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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.
Maybe I'm being narcissistic but I feel like I may be at least half responsible. I blame the other half on @KMC and @FiveHourMarathon. No disrespect intended but I share the latter's perception that if @KMC's comment had been aimed at "Negroes", "Venezuelans", or "Trump-Voters" it likely would have gone un-reported and thus un-moderated.
What that means for the forum as a whole is it's own conversation.
You said this in modmail, and repeating it doesn't make it true. @KMC has been modded for saying similar things about "Negroes." People absolutely report posts that tee off on Trump voters, blacks, and other groups.
I can't even fathom your theory of mind that says we give special protection to Indians.
At this point, you're a broken wrong record.
Not "Indians" the "Ingroup".
Which, as @FiveHourMarathon observed in that same thread, is perfectly understandable, "We're always going to have a bias towards our friends."
So, your theory of mind is that I go extra-hard on anti-Indian comments because I am (kinda sorta in a distant online way) friends with @self_made_human?
Why do you think I don't go hard on anti-MAGA posts since I'm about equally friendly with @FCfromSSC, then?
I don't know how to penetrate such obtuseness. I'm just going to keep pointing out that you're wrong, and if you want to advocate for changes in moderation, telling us we're doing things we aren't is a demonstrably unsuccessful strategy.
I wish. I'd settle for you going easier on me in particular, but I will note that every time we've had a disagreement (or the one time you temp banned me before I became a mod), I thought you had a good point.
On a more general note, there is little need to demonstrate favoritism towards the mods here. They were chosen because they were considered a good fit for the community and have a record of the kind of engagement we're looking for (and of course because they're willing to devote the time and energy). It is little surprise that we're not the ones usually needing to be slapped with warnings or bans, and even when we do mess up, it's usually a temporary lapse that is addressed through internal channels. The overwhelming majority of the time we end up in a fight, it was provoked by someone less sympathetic.
This is easy to mistake for favoritism towards us and harsher punishment for those we dislike, but I do not think it's true. We usually recuse ourselves from weighing in on moderation decisions when we believe that our judgement is clouded because of personal antipathy, or even because us taking action will convey the impression of a vendetta.
@JeSuisCharlie isn't just accusing us of being biased towards each other, though. He's accusing us of giving special protection to Indians because of you.
Presumably the only reason we haven't banned the Joo-posters is that none of the mods are Jewish (afaik).
That is a claim I find even more confusing. I can kinda sorta understand the reasoning behind claims that we are biased against left/right wingers if I squint, not that I think those accusations have much merit either.
(The RW claim we extend affirmative action to Leftists, the LW claims we go easy on the Right because that is the Forum Consensus)
But Indians? Really? I have no idea where that's coming from, and I think your handling of KMC's previous warning was perfect, and that you would have done the same thing for any other ethnic group. I wouldn't have touched it (not that I had the opportunity to before you did, as far as I remember) because of the potential of coming across as having a conflict of interest.
(As I've said before, Zorba's moderati must be above reproach)
People write negative comments about Indians all the time. I have done my fair share of criticism, even though I also come to our defense when I feel that the criticism is unfair/factually incorrect. Usually, that amounts to politely reminding people that India is not sub-Saharan Africa, and that assuming similar levels of dysfunction or dirt is unwarranted. Can't say I've ever modded anyone for insulting us either, though I do recall you warning Hlynka for being blatantly racist against me years ago (an opinion shared by others in writing). If I can't get away with claiming that I am extremely non-partisan about my place of birth when I have multiple comments discussing its dysfunction (or acknowledging that claims of an average IQ in the low 80s have evidence), who can?
I genuinely consider my ethnicity to be mostly incidental trivia about me, at least when it comes to my most important opinions and beliefs. I can't really help being Indian, can I, but I am nothing like the modal Indian in India, or even the other lucky bastards who made it to the West.
Eh. People will always have grievances. Some more factually warranted than others. I feel like this one can be safely ignored, while I make a cursory wave in the direction of potential personal bias while denying actual bias.
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If anything, the most "anti-Indian" poster we ever had on here (though I haven't seen him here for a few months) was that actually Indian castist guy who seemed to think that most of modern India's problems could be fixed by getting rid of special treatment for the lower castes and making Brahmins truly the top dogs again. I think his name was something like MrVanillaSky? Was certainly an interesting perspective to see. But I saw him get modded a couple times, he definitely didn't seem to get special treatment.
