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 -
Yes on all points, but Cops is great and it is a travesty they took it off air. There's so many great situations that keep coming up: prostitute turns out to be a guy, guy with no shirt on is drunk or high and thinks he can fight the cops, any time they get out the police dogs, etc, etc, I could go on. Did you know that a German shepherd can outswim an adult man, grab ahold of his leg and drag him back to shore where the cops are waiting for him? I do, and I've seen it on Cops.
Our culture is poorer for losing Cops.
I remember playing ”Cops” as a kid in the very early 90s. It involved one guy being designated as the bad guy and the rest being cops who would then run after him and tackle him on the ground as a group. Not surprisingly nobosy wanted to be the first to play the bad guy. Ah, to be young again…
>when no one brought a ball, but you and the bros want to play Smear the Queer anyway
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My brother, there are youtube channels that do this now. Some are just raw footage, some are trashy and will have really unpleasant stuff like seeing a recently deceased's family being informed of the death of their loved ones. My favorite is Midwest Safety; straddles the line nicely between putting enough contextual information and keeping things relatively classy for the genre.
Lost 3 hours of my life to this yesterday. I think the pattern that is emerging for me is that many peoples brain breaks when they are arrested (especially women). They just refuse to believe this could be happening to them in this moment. These are people who have been (we find at the end) arrested multiple times before! Yet the hysteria and confusion are genuine (attempts to fake a medical emergency less so).
I think for a lot of people, the thinking is that if they let the arrest happen quickly and without drama, they are accepting an L, but if they drag it on and make it as hard as possible, maybe something, anything will happen that can turn this into a W; they think maybe if they make it as excrutiating as possible the cops will in frustration do something they can spin into brutality or racism and they can use that as leverage. Usually in the end the leverage ends up going the other way, as in the description of the sentencing in the videos you often hear they end up pleading guilty at the initial charges to have the kicking and spitting and biting at the cops charges go away. You end up wondering how lenient the sentences could have been if they had just gone quietly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link