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 -
Even granting everything in the story as true, I don't really get the outrage from either side.
Was she a rape victim? No, she clearly was into it and egged on his advances without thinking about the consequences, and then she lacked the courage to tell him she wasn't interested so she let the sex happen by lying about her feelings.
Was he treated poorly? No, he had a chance and blew it by being out-of-shape and awkward.
The only part of the story that didn't work for me were the last lines. "Are you? Are you? Whore." just seems unrealistic. That kind of guy would say something more subtle and passive aggressive, "Guess I should've known when you told me you weren't a virgin. Guess I was wrong about you. Enjoy fooling around in college, I guess." or something like that. Less raging misogynist and more seething "nice guy."
Anyway, I'm also not impressed by these new revelations. Nobody would know that this story was about this dude if Alexis hadn't said anything. It seems anonymous enough and the story consists of so much internal dialog that unless you were a close friend if either the guy or girl and had heard this story from them, how could you possibly know it was about them?
And it's a silly piece of fiction that was written years ago. Are we meant to believe that this guy killed himself because of the story?
From what she wrote, it sounded like everyone who knew them knew that it was about them. It's a small town and there were lots of identical details. Bad enough for her, to have her private life suddenly exposed to the world. Probably much worse for this guy who is now being portrayed as something damn close to a rapist to anyone who knows him in real life. It seems to me to meet the legal definition of libel. I don't know enough to say he killed himself because of the backlash but... it sure sounds like it played a part.
It's never been easier to move to another town, lose weight, read some PUA books or whatever, and get your shit together. I don't know what was going on in that guy's life, so I'm not trying to speak ill of the dead, maybe he was wrestling with other demons, and if so I might have more sympathy. But I also think the suggestion that this mean article was so awful that he killed himself is, as we used to say long ago in the 90s, really gay. Nobody makes you do anything. Did literally every single woman in the town know about this dumb story? Did literally every single woman care? Would anyone still have cared 5 years from now? Would anyone have cared 5 miles outside Podunkville city limits? I guess this comes across as mean, but external locus of control males just turn my stomach. I mean imagine being rejected by some literally who college girl because she thinks you're a "loser," and then going ahead and proving her right for all eternity be necking yourself. Just fucking embarrassing. The best revenge is a life well lived.
This is an incredibly callous response. Maybe you really are a Tleilaxu Ghola.
People kill themselves for all kinds of reasons, many of them wildly insufficient, and nearly all of them inconsistent. There are virtually no life events that consistently lead to suicide, in the sense that there are more people who have the same experience and don't kill themselves, from even the most traumatic events. Most suicides are for much less.
When we attribute one person's suicide to another, we are engaging in an extreme form of eggshell plaintiff.
What do you think the suicide rate is among the subjects of viral MFA-type short stories?
It's less that I disagree with the premise, more that the way he said it was over the top and cruel about a subject I find distasteful to be so flippant with.
Is your distaste rooted in some actual lived experience with suicide, or is it based on some abstract sympathy for suicides as an abstract, theoretical class of people? If it's not the former, I would recommend thinking twice about casting judgement on how others react to it.
Flippant is defined as "not showing a serious or respectful attitude." I assure you that I was quite serious about what I said. I was not mocking his death, I was saying that it was a pity, a shame, a sad and grave mistake, completely and utterly unnecessary (assuming the article caused it). And I afford suicides the respect they are due, which outside of extreme circumstances, is IMHO not very much, as it is often a quite self-absorbed act.
If you disagree, I'd be interested in hearing why. I don't claim to be the sole authority on the subject, I'm on The Motte to have my opinions challenged after all.
Not Thomas, but I felt your post was callous and flippant, and this is because I regard suicidal impulses as a mental illness, not an action which it is worth criticizing at the level of rational debate. It's a "stop hitting yourself!"-level error - suicidality is an altered state of consciousness, and suicide survivors coming out of it very often testify that they're immediately aghast at what they experienced. ("What was I thinking?") You may as well tell a schizophrenic that hearing voices is irrational, or a junkie that whatever he ingested he should just stop tripping, as a pure exercise of will, because rationally, he knows fnords don't exist.
Eh, sometimes. My most recent suicide attempt was pure* "bad intel"; I remained suicidal until sufficiently-convinced that I'd been wrong about the legal practicalities (for like a decade; it just hadn't become relevant until then), and then immediately stopped. One of the others was closer.
*Unless you count "high scrupulosity" as a mental illness, which I would object to on moral grounds.
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