And when everyone dogpiled on self_made_human for using AI to slopify his posts I didn't see any mods rushing to rescue him even though he's both Indian and a mod himself.
We don't really have many active Indians who have mentioned they are Indian here. From memory, it's just me and @DirtyWaterHotDog, after Vanilla left (apologies to anyone who I've forgotten, if they exist).
Vanilla was an interesting character, there are plenty of right-wing leaning Hindu-nationalist casteists in India, though I have the good fortune of knowing very few of them. As painful as it is to admit, I think it's probably true that there exist significant disparities in IQ between castes in India. I'm far from upper caste, and just above the threshold where I'd be lower-caste and entitled to affirmative action.
Speaking of said AA: I loathe it with every fiber of my being. It deprived me of the opportunity to enroll in a better med school despite decent grades and exam results. I was entirely caste-blind my entire life until that point, because I was Westernized enough to simply not care (and my family were socially liberal). The immense resentment that developed afterwards is mostly gone, because I managed to escape to a place where caste had no bearing, where everyone's performance was judged on the grounds of the performance itself.
I understand why the upper castes are mad about things, even if I'm lower-middle caste (I lack a better word for it). This AA is ruinous in India, and many have fled to the West to get away from it, even if that wasn't my primary motivation. From a purely Bayesian perspective, these mostly upper caste Indians are probably right to think that the lower castes who benefit from quotas are dumber than them on average. Should they import their casteism and rage to a Western context? Probably not. I don't. But someone who got into an IIT on the basis of caste is not of the same quality as another candidate who didn't. It might be an inscrutable and impenetrable quibble to a white recruiter in SF, but Indians from India would know better.
I consider myself fortunate not to have to worry or particularly care about it anymore, and note that I would never have if it wasn't wielded against me or used for demagoguery and identity politics.
Neither did I. Amadan was one of the critics himself, and while I still advocate for my approach to LLM use, I took his dislike of it seriously. Far more than I would the average resident doing a drive-by. Negative feedback from someone I like and respect (despite his concerning takes on Reverend Insanity) means much more to me than anything thrown by the peanut gallery. I think his response, namely ignoring or skimming most of my posts, is a far more reasonable one than people calling for any LLM usage to be banned or slinging insults at me. I endorse the general principle, I agree that for many topics on this forum: if you don't like it, don't read it, instead of bitching about it.
(This has a limit. SS gets warned for joo-posting when he becomes one note. It is good for him that he tries to spice up his repertoire on occasion, though his true passion and calling still bleeds through.)
Hell, since the initial kerfuffle, I even ended up using LLMs less for editing purposes and stylistic purposes. My self-imposed standards include that if people are noticing and mentioning AI influence in my prose (regardless of their stance on it), then I've lost too much of my original voice and character. Or perhaps I took it even more seriously because people who appear intelligent and discriminate and who gave me positive feedback mentioned they noticed in passing. Even if they don't mind, I do. I like my voice, even if I think AI helps me in practical ways.
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I've worked with many Indians in corporate America. I've even been sent to Hyderabad and Delhi a few times over the years. Its takes a while for Indian coworkers to open up to you about this stuff, if they ever do, but opinions in the same general neighborhood as this are incredibly common, though not necessarily the part about Brahmins being in control, the bits about special treatment of the scheduled castes seems universally unpopular amoung people who don't receive the treatment, and even some that did. Of note, Indians that work in corporate America in the US is a powerful filter on who you hear from.
The ones in Silicon Valley are the most notorious for it online, at the very least. I don't work in SF or in tech, or even happen to live in America, so I have no idea if it's actually common, but most other Indians not in India don't care very much. The 2nd gen ones hardly care at all.
I've stopped thinking about it entirely since I've left the country, though as my reply above will show, I haven't changed my actual views on the topic. It's good to get away with not caring, instead of it being a constant handicap or shackle around my ankles like in India.
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I work with a ton of Indians at my day job (about 80% in Mumbai, 20% in the US) and I make a point of looking people's surnames up since it's a decent (if imperfect) indicator of caste. The more competent of my coworkers (though this is an obscenely low bar, they're almost all awful) definitely tend to have last names correlating with higher castes.
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