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 -
The Gender-Swapped and all Minority Remake of MeToo is Really Good
A J.P. Morgan executive is being sued by a former junior employee for allegedly saying hilarious shit like this. If there were merits to the case, it would be comic book levels of sexual harassment. Literal "cringey HR video" remarks.
Unfortunately, most of finance twitter has already come to the conclusion that the allegations are highly or totally fabricated at worse and, at best, that there was a mutually consensual affair that the junior employee, since fired, is trying to use to legally extort settlement money.
Here's the fun twist; the executive is female, of white-and-something else origin, and the alleged victim is a male of likely southeast asian or, maybe, arab origin.
This is mostly a flavor-of-the-week alleged sex scandal that will be forgotten quickly. But the culture war implications are fun if you list them out;
Of course I am being tongue-in-cheek here because this is goofy tabloid nonsense. But goofy tabloid nonsense can have second and third order impact. If the ghost-of-the-ghost of MeToo now has junior male employees fabricating or embellishing facts to try to rend some money out of corporations, at what point do those corporations, and their legal departments, and courts, start to get fatigued of these annoyances? Do we see something coming-full-circle where off-color sexual jokes are de facto re-permitted in work environments because "everyone does them, and if you can't deal with them, you probably shouldn't be working here?"
On this one, I'm in the Nothing Ever Changes camp. MeToo both nailed a few actual monsters (Weinstein, Bacon, Matt Lauer) and caused thousands of anonymous, awkward men permanent career damage. Something something trolley problems. MeToo did not cause a fundamental shift in workplace "gender relations."
AI will never replace this level of art.
This is incredibly fake. The New York Post is putting their defamation defense in the body of articles about it now:
Exactly. I don't believe that a white woman in a high-powered professional job is going to say this to some Indian guy she's obsessively in love with:
She's from the Balkans so I can see it.
More options
Context Copy link
It would be very odd that a white woman was obsessively in love with an Indian male in the first place. Add that it’s a high status white woman. Add that she apparently was sexually harassing and racially insulting the guys wife. Just massive press x to doubt.
Hey hey hey !
When people say Indian they think the vocalist of Bloodywood and not the rapper of Bloodywood.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Elizabeth Holmes
Elizabeth Holmes was in love with Sunny before she even achieved high status, though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
People always say things like this, but where I am, I always see plenty of white women with Indian men.
I don't think women are as put off by South Asian males as the Internet likes to believe.
Is it Albania? Because then this would lend credibility to the claimant.
More options
Context Copy link
I've lived in a lot of areas with large amounts of reasonably-successful Indians and I've pretty rarely seen meaningful IMWF numbers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Possibly the white woman with the last name "Hajdini" didn't think of herself as white. I wonder what she put on her college application.
As discussed below, no Europeans think of themselves as white in a politically relevant sense. We think of ourselves as English/Irish/German etc, like to think we can distinguish different European sub-populations visually, and find the fact that some of the lesser breeds without the law (Kipling was talking about the Boers here, not the blacks) have the same skin colour as us morally irrelevant.
Historically the superordinate identity that Europeans reached for when they wanted one was Christendom, not whiteness. (Whiteness didn't work, because the actual outgroup was Muslim Arabs and Turks, who are no more swarthy than southern Europeans). There is now an alternative left-coded superordinate identity - the EU is a political community that can be the locus of civic nationalism. But neither Christian nationalism nor EUism are popular among European nationalists compared to the nationalisms of individual countries or secessionist regions. (Single-issue anti-Islamism is, which could be considered an extension of Christian nationalism) White nationalism is an American invention, developing in a context where you wanted to outgroup 15% of the native population but couldn't reasonably claim they were foreign.
The wogs do begin at Calais, but Christian (and post-Christian) wogs are not enemies by default. Heck, even the snail-munching, sexual deviant frogs have been on our side for 120 years now.
More options
Context Copy link
She's Albanian, they generally think of themselves as white and those who don't believe that the Albanian race is uniquely supreme and destined to rule all, starting with Dua Lipa and Xherdan Shaqiri.
Do they think that on college applications, though?
More options
Context Copy link
The northern Italians have a saying: "Africa starts at Rome"
Or as the Brits used to say, "The wogs begin at Calais": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wog
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
At minimum, I'd think, she'd use, fewer, commas,,,
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link