site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

New epstein files stash released - search here: https://www.justice.gov/epstein

Trump is mentioned lots of times though some of the more lurid accusations (I was gangbanged by Trump and a bunch of other rich dudes) seem to be non credible. Epstein emailed himself about how he was annoyed that Bill Gates needed medicine from banging underage russian girls - probably fake blackmail. He also got banned from Xbox Live, shared coomer FNAF 4chan threads, talked with Chomsky about racial intelligence differences, getting advice on silencing a girl trying to expose his friends. For our global-intelligence-conspiracy friends, there are some connections to intelligence agencies.

Mods, remove this if it's a crappy post. It's hard to come up with a through line for this, other than "WOW he knew a lot of people".

Unless this breaks some obvious threshold where I need to notice I am likely going to ignore anything on Trump. I 100% believe he banged Stormy Daniels for money but none of his ex-wives fit the pedophilia bro type. I do not think there is a huge overlap in guys who bang Daniel’s (big breast) and into underage girls.

For the reason perhaps I should give other people with accusations the benefit of the doubt. Bill Gates though does have pedophile vibes. Even DiCaprio vibes like a guy who would probably go younger if he was allowed to. Trump just seems to have always gone for a different body type.

“He knows a lot of people” It’s weird how a quote from a movie will stick with, but in the movie never been kissed the one baseball player friend of hers who also went back to High School said something like, “If one person says your cool then everyone will go with it”. My view is if you have one famous person vouche for you and then you meet 5 more and handle it well then it’s easy to know 500 famous rich people. You are in the club. It’s much harder to find the first famous friend than number 100.

I cant help but feel that this is purposely daft. I happen to be both into skinny, and fat women. I married a skinny woman, but if I we're a less faithful man, I feel that I would pursue trysts with fat woman exclusively, because that's what's not available at home.

On the Trump note, I agree, nothing here really passes my sniff test, but I also don't believe they would release anything that would actually incriminate him, if it existed in any of the "files"

Ok so you might be non-conventional. I feel like most guys I know always date the same girl. I had one person in my 20 something friend group I would always get in conflict with because we would always want the same girl. Other friends this never occurred because even if the girl was conventionally attractive and I knew that I would have zero interest in her.

I feel like most men do have very strong types. If you are going to pay for sex you are probably going to buy exactly what you want. I guess it’s possible Trump would have sex with someone like 16 year old Britney Spears but I think most people who have pedophile attraction prefer girls who have ballerina style bodies (no chest, fairly-like 90 lb girls).

It would be interesting to know why % of men have true attraction to a wide variety of body types. My gut says it’s very low.

I have the opposite intuition. My feeling is that there are enough people in both the government and media committed to #RESISTing Trump that if they had anything truly concrete that they could use against him it would have come out by now.