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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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Etc. etc. It works because we’ve lost consensus about what things we’re supposed to believe as a nation.

I don’t think it works because of that, since if anything there I’d say it works because of the consensus that communists and antisemites are bad. It works because it shows social dominance and control of the interaction by calling out bad faith intercolution in an unaffected, playful way, tossing down a reverse uno card to parry and deal 2X damage.

It can also be applied more broadly to deal with rhetorical tricks or attempted gotchas in general, not just American culture war topics (hence the possible origin from dealing with women’s shit-tests). For example, loaded questions:

“Have you stopped beating your wife?”

“No, it’d be cruel to deprive her of the violence she craves.”

I suspect its origins are far older than PUA knowhow, though, even if PUA put a name to it and helped popularize it.