site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I read an article from Zerohedge recently that listed a bunch of conspiracy theories that will be proven true on 2023. After well every conspiracy theory last year seems to have been proven true. I can’t find the article right now. I read thru their list and thought all the conspiracies were dumb and basically every conspiracy theory that seemed to be likely true has already been proven true.

I have two questions?

  1. What conspiracy theories still exists that haven’t moved into the >50% now think is likely true.

  2. Presuppose theirs a potential snitch who has all the documents and proof to show the world that the conspiracy your running in fact does exists. Is there any reason to kill him or you should just let the culture war battle happen and not worry about going to jail etc.

Maybe my mind isn’t curious enough to see new conspiracies but it does feel like a lot of them were checkmarked true the last year.

I nominate these:

  1. Joe Biden is the Big Guy. I mean, everybody thinks that, but there's no proof. I expect it will show up eventually.

  2. There's something that covid vaccine does to athletic young males that makes it significantly riskier than presented (which was pretty much zero risk)

  3. Facebook and Google (YouTube) are as controlled by US government censors as Twitter was, and regularly and with minimal filtering execute governmental requests to suppress information and dissidents

  4. Ray Epps confirmed to have been working for US government

  5. We learn China has been lying about their covid stats and the real numbers of deaths are horrendous and all their zero-covid strategy was a colossal atrocity

  1. What does it mean “the Big Guy”?

  2. The data is already quite strong about this. It has already been a warning in vaccine information for more than a year. What we don't know, how much of a risk it is. Probably not that great in absolute numbers. However, the benefit from vaccine in young people is also not that great. We don't know if the benefits overweigh the risks.

  3. Very likely indeed.

  4. Who is Ray Epps?

  5. I don't think that China lying about covid matters. Nothing about covid really matters anymore. Most stats are only meant to scare people without true understanding how risks are/were age stratified. It took 3 years for European Medicines agency to finally say that covid risk increases exponentially by age even though we learned it within the first 2 weeks of pandemic.

What does it mean “the Big Guy”?

If you want to learn about American scandals, British tabloid gutter press is the way to go ;-)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11056505/Hunter-Biden-associate-referred-Big-Guy-SECOND-message.html

Who is Ray Epps?

Big Trump fan from Arizona, who traveled all the way to DC to meet his idol, and then, instead to listening to his speech, engaged in highly sus behavior.

Meet Ray Epps

Meet Ray Epps, Part 2

This means Epps came to the Trump speech early in the morning with the sole intention of recruiting a mob to follow on the heels of the Capitol breach team he would personally oversee while Trump was speaking—the very breach team we have covered in this report whose operators would remove the fencing, signage and barricades before the masses would arrive at the Capitol.

Let’s put this all in context:

Ray Epps flew 2,300 miles from Phoenix, Arizona to Washington, DC for a Trump rally, supposedly as a Trump supporter.

Epps arrived at the rally entrance more than two hours early, camped out to constantly shout recruiting instructions about coming to the Capitol after the speech, but then skipped out on the speech itself, because he was too busy personally orchestrating the Big Bang Breach Team that kicked off the riot and tore down the fencing, barricades and signage, which made rallygoers totally unaware of the legal booby trap they had walked into.