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 -
Good morning, my fellow patriarchs, my AIPAC fellows, my Thielite dudebros and gainsmaxxing vrilchads. We gather here in memory of the dearly departed: of the progressives no longer in our midst. Of those who unironically use low human capital as an insult. They who have flounced (and who may yet remain amogus with their alts) with long, boring wordcel essays on how we're all racists, or not participating in their personal armies against Trump, or what have you. Sometimes they even delete their posts, leaving only the scathing retorts to their shaming screeds.
But why do I bring the subject up, you ask?
The reason why I bring the unpleasant topic is because it's become a distinct genre of post on the Motte. Since I am a pattern-noticer of much skill, I thought it useful to put in the effort to make a F.E.C (Frequently Expressed Crashouts) as future reference, and to hopefully save time and effort in the future to what is otherwise a pretty repetitive subject. Feel free to add onto this list, if you feel I've missed anything. I admit that I am making rote argument and there may be gaps of which clever people can argue around it.
A) I'm not comfortable with witches/HBDers/misogynists/actual racists in the Motte. That's why I'm leaving!
First of all, so long, farewell!
Secondly, why are you even here? It's not like there's a shortage of places which moderate against such people. The whole point of the Motte is to talk to weirdos and freaks such as myself with as much politeness and decorum as can be managed. If the subject matter makes you uncomfortable, tough titties. You're an adult. You can decline to participate in conversations you have no interest in. Or you can make an argument that stands on its own merits. If you can remember how to make one!
B) The moderators are terrible at their jobs! They won't ban [X] or [Y]. Here's my evidence-
@Amadan is the embodiment of the Platonic philosopher-king, and their judgement is infallible, like the pope speaking ex cathedra.
The jannies of the Motte are of a different breed than the soft, nepotistic babies of Reddit. They are veterans of forum warfare. The Navy Seals of the mop force. If you take a look at Amadan's profile and sort by top rated, you will see a long list of people they've dunked. Their rage is truly a sight to behold. The only reason they haven't torn you apart yet with their immense verbal IQ is because the other moderators have to physically restrain them from the keyboard. The fact the moderators aren't handholding every little personal spat and argument is a sign of enlightened restraint, not weakness.
C) I'm just so exhausted by the witches/HBDers/misogynists/actual racists. It's emotionally draining. For my own mental health, I have to step away.
That was always allowed. Why are you telling us this? This isn't your blog.
One of the most insidious things in internet communities is passive-aggression. Oh, if only this space wasn't so toxic, I'd participate more! This is a favorite tactic of flouncers who want to use shame but aren't aggressive enough to argue with individuals or demand change from the mods. Using therapyspeak in any other context other than therapy itself is annoying and manipulative! If you want to leave, just leave. Don't make a melodramatic show about it. No one cares.
D) I'm being oppressed because I'm going against the consensus! You guys are hypocrites!
Is the consensus in the room with us right now?
I'm not going to disagree that there is an element of groupthink to all communities. But if you come to a community with the greatest concentration of witches, contrarians, and satirical trolls per capita and you're getting pushback - maybe you should rethink things. If you feel that your position is fundamentally correct, then the number of people disagreeing with you shouldn't matter to you. So as long as you present the best version of your argument for your position, all the downvotes in the world won't change the content of your post. But if you come into the conversation expecting special treatment for being an iconoclast or going against the grain - tough luck!
Perhaps your words aren't as convincing to others as you thought it was. Get gud. Skill issue.
Did I miss some flameout that prompted this?
Those people aren't progressives, and they're still around. It's the ones who were nodding along with Hanania right up until he started saying Orange Man Bad. And the econ-pilled ones who were mad about tariffs.
My pet theory is that @Amadan is Freddie DeBoer. Hear me out.
