site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This is something I really am learning to hate in other autistic people. They can accept these two premises individually but can't seem to understand what they mean together because they can't observe the phenomenon.

  1. Humans communicate on two levels: explicitly through stated content, and implicitly through subtext. Additionally subtextual communication is both conscious and nonconscious: tone, inflection, body language, etc. Essentially non-verbal behavioral leakage exists and is positively correlated with strong emotive feelings

  2. Autistic people suck and recognizing, and conveying subtextual communication. They can't passively observe it, not within how they communicate or how others communicate.

Result: Strong emotionally affective beliefs end up being roughly communicated through non-verbal communication in nonconscious ways. This is obviously very lossy information wise, but when ever has social comms been an exact science, it's all vibes and intuition anyway. If you are autistic you will have a hard time determining what non-verbal comms you are sending out, and may literally be communicating more than you intend.


You seem to have a seriously complicated relationship with women. You blame them for the poor dating environment, you blame them for poor social environments, you think they are less pro-social than men, they can't honor their words vs men. You think the political ecosystem is worse because of women, you think women need to be monitored, controlled, shepherded because they are impulsive children, they lack desirable traits in a partner, they cheat more, their education is socially harmful, it goes on and on. BUT, you also love women, you've staked your entire existential meaning towards something that requires a woman to love you. You are dependent on women for your desired future, for your meaning. Women are simultaneously the villains of your entire world view and the indispensable condition of your personal salvation. (If you would like me to reference all of your posts on these, I absolutely can).

You have women up on a pedestal and simultaneously in a gibbet.

These are strong emotionally affective beliefs, I absolutely think they leak.

You actually remind me of a close friend, he's very similar to you, late millennial, single, has trouble with women, expresses very similar opinions to you on that subject, slightly autistic, slightly conservative (though a militant vegan!) and for the important reference he's crypto-conservative, ie hiding it. He doesn't talk conservative points, doesn't express his power-level, in his opinion nobody should know he's a conservative. But in our friend group it's pretty much an open secret that he's conservative. Why? Because all of his non-verbal communication, and the very few comments he does make. Neurotypical people can intuit it, they talk, they compare notes. You state a strong opinion around him, and you can literally see the right-wing debate bro combination of Charlie Kirk + Sam Harris as gears in his head start spinning up, even though he refrains from engaging. I don't have character references, so yeah maybe you are unimpeachable, but if it's just your opinion on your unimpeachability, well I think you might be unaware of the subtext you are conveying.


That said I think you should try non-party social events in a public place around a shared activity. People flake because they feel the social pressure to say yes and the lack of social consequences for not showing up. I have experienced it when I organized events around social parties in Chicago, it's not gendered. I think an open social activity is more likely to draw new blood. Food for thought.

EDIT: and because I realized I didn't respond to several of your points, I don't think this is solely on you, absolutely there is a trend of social isolation among people these days. But this returns to my pragmatic point: You can be happy or you can be right. Just because there is a trend doesn't mean you are helpless and should just sit back and seethe, you can make changes to your own lifestyle, behavior, beliefs, and if you really place all this existential importance on a family, then you would try to make it happen at any cost. No change would be too much of an ask. Who cares what everyone else is experiencing, you need to look out for your own happiness, your own success, and your own life fulfillment, it's a hard game out there, you just going to quit and whinge because the deck is stacked against you??

I don't think most of what you are saying applies to our friend @faceh, but I do recognize the pattern you're talking about.

There seems to be an odd epidemic of people who are upset that other people don't believe their lies. Epistemically similar to a flaming homo who comes out and everyone says "oh good we already knew" and he gets mad about it.

I recall a conversation with a friend of mine where she was talking about how a friend of her husband's, his wife hates her. And then later in the conversation it turns out that the husband has always had a thing for her and tried to proposition her multiple times. But the wife "had no reason to hate me, she didn't know about any of that!" Ok, but you can't hate a bitch for being right. She was right to be suspicious of you, even if you think she had no reason to know about it, so you have to assume she had some subconscious information at least.

Similarly, a certain type of man seems to be flummoxed that women he hate don't like him. "Why don't the normies fall for my lies to them about who I am and what I think of them?"

Part of my personal history is that I was two weeks away from actually getting married before my ex broke it off.

So strangely, I was able to get a woman to the point where she was asking to get married to me. I doubt I would get that far if your thesis were true, do you?

I've had a lot to think about since then.

Basically, I did six months of therapy grappling with my personal failings. Came to grips with those.

And then I did a whole lot of research to figure out why I was apparently struggling, to figure out how much was attributable to me, and how much was attributable to 'outside factors.'

Across the board, it turns out that there's a complete failure to form functional relationships observed in every country on the planet. Its worse amongst the young.

I will take no personal blame for problems that are clearly systemic in nature. If EVERYONE is struggling in precisely the same way, its not an individual problem. Its definitely not a me problem.

Especially when I've gotten far closer to a successful outcome than the majority of people out there.

And before you ask, my ex has not gone on to find a better guy and have a happy stable relationship. Almost the opposite. Its utterly clear how her personal issues have driven her outcomes, and have little to do with me.


So no, I'm not very persuaded by someone trying to assess my desirability based solely on posts I make on the autistic argumentation and controversial debate forum, who has never interacted with me in real life.

What I do have is a level of disagreeableness that refuses to go along with polite fictions to ignore a clear, broad problem.

Which, let us be clear, I've been using this forum for LONG time, including the period when I was in that relationship.

Part of my personal history is that I was two weeks away from actually getting married before my ex broke it off.

Right but was the "Women are the problem" part of your view back then, or was that the catalyst that pushed you towards "the discovery of the truth"? Dating really is a lot of luck, you need to meet the right person at the right time.

