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 -
Some time ago, I posted about how it feels like wokeism is getting less popular. I didn't have much to back it up, except some observations about a popular techie watering hole called HackerNews, so the whole exercise left me with more questions than answers.
Well, today I chanced upon "The Great Awokening Is Winding Down" by Musa al-Gharbi, a sociologist from Columbia University that focuses on "how we think about, talk about, and produce knowledge about social phenomena including race, inequality, social movements, extremism, policing, national security, foreign policy and domestic U.S. political contests." (With that broad a scope of inquiry, I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't a fellow mottizen). Al-Gharbi puts together a compelling story: there are fewer woke-related cancellation events, fewer research papers are published related to woke ideology, newspapers are writing less often about race/racism/racists, and companies--including media companies--are not only pushing back more strongly against the demands of social justice warriors, but also closing their purses and defunding both internal DEI departments as well as financial pledges they made to the bankrupt ideals of equity just a few years ago.
While this type of news warms my heart, most of the evidence al-Gharbi provides is composed of disparate op-ed columns from American newspapers. Throughout the last ten years, there have always been dissenting voices that managed, somehow, to walk the thin line between criticizing woke ideology and not falling victim to it. So I don't see why al-Gharbi puts any trust in these pieces, even one as monumental as the Times' recent response to GLAAD.
That said, al-Gharbi's analysis provides some value when he describes the recent behavior of companies and when he provides some numbers to back up his claims. The numbers he shares seem to confirm that the public is losing both interest and tolerance for wokeish puritanism. But the numbers themselves are so remote as to heavily dilute their meaning. For example, there is the fall in the frequency of terms like "race", "racists", and "racism" in papers like NYT, LAT, WSJ, and WP. Or the falling number of scholarly articles about identity-based biases. Al-Gharbi chooses to interpret these as evidence for this theory, but doesn't take into account other factors that could be responsible for this behavior. Like, maybe papers are using fewer words like "racists", and instead using some new fangled euphemism (like homeless -> unhoused)? Or perhaps, in the scholarly article case, these topics have moved to other forums, like described in Scott's recent "Links for February" post:
The arguments that convince me the most are when al-Gharbi talks about the changes in company behavior. These are hard, reality-based events that are orchestrated by smooth talking servants of the Invisible Hand (praise thy golden touch!). You can't argue with a company that not only doesn't pander to internal activist pressure, but goes onto punish them by expelling them from its belly. This mirrors my own experience working in the corporate world where more and more people roll their eyes at DEI-sponsored programming, finding convenient excuses to skip out. Even leadership's support, once crisp and vocal, has died down in volume to a DEI-themed zoom background or a quick few words mechanically tacked on somewhere.
Emotionally, the most salient point and the one I hang my hopes on is how Gen-Z seems to be rebelling against the enforced work puritanism. It's probably my nostalgia, but as a child of the 90s, I can't help but see in this behavior the reflection of my childhood. You had gory movies like Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill. You had gory games, probably led by id titles like Doom and Quake--titles which introduced hundreds of thousands of people to online deathmatching. You had dirty grunge, whose raw scream was quickly adapted and made into Billboard Top 100 records. But you also had plenty of metal and industrial sub-genres spin off and avoid total commercialization. Let's not forget the two movies that closed out the decade, both quite clear in their anti-puritanical message: Fight Club and The Matrix.
While later on all of this was sublimated into the cheery smiles and pastel colors of the aughts, if today's teenagers feel a similar sort of anger and distrust of righty and lefty moralists, I can rest easy--the world will not end, at least not for another decade or two.
I broadly agree with many people here that this is more indicative of wokeness having completely won rather than of it being in decline. To use the same metaphor as someone else here, there's no need to hammer down nails when none are sticking up.
But one area where I think we may be seeing signs of the start of a decline is in certain areas of pop culture. The complete failure of efforts to boycott Hogwarts Legacy based on Rowling's refusal to tow the woke line on trans issues has been discussed plenty here, and that follows a number of other high profile woke failures.