He's obviously invested in TheMotte, but rarely makes a top-level post (has he ever?) on a new subject - and he can't, because it would inevitably be about basketball or education policy or half-asian babies and destroy his opsec. When he talks about his politics, it's always how he's a true leftist but the progressives put him up on the wall for wrongthink (Freddie saying HBD-adjacent things, being cancelled). He clearly has a job that allows him to piss away hours in the middle of the workday on the sisyphean task of internet jannying. 'Classical-liberal' politics. It all fits. Giants walk among us.
I'm confident most progs manage to be at least as decorous as this post.
The world is too complex for anyone to properly grasp. The purpose of echo chambers is to selectively filter/spin stories that flatter their ingroup, or make the outgroup look bad. I'm fairly confident that if you perfectly swapped someone's social environment to be full of partisans of the opposite valency, and fed them a curated media diet you could change their politics fairly easily over time.
In other words, a lone prog crusader isn't going to convince TheMotte any more than you're going to turn Reddit pro-Trump, regardless of how eloquent either of you are.
Cute theory, except I'm not a leftist, I'm exactly the kind of liberal centrist Freddie despises.
SF nerdery. Which Freddie also despises.
That's exactly the type of cover Freddie would use for opsec. @Goodguy
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Amadan is a self-proclaimed leftist? Are you sure? I kind of feel like I would have picked up on that after years of being here.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm sold, and I'm adding this to my list of Motte conspiracy theories that I believe (others include JD Vance lurking here).
I find this one more plausible than the Freddie deBoer one.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Can you link to a couple of these "goodbye" posts so I know what you are talking about?
I'll try not to make this a "Amadan's Greatest Dunks" compilation, but here's something roughly representative.
GematriaUnlimited, alt of banned user, hater of MAGA but from a vaguely socon perspective, hysterical calls to action, namecalling.
Clementine, nonspecific objections to subject matter, not specifically naming names. Generally wishy-washy.
AlexanderTurok, "You're all retarded low-human capital."
KulakRevolt, "It's time for the reactionary revolution, talking is pointless"
You'll have to take my word for it that this is roughly representative. Flouncers who delete their posts are unfortunately permanently removed from the historical record, so I can only characterize them generally rather than specifically. Honorable mention to GuessWho the Darwin alt who got so throughly destroyed that they didn't even make a huffy flounce post, but instead slunk away in shame.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Reads like consensus building.
TheMotte is the TheMotte. Exiled weirdos call this place home, as do normies with high openness. Neither gets to define what this place is or isn't.
It's no secret that the median individual on this forum has been steadily shifting right. It's a valid concern.
The place risks turning into an echo chamber. Scratch that. The risk was realized, and this place is nearing a complete transformation into an echo chamber. I don't mind a shift in the Overton window. I do mind the decreasing quality of discourse.Sometimes it feels like TheMotte is stuck in 2020. Woke is over. Trump is president. MAGA won. Where is the America that was promised ? Consider this. What if the forum has gotten boring because people are too scared to express the true contrarian opinion?
"Maybe woke wasn't so bad after all." (kill me)
Thanks, but no thanks. I liked what this place was. In its current state, it still exceeds the bar (low as it may be) for discourse on the internet. I'll bitch and moan as much as I like. That's my right.
I was about to summon my heritage motteizan creds. I hear JD's worldview carries weight around these parts. Alas, you created an account 1 full day before me. I concede defeat.
“Woke isn’t bad.”
I question your motives given that you are Indian. Woke was generally rhetorically at least supportive of brown people who suffered from colonialism (eg Indians)
MAGA has been very skeptically of immigrants especially Indian immigrants.
Therefore, I’m skeptical that you objectively think woke wasn’t bad compared to the status quo post. Instead, I wonder if you think the status quo post is worse for Indians and therefore don’t like it (consciously or subconsciously).
Now of course it would be fair for you to say “you too” but in reverse. I guess the difference is this is still a white country so it seems like the majority ought to be able to say “we want to benefit the majority; not the minority.”
More options
Context Copy link
The motte is not an echo chamber. It is a forum with admirable diversity of right wing opinions, which doesn’t quite correspond to the typical diversity of IRL right wingers.
