site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29677 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 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.

9
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The Democrats lost young men to the party of, “hold still for your mugshot before you watch Riley Reid take her clothes off.”

Defending porn would actually be a good issue for Democrats to take up if they had any hope to be credible about it. The problem is that there's too much history of feminists attacking porn (don't bring up sex positive feminists, the difference between them is that sex negatives are against making porn and sex positives are against men watching porn), too much history (10 years plus) of left wingers agitating against busty women in videogames and too much history of democrats loving heavy handed content moderation.

Pornhub lost mastercard and visa in 2020 due to an article written by a journalist who wanted to use that as a springboard for his gubernatorial run, as a democrat.

I have seen a few ads out there recently that are clearly right-coded and anti-porn, usually treating it as a personal failing (addiction). I don't think there are that many "porn is a great thing, actually" advocates out there, and most that exist are probably left-of-center by a decent margin.

I could see the median male voter being both a consumer of the, uh, content, but also thinking it should be less accessible. Not high confidence in that, though.

I don't think there are that many "porn is a great thing, actually" advocates out there, and most that exist are probably left-of-center by a decent margin.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

There's something special about using a phrase coined for people who are never nude to describe porn advocates.

Yep. I was gonna go with one of the casual exhibitionists to really nail down (hurr hurr) the disjunction, but most of them are either relatively apolitical or overtly lefties.

I don't think there are that many "porn is a great thing, actually" advocates out there, and most that exist are probably left-of-center by a decent margin.

Yes, but if the Democrats wantes to capitalize on porn, that would be the position they would have to take. 'We know you're pigs, we want to let you' as summarized by hydroacetylene loses even to 'That stuff is disgusting and we're going to make you stop'

I would prefer there to be less goonslop in mainstream purely based on aesthetics. It's like the reverse of the "characters must be shapeless agender blobs" trend, and the reverse of the bad thing is not always the good thing.

No, Hestia does not have to be a generic big titty asian girl.

Yeah, but I would rather her be that than the other alternative.

Disagreed. Not every character has to be eye candy. Or white.

  • -10

They do if you want to make money.

If you believe whites have all the money and you believe Representation Matters, then naturally if you want to make money they need to be eye candy and white.

I don't believe representation matters, personally, but hey, given how much people seem to care about it then that's the argument. And people like eye candy more than eye ugly.

"Not every room in my house needs to be aesthetically pleasing! Where's the variety? Where's the tension? If every room in my house is painted pleasant colours, I will take aesthetic pleasure for granted and I won't appreciate those rooms as much! That's why I painted my living room traffic cone orange with bright pink molding."

Also I don't know why you would assume a Japanese production with Japanese artists working in a Japanese style would make a white character, but they didn't. She's mukokuseki.

Edit: lol that was you calling her a big tiddy Asian girl, so I think even you know you're being reductive.

"Not every room in my house needs to be aesthetically pleasing! Where's the variety? Where's the tension? If every room in my house is painted pleasant colours, I will take aesthetic pleasure for granted and I won't appreciate those rooms as much! That's why I painted my living room traffic cone orange with bright pink molding."

The thing that strikes me about your friend’s building — if I understood you correctly — is that somehow in some intentional way it is not harmonious. That is, Moneo intentionally wants to produce an effect of disharmony. Maybe even of incongruity. I find that incomprehensible. I find it very irresponsible. I find it nutty. I feel sorry for the man. I also feel incredibly angry because he is fucking up the world.

God damn, that was a great read. And Eisenman made some good arguments - I wish the current proponents of his cosmology argued so well. It is depressing to realise that Alexander, despite by the sounds of it representing the majority opinion, essentially lost, though.

There's a difference between being aesthetically pleasing and everything made out of diamond blocks or the equivalent. There is nuance between making everyone the same hot woman with minor variations and making everyone blobs. For the record, I think Hades II achieves that nuance decently.

Hyperpalatable aesthetics is the mcdonalds of art. I like some mcdonalds every once in a while, I don't want to eat it all the time. And not just because it's unhealthy.

mukokuseki

TIL the word for "basically white, or close enough that dark skin-fearing consumers won't raise a fuss".

That's a pretty good argument, but I can't shake the feeling that there is something deeper to your complaint. There is an undercurrent of resentment to your position that twists the perspective you are arguing, not necessarily in your case, although that isn't to rule it out. In particular -

TIL the word for "basically white, or close enough that dark skin-fearing consumers won't raise a fuss".

Is an ironic inversion of the argument against mukokuseki in the early days of the idpol ascension, which was that mukokuseki was the word for 'Japanese but not so Japanese it upsets white people.' Either way it's white supremacy?

Maybe in the early days of idpol the white skin enjoyers were against Japanese but now it looks as if it got a big injection of "le based feminine Asian waifu" people. Either way, it's going to be the kind of people who complain that, checks list, Ghost of Yotei's protagonist does not look like a jade beauty, or Aphrodite's cheekbones too sharp 3/10, and I think that kind of grievance is retarded and annoying, and the grievance of those who want token rep of every ethnicity, gender and disability under the sun is also retarded and annoying.

Just make characters with character. Supergiants' Hestia has character, Asian Hestia doesn't, at a glance.

More comments

It means 'stateless', i.e. not drawn to have a specific ethnicity.

One reason that Japanese stuff is so popular at the moment is that it's almost completely separate from American politics. The Japanese aren't just not woke, they aren't not-woke. They just draw girls like that because they think it's cute.

It is a perfectly reasonable observation to make that the features the Japanese (really, almost everyone) generally regard as "cute" have little in common with darker-skinned phenotypes. Darker-skinned populations have Noticed this for a long time, alongside related phenomena concerning group status, and take quite major offense to it. Despite the promise of equality given by the dismantling of explicitly discriminatory systems, these humiliating phenomena remain. Hence, it is not enough to be merely not-racist; one must be actively anti-racist.

I think you're blundering straight into the greatest problem with anti-porn sentiment (though this is probably more of a problem with anti-porn sentiment from the left than anti-porn sentiment from the right): its bleedover into censorship of non-porn. Non-porn has a much harder time adapting to the conditions of porn censorship than porn does.

No, Hestia does not have to be a generic big titty asian girl.

Agreed. Small tits are underrated!

Hestia does not have to be a generic big titty asian girl.

But it's so nice that she is ;-)

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