site banner
PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   26056 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 25, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The plot continues to thicken.

Yesterday, 480K-follower account Aesthetica claimed to have gotten in touch with the mother of a friend of the two girls in the video, who was with them at the time. Her message:

"Yes. So what happened was the girls where out just walking and the man in the picture made comments to lola(the younger girl) calling her sexy and other sexual remarks then the girls started to tell this man to leave them alone and stop following them and making sexual remarks to them. After that the man's sister (also in the picture) came around the corner and physically attacked ruby(the older sister) she grabbed her hair dragged her to the floor started to punch her then both the man and woman where kicking her in head while she was on the floor. At this point my daughter (mayah) called the police so my daughters account after that is all abit blurry. But that is when lola had the weapons she pulled them out to protect ruby. After that the man came back at lola recording her making sure she showed the weapons to the camera and antagonising her. Ruby was hospitalised after the attack with a severe concussion a tennis ball sized lump to the back of her head aswell as lots of bruises."

Aesthetica also set up a GiveSendGo whose funds are to be received by one "Elaine Thomson". GiveSendGo has allegedly verified the details.

Is this believable? On the one hand, 480K followers is a lot. I'm not familiar with the account, but I doubt it would have gotten so big if it had a history of such brazen fraud as this would be if proven false. Such a track record would at least make that follower count less likely. Of the many replies asking for evidence or accusing him of scamming, I haven't seen any pointing to a past instance of grift. On the other hand, my googling hasn't turned up any connection between Elaine Thomson and Mayah, and no other reporting has disclosed the names of the other two girls.

Or, not in connection with this case. Two girls named Lola and Ruby were reported missing in July. Moreover, the description of the clothes Lola was last seen wearing -- "a blue Nike t-shirt and light blue jeans with tears on the knees" -- precisely matches what was seen in the video. That can't be a coincidence.

So how did Aesthetica know their names? Two possibilities that I can see: either he's telling the truth, or he was somehow made aware of a news story about missing girls with matching physical descriptions, connected the dots, hopped right on fabricating the mother's message -- using the girls' real names to make it believable (but shrewdly waiting for other accounts to provide "confirmation" in the form of the news story where he found them) -- sprinkled in some falsifiable info like Ruby's hospitalization for no apparent reason, and got GiveSendGo to go along with it. I think it's more likely that he's telling the truth. (Which is of course a separate question from whether the mother is telling, or knows, the whole truth.)

(Edit: I searched "lola dundee" on X and found one account, a right-wing-coded account with 139 followers, that made the connection before Aesthetica's post. That does make the fraud story somewhat more plausible.)

I don't want to speculate too much on what it means that the girls had been missing for weeks. "They're feral children" and "they were abducted/being groomed" can handle that datapoint about equally well. One thing that puzzles me is why the woman Aesthetica corresponded with didn't mention that the girls had been missing.

Let's consider the other side of the Bayesian story. In an earlier comment I posted that one gypsy grooming gang had been caught in Dundee within the last few years. Zoomer Historian on X has pointed to two more stories involving gypsy grooming gangs operating in Dundee, raping girls and coercing them into prostitution. As for Ali Dumana himself? If this screencap is to be believed, he has bragged on social media about bringing in the "UK [cat emoji] money".

So we have:

  • A video of a gypsy, a (taking your word for it) tiny minority group in northern Scotland, accosting a pair of underage girls, one of whom says something like "Get away from my sister",
  • In a city where gypsies are known to have been running grooming gangs,
  • With a hard-to-fake, probably authentic (from Aesthetica's perspective) story from their friend's mother explaining that the girls had been defending themselves against sexual predation,
  • And the man himself dropping thinly veiled hints about pimping on social media (again, assuming the screenshot wasn't faked).

Against this we have:

  • A BBC report with an easily backtracked statement that there is "no evidence" the girls were at risk of sexual assault,
  • A police report warning against "misinformation", without specifying what exact rumors have been misleading,
  • Prejudice against Scottish LHC, from the "informed" perspective of a foreigner who lived within a few hundred miles of the area for a year or two.

Others have stressed the BBC and the authorities' dismal track record on stories like this. I'm with them that these mealy-mouthed official statements provide almost no evidence one way or the other. When migrants harm or predate on sympathetic white victims, they obfuscate it. Even when it's inevitable that the full story will eventually see the light of day, they slow-walk it in the hope that the furor will have died down by the time that happens. They did it for years with the grooming gangs in England, they did it with Southport, and I see no reason to believe they wouldn't do it again here. Dumana might still turn out to be wholly innocent (and not an NGO plant as @ArjinFerman speculates) -- though I doubt it -- but even if so, this level of smug condescension towards anyone not willing to take the BBC's word for it is completely unwarranted.

Wait, wtf? Their names were Lola and Ruby? Is this a simulation? Why not just go all out and name her Lolita, geez... (sorry if this is an inappropriate joke. I just feel like it adds to the strangeness of the situation)

If the narrative on this event flips one more time I'm calling the Architect and telling him I want a new Matrix.

I've seen the story make it's way through the feeds. I'm reluctant to believe because of how easy it is to prove/disprove for any "field correspondent" and how much egg on face it would be for thrainstream. Not that it hasn't happened before, I suppose.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats