site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   25280 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Being nice to the help is a status marker for good breeding in America. Presumably other cultures that care more about breeding care more about that status marker.

There are three classes of this: mean to the help (nouveau riche trash), explicitly nice to the help (lesser gentry), and "why would you be mean to the furniture?" (true money).

explicitly nice to the help (lesser gentry)

Yeah, that about sums me up… What an awful thought.

My brother pointed this out to me about myself once, and it was one of the most cutting (unintentional) insults I've ever received.

Glad to meet a like-minded (lesser) gentleman, haha.

FWIW I think 'lesser' is doing a lot of work here, the only people I've come into contact with who seemed to have the 'furniture' attitude in modern times were on the order of a Duke. Most people below that take some interest in the help, although perhaps with varying levels of performativity and enthusiasm.

Yeah I mean the true super-rich, the kind of people who have too many servants to get attached to individuals. Money's a bit like wine, in that it matters if your bottle of wine is below $20 or above $100, but in between it's pretty much the same.

Makes it less cutting, at least. I know I'm not a Duke, all I have to do is look out of the window at the huge lack-of-tracts-o-land...

it matters if your bottle of wine is below $20 or above $100, but in between it's pretty much the same.

Do you think so? I was always under the impression that it was broadly an inverse-log:

  • under 10GBP is going to be awful unless you select very carefully, and even then the result is going to be petrol-ly
  • 10-20 is perfectly acceptable
  • 40-50 is very nice, actually interesting enough to reward shutting up for a bit and paying attention to the wine. I got 50 GBP Chateauneuf du Pape for the family for Christmas.
  • 100 is going to be good and really special and worth paying attention to and remembering
  • greater than 100 and you're really wasting the extra money unless you have a very refined and educated palate, and even then I suspect the enjoyment is going to be broadly intellectual

I've been given the super-duper nice wine before and it was indeed lovely, especially when it was set up as part of a proper tasting and you were told what to look for, but I'd never consider it worth the money for my own table unless I was replacing what I took out of the family cellar (alas, this is true money territory) or deliberately showing off for some unfathomable reason.

I learned this as a rule-of-thumb from the guys whose job at Stanford is to study the wine business, so I trust them. The way I would put it:

  • Under 10GBP/USD, it will be awful. You cannot sell drinkable wine in the first world at that price.
  • 10-20, it's not bad, but there are noticeable quality sacrifices that you can see in that spectrum.
  • 20 was the anchor for the Stanford guys in part because that's what Duckhorn's Decoy was priced at at the time (now it's $25 on the coasts, still $20ish outside of big cities), and Decoy was their example of the perfect $20 bottle you can get anywhere in the States.
  • 20-100 everything is marketing. Price is a signal, sure, but you can find wines in the low 20s that are better than wines in the 80s, and the difference is marketing/distribution. Also country of origin - imo France has the worst price:quality ratio, because everyone knows that French wine is Fancy, and South Africa has the best because ain't nobody thinking South Africa is Fancy.
  • Above 100 you get into special stuff you just can't make for a lower price point. Some wines that are just bullshit marketing, of course, but for the most part there's going to be something special and expensive like long aging or a notable vineyard. Personally, I'm not sure I've been bitten by the wine bug that badly.

Personally, I would envy the super-rich more if they were doing cool shit with that money. I certainly wouldn't settle for some big houses and a lot of servants.

Interesting. It's not at all what I heard from my father who is big on the Wine Society but admittedly less pedigreed. His contention was that price still pretty much equals taste since so many people take an interest in these things and the feedback is strong. Personally I can't say either way. My experience has fitted with the scale I gave you but that's maybe just the marketing. I'll try and look into it some more.

More comments

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats