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 -
Just to make a general observation about the gender war as a followup to my comment on the Promise Keepers organization:
I think we can generally observe is that women’s main complaint about men is that desirable hetero men are unwilling to exclusively commit. If we accept this, we can also see that this is actually two complaints rolled into one. 1. The men that are willing to commit are undesirable (icky, clingy, lame, “chopped”, entitled, toxic, porn-addled, skinny fat etc.). 2. The men that are desirable are unwilling to commit. (On a tangent I’d argue that most of the lipstick feminist complaints made in the mainstream media by middle-class women about men in general do usually boil down to the rather similar complaint that 34-37-year-old successful, well-paid, charismatic, tall, ambitious etc. urban men are in no rush to marry 31-34-year-old college-educated middle-class office worker women.)
If we look at this logically, to the extent that it even makes sense to try doing so (which is a valid question in itself), there are two potential remedies for this problem. 1. Focus on the undesirable men that are willing to commit and somehow transform them into desirable men i.e. alphaize the betas 2. Focus on the desirable men and incentivize them to commit i.e. betaize the alphas.
Now I don’t know about you but to me it seems self-evident that #2 has more potential for success no matter how you look at it and yet virtually everyone who makes any sort of recommendations regarding this entire issue (and that does not only include Red Pillers) is promoting #1. No, really – I’ve never seen anyone advocate for #2, not even the Promise Keepers or, for that matter, any other similar group that does not claim to be feminist and is at the same time pushing the nebulous concept of a new positive masculinity.
Am I seeing things that are not there or is this really not the case? Because as far as I can tell, it is. It seems like there is a general unspoken consensus in society that trying to compel sexually successful men to commit to women is a completely impossible, pie-in-the-sky idea that deserves no attention at all; that, in other words, expecting modern women to elicit commitment from the men they are attracted to is laughable lunacy.
A lot of good points under this post, with many of which I agree. But there's something I haven't seen mentioned. Average screen time for Gen Z and Millennials is 7 to 9 hours a day (half of that being at work and other half recreational). After 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work, 3 hours of grooming/shitting/pissing/cooking, 1 hour of commute, an average young person has 4 hours of free time per day. I have absolutely no doubt most of that free time is going towards scrolling Tiktok, Instagram or Twitter. As a man, if you're not lucky enough to have some women in your workplace that are your age and single (good luck taking the risk to rizz them up), have a group of friends that's not just made up of other men, or have hobbies that aren't meatfests, you're done for. Even if you're good looking enough (unlikely), meeting women through dating apps is pretty much a second job, for which you don't have free time for because you're scrolling tiktok. And everywhere else in your life, you just don't have an opportunity to mingle with single women. And even if you're lucky enough to have women around you can hit on - that requires effort and time, will you sacrifice your precious screen time for it? Even if you do, the ball is now in woman's court and women spend 1 extra hour scrolling their favorite choice of social media on average.
I have a theory that collapsing social norms play a big part in this- in the eighties and nineties single people were expected to go out dancing(etc) even if it wasn't their cup of tea. Nowadays only the very extroverted/promiscuous/partying do this. And, well, 'not a huge partier' is a legitimate preference to have(which most people share for their long term partners, on both sides of the gender divide). It's a whole thing where evaporative cooling of the normal modes of social interaction make those modes of social interaction less appealing for normies.
I've seen guys on twitter lament that the only women at bars, dance halls, etc are 'washed up party sluts' or whatever, with boomers wondering why guys think this way all of a sudden. And I have a sneaking suspicion that shy second grade teachers in the eighties were a lot more likely to go out dancing anyways than they are now- do you think they liked the club much back then? It's loud and it's after their bedtime and there really are a bunch of sleazy guys out to get them there. Phones and occasional hinge profiles are so much safer, even if they don't work.
While I agree that there may be some positive feedback loops that killed off the appeal of some types of social interactions, I think it's mostly just an excuse for many to continue scrolling. There's other social activities outside of hitting the club or bars that are also cooling off. I believe every possible activity is in competition with scrolling tiktok. The guys on twitter crying about party sluts in the club are just using it as an excuse to why they are not out there getting easy (according to them) women every weekend and are sitting refreshing their feed with 8 hour screen time on a weekend instead. Probably the first time in history when men are complaining about legions of easy women. What's easier? Dress up, get a fresh cut, allocate some cash, get at least one friend to do the same (nobody is going to the club alone) on a weekend or just stay in and scroll your favorite source of dopamine instead? I think it's really that simple. I'm guessing we would be back to early 2000s state of things within a year if our phones just poofed one day. Back to what I said in my original post, 7 to 9 hours of screen time daily, with half of it being off work is truly insane and we all kind of just accept it. As on old zoomer, 4 hours of screen time was my allowance with my xbox 360 on a weekend after a week of good grades. Now everyone, from young to old, has this as their daily baseline. Even Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, is glued to his twitter feed while running 67 companies at the same time. He is able to remain functional (even that is debatable) because of his naturally high agency and a curated cocktail of medications and supplements. An average person doesn't have either. On the bright side, natural selection will probably do its thing pretty quickly and humanity will be back to normal after a generation or two because everyone else will die off glued to their screen and talking to their AI caretaker
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link