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 -
Is Dinergoth a real thing? (soft-paywalled; use reader mode to get the whole article)
Before we get carried away with narrative, let's do a reality check. Is "Dinergoth" pointing to a real cultural phenomenon? Can anyone provide anecdotal evidence?
I can probably think of one or two people I know who meet this description, but that's not enough to validate the claim, which is that:
The problem is, this archetypal Dinergoth is, by construction, invisible to anyone who's not one of them. They can't afford to live in big cities, so you'll never encounter them there. Even in a small town, the Dinergoths are shut-ins who never leave their (parents') homes and never venture out into the community to meet people. Instead they (supposedly) spend all their time chatting with each other on Discord (hence, so the article claims, the flattening of regional accents among the youth - although I think that trend is older than gaming chats).
And now that I've read this article, the next time I run across one of those obese 20-something piercing-having pink-hairs I occasionally spy at CVS or Walmart, I'll update my stereotype of them from "Antifa" to "Dinergoth"; but really I'll have no evidence either way unless I talk to them and get to know them, which I won't.
Perhaps some of you reading this are Dinergoths yourselves, although I rather doubt it.
For a few years now, I have been more and more worried about the youths. Sitting on my porch, in front of my lawn (get off!), I watch the they/thems scuttle by and think to myself, "kids these days!"
The aesthetics don't actually worry me. This is kids doing what kids do; picking fashions and accessories deliberately to freak out the squares. Long haired hippies, punk rockers, grunge, glam, goth, emo. It's all branches from the same trunk.
What worries me is the response to it by their peers. For most of post WW2 western history, there were normie aesthetics that were obvious and represented the median of teenage expectations. Think of your preps or in-crowd. Jocks and cheerleaders. Perhaps those were the zenith of normie expectations, but it filtered down. Being counter-culture was deliberate and carried real costs. If you had green hair and piercings, you'd be looked at weird. Peers would make fun of you. You might be bullied. You then got to respond to this in a number of ways;
You could endure the bullying and double down on your identity as a goth/punk/emo/sensitive kid. Good for you. These are the kids who go on to art school or something and at least maintain their weirdo integrity. You probably open up a Banh Mi shop in Portland years later and dabble in polyamory.
You could decide being bullied sucks and that conformity actually isn't so bad. You ditch the piercings and black clothing and get a decent pair of jeans, a polo, and a leather wristwatch. Later, you laugh at some old high school photos you find years later as you logon to your 10:30 zoom call and greet your peers with "Happy, Friday, gang!"
Or, least preferable, you let bullying soak into your soul. You maintain your goth aesthetic but develop anxiety and depression. Barely graduating High School, you self-medicate through your 20s and wake up at 35 as a committed misanthrope. You either turn into a hardcore burnout or find religion.
This spectrum is continuous, not discreet. Most kids experiment with some level of "rebellion" in the teenage years but shake out towards the median. That's fine and good. With that last example, of the committed burnout, I'm being a bit intentionally hyperbolic. This is also why I still am against extreme forms of bullying.
I am not, however, against all bullying because the alternative is worse. The alternative is what has resulted in these so called Dinergoths.
Total and radical acceptance means there's no cost to defecting from norms and median social aesthetics. If I come into 9th grade with cat ears on my pink dyed hair, black lipstick, a rainbow flag choker, and am met with a shrug from my peers and "you do you" milquetoast encouragement, I haven't encounter a real social cost function. This is a massive societal failure to the Youths. Childhood and adolescence is where you have unlimited (mostly) do-overs for social situations. You awkardly ask someone out, you make a bad joke, you make a poor outfit choice, you experiment with various identities. It's all (well, most of it) fine because the folly of Youth is expected and you can reset as many times as you like.
In adulthood, this isn't the case. The stakes are high. Being socially malformed can have real negative impacts on career and personal development. Of late, being an autistic weirdo male can even get you fired from your job (See: James Damore). I think these Dinergoths are what they are because they didn't encounter real social cost until it was too late and they had no emotional means of dealing with it, so they retreat to basements and discord servers.
To use a physical health analogy, it's always been folk wisdom that letting kids get a little dirty is a good thing for their general immunity. I don't know how accurate that is (although I believe exposure to peanuts has been proven to reduce or eliminate peanut allergy severity) but I think it is still useful. Likewise, it's good to let a kid make a few social faux pas - and to let his or her peers inform of this. Sure, there may be some tears and hurt feelings, but how many childhood embarrassment stories become the stuff of humorous remembrances later on?
Taking this useful and necessary feedback mechanism from kids makes them brittle and turns them inwards as they enter adulthood.
Not now that dinergoths are the ones making the hiring decisions. Plenty of people get away with non-median social aesthetics now, and still make plenty of money and have successful social lives. The archaic social norms no longer matter at any stage of life (other than maybe for boomers, but soon they will be retired and irrelevant).
James Damore was fired because of wokeness, not because of his aesthetic or personality traits. He was fired for committing wrongthink. When has someone ever been fired from a tech company for wearing cat ears? The question of what lifestyles and aesthetics are allowed is different than freedom of speech and thought.
This thread is veering off topic. If "dinergoths" exist at all, they aren't working as well-paid professionals, let alone as hiring managers for said professionals. They're going to be in dead-end jobs commensurate with their poor social skills, as remnants of the hollowed-out working class.
As much as engineers may bemoan getting bossed around by Woke HR Karens despite their lack of "real" skills (as in, pertinent to the company's stated purpose), becoming adept at Machiavellian court intrigue isn't exactly easy either. Your typical socially inept Dinergoth would never make it in HR.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link