site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   16843 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

All-time win for David Zaslav. Sold the company at triple the market’s valuation a few months ago. Saddle the cable TV assets with impossible debt, spin them out for almost nothing, ride off into the sunset. Even Patrick Drahi would struggle to be this smart.

Will AI replace all human-created media? I doubt it. I think there will still be a market for camera-filmed media, albeit a smaller one. People watch thousands of hours really bad reality TV where the sole attraction is that it’s real people involved, for example. Maybe movies will die out and it’ll just be the stage left, or hobbyists. Either way, this would have been a bad deal even without generative AI, and it’s an especially bad one with it.

Some funny comments about a Warner buyout spelling the end of a big tech bubble for the second time, too.

Saddle the cable TV assets with impossible debt, spin them out for almost nothing, ride off into the sunset.

I know I could just go ask ChatGPT or something, but does anyone want to throw out even just a few sentences on how this is legal? What measures prevent every company from just pinning their debts on spinoffs meant to die, and why did those measures fail here?

Creditors did approve over the summer, as (of course) they have to.

Why did they approve? The debt was junk rated, with a negative outlook, trading well below par. Absent a spinoff there would have been further painful restructuring anyway. Some (about 25%) would end up with the profitable streaming business now being acquired by Netflix. And, most importantly, WBD agreed as part of the plan to a major debt buyback plan that made creditors happy.

In the end, approving was the least bad option for them.

Banks have to agree (generally for some inducement). You can’t just put all of your debt in a legal entity and spin it out thereby eliminating your debt. Banks aren’t stupid. Likewise you can’t strip assets out of the banking group without consent (again banks aren’t stupid).

The other poster is making a value judgement that the banks are making a bad deal. The banks don’t share the pessimism. We will see who is right.

The official SEC filing says:

Prior to the consummation of the Merger [with Netflix], WBD [Warner Bros. Discovery] and a newly formed subsidiary of WBD (“SpinCo”) will enter into a Separation and Distribution Agreement (the “Separation and Distribution Agreement”), pursuant to which WBD will, among other things, engage in an internal reorganization, including the Holdco Merger, whereby it will transfer to SpinCo its Global Linear Networks business and certain other assets, and SpinCo will assume from WBD certain liabilities associated with such business (the “Separation”). WBD will retain the Retained Business, and all other assets and liabilities not transferred to SpinCo, including WBD’s Streaming & Studios businesses.

Presumably, the devil is in the details of "associated with such business".

I do wonder how AI will affect these types of things. AI has been better at chess than humans for quite some time, but still people care much more about human chess than matches between different chess engines. I'm not predicting it will turn out this way everywhere, but I can imagine a world in which a similar dynamic happens in a lot of creative media where people really do prefer it to be more human. For me personally simply the knowledge that something is AI generated will cause something to feel less meaningful. But I suppose my media consumption is rather far removed from the median to begin with, so my feelings on the matter might very well not be representative of wider trends.

Isn't that tied to the AI content just being bad? The issue I'm having is much like with JJ's mysterybox style story telling, there is no point, it's just narratively stringing people along. It works for a while but then people get pissed.

If there was a point and it wasn't completely inane then I'd wager almost no-one would care about whether something was AI made or not. The amount of people seeking out (good) human performances of music and theatre is microscopic, even when it's free!

It's easy to grandstand about not consuming AI slop (not saying you are) when it's uniformly abject shit.

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