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 -
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.
I, luckily, have no idea what your first sentence is talking about. Could you expand on this?
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link