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 -
Because, as bad as that is, we have not seen a closeup video of those people being shot to death, and that means something. That Senator's death could have been gruesome. Being shot to death in your own home is a gruesome enough picture, and it carries weight, but it simply does not have anywhere near the same impact that the imagery today had.
You are not the arbiter of moral high grounds. Even if you were it will fall on deaf ears.
I don't know who the shooter was, or what their motivations were. There's a chance it's another mentally ill person who has no real political affiliations. Maybe it's a far right winger with accelerationist goals. Maybe they had personal beef with Kirk.
None of that changes the sheer giddiness and overt schadenfreude of the anonymous leftist redditor or tiktok'er, or the careful framing our left leaning mainstream outlets will use to report and cover this story. That, while not as disturbing as the violence, will have a larger impact on broader non-left society and discourse down the road. It's been like this for over a decade. People are tired of it and they were looking for a reason to get pissed because they were already pissed off to begin with.
Try being on Tumblr right now.
Yeah, saw several Tumblr reactions today, and while it is perfectly predictable, I'm saddened how many people are celebrating political violence against a non-politician on there. There's a lot of people who don't have any sense of decorum, or respect for people with opposing viewpoints.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes. Browsing Reddit today has been eye opening, if not entirely surprising. The open glee upvoted across every subreddit is only really comparable to the Mangione murder. At this point it hardly matters to me who actually did the shooting
Reddit is not representative of the left as a whole, just like X and 4chan are not representative of the right as a whole. All these sites heavily over-represent highly online, highly ideological people.
According to this, an actual majority of Americans (57%) are on Reddit. X is half that, and 4chan is 1/20th.
Given that Reddit is A) left of center, and B) bigger than the entire left wing of the country, are you sure that Reddit isn't representative of the Left?
Very impressive numbers, much more than I expected.
I assume 95% are lurkers which I think is the normal ratio. That gives you 5% of 60% as regularly posting redditors, about 3% of America.
Which broadly passes my sniff test but may not do so for others.
More options
Context Copy link
Not sure, but pretty convinced of it, since a large majority of leftists I've met in person have not been like Redditors. Granted, that's just another kind of bias, and some might say "well they were just hiding it around you". Maybe, but by the same token I could say that for some people their Reddit use is just them blowing off steam and it's not really representative of their entire personality. It's hard to say.
I dunno about that. I think the mental frictional cost of using social media purely off the popular page is so high that you either get off the site entirely or create an account to curate out trash. Anyone who uses reddit but doesnt actually see a problem with /r/politics or /r/pics slop is someone to be wary of for either being uncritical of the opinions presented or too dim to be aware that he is being propagandized.
More options
Context Copy link
See section III of I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup:
It's not necessarily that they're hiding it around you. It could be that you aren't dealing with the full range of leftists.
You're kind of damning them with faint praise there.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
How do we know this? I'm skeptical about taking your word for it.
More options
Context Copy link
Reddit is a mainstream, corporate-owned forum. They purged all sorts of subfora and people on the grounds of how offensive they were, how advertisers might pull out, etc. etc. They don't get to pull the "teehee, we're just a bunch of shitposters" card now.
I thought only chapotraphouse on the left got purged. Everything else that was axed were either unmoderated dead subreddits or narrative breakers like /r/gendercritical or hell this very subreddit /r/themotte.
I mean, technically Reddit didn't axe /r/themotte, only siteban some of the witches and threaten to axe the subreddit if Zorba didn't start cracking down on witchcraft. But that's splitting hairs.
They couldn't fire us, we quit!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Bro, I'm pumped you got to use this word in a sentence.
I'm... happy I could make your day. I suppose it is important to enjoy the small pleasures.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is national polling representative of the left as a whole?
Probably, although I'd be curious to see the exact questions asked in the poll and to compare the data against what right-of-center people would say about the justifiability of killing equally divisive left-wing figures. Here's some information: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/04/lets-kill-the-republicans.php.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
One thought experiment I had was to read the to reddit Mangione (who in my opinion while crazy probably deserves to be executed for his lack of remorse) comments/apologetics and imagine if they were instead written about the Minnesota killings. It was really quite sickening. I really think Reddit allowing those comments and that response for essentially a vigilante lynching, is opening the overton window for copycat behavior of all stripes.
Hard to imagine a Left-wing figure getting shot with this sort of reaction from the Right. There's just not anybody as strongly divisive enough, and being Left Wing is kind of 'inherently sympathetic' in the sense that you may not agree with them, but also it's hard to hate most Left-wing figures since it's a position originating from an excess of empathy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link