site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 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.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I wanted to give Enterprise a chance. The soft rock-jazz AOR fusion warbling of the theme song took me aback a bit, but I soldiered on.

Then we got "the fucking idiot* showrunners made it canon that this is not a bad shitty joke, it is now established in the Trekverse that Humans literally smell, so far as Vulcans are concerned, and they have to wear nasal filters to be around us".

I could not believe, over several episodes, that no this was not a shitty joke some dumb Human (Tucker) was trying to make a running joke, it was to be taken as real true fact of the setting.

Then we had Archer going to go to war (or a diplomatic incident) over his dumb dog where a bunch of aliens who had never seen a dog before and had no idea what kind of animal it was neglected to warn him that some plant on their world would give poor doggy-dums the equivalent of an allergic reaction.

The stupid, stupid, stupid attempts at fanservice sexiness (but not too sexy, and let's pretend that you treat radiation by rubbing gel on your half-naked partner. Yeah, hard science for the win!)

I liked Reed. I liked Hoshi. I was willing to give T'Pol a go, even though they plainly had her in the Seven of Nine catsuit and heels role, until they infected her with the mind-controlling Ceti eel and diverted what little character she had apart from being the sexpot to "Imma rebel against everything Vulcan and be 200% pro-Archer, pro-Humans and pro-romance with stinky Human Tucker".

It's a toss-up whom I loathe more, Tucker or Phlox, but given that Phlox is such an insufferable pain in the backside I'd be happy with an episode where they blew up Denobula (they blew up Vulcan, damn them, in the franchise but they couldn't destroy this lair of prats?)

My viewing dropped from "it's new Trek, that's every week sorted!" to "occasional if I remember" and ended with the first whispers of the Time war or whatever that plot was, when they decided they'd re-do Voyager's Year of Hell (the most popular season for that show) and re-cast Archer in the Janeway Action Hero mould. At this period, the Federation doesn't even have working transporters for people, but they're going up against a civilisation that can manipulate time? That's bows and arrows against nuclear missiles. I noped out because Braga and Berman and their bloody love of convoluted time travel episodes, plus some things are just beyond suspension of disbelief, and I didn't like any of the characters or setting enough to stick with the show.

*Yes, I am salty about this. It's reducing Trek to the level of "jokes twelve year old boys would think funny".

The thing that always really annoyed me about Enterprise was the decision to come up with a canon explanation for why the Klingon look changed. Just no. It was done for real world reasons, the audience is capable of rolling with it, move on. There's no need for a convoluted explanation, or indeed to acknowledge the change at all (unless it's to wink at the audience like in Trials And Tribble-ations).