and-the-weirdos, and sometimes surprisingly mainstream. There's a Daily Show skit called To Boldly Gay where furries were a good part of the punchline, and I'm not going to link it because it didn't censor the smut sketch it was making fun of, and that was cable television. CSI's Fur and Loathing is probably the most infamous.
(Sexual politics of the time, given the broad gay-or-gay-adjacent bits of the fandom, probably had an impact, too.)
One of the joking-not-joking responses is that while the media reporting was probably just the standard Jerry Springer stuff, the trolls, at least, sure seemed to spend a lot of time and attention scrolling through art or writing that supposedly made them violently ill. And just like the then-prominent gay marriage debate proposed that the people most strongly opposed to gay marriage were really closeted, after a few high profile (if not very-well-proven) examples, a lot of furries took some cases of user overlap between CrushYiffDestroy (a furry-self-critical forum) and the SomethingAwful forums as evidence that many of others were really using the movement to
summon their own armylitigate disagreements in a more favorable environment under an alt.More options
Context Copy link
Congratulations on not being a furry (I also, don't know what he's talking about, what're the odds there's a Kiwifarms thread about it though lol)
Furries remain something that I can't, quite, accept that they exist.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Maybe in general, but not in my case. A few years back, after a long downward pattern of less & less use, I copped a permanent ban on absurd grounds, and had my appeal rejected.
I had been for many years, as early as 2016, been slowly enjoying the app less and less. Just took it as a sign that my time was done, deleted my profile, deleted the app, never reinstalled it again.
Every once in a while I’d get a link from somewhere else and just reading the comments for a minute before I inevitably closed it, I’d felt like I’d roll my eyes so hard they were about to pop out of my skull.
We are having this conversation at TheMotte.Org , whose very existence is proof of how shitty Reddit is and has been for a long time.
It’s been clear to me for years that Reddit is mostly just a botnet & super astroturfed influence peddling platform that’s been shrinking itself into an irrelevant echo chamber. It’s honestly incredibly boring.
Claims not be a redditor. Used reddit from somewhere prior to 2016 until a couple years ago. Appealed the ban to try to keep using reddit.
Yeah, dude, you're a redditor. Albeit maybe an exiled one. One wouldn't say that an American living abroad has ceased to be an American, and a Catholic who stops going to communion is always just a lapsed Catholic.
Yes I would. Sure, it depends on length of time - someone who lives in another country for a few months or even a few years does not cease to be an American that quickly. But when that person has been in the other country for a few decades, I think it's fair to say they aren't American any more. And I think @MaximumCuddles case is more analogous to the American living overseas for a few decades - if he hasn't had an account in 9 years, that's an eternity in Internet time.
He said he stopped liking it in 2016, he stopped using it when he got banned "a few" years back, which I'd normally read as 2-3, giving at minimum double the amount of time of using Reddit as having left Reddit.
Given that it takes five years of residency to be ready to apply to become a US citizen, I'd say leaving for 2 or 3 years isn't enough to shed it. Certainly if one lived in the United States for 20 years, leaving for ten isn't enough to stop being American, you probably never quite stop being American at that point.
I'm curious what the linguistic or philosophical category is for a statement where I would say that someone can't claim something as a positive status, but can't argue against it as a negative status. Like if a teen boy has only received a handjob, one is probably precluded from claiming to be a virgin in the positive sense of being chaste, but probably can't brag to his buddies about having lost his virginity. Or a corporate lawyer who does some pro-bono work for woke causes; he can't claim the positive status of being in public interest because he's a corporate sellout, but neither can he avoid the negative accusation of working for the woke blob.
So the question is, is being a redditor (or an American) more like building a bridge, or fucking a goat?
More options
Context Copy link
It hasn’t been quite that long since I’ve deleted my account, only a few years, but I’d put the probability of me using Reddit again on any substantial level again around 5%. It would take a miracle to get me to use it again even on a weekly basis.
It’s joined a bunch of other sites in the dustbin of things I don’t use. Might as well be Friendster or Snapchat at this point.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I’m as much a redditor as I am a Digg user, or a 4chan User, or a SometingAwful user (goon), or a MySpace user, or a Facebook user.
Which is to say, not at all. I don’t use any of those things much at all anymore, even if I have a still active account.
You’re projecting since you’re still using Reddit. I probably spend less than an hour a month on Reddit, only reading it when shared in some other context on some other site. Or when I do a search and the other results are Reddit. Been that way for 3 years at this point.
It got boring. I appealed my ban in a sort of weary indifference, mostly out of curiosity. I knew it wouldn’t work, the site was too far gone and had been that way for years.
When I finally copped the ban I was using it maybe 2hrs a week when I was very bored, I simply didn’t enjoy it much anymore and most of the good communities had long ago gotten zapped by the eye of Sauron. I knew it was just a matter of time before there was literally nothing of value left so I pulled the plug early.
Just like Digg; not with a bang, but a whimper.
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