site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 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.

While linked article is blatantly right-wing, yes even the left admits left-wing violence now is more common than right wing violence.

The left tried cancel culture and that stopped working after a while and now are up in arms that the right can cancel better than the left, so now they are resorting to out and out violence. Hopefully we won’t hit the point where the right demonstrates they can do violence better than the left.

Things are getting ugly in the US. I, for one, am glad I left.

The Atlantic is establishment as establishment gets, they don’t want revolutionary leftists(thé kind that shoot people) in power any more than they want thé handmaid’s tale.

the right can cancel better than the left

Funny, the rest of this thread is insisting that the left still holds all the cards when it comes to cultural power. Where’d you get this idea?

A lot of people were cancelled for celebrating Kirk’s death.

And you’re blaming that for a rash of violence dating back to July, if not last year?

I mean, I guess I think the trend is overstated, too. But it is obviously not due to cancellation.

Where was I “blaming that for a rash of violence dating back to July, if not last year”? Please re-read what I wrote.

The wording was sloppy, because I had two clauses, but the entire American Eagle “Good Jeans” incident showed the left that cancel culture techniques just weren’t working any more, and it was around that time the left started to become really violent.

Another example of right wing cancel culture from earlier this year is how 4chan hacked that Tea app then mocked the pictures of women using that app.