site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   13151 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

'His legacy is cringe': how Charlie Kirk became a meme among the young – even his supporters

Audio of the gunshot that killed him has become a TikTok meme, as have ironic reposts of the apparent AI-slop song We Are Charlie Kirk, which was originally created as a posthumous tribute. He was the butt of a crude joke during the Netflix roast of the Hollywood star Kevin Hart in May. The next month, a viral tweet encouraged people to take “a shot” in his honor on Juneteenth. And a trend known as “Kirkification” has emerged, in which internet pranksters superimpose his face on to unlikely images, such as the Mona Lisa, a woman in a bikini, or Jeffrey Epstein.

This contemptuous, at times nihilistic humor marks a dramatic shift from the period immediately following Kirk’s death in September, in which conservatives sought to suppress criticism of the late Maga luminary. Hundreds of people were fired or otherwise disciplined for denouncing him (which has since resulted in several settlements over alleged first amendment violations). The attempted censorship actually intensified the satirization of Kirk online, said Alex Turvy, a media sociologist and author of an upcoming book about internet culture, Memes in the Machine.

“For the first few weeks, the only safe thing to say was praise,” he said. “When you mandate reverence on a medium built for irony [the internet], you don’t freeze the image, you load the spring. A lot of the mockery was that pressure releasing.” Previously, it used to take years for tragedies to become fodder for cynical internet humor (9/11 being one example). With the power of generative artificial intelligence and image-doctoring, however, Kirk was meme-ified in a matter of weeks.

It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted. Regardless of what the Guardian's experts say, it was reasonable to deploy cancel culture against the most gleeful celebrators of Kirk's death. Killing people you disagree with in a democracy is bad, and celebrating it shouldn't be accepted. But the right clearly pushed their chips in too far trying to martyrize the guy and now his legacy is incomprehensible memes that have nothing to do with his life or message. Turning Point was always aimed at zoomers, and their verdict is in. There are probably a bunch of them who don't realize Kirk was a real person. And the less said about Erika the better.

As a side note, there are a whole bunch of retarded conspiracy theories around his death, because we can't accept that a guy could just be shot by a lone nut despite multiple videos. Even JD Vance isn't immune.

Zoomer humor might have done it eventually anyway, but the right wing reaction to his death was definitely a major catalyst. The ridiculous over the top cringeposting (such as people going like "this means war!") was not serious behavior. It was the behavior of people more obsessed with signaling how Cool and Brave they were to their audiences and like-minded peers. Throw in the conspiracy theories claiming that some trans witch coven, or Israel, or whatever other nonsense besides the literal guy who is on camera in the area who used his own family's gun and admitted to it to people in his life shortly afterwards, and how was it not going to become a joke?

If you act like a fool, people treat you like one. The reaction was ridiculously over the top, and that engineered its own mockery. They tried to force a martyr but that doesn't work easily when you're in a personal responsibility country and the lone wolf culprit is quickly caught and brought to justice. You can't form a meaningful protest or statement against anything, the killer was arrested the second he was found! There's no ongoing injustice to sustain anger against, unless of course you make shit up.

The only reason George Floyd worked even a little is because police are a government organization so blaming it on "policing" as a whole is reasonable in the minds of ordinary idiot citizens who don't actually understand how government works and that police departments in the US are highly compartmentalized from each other. And even that response was so large because COVID, people were bored and wanted something to do. You can't do a COVID era campaign in a non COVID time.

And as history has shown us, this was cringe. Incredibly cringe. His death is a meme because even his fans and allies (looking especially at those like Tucker Carlson claiming Israel killed him at the funeral, Candace Owens, and even as you pointed out Vance himself) couldn't help themselves from being cringe. That's why we got incredible jokes like this.

Just to add finally, this was pretty much unpreventable. The right wing media atmosphere now is tuned to making outrage slop, and pivoting on a dime to being serious is just not happening. Internet pundits can't take his death seriously, because the slop machine is on full throttle.

I grew up in Arizona. It upset a lot of people and was really, really gruesome. Edgy hasan orbiters were outright gleeful about it right after. I think it’s a lot more ‘cringy’ to make memes about a widow trying to carry on in public life after her husband gets murdered in plain view. I don’t get seeing a public figure get murdered and thinking it’s odd people try to find good things to say about them.

It also makes 0 difference whether it was a lone wolf. You seem to forget that this was less than a year after the attempted assassination of Trump. There was a real feeling that a cycle of violence was beginning. Thankfully that did not come to pass, but a lot of the ‘martyrdom’ was coming from ‘why exactly was a somewhat edgy college debater murdered?’ and ‘why are people snidely saying he deserved to be murdered?’

