site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 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.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

America could have been the best country on Earth but immigrants have stolen it and turned it into a mediocre, and declining, country that is barely better than Canada and the UK (worse immigrant situations and base populations). You praise the root of this destruction: egalitarianism, hardworkocracy (meritocracy is when high IQ people are aristocrats not when grinding for market value pays off), classlessness, greed, deracination, treachery, and above all, hubris.

Chinese and Indians have completely invaded American STEM at all levels: tech companies, academia, mathematical finance, hardware, and engineering. Smart white American labor has been completely wiped out and has nowhere to go. It almost amounts to a genocide of smart white Americans. And mediocre white Americans don't care because they are classless, greedy, deracinated, treacherous, narcissistic, and believe in the lowness of hardworkocracy. They think that if some aliens land in Montana and start taking over all the land, Americans should just compete with them to have access to the finite resources. Compete to the bone, compete until there is nothing left in live worth living anymore. Just work, work , work, work according to standards set by the aliens, by the demiurge, sacrifice love, beauty, friendship, and everything to pointless toil. I question at times how much qualia they have, if any. Maybe some people have a divine spark and others are just mud.

Aristocracy is when high-agency people break rules, scheme and kill to fulfill their desire of getting things simply for existing instead of working hard. Those who complain about not being given things instead of doing the above are not aristocrats, they are failsons.

No, Aristocracy is when smart people get to compete with each other and keep the profits of their own competition for themselves, instead of having all their time wasting competing with a horde of lvl. 1 3rd world zerglings and then having their miniscule EXP half confiscated and handed to more 3rd worlders and proles.

Smart people are keeping the profits for themselves. Ergo, you're not smart enough to be an aristocrat if you're here complaining about taxes and nepotism.

Most smart people lose half of their income to taxes and make half of what they should because of anti smart people systematic efforts to lower their opportunities. In other words, most smart people are upper middle class and make six figures. Or less -- go check the IQ income correlation. 145 IQ people are on average at the 90th percentile of income, with a lot of spread. That sounds wrong to me.

Whatever you call "let the high IQs work without taxes or competition with anyone they don't like", it's not "aristocracy" in any established meaning of the word. Aristocracy is not when you "get" to do things. Aristocracy is when you do things, while other people less versed in politics "get" to do what you allow them and no more.

Bemoaning that the world isn't fair because you only get to keep 100k/year instead of 200k/year is a useless and undignified activity.

let the high IQs work without taxes or competition with anyone they don't like

I didn't say without competition. I said without meaningless competition. It's like banning France from the worldcup unless they play 3 games a day against U14 teams to qualify. Obviously in a lot of worlds France will just sit it out and the world cup will be won by some mediocre team that was willing to play all year against U14s.

Aristocracy is not when you "get" to do things.

Aristocracy is a privilege, nature is when animals just do things, like a bear eating a human for example. Aristocracy is like being born into a world where you don't have to waste your time fending off bears.

Bemoaning that the world isn't fair because you only get to keep 100k/year instead of 200k/year is a useless and undignified activity.

It's less undignified than having or expressing false consciousness and it's not more useless than anything else people comment on the internet for free.

I didn't say without competition. I said without meaningless competition.

I didn't say without competition either. I said without competition with anyone you don't like. Naturally everyone is incentivized to eliminate as much competition as possible, branding it "meaningless" and "below them" and shit. That isn't how it works. Competition only becomes truly meaningless when you're strong enough to make your lessers compete against it instead. Like the actual aristocrats of the world are currently doing to you. You're the bear barrier. You'll remain one until you become the kind of person who's better at wrangling people than bears.

If you're truly too smart for your current position in the world then complaining on wordcel forums is both undignified and useless. You should be out there lobbying, colluding and scheming.

I said without competition with anyone you don't like.

I didn't say that either, I don't like all smart people. I like some non-smart people. But the point remains that a lot of my and your life has been spent in intellectual competition with people obviously less intelligent. This mainly is expressed through credentialism and dumb hiring practices. It's also expressed in lack of intelligence segregation. The consequence of having no segregation is a performative zero sum competition to separate yourself from someone you do not mix with. The reason you don't need to spend half your life demonstrating why you shouldn't be a farm animal or a wild animal is species segregation. Top 10% people are not segregated enough from the bottom half of humans even though they're as easy to tell apart as man and goat.

If you're truly too smart for your current position in the world then complaining on wordcel forums is both undignified and useless. You should be out there lobbying, colluding and scheming.

Stop criticizing how I spend my leisure time, it's rude and disrupts how I want to spend my leisure time. Do you never do anything for fun? The idea I have to spend all my time competing against Chinese rice peasants and white proletariat is what I'm against. Aristocrats philosophize. Maybe be happier that you're here also partaking in aristocratic leisure?

Like the actual aristocrats of the world are currently doing to you.

The aristocrats aren't doing anything to me. Literally, socialism is a bigger problem than billionaires by a magnitude of 10,000 times at least. Socialism takes all my money. I don't like the billionaires because they are not aristocrats, they are mostly lucky peasants or class traitors and that's that but they're basically not worth worrying about.

More comments