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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Previously I've written about how Musk can Make Twitter Great Again with Celebs&Sports.

But now let me discuss how Musk can use twitter to subvert the regime without even trying: just allow people to have a clear and unfiltered look at the world.

As an example of this, consider the most recent viral content on twitter - more popular than an NBA game happening simultaneously - #wafflehousefight.

As the mainstream media might describe it, "some drunken revelers at a Waffle House in Austin, TX engaged in an altercation with Waffle House employees." At least that's what they might write if they covered it, but only yahoo and foxnews have bothered to actually cover it. And of course the reason is clear: the story is a group of morbidly obese angry black women assaulting a pretty-ish blonde (and clearly red tribe working class) waffle house employee after demanding the "white girl" make them waffles while they sat in a closed off area. The blonde white woman is clearly the hero of the engagement. It's a clear glimpse of what the mainstream media + tech companies normally try to hide: a disproportionate amount of crime is just black people getting angry and doing dumb stuff.

Quite a lot of tech and media tries to cover things like this up. Reddit has banned factual subreddits like /r/hatecrimehoaxes, /r/greatapes (black people doing crimes) and similar. The mainstream media similarly downplays stories such as black nationalist terrorists shooting up subways, as well as using tactics like not including the attackers photo.

Numbers, for anyone curious. Newspaper have also stopped publishing mugshot galleries to prevent people from noticing.

When the entire network works together to suppress facts, they generally succeed. But twitter can change that.

Twitter is popular because of celebrities and sports, and the content most people consume there will continue to be 90%+ celebrities and sports. But with stories like #wafflehousefight, Musk has an opportunity to give people a glimpse of what is being hidden from them. People may begin to realize that their eyes aren't lying, it's merely a set of elites who are gaslighting them.

Reddit has banned factual subreddits like

There are facts, and then there are facts.

I think very few people in this space is ignorant of the disproportionate share of American violent crime committed by young, male descendants of American slavery. Probably few readers here are ignorant of the disproportionate share of American violent crime perpetrated against young, male descendants of American slavery. And I would even go so far as to suggest that a large majority of people reading your comment are aware that news media "thumbs the scales," so to speak, in favor of hyping up white-on-black crime while papering over the reverse.

The question is, have you written this post in such a way as to grasp these facts with maximum light and minimum heat?

I think, ultimately, no. You've drawn two reports for consensus building and culture warring, and one for AAQC. This is not actually a quality contribution; while it is "edge space" this is actually a comment that has earned you a warning. Your ostensible thesis--"Twitter can expose how the media tries to manipulate you"--is fine. The argument and evidence you bring, however, looks like you were using Twitter discussion as a pretext for a link-dump on how terrible your outgroup is.

The topic is extremely inflammatory, as I suspect you know. So while I appreciate such effort as you did put in to at least include links and examples, ultimately you fell short of the called-for threshold, in part for want of charity and steel-manning.

What would have been necessary to reach this threshold on the specific topic I chose, according to you?

Assuming the topic you mean is "Twitter can expose how the media tries to manipulate you," you could have simply chosen less inflammatory examples of how the media tries to manipulate you--or even used a wide variety of examples so as to not come off as harping on your bête noire. In general, writing with great evidence, clarity, and charity is very likely to get you to a much less accusatory (or race-baiting) place.