I will take no personal blame for problems that are clearly systemic in nature. If EVERYONE is struggling in precisely the same way, its not an individual problem. Its definitely not a me problem.

Yeah I can agree that the current dating market is fucked, I just don't buy grand overarching narratives that its all a single gender's fault rather than the complex interplay between genders, their desires and their interactions. However given that this is the environment, the real question is more what can you do to protect yourself, improve your odds, and still build the life you want? Being right about the system can explain your situation. It cannot, by itself, improve it. At some point, you have to decide whether proving that the problem is unfair matters more than finding a way through it.

There seems to be a bit of a motte and baily here: Motte: There are systemic issues causing relationship formation and interpersonal social cohesion to plummet. Bailey: Women are the cause of all of this because xyz evidence.

So no, I'm not very persuaded by someone trying to assess my desirability based solely on posts I make on the autistic argumentation and controversial debate forum, who has never interacted with me in real life.

As is your right, I once was like you, I made the same arguments you do, with the same totalizing world view. I think it can be very cathartic, but it's very resentment driven. Resentment poisons the soul. You come across very resentful on this forum towards women, but who am I to know you IRL. I can only pattern match to myself of yesteryear and advise you to take a more nuanced stance that isn't so totalizing, blaming a single gender for all the social dysfunction. I'm sure you'll tell me its not resentment, its observing reality and truth! Truth hurts!! Yeah... I've been there...

I just don't buy grand overarching narratives that its all a single gender's fault rather than the complex interplay between genders, their desires and their interactions.

Once again, you won't find me saying its either gender's fault. I have never uttered the words "I blame women for [X]." Go ahead, look through my comments. If I meant that, I'd say that.

I've very specifically said:

Look, I don't think women are the problem. But the problem is with women. Specifically, in their mind, in that they've formed cultural expectations that, via feedback loops, are completely divorced from reality and renders their own desires unachievable.

So... you have to address their desires. Reality can't be manipulated to fit their desires, so it seems obvious to me that you gotta at least TRY to make their desires comply with reality.

There is no fixing this by changing men's behavior. You have to address the problem where it resides.

Here's a serious question. If the sort of guy who 'dislikes' women is repellant to them...

Why is it that young men who go on dates have a lower opinion of equality then those who don't. Almost like it is exposure to women that leads to the reaction. Or is it that having a low opinion of equality gets you dates? This seems to undermine your thesis.

As is your right, I once was like you, I made the same arguments you do, with the same totalizing world view. I think it can be very cathartic, but it's very resentment driven.

No resentment in my heart. It actually saddens me that female happiness is on the decline so drastically. We need to fix things for their sake, too.

What's annoying is pointing out that all that data, anecdotes, and personal experience is all pointing in the exact same direction.

And then having that dismissed with the equivalent of "sounds like you hate women bro." Nope. Given how much and how many forms of female toxicity I've been exposed to over the approximate last two decades, I'd say I'm actually very, very appreciative of the goodness in women, when I encounter it.

Once again, you won't find me saying its either gender's fault.

It's the women.

In general I think this is one of those maybe technically correct opinion in the strictest sense but is basically incorrect. You never say the exact words "I blame women" instead you repeatedly assign a disproportionate amount of causal and moral responsibility to women for the problems you've identified. It's a pain in the ass to dig through all your comments ever, so I sicked ChatGPT 5.6-sol on your user history, it only sampled some of them, I guess AI is as lazy as humans are, but it looks like it took the most recent 3 pages of your profile history and then about 5 randomly sampled and the 4 ending pages. Something like 28% of your comments are Dating/Women related and 84% of those expressed negative sentiment about women according to the Bay-Area RLHF regime. I suppose I could get a better read by running the code myself but that feels more invasive than what I just did and there seemed to be some DNS problem that I am too lazy to debug.

Look, I don't think men are the problem. But the problem is with men. Specifically, in their mind, in that they've formed cultural expectations that, via feedback loops, are completely divorced from reality and renders their own desires unachievable.

So... you have to address their desires. Reality can't be manipulated to fit their desires, so it seems obvious to me that you gotta at least TRY to make their desires comply with reality.

Making this about men, makes it still just as right as it was about women. It's almost like this is a complex multi-faceted systemic problem where both sides are stuck in delusional feedback loops feeding their own rage-filled echo chambers.

This seems to undermine your thesis.

I'm not sure how, this is no different than "Being a misogynist is repellant to women vs have you look at female attraction towards dark triad traits". Studies are complex and a twitter post with no paper attached is the worst kind of evidence because you can't even fact check. It's literally just selling outrage for clicks. I get that you like living in an echo chamber because outrage feels good but this is rage porn. News flash interacting with other people in competitive stressful environments makes you like other people less.

We need to fix things for their sake, too.

Yes I'm sure like most conservatives you believe we need to save people from themselves. If only they would not be gay then their souls will be saved, if we just torture them some more they will find salvation in heaven. What is weeks of earthly pain for an eternity in heaven!!! Do I need to pull out the C.S. Lewis quote?

What's annoying is pointing out that all that data, anecdotes, and personal experience is all pointing in the exact same direction.

How many women have you talked to about their anecdotes, and personal experiences? You clearly act like you think women are children, is that why you don't think their opinion is relevant to the conversation?

"sounds like you hate women bro."

That said I've also never said this, and I don't think it. I think you have a very complex relationship with women. They clearly are some sort of collective villain in your mind.

Tho the longer I have this conversation the more I feel like some poster arguing with SS about DaJoos. As in you've already made up your mind, there is nothing that would change it. You already have this grand unified theory of everything. Everything returns to DA FOIDs, I talk about social community formation, back to DA FOIDS HAVE NO HONOR (This is a flair for the ages).