site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 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.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Anyone consistently taking home 30k over a weekend should feel ZERO need to advertise that fact, trebly so if they're in a dubiously legal occupation. They should not want to invite competition, especially from potentially more attractive ladies.

Likewise, such a person would probably not want the attention this could bring to her clients, both for competitive reasons and for their own confidentiality. Its more accepted to do this kind of disclosure either anonymously or as a post-retirement memoir, no?

Conclusion: maybe ONE guy paid her 30k, ONCE, and maybe for some particularly lurid scenario or there were some other expenses involved or whatever. She's using that to set her price negotiations with any future Johns aggressively in her favor.

I'm skeptical of taking MUCH from this about the larger escort scene in SF, although I'm willing to believe, given the gender ratios (to say nothing of sexualities) I've heard predominate out there that any cishet guy with decent Testosterone and hundreds of thousands/millions of tech dollars in his pocket would try to find an outlet.

This article is likely an ad. Not even heavily disguised I'd say.

If the numbers keep going up but everyone is employed wiping the asses of boomers and sexually pleasuring tech AI millionaires, have we really improved society?

There's a valid read on this from the AI/Economic Anxiety perspective though, yes. Tech bros are an ascendant class purely on the backs of very new wealth and the appearance that they'll 'own' the future (maybe not literally) on current trajectories, so their status is likely to keep on rising if they don't get unceremoniously displaced by their own product.

And so the two broad sectors of Western economies that are 'thriving' are anything that directly caters to wealthy boomers (or not-so-wealthy, given how much the government spends on them too), or anything that is closely related to AI development. (Finance is doing fine too, but that's not so interesting).

The up-and-coming generation would not be wrong to notice they can trade in significant amounts of dignity and personal autonomy to siphon some of the wealth those particular beneficiaries without having to actually break through into such classes. But 10-15 years of doing so just for a shot at getting enough financial independence to never have to degrade yourself again is kind of bleak to contemplate from this side of it.