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 -
I want to pre-register a bet and get some opinions on this one. This death threat is absolutely fake, right? The grammar is ridiculous, and the word and phrasing choice is an absolute parody. Everything about it smells like an educated non-english person larping with zero understanding of what the natives actually sound like.
It reminds me of my college professor who smashed her car windows and wrote "brave dykes will never smash the patriarchy" on it to blame frat boys (which worked on the college, but fortunately not the police & insurance agency).
I expect we'll never hear about it if it turns out she wrote it. But I doubt even the met would grab some random local boy and use him as a scapegoat like my college tried In that incident.
It's so over-the-top obviously fake that I actually give it a 10% chance it's an actual troll who sent her that, and whether she believes it's for real or not, obviously she's going to run with it.
But yeah, 90% chance it's her or someone she put up to this. "Yoruba" is a tell - actual white nationalists don't care if you're Yoruba or Igbo or Tsutsi or whatever. Nor would they switch between "Shola" and the more formal "Adeshola." The syntax is characteristic of African English speakers.
Interestingly, India Willoughby (a trans woman whose main occupation seems to be jousting with JK Rowling on Twitter) claims to have also received one. What a coincidence, two leftist Twitter grifters both get threatening letters spelling out in explicit detail that Very Bad People want to kill them because they are black and trans, respectively.
That's exactly the weird doubt I had. Maybe there really is some weirdly autistic chav who goes around ranting about "fucking yorubans, with their nice houses and slightly narrower than west-african-average cranial maxilla and posh Ufẹ̀ accent. I hate them even more than the fucking Kposo!"
Some of the far-right accounts I've seen on Twitter have joked that online racists are the kind of people who would end up learning obscure details about ethnicities in Nigeria and so on. "Racists learn about different peoples to hate them more effectively." Of course that would be more like 4chan autist types and less like people who would send misspelled threat letters, unless - as indicated in another post in this thread - it's a double false flag.
Currently news about ethnic relations in Nigeria have gotten a momentary boost in Finland due to this strange story, but that's a whole another issue.
Sure, but far right twitter autists are mostly not the ones actually sending death threats.
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