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 -
A post is blowing up on my part of twitter where a guy is saying he only wants to spend 10 minutes a day with his kids.. This has a surprising amount of scissor power, with people coming down on all sides.
Relevant quote:
The one straightforward argument is that, well, he's a shitty dad. Especially since he says he wants to be working, accomplishing something, and what is his work? Well, he's a creative director at some random tiny crypto business working on "building digital gold." So... easily mockable.
The other side says that modern parenting norms are fucked, as he aludes to, and that kids used to be a lot more free range. Normally I'm sympathetic to this, but the guy's kids are below five, so idk. I think infants and toddlers definitely need a lot of attention.
Either way I'm curious how parenting norms might break down along culture war lines, and what people here think?
ETA: Also, a great and extremely sassy quote tweet:
I believe a big issue with child rearing discourse - relationship discourse for that matter - is that people really need to define what they are talking about. Before this one sleep training blew up on my feed where the range of believed practices seemed to be from letting your 3 week old scream until they pass out to not immediately running to pick up your six month old if they made any noise whatsoever.
Complaining about 10 minutes is weird, but it's not like I spend hours playing with my 2 year old. On weekdays I probably "actively play" with him less than 30 minutes a day. We interact more then that but it's just touch points. We'll interact for a minute and then he'll go back to doing his own thing.
I think you're right about this. I'm trying to think of what 10 minutes of "play" with my kids would look like and I'm not sure. I don't think a 2-4 year old could hold 10 straight minutes of interest in a single game of play.
We'll play hide and seek a lot, but the kids version of this is having my wife and I "hide" in the exact same place over and over while they find us. It is really fun, and they laugh and laugh while we do it, but I don't think bouts of this last much longer than 10 minutes or so.
Reading to them takes longer than that for sure, but is that the same as playing? I think we just spend about 45 minutes reading all the kids favorite stories to them before bedtime.
I'll spend a lot of time with them "playing" outside, but that's usually just me supervising them while they play with each other, interspersed with a few minutes at a time where they show me something interesting or the climax of a pretend play that they're doing "Dad come and see our bunny house! [pile of sticks]" etc. Or if they "help" me cook dinner it's a few minutes of them watching me cook something before they get distracted and want to do something else.
Thinking about this some more and we do go on a lot of really long bike rides where it takes up most of the day, but thinking that through it's a lot of short stops at a lot of places. 10 minutes at coffee, 20 minutes at the park, 10 minutes at the grocery store, etc. etc.
I think this person is just way overanalyzing themselves.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link