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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6383 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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It is like they are trying to somehow say "white dudes" with a Hard-R if you know what I mean. On paper it sounds neutral, but they way they say it...

I don't see it as directly insulting as the hard R so much as...patronizing? Juvenile?

It's just a weird way for supposedly adult political consultants to talk consistently about a group they need to pander to. Trying to think of a parallel and blanking.

Seems more like a soft R? Or no R. It's patronizing and disconnected but still offensive in a similar way that going up to a bunch of black guys and calling them "my nigga". Because that's what they call each other, right? Right? Probably maybe? Vote for me my niggas!

I'd say it's sort of like the way women sometimes talk to their friends. Talking about their "girlfriends," "gal pals," and "hey it's your girl x here..." It's fine when they do it between friends, it shows intimacy and comfort. But it's considered impolite when an adult man talks to them like "hello girl," or calls them his girlfriend when they're just a regular friend. It shows too much intimacy.

Modern American English tends to be pretty casual, we don't have like a formal "you" the way some foreign languages do. And we tend to call everyone by their first name with not title. But when random news media or campaign strategists start calling me "dude" it feels like going a little too casual, it makes me want to push back and be like "um you don't know me well enough to call me that."

This feels like the right take. "How do you do, fellow kids white dudes?"

For all the talk about "permission structures" as a joke, I think the Democrats lack such a permission structure among themselves to talk to men, especially white men, qua men. The idea of such an affinity group seems anathema to them --- although to be honest I have no desire to join such a group, and they're not completely wrong that such affinity groups have done, uh, some bad stuff in the last couple centuries. "White dudes" seems about the least threatening way to identify them, but nobody asked how they feel about the label.

It might be easier to turn down the volume of the affinity group messaging altogether, rather than grapple about how to accept perceived "majority" affinity groups, but that would be a pretty big course change for the party. But I'll note this plan also flatters my personal "post-racial society" sensibilities from growing up in the 80s and 90s. Ultimately it feels like they've put a lot of effort into advertising what they aren't, but that's a set they seem to think includes me.

It's less that I think "White Dudes" or variations there-of are in any way equivalent to dropping a hard-R gamer word. It's more, I sometimes can't believe the amount of hate and vitriol leftist are able to pour into their enunciation of that word. On paper you'd never imagine it's possible.

I'm reminded of a joke from 30 Rock like 15 years ago - so at the beginning of the recent "awokening," or possibly before it - where one of the writers is forced to go to sensitivity training. The instructor asks about offensive terms you can use to call minorities, and he responds by saying, "PERSON of COLOR," putting emphasis on the all-capped words, and the instructor says, "Well, if you say it like that, sure," or something like that. This was around the time when "POC" was becoming more and more mainstream as a generic term to refer to "people of races we've deemed as oppressed," and one could probably describe the way he said it as "Saying 'person of color' with a Hard R."

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