site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Its a sad situation but nothing here seems unique or even too particularly culture war. Police have a bad tendency to trust the first calm person to talk to them, which is Digwa claiming that he got attacked first. They especially trust the calm person over the one who is clearly panicking or having some sort of unidentified issue. This is a problem that gets brought up in domestic abuse circles sometimes, that the abuser seems cool and collected when the cops get called in by a neighbor while the victim will often be emotionally frazzled and angry and look like they're a hostile aggressor.

So given this, the police approach the scene and find a calm guy who says he got attacked and another guy who is panicking and freaking out and is like almost every other situation you see a guy freaking out in, probably on drugs. Violence cases are rare, drug guy being crazy or having an overdose is common. They make the assumption this is like every other case. His wounds were in such a way that they weren't easily visible so even when he's saying he got stabbed, they assume it's the insane mutterings of a druggie high off whatever.

The solution is to check anyway but that doesn't necessarily help unless you constantly reinforce it, since the officers will eventually default back to ignoring it again. Heck one of the cops even acknowledged it, like "oh well I think we have to check anyway don't we?". They knew better but they were used to just ignoring it. They really didn't believe he was stabbed and defaulted to their base assumptions and base behaviors

Yes, two knives. Digwa was carrying two ceremonial knives that are permitted to him as a religious article, one of them being a kirpan, an 8 inch one, on a sheath over his waistband.

Now this is something I think is always ridiculous. Religious exemptions are a nonsense idea.

Either a rule is genuinely important to have and exceptions shouldn't be given out (because it's important!), or the rule isn't actually important and therefore shouldn't exist. Almost everything that has a religious exemption to it should just be gone! Why should you lose more freedoms than someone else just because you believe in a different sky man?

Its a sad situation but nothing here seems unique or even too particularly culture war

Quick sanity check: what is a "particularly culture war" situation. Was George Floyd one?

@magicalkittycat, hey bro, how come you answered pretty much every comment except this one?

I haven't answered lots of replies, there's way too many! Just doing a quick check there has been >40 replies to me in 9 hours. I have a busy life with work and my kids and this is just something I'm going to check and reply to casually if there's too many going on.

But sure I'll answer yours

Quick sanity check: what is a "particularly culture war" situation. Was George Floyd one?

I don't think it's much of a culture war situation because basically no one has been on the side of "police should just make up their mind based off the first person they talk to and police should ignore a stabbing victim's pleas by assuming they're just a druggie or hallucinating or whatever the police assumed there". I haven't seen anyone argue that it is good for police to do that.

For a culture war, certainly there must be a war element to it. Some sort of disagreement on if this behavior was responsible policing or something. But nope doesn't seem to be much, pretty much everyone left and right wing I know seems to agree, police should actually check instead of just assuming it's nonsense.

I have a busy life with work and my kids

There it is, the Darwin tell:

It's in my queue, but I've gotten like 90 replies since yesterday and the long ones take a long time to do justice (and I do have a job and a family). At this point most comments aren't going to get a reply, realistically.

@ArjinFerman, just in case you were unaware, you are talking to one of Darwin's alts. (The last one was called @guesswho.)

Wow incredible! I have a job and family and other hobbies and don't prioritize replying to every single comment here.

I feel like you're telling on yourself, and what you think of the userbase, really hard here if you think being a well adjusted individual with an active life is an odd thing. No offense but you might really need some grass touching dude.

I am a well-adjusted individual with an active life. I was pointing out that you and @guesswho (if we're still maintaining the pretense that you are separate individuals) have an eerily similar tic where you have seemingly limitless time to expound on your opinions (seriously dude, you post an average of 2.5 comments per day here, you're in no position to throw stones), but the second you get any significant amount of pushback, you instantly claim to be far too busy with your other responsibilities to reply to them. I'm not criticising you for not replying to every comment (I routinely have more important things to do than to be posting here). I'm pointing out that the pattern of behaviour is so uncannily similar that I would be flabbergasted if you aren't yet another Darwin alt/sockpuppet. And I really, truthfully, do not understand this weird urge you feel to periodically flounce off, only to reappear some time later under a new username. It's just such phenomenally strange behaviour. I wonder what your next username will be.

I am a well-adjusted individual with an active life.

Damn are you me too then?

(seriously dude, you post an average of 2.5 comments per day here, you're in no position to throw stones),

I also regularly go days without posting too and when I do post it's generally in bursts centered together.

I'm not criticising you for not replying to every comment (I routinely have more important things to do than to be posting here). I'm pointing out that the pattern of behaviour is so uncannily similar that I would be flabbergasted if you aren't yet another Darwin alt/sockpuppet

Woah, you are a Darwin alt. Your pattern of behavior claiming you have other things to do is just what he did! Holy shit.

Woah, you are a Darwin alt. Your pattern of behavior claiming you have other things to do is just what he did! Holy shit.

Poor reading comprehension in addition to being obnoxious (yet another thing you have in common with @guesswho – what a coincidence!). Go through my entire comment history and you will never, not once, find an instance in which I claimed the reason I could not reply to someone's comment was because I was too busy with my job and family. There have been times in which I was so occupied, but I never announced it in the sneering tone of dismissive condescension which is your favourite. That specific tic is a dead giveaway. So too is your defensive shit-slinging when you realise your subterfuge wasn't quite as convincing as you thought it was.

More comments