I think it’s a lot more ‘cringy’ to make memes about a widow trying to carry on in public life after her husband gets murdered in plain view. I don’t get seeing a public figure get murdered and thinking it’s odd people try to find good things to say about them.

Yeah and that's old fart behavior. People joke about 9/11, and suicides, and all sorts of other dark crap. Wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe and invites even more jokes. This is part of why Kirk cringe snowballed, because getting upset at the youth's memes just make them meme harder.

It also makes 0 difference whether it was a lone wolf. You seem to forget that this was less than a year after the attempted assassination of Trump. There was a real feeling that a cycle of violence was beginning. Thankfully that did not come to pass,

Correct, the feeling was bullshit. It was a real feeling but that's because people are paranoid idiots.

None of the jokes or memes I’ve seen have been from perspective of ‘Charlie deserved it’, just usual bizarre post ironic references, so I don’t really get what you’re saying. The whole problem people had was with the initial jubilant reaction towards the actual act of violence and people earnestly saying he deserved it.

The only stuff I’ve ever seen people get mad about is mean spirited stuff where people do a finger gun to their neck and intimate that some person deserves what happened to him.

Yeah and that's old fart behavior. People joke about 9/11, and suicides, and all sorts of other dark crap. Wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe and invites even more jokes.

An interesting position.

Big leak of the Young Republicans groupchat, spanning multiple high level members across the nation's "premier Republican youth organization" (as it calls itself), including staffers for GOP representatives, at least one Trump admin employee, at least one elected official, and other high ranking conservatives. "Young" in this case is 18-40, adults working in a professional capacity....

Shit, that doesn't seem very consistent. Reading this thread, it seems like you think people "joking" about "dark shit" is a very serious problem, sufficient to make a long and highly-uncharitably framed post about it, provided it's your outgroup in the hotseat.

Sir, there's been four new Nazi/Hitler/antisemitic issues in the conservative community in just the past day[.] Following the recent Politico expose on the Young Republicans groupchat leak among mid 20s-30s leaders of the organization containing comments about gas chambering their political opponents and antisemitic remarks like this[.] “I was about to say you’re giving nationals to [sic] much credit and expecting the Jew to be honest,” In the followup to this, yes you heard it right, at least four new antisemitic and/or Nazi controversies in the past day or so.

Damn, check that out, a whole additional post and extensive comment thread where you very much seem to be attempting to frame this as a really serious, chronic problem that demands action! Can you point out any place in either of these posts or the subsequent threads where your critique of "old fart behavior" or "wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe" impinges on your analysis?

Let us speak plainly. I don't think you actually believe anything you write here. You are a committed Blue Tribe partisan, and in each post you say whatever you think will advance your short-term partisan interests in the immediate context, with zero concern for any sort of long-term principle or consistency. You will (and have!) argued in favor of free speech when you perceived free speech to be of benefit to you, and you will (and have!) argued for censorship when censorship is of benefit to you. If you have anything recognizable as actual principles, I do not believe you have ever shared them here; certainly I do not believe that I have seen them.

Now to be very clear, I do not think you are breaking the rules by behaving this way, and as far as I am concerned you are perfectly free to continue as long as it pleases you. This place is for arguments, and you certainly bring arguments. To the extent that your pattern of argumentation is viewed as obnoxious by others, I encourage them to simply remember the things you have said, and repeat them back to you, and those who agree with you, when the moment becomes opportune. As an example, I think it is pretty likely that Blue Tribe is going to, at some point in the next few years, start experiencing what it's like to be on the receiving end of actual, motivated, grassroots political murder. And when that happens, and when Blues here discuss how prominent members of their tribe being publicly murdered worries them, I am going to quote them this line right here:

Correct, the feeling was bullshit. It was a real feeling but that's because people are paranoid idiots.

...along with a bouquet of similar quotes from your previous posts. And why shouldn't I? These are the arguments you choose to make, and the other Blues here choose to accept, are they not?

I think accusing Magicalkittycat of having beliefs in an overreach. Fairly high confidence it's just a work of contrarian performance art moreso than actually occupying any particular part of the political spectrum

Send me a few links to where he did that to liberals or progressives, and I might buy that. Niche independent online fora are weird place to do "contrarianism".

People joke about 9/11, and suicides, and all sorts of other dark crap.

No, not all sorts. What you're describing hasn't been believable for over a decade.

Plus making fun of sacred topics like Trans Suicides gets a totally different reaction from the Left

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats