This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
Contributions for the week of March 30, 2026
Contributions for the week of April 6, 2026
- "I think Terry Pratchett is the atheist version of C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien."
- "But Halo... Halo was magic."
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
It's a shame I didn't see Amadan's comment while it was fresh. I'm almost tempted to AAQC it again, I think it's that good.
The one thing that we ask of Mottizens is the ability to engage in civil discourse, including on controversial topics. Especially on controversial topics. We make allowances for the fact that this is a rather big ask, especially by wider internet standards, but it's also the whole fucking point of this place. You can say just about anything, as long as you say it politely, and back up inflammatory claims proactively. What counts as inflammatory? Now isn't that a debate for the ages? I'd like to use the "reasonable member of the public" doctrine, but that's got more loopholes than the factory where they make basketball hoops.
This is fine. It really is. To channel Sam Altman (hiss hiss), the Motte is nothing without its users. The users wouldn't be here if us mods didn't do the unpleasant job of occasionally cracking a few skulls. I don't like doing that. I doubt any of us do, and that's in part because we were negatively selected for that tendency. We do it because even the clearest, easiest-going set of rules on the planet won't stand up and defend themselves. Entropy is a bitch.
Does anyone think I like the anti-Indian stereotypes floating around on the web, or that surfaces even here on occasion? Hah. You wish. I console myself with the (true) fact that I am very, very far from the modal Indian, and that the complaints usually lobbed against them aren't applicable to me (assuming we're talking about something with more merit than generic accusations of shitting on streets. And when the criticism does encompass me? Including for characteristics I really can't change? Well, the Indian Subcontinent probably selected for thick skin, for protection against malaria if nothing else.
Very few things written here are truly worth getting heated about, I say, even acknowledging that I've lost my cool in the past (albeit for other reasons, anti-Indian sentiment is rather low on the list of things that reliably rile me up). And well, on the flip side, getting a warning or ban on a niche internet forum is not the end of the world. Go read a book. Touch grass. Feed your kids, or go make kids.
Digression aside: something that more people should know is that if you are genuinely uncertain if a planned post of yours clears the bar, you can just... DM us. The mod mail exists. You can ping the mods and ask, "hey, is this okay to share?" Almost nobody does this. More people should. We should probably put this next to the rules.
Would you be willing to expand on this a little at some point? I've been grappling with some issues around this personally and some perspective from your side of things might help a lot.
When I was younger, I lived in several places that had notable Indian minorities, and that continued in college due to being in a technical major. Several of my closest friends in those times were first or second generation immigrants. In most cases, they weren't just American, but they felt more American than me. They flew the flag at home, played sports in school, participated in neighborhood cookouts (with mildly weird limits depending on where they came from originally), and did all the things you'd expect from somebody who really liked being in America. One of the best trap shooters I'd ever met hadn't ever fired a gun until he got his citizenship, but he started coming to meets as soon as he could because, in his words, "I'm an American now". Hell, in some ways it was aspirational for somebody like me. I figured that if families from a country as poor as India could manage to live the American dream, maybe a dumb redneck like me could too.
Lately, I've been interacting with the Indian diaspora in the US again and it feels completely different. It's mercenary and extractive. They all seem to want to make bank and go home, or terraform the surrounding area into India-but-not-in-India. The families don't try to integrate or assimilate at all. Kids keep their own cliques in school or go to private schools. Community events are almost entirely held within the diaspora.
Do you have any idea what's going on? It's caused a measure of cultural whiplash for me. I can't tell if it's a change in culture in India, or different social classes and subcultures immigrating, or changing views towards America, or what, but fuck me if it's not a noticeable difference.
Not to be a single-note piano, but "the Great Awokening" seems like a plausible culprit for what you've observed. It's just identitarianism forcefully asserting itself. This, basically, and then this (PDF warning). "Assimilation" used to be a goal; then it got dumped into a bucket with "colonialism" leading to the crazed perception that Indians (or whomever) who travel to Europe or the Americas are being "colonized" if they assimilate.
I have met a fair few immigrants who are actually quite insistent that their children assimilate, but in many cases this seems to backfire somewhat. There are definitely people out there who prefer to feel attached to the culture and practices of their ancestors, for various reasons, despite being geographically remote. That I am a rootless cosmopolitan does benefit me in some ways, but there are definitely times when I wish I had been better suited to becoming a key figure in a community of comparatively limited importance beyond its own boundaries.
I'd be hesitant to blame Woke for this, really, though I've already plead general ignorance on trends on the ground (I'm not physically there, and I don't interact with the Indian diaspora on an intentional basis). Sure, identity politics was enthusiastically adopted by a specific clade of diasporans, but there are fewer true believers than you might think. People will do anything to improve their odds on college admissions screens, and this is hardly unique to Indians. In fact, they're in a particularly awkward spot.
I think @Testing is more likely to be right here, though that's a low confidence claim. Then there's reaction-formation: if anti-Indian sentiment is on the rise in the States, the natural thing is to band together. My impression is that the worst of it is mostly restricted to X and other social media cesspools, the average Indian on the ground in the US hasn't really noticed active discrimination. In the UK? We're still very much model minorities, the usual vitriol is reserved mostly for other (sometimes visually indistinguishable) South Asians.
As an Enlightened Centrist™ , I blame both the left and the right for this. In particular, the unsophisticated view that race is what matters rather than culture.
People respond to incentives. In the recent past (1980-2010 maybe?), a lot of racism/harassment/ostracization were predicated on culture and behavior. If you act like a normal American, wave American flags, and try to fit in then people would treat you as a normal American. If you can't speak English, roam around in gangs of your own race, play foreign music, shoplift from stores, etc, you're a dirty foreigner. Therefore, immigrants were incentivized to assimilate, because they could improve their reception and treatment. Being bullied is a negative reinforcement for being unamerican, therefore it incentivizes Americanness. Of course there were also a bunch of genuine racists who hate people because of their skin color and nothing you can do can fix that, but they have always been the minority. Most racists use skin color as a proxy for things they actually care about like crime and culture, so more patriotic minorities can usually avoid their ire by being "one of the good ones."
Woke tore this down. All immigrants are good, all racism is bad. Fewer people outwardly discriminate or criticize immigrants for being foreign. Importantly, this happened mostly on the margins. The more kind and well-intentioned people who legitimately were concerned with people getting along and reducing crime rates and whatnot were the most likely to turn woke or at least stay silent to avoid being cancelled. Meanwhile, the hardcore racists who actually hate skin colors stayed where they were. If you are an immigrant, the naive left will love you no matter what you do, and the naive right will hate you no matter what you do, and there's way fewer people in the center who will actually vary their treatment of you than there used to be. So the incentive to change is way smaller. Negative reinforcement doesn't accomplish anything if it's inflicted randomly instead of in response to specific behaviors.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link