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 -
As a person who was not an American teenager in the 1990s, this game looks like completely overrated trash. First off, it's not a game, it's a 2 hour cut scene. They should have made it be a corny coming of age movie. The plot is completely boring. The aesthetics are ugly and look trans (1). The characters look like SSRI addicted 2010s university Marxist vegan polyamorists with mystery ancestry, not 1990s European-American teenagers.
Clannad is a better slice-of-life high school „ video game“ by a mile, the United States just cannot compete when it comes to that genre because it's too narcissistic about all of its obnoxious peculiarities: it's terrible music, its terrible politics, its ugly aesthetics, its inferior culture.
That it got straight 10/10s means the review companies are being suffocated by 45 year old American liberals. Does that sound like meritocracy to you? Are they really the best people to review video games?
While I agree that it looks like trash, I would question the label "overrated", seeing as practically all commentary I've seen on it firsthand comes to the same conclusion. I guess "overrated" begs the question "overrated by who". "Gaming journalists"? Uh, okay; are there any real people with that opinion?
Even post-gamergate, the culture that gaming journalists belong to still has fairly disproportionate influence over what games are made and what they are made of, despite that culture being obviously disconnected from the culture and preferences of the actual people who buy and play video games. Mixtape getting a bunch of 10/10s from gaming journalism outlets is probably a sign that we have more games with its aesthetics to look forward to.
Over on X, someone pointed out that they bought perpetual rights to all the songs involved, and this would cost a fortune. Meaning there's a lot of money behind the game. So those 10/10s may simply be purchased (as is traditional).
It's made my Larry Ellison's daughter. There's huge money behind it.
I'm sure they sprung for the "ultra premium ad package" for the major sites.
Technically, it's only published by Larry Ellison's daughter.
Yeah, and nepobabies funding the arts, entertainment and other stuff is the other half of raison d'etre of the capitalism: after you get rich doing profitable business, you can do whatever you want with your money, including giving it all to your kids so that they can fund obscure non-profitable computer games they want to see. The main available alternative of "non-profitable arts are only funded by bureaucratic committees" won't guarantee any better results.
There is so little of "better" arts because the finance bros and other medium-to-super rich have a revealed preference of complaining about modern art on Xitter rather than patronizing the arts they supposedly like. One deci-billionaire or a network of few dozen deca-millionaires could plausibly kickstart a whole artistic movement just with their wallets.
I think it's the finance bros and suchlike who are funding a lot the bad contemporary art. Deutsche Bank in particular has made "we fund edgy contemporary art" into part of its corporate identity. Drexel was the founding sponsor of the Turner Prize. Saatchi and Saatchi were not finance bros, but a lot of finance bros showed up at their art parties.
The idea that most wealthy people in finance dislike this stuff is largely wrong. They either don’t care at all or, if they read literary fiction and like art, have similar PMC contemporary tastes to all the usual judges. Are there some vocal trads, particularly on twitter? Sure. And these people are certainly more likely to vote (or donate) to conservative parties for reasons of economic policy. But their artistic tastes are not different from their ‘woke’ peers, just trashier. Snobs make fun of rich new money trash for buying Kaws’ giant toys, but those are still contemporary art, just bad contemporary art.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link