About a month ago, HBO released Velma, a cartoon spinoff/reimagining/prequel of Scooby Doo featuring Velma as the protagonist, along with all the main cast members of the show (except the dog himself, who is completely absent) go through high school (in modern times with smartphones and all that). It was very openly woke with every character being race-swapped except Fred, and the show starting off with Velma narrating that this is her origin story and that "normally origin stories are about tall handsome guys struggling with a burden of being handed even more power," and by all accounts that tone only got more heavy-handed as the show went on. It was also completely panned by critics and fans alike, receiving some of the lowest scores ever from both in places like Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB. This doesn't mean it was a failure, and it seems to have been renewed for a 2nd season - possibly due to "hatewatching," possibly due to a 2nd season already being too far along in the pipeline - but at least it indicates that it's something the general audience doesn't really want to tolerate.
Before that, last year there was Saints Row, a video game reboot of the Saints Row franchise, which was initially a sort of GTA clone back in the day designed to appeal to a more edgy crowd (I never played any of the Saints Row games, so I'm going off 2nd hand information). The woke messaging in this was pretty minor by all accounts, but it featured a lot of changes to the franchise clearly designed to appeal to that crowd, including making the protagonists a diverse set of 20-something recent college graduates trying to make it in an expensive city, who start the eponymous Saints Row gang in part as an effort to pay back their student loans while also fighting for enacting what they see as justice in the world. While in the original, I believe that the protagonist was just a random guy working his way up the gang hierarchy and becoming a ruthless kingpin because he wanted power and money and women. They also changed some running jokes in the franchise presumably for sensitivity reasons, including changing a mechanic shop name from "Rim Jobs" to "Jim Robs," and a fast food chain from "Freckle Bitches" to just "FB's." The game was roundly rejected by both critics and fans, and seems to have bombed financially. Much of the criticisms had to do with the game's buggy state and poorly designed/implemented game mechanics, but, of course, those are not characteristics that exist independently of it being "woke."
Late last year, there was also Rings of Power, a prequel TV show to Lord of the Rings based on some supplementary material by JRR Tolkien, which Amazon famously spent $1bn+ for production and made a big deal of including diverse racial representation in populations where it wouldn't make sense from an anthropological perspective. It also featured as the protagonist Galadriel, an elf who appeared in the Lord of the Rings and who was clearly better than others in almost every way including her fighting skills and intuitions about Sauron's return while also being highly aggressive and abrasive towards others in displaying that superiority. The show was mostly rejected by critics and fans. I don't think Amazon released viewership numbers, but I recall reading that after the initial 2 episodes which were released together, the show's viewership dropped precipitously.
Also late last year, there was the TV show She-Hulk: Attorney at Law on Disney+, which featured quite a bit of woke messaging, such as a monologue in the 1st episode where She-Hulk goes off on the Hulk: "Here's the thing, Bruce. I'm great at controlling my anger. I do it all the time. When I'm catcalled in the street. When incompetent men explain my own area of expertise to me. I do it pretty much every day because if I don't I will be called emotional or difficult or... might just literally get murdered. So, I'm an expert at controlling my anger because I do infinitely more than you!" Along with the main plot point of the season being about a group of angry men trolling She-Hulk online, culminating in them crashing a ceremony for her winning a "Best Female Lawyer" award and playing embarrassing videos of her for the audience. This one had a bit more critic support, but fans seemed to pan it for various issues, including the woke messaging, poor use of breaking the 4th wall, and bad CGI.
Now, woke works in pop culture failing is nothing new; in the past, we've had films like Terminator: Dark Fate or the Charlie's Angels (Elizabeth Banks version) or TV shows like Batgirl bombing. Even The Last Jedi counts despite the massive amounts of money it made, because of how it poisoned the franchise, preventing it from making as much money as Disney clearly expected to make from buying that franchise from Lucas. But generally those works still got massive support from critics with the bigoted fans being reprimanded for not supporting these great progressive works of art. Some of that happened in these cases, with probably Rings of Power the biggest example. But it seems to me that there's more rejection of works like this by critics than ever before, and they're no longer so willing to circle the wagons to protect some work if it clearly lacks the basic fundamentals of what makes works of fiction like these actually good. And I can't recall ever seeing so much rejection like this happening back-to-back-to-back so quickly.
Maybe it's just a blip, and maybe it's just a tiny bit of overreach being pulled back before "progress" continues unabated, but I think there's an optimists' case to be made that this might be a turning point. The Hogwarts Legacy situation feels like it could be a sort of Emperor Has No Clothes moment as the masses realize just how much power the woke have with them going all-in on trying to "cancel" the game and having essentially negligible - and possibly positive - impact on its sales.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link