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 -
If the right can rally around scandals as first world problem as