Revleft, back when it was a thing, wasn’t an echo chamber either- it was different kinds of communists screeching at each other for being secret reactionaries, and sûre that’s not the vibe thé motte is going for, but you don’t have to have the conventional representatives of the other side to not be an echo chamber, is my point.
Internal diversity. It's just us weirdos and freaks. But wouldn't it be a more interesting space where left leaning users participate while being held to the same moderation and quality standards so they engage without the usual social shaming dialogue (accusations of bigotry, bad faith, or moral failure)? Let the discussions move beyond status games and purity spirals toward actual arguments. I want the leftists in the conversation. Darwin was one of the few prolific leftist posters around here, though a ragebaiter admittedly. Been two years since he ditched this site and retreated to reddit.
I don’t mind claims of bigotry (sometimes it is true). But what I dislike is assuming bigotry is always wrong (or at least irrational) and the inability to recognize the lefts own bigotry.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Woke isn't over until there is a flier of FBI crime statistics (or the equivalent thereto depending on month) posted next to the HR-mandated "[allegedly oppressed group] history month" flier.
True. That said, wasn't the whole HR-mandated woke stuff kind of exaggerated to begin with? I've worked for over ten years in tech, an industry that is often considered to be a hotbed of progressive activism, and I have almost never seen it. Yes, I would get fired if I started saying ethnic slurs at the office. But I've seen almost no woke propaganda at my jobs. If I recall correctly, the closest has been some very minor but not coerced options to have custom pronouns and maybe one brief computerized inclusivity training that I think pretty much everybody just ignored and clicked through. And that's in over ten years.
Really depended on where you were. I was at a university and it was stifling. Militants took over my student union and made seats for every minority under the sun until they outnumbered representatives of actual students, and anyone who objected was unpersoned. There were the ‘how not to be a
Taoist’ (really, Apple?) workshops. The endless complaints from female colleagues about all the white men they had to put up with, apparently oblivious to my gender and skin colour. The girl who went trans, putting me at serious risk of being thrown out if I ever forgot myself and used ‘she’ for the squeaky voiced 5ft ‘man’ sitting next to me. The manager at my first tech job who hinted that I hadn’t been promoted because of my failure to give sufficiently woke answers to an HR training quiz.Above all there was just the fear. The knowledge that if you put a single foot wrong you were dead, a decade of university and research work just done in the blink of an eye.
It was bad. I’m glad it was better for you.
More options
Context Copy link
No, it's not. Thr claim was never particularly believable even at the start of the SocJus trend, and it's even less believable after years of every major company draping itself in rainbow flags every June.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The anti-woke have discovered that half of them hated the process of wokeness, and the other half hated the way the process was targeted. On this forum this mostly takes the form of disputes around the Hebrews, elsewhere it revolves around Charlie Kirk or foreign wars.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I am neither lefty nor progressive, but I too have flounced off in my time (and then got dragged back in again). Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
More options
Context Copy link
Judging by the reports, this is not going over well. It does kind of read like a bit of trolling and dunking on your outgroup.
First of all, as much as I appreciate the (no doubt totally sincere and not at all tongue-in-cheek) flattery, I do not "rage" and I am not sure why you are they/theming me. My pronouns are "He" and "Go away."
More seriously, we have seen some of the rage-quitters and "I can't even" flouncers you mention, but really, not that many. And not all of them have been outraged leftists. For the most part, the leftists who can't stand to share space with HBDers and misogynists have already left. We do have a couple of very persistent mentally ill obsessives who keep screeching at us in filtered comments you never see, but again... not all of those are leftists.
Unfortunately, I do think evaporative cooling is leaving us with fewer and fewer posters who aren't one-note culture warriors, and very heavily skewed towards the right. I wish there was a way to recruit more people of diverse viewpoints, but even the SSC/LessWrong forums now think the Motte is a hive of scum and villainy because of who we don't ban. There really is a longer point to be made here, about how rightists have become the more ideologically "tolerant" faction. Not to say I don't get the sense that a lot of rightists are very eager to put leftists (and moderates) up against the wall - but they will at least talk to the other side while it's mostly liberals who now act like even engaging in dialog with a MAGA is starting down the dangerous path of seeing them as human beings.
