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 -
I'm afraid I didn't save a source on this, just the numbers, but the last studies I saw claimed that:
Yeah, there was some girl who made $1M in 24 hours. That's how dualized labor markets work. From the outside, it looks awesome to be a multimillionaire actor, ball player, musician, or whatever, because the ones who become successful are almost tautologically the ones that everybody knows about, and the ones who don't make it big become invisible.
No, "most of these girls" cannot "buy mansions, hire maids, babysitters, tutors, and never work a single day in their lives after grinding OnlyFans for a few years". The ones who metaphorically won the lottery can, sure, but every blue collar working guy can literally buy a lottery ticket if he wants.
That said, I'm not sure if there's much more downside to the metaphorical lottery ticket than there is to the literal one. You do have to choose between being open about your sexual past with future partners (and risk scaring some off) or being tight-lipped about it (hurting the level of emotional intimacy you can share), but that's been a tradeoff that everybody's had to face since the Sexual Revolution, whether there were cameras involved or not. "I only did it for the money" might even inspire less jealousy than the standard "I loved my exes just as much, but don't let that make you pessimistic about our future; tenth time's the charm!" Worst case scenario: at some point somebody's going to set up a Reverse Image Search with much more advanced AI than Google originally had and much fewer scruples than Google currently has, and they're going to suck in every random archived torrent they can find ... but under what circumstances is even that really going to backfire on you? The modern liberal consensus is "that's your own business", and the most common conservative consensus is "that's awful, but you can repent and be forgiven".
I'm not convinced. The girls famous enough for the argument that their 'OnlyFans fame will bite them in the ass one day' to be applicable are making more than 50k a year. If not on OnlyFans specifically then on Instagram and other things.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link