site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24827 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 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.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Damn that sucks. Does anybody know what caused him to go dark?

He had a meltie about being called out on the whole LibsofTiktok hoaxing thing.

If he had just did it for the lulz, he would have been forgiven, but he had pretensions on becoming a Serious Intellectual. The whole affair became his cross to bear and he kept on doubling down on how lying to people to make a political point was a Good Thing Actually until he flounced out of here.

Shitposter fails to launch to serious political influencer career, many such cases.

That was three years ago. The question was why he's temporarily gone quiet on Twitter, just when a lot of stuff that's right in his wheelhouse is happening.

He mentioned it here. Professional obligations of some sort. He'll be back in a few months.

That's a quite uncharitable account.

"Lying to people to make a political point is a Good Thing, Actually" is commonly argued by people who think the Sokal or Sokal Squared hoaxes are good things, of which I am one. My observation was that Trace's hoaxing of LibsOfTikTok was fair enough, though I didn't think it proved what he seemed to be claiming, but also that the overwhelmingly negative reaction he received was very clearly both tribal, unreasonable and unnecessary. And sure, he eventually flounced out of here. Most of us have or do sooner or later. I did, more or less, once upon a time, and the only reason I'm back is because I managed to throttle it down to about 2% of what I originally wanted to say. The Culture War poisons us all sooner or later.

He's got the Schism, and he's grinding away at the mainstream conversation, from what I've seen. I have profound disagreements with his values and views, but everything I've seen shows me he's attempting to act in good faith to this day.

the Sokal or Sokal Squared hoaxes are good things, of which I am one

It's one of those weird things about left vs right and the modern social media landscape, but I continue to think there's an important difference in showing that academic publishing is useless versus demonstrating the low (but not zero) standards of a Tiktok outrage-merchant.

also that the overwhelmingly negative reaction he received was very clearly both tribal, unreasonable and unnecessary

He took The Motte's offense particularly hard for obvious reasons, but the reaction of Blocked and Reported's subreddit was not much better from the "don't make yourself the story" angle and considerably less tribal IMO.

He learned an important lesson a hard way, and is at least as good faith as any other "personality" these days, and more so than many.

I did, more or less, once upon a time, and the only reason I'm back is because I managed to throttle it down to about 2% of what I originally wanted to say.

Like one point specifically? Or out of all of the things you want to say, you voice only 2%? I'd love to hear you elaborate - what are you filtering? Why? If you think it's going to get you banned I'd be happy to receive a bullet list in a DM, if you have enough spare time to type it out

To clarify, I flounced once, and was able to return because in the heat of the moment I managed to throttle down the message to 2% of what I wanted to say, and so did not completely burn my bridges here.

I do not generally want to say those things any more, and even in my worse moments I want to want to not say them.

I don't think it's uncharitable to characterize his actions as a emotional overreaction. If he didn't want to be known as the LibsofTiktok guy, he shouldn't have done it. Sokal himself is primarily known for his hoaxes rather than his academic work. What did he expect?

Is it fair that a singular act overshadows everything else he's done? No, of course not. But that's the impression he made on many of us. The moral of the story is that gay furries shouldn't throw stones from glass houses.

My issue with Trace is that he wants to be simultaneously a Serious Investigative Writer Thinker Guy and also a Sassy Bitch Merry Prankster. And that's fine, really, but he also refuses to offer that kind of consideration to others, and also freaks out whenever anyone doesn't offer friction-free clown-nose code switching to him.

Take away any one of those clauses and he's fine. But when you add them all together... bro, what are you even doing?

I, luckily, have no idea what your first sentence is talking about. Could you expand on this?

  1. Create an ultraprogressive story out of thin air (furry teachers spreading it to children, IIRC)
  2. Pitch the story to LibsOfTikTok as if it was a real example of leftwing overreach.
  3. Wait for the lie to be amplified and spread.
  4. Expose that LibsOfTikTok spread a lie, and therefore is not up to journalistic standards.
  5. Ignore the fact that they helped create that lie, but still claim journalistic standards.

My assessment was that all of this was fair game. LibsOfTikTok doesn't follow "journalistic standards", this is plainly true, why bother claiming otherwise?

In my view, the problem comes when we claim that LibsOfTikTok shouldn't be listened to. LoTT doesn't need journalistic standards, because all they're doing is posting up primary sources. This means you can get them to post fake things, but it doesn't mean that all or even most or even an appreciable fraction of what they post is fake. Likewise, it doesn't mean that those "journalistic standards" prevent much or even the overwhelming majority of what Real Journalists output from being fake by any reasonable definition of the term.

The proper response to Trace's prank was to grab ten or twenty top-engagement stories from LoTT per week, week after week, and just check them off; this one's real, this one too, and this one, and so on, and note how even if they are operating through pure partisanship, and even if their standards of evidence are low, their approach to journalism requires so little trust from the audience that they are still highly effective and probably less deceptive than the NYT.

I'm with you. Sometimes people might just be actively working to corrupt your data, and the ease and proportion of fraudsters matters. It took a lot of effort to create the hoax, and I suspect that a large fraction of her source material is genuine and mostly-accurate (accounting for sensationalism). Given that she wasn't looking for super-rare niche events, that suggests that most of her stories were true.

If they wanted to show she was spreading fake news, then it would have been much more effective if they found organic false stories instead. Heck, it would've been much more effective (but very dishonest) if they didn't advertise how much work it took to create one fake story.

It's a shame how all the really interesting SSCs are from more than a decade ago.

I think the priesthood article was as good as the golden era ones.

It was alright but not even top twenty.

You can read the article that was the cause of all this drama (that TW wrote) here. Then you should really read the comments! I think that he also cross-posted it to the Motte-on-Reddit at the time, which caused a stir.

Re-reading that, it really does reflect badly on Trace. A bunch of people did everything they could to make this fake story as realistic and convicting as possible; then when LoTT did try some fact-checking they made up more plausible explanations as to why they couldn't give exact details.

Having lied as hard as possible, Trace then piously lectured about not fact-checking, conveniently forgetting he had worked to subvert the fact-checking they did. Yeah, sure: "on the face of it, it was dumb; nobody could possibly believe this if you know anything about furry sub-culture". But if you don't know and you're hearing true stories of equally crazy shit happening, how do you mystically intuit "ah yes, this tale must be fake but this one about 'let's change language to chest-feeding and inseminated person' is true"?

But note thats not the "going dark" being talked about here. He shuttered his blog and twitter just this month for 9 months due to an unspecified "professional obligation".

Thats quite separate from his flame out from here some time ago. Different events.

@Stellula

Ah, oops! My bad.

I'm a follower on his page. Apparently he is having a lower profile due to career/school stuff for a while.

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