The Motte regularly disheartens me and there still isn't any other place like it.
Should we make a try at returning to Reddit in search of new blood?
The environment is different now over there.
I don't think it's the worst idea, but from a moderator perspective: Jesus Christ their tooling is awful. And as a mere user, the current reddit mobile experience is obnoxious.
I would reserve/endorse a return for very specific circumstances, such as if this community is truly dying (it's not). Or perhaps we could start posting things that aren't just the monthly AAQCs there, maybe smaller discussion threads that show evidence of life and are a springboard to the site.
We genuinely are doing pretty fine, even if we don't have the activity that the sub had at its peak. If I had the opportunity to meet Scott in person as planned, I'd have begged for him to give us even a small shout-out in a relevant Open Thread.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I had the masculine pronouns in place, before I realized I actually didn't know your pronouns and asking you what they were for a bit of servile flattery would probably annoy you more.
The reason why there's a partisan tilt to my observation, and that's because righties do not go 'this forum is full of feminists/progressives/liberals, and I'm leaving' because A) no one says that and B) such a conservative would have already been preemptively banned a long time before they could get exasperated. I tried to be as nonpartisan as I could, but there really is a difference between righty and lefty crashouts: the former have personal animus against the mods and the latter are disgusted by the community itself.
More options
Context Copy link
I don’t know what the ideological leanings of this place even here except that on occasion it’s a decent place for me to express an opinion and get feedback on it. People that are highly invested in any topic or community will typically overanalyze and read with much greater intensity every letter in the words someone writes. Some of my comments draw in consensus, others get blasted, but that’s part of any community.
I also agree with him somewhat about the way you ‘seem’ to moderate, Amadan. I’ve replied in kind to other posters in the past where logic has clearly left the building and ran out of gas on their part, obliged them and been every bit as much the condescending prick they come across. Strangely the finger wagging did seem to be somewhat one-sided in my case when the abuse of the rules were far more concentrated on the other side. On my last ban I didn’t even know I’d been banned at all, let alone for several months. I just voluntarily went on an extended hiatus and miraculously chose to visit the site on the exact same day the ban had been lifted.
Posters on the regular need to keep their emotions in check and ask themselves what they’re looking to get out of these conversations. And if you get little to no value out of them, then it’s better to leave the platform. Moderators on the other hand need to be somewhat charitable when someone comes along and sarcastically delivers a counter argument against someone else’s point. It’s difficult to interpret where someone is coming from through text when that’s all you have to go off of, but either be strict and apply it consistently across the board, of it there’s ambiguity, step in to clarify or otherwise let it slide.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don’t think HBD can be considered witches anymore. It’s crossed the Yglesias/Noah Smith rubicon if not explicitly than implicitly. What else can it mean when Yglesias says American Muslims (filtered historically) are not like European Muslims.
The top 3-5% tend to seem to agree on it. The PMC potentially do too but for career reasons would be afraid to say things explicitly. And the rest are too dumb to have ever bought into intellectually arguments that they shouldn’t just trust their eyes (and what they see watching football on Sundays). HBD is something I knew as a 5 year old.
More options
Context Copy link
To be fair to the, uhm, contra-contrarians, there is a noticeable issue here of voting- for-agreement (as opposed to quality of argument) and dogpiling. Even if both are far better than reddit. It's human nature I suppose, I regularly catch myself wanting to downvote only to control myself since the poster is clearly arguing in good faith, I just disagree hard.
I've never understood this, updoots and downdoots have always been retarded to me, but maybe that's my 4chan background talking. If anything, downvotes are a sign I pissed off the right people, but w/e.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If you can identify easily what kind of persona won't do well here and summarize it in your points 1 and 3, that in itself is a consensus. Do you not see the contradiction? Not to mention the other consensus of opinions here. And with every crashout, it only gets stronger. Why you're being smug about it is beyond me.
