site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I once said, here or at the old place, that if legit cyborg waifus become a thing I’m moving myself and my family to a compound in Utah to join the Mormon mujahideen that will no doubt inevitably develop.

Unfortunately, I meant it. Timeline seems to be moving up, better start making some concrete plans.

Just have the robot waifu be able to bear children. Then we wouldn't need ELON money to have 30 children. If anything, this might actually fix the demographic collapse

I think it's more the raising of children that's the bottleneck at the moment.

I saw a post on X saying there’s a subgroup of elder right wing millennials raising children as unreliant on digital consumer tech as possible with the implicit goal of preparing them for Butlerian Jihad.

“Well of course I know him. He’s me.”

I laughed aloud when I saw that, I hadn’t thought of it exactly that way but I instantly recognized it as right. As far as I know from my peer group growing up I’m only one of 15% of them that currently has multiple children, and of that 15% I’m clearly in the top 5% or so of how anti-tech I am and I’m obviously the most right wing.

My children don’t have tablets, or smartphones, tv time is very limited and monitored with an eye towards classic movies and long form YouTube content that’s purposely less bombastic. The only time they play video games is when we are all together and we play couch party games, and we have one laptop that is mostly used for my work. There’s no unsupervised internet access whatsoever. My eldest just got a basic music play that they have their own restricted Spotify account on.

They mostly draw and read from a big library, play imagination games and build things. We hike regularly, and spend lots of time outdoors in rivers and mountains and the beach.

It’s not necessarily a reactionary thing; really for me the goal is helping prepare them for an increasingly hostile environment by helping them learn to love being human, love their bodies, tolerate boredom, generate their own fun, act without being prompted, etc, etc, etc. they’ll need it.

I saw a post on X saying there’s a subgroup of elder right wing millennials raising children as unreliant on digital consumer tech as possible with the implicit goal of preparing them for Butlerian Jihad.

Curiously, the elder millennial couple I know most committed to this are both rather woke lefties, but to the outside observer, they probably appear small-c conservative (or perhaps traditional). They seem to have arrived at their child-raising style via old lefty suspicion of capitalism and 90's-style leftist anti-vaxer/homeopathy-type health beliefs. Horseshoe theory strikes again.

While I don’t doubt your take on your friends is correct, there’s a much misunderstood rise of the “right wing hippie” over the last ten years.

The biggest crunchy hippie I know, who’s a huge enthusiast of yoga and has been on the wellness & spirituality kick as long as I’ve known her, is pregnant with her third child in three years, raises chickens in her rural town that she escaped to during covid, and owns several firearms. She 100% voted for Trump and loathes democrats and you’d likely never suspect a thing if you met her.

Same with me; I assume most people just assume I’m a grown up ex-hipster elder millennial who loves slamming craft brews and is somewhat Reddit-coded (barf).

But I am straight up to the right of Franco, 100% Bukele-pilled gringo.

A lot of people got very good at hiding their power level. Basically no one outside my closest friends know anything in detail about my personal & political beliefs, hiding them became second nature during the great awokening.

Almost every person in my wider social circle would be absolutely scandalized if they knew what I believed in. People just assume because I’m smart, courteous and well spoke and I keep my cards close to my best that I agree with them.

While I don’t doubt your take on your friends is correct

Believe me, based on some conversations I've had to sit through, they are True Believers. And probably example #1 of Henderson's luxury beliefs theory. They are vocally (strongly, and often) in favor of all kinds of lefty positions that are destructive to society, and they follow none of them. Aside from not attending church, one would be hard-pressed to identify a traditional belief they don't obey.

Otherwise, I agree with you fully because I've followed the same pattern.

People just assume because I’m smart, courteous and well spoke and I keep my cards close to my best that I agree with them.

These days, this provides less coverage than you might think. I do the same, but my nigh-absolute refusal to engage in culture war politics has led some friends and family to (correctly) conclude I'm to the right of Attila the Hun. As the sage said, one must be very right wing to not discuss politics.

I think your instinct is correct in general with regards to how much the game is up in terms of being able to “hide your power level”, I’m just an extreme outlier living in an extreme outlier environment.

I have a very social job that requires me to be everyone’s buddy and have an “always on” personality. Disagreements, even polite ones, are not tolerated and heavily punished.

The area I live in is not only deep blue like the Pacific Ocean, it’s extremely isolated from trends that are obvious to outsiders.

I live in the DMV area and close enough to the dark heart of the stay-behind operation of Obama’s America that I’m dealing everyday with maximum ideologically motivated reasoning. I call it the “Iron Bubble”, people are extremely out of touch and in denial with what’s been shifting underneath their feet in the culture at large. Ironically, it’s very “Hitler & his closest associates in the Bunker” vibe, or reminiscent of “Baghdad Bob”.

It’s not surprising, there’s real money and power at stake here with the fall of the old order. Things like DOGE & the fall of DEI broadly have extreme direct consequences to these people. I’d love nothing more than to loosen up and be sincere as is my nature, but it’s like being in a squad of Japanese soldiers who are holed up in an island and don’t know the war is over.

a very social job that requires me to be everyone’s buddy and have an “always on” personality

Please elaborate.

More comments