It's like showing up to a zoo, which advertises itself with animals, and then complaining to the zookeepers: "I think animal-keeping is unethical. Why don't you get rid of them?" A Motte without the chuds and the HBDers and the holocaust deniers already exists: it's called the SCC reddit/comment page.
Admittedly, 1 and 3 are quite similar, but one is more emotionally manipulative than the other which I found annoying enough to warrant its own entry.
I guess it depends which action you're criticizing. I don't ask for anybody to be banned for instance. It's quite easy to simply not respond to the people I find odious.
But it is easy to notice that bad comments that agree with the Motte consensus end up fairly highly upvoted even as they get a modhat response, and if you go against said consensus you will often end up in the negative regardless of the evidence you bring. I would be pleasantly surprised if I changed even one person's mind, but usually you either get downvotes and no response or some response that boils down to belief that a nebulous outgroup is evil and acting out of malice. Not exactly intellectually stimulating debate.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm a socially libertarian, economically moderate, tough-on-street-crime, race realist, pro-choice, don't-care-about-abortion, moderate-on-immigration classical liberal.
I don't post here as much as I used to because it gets boring to argue with the same few conservatives about the same few topics over and over again.
Not only that, but many of my disagreements with conservatives boil down to matters of preference that can't really be argued about on rational grounds. For example, take the matter of whether drugs should be legal. This topic can often boil down to a question of whether individual liberty is or is not more important than the government taking steps to keep society physically and mentally healthy. But that is not an answerable question. It really is just a matter of taste, odd as that might seem.
I do still find interesting ideas here pretty regularly though.
I notice that my comments often get upvoted much more than the actual written replies to them would make it seem. Which indicates that either people here are actually pretty good at upvoting for reasons other than agreeing with the material and/or that the people who post the most on the site are not actually a representative sample of all the people who vote on the site.
While I do get and agree with this, there is some useful discourse around the implications of those vibe-driven policies.
For example, I'm relatively OK with laxity on drugs, but I wish those folks would either ge% behind efforts to exclude the indigent from libraries/parks or else admit that this laxity has a real consequence in the destruction of those places and the deprivation of those that would usually benefit from them.
One doesn't have to confront the unsolvable issues to have that conversation. And maybe it helps not to talk about it directly but to work on how to accommodate it and what tradeoffs are needed.
Oh, I agree with all that. I think that drugs should be legal but that society should strongly police things like antisocial use of public spaces. And I agree that it is good to have a conversation about the tradeoffs that both the lax or the strict approach to drugs have. I just think that the fundamental issue of individual liberty to consume substances vs. use of government force to limit individual consumption of substances is not rationally arguable.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But that's a perfectly valid reason though. It's not like the Motte is homework.
Agreed. I just saw your post as an opportunity to share some related thoughts.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The motte doesn’t have a ‘consensus’, we’re all witches and wrong thinkers of course, but different kinds of wrong thinkers, a wide variation and one which is instructive to watch, as while we do exhibit blind spots and patterns, we truly cover a variety of politically incorrect opinions.
More options
Context Copy link
Funny post, tell Grok thank you for us.
I wasted the good part of an hour writing this up, so to have the authorship attributed to Grok makes me the big sad.
Ugh, I know the feeling.
More options
Context Copy link
The Amadan part was the main section giving me strong AI vibes - if I'm wrong, mea culpa! My thanks was not sarcastic, I did enjoy it whatever the provenance.
Ahah, that's fine.
It's kind of sad that I ping people's AI suspicions, when I've always been longwinded and rambly.
I love run-on sentences with tons of parentheticals, asides, etc., and I've found that that makes my writing less likely to get pegged as AI slop. So join the bad grammar gang (or maybe start writing like Cormac McCarthy) and you won't have to worry about it.
More options
Context Copy link
That part, and only that part, did seem a bit LLMy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This doesn’t feel AI generated to me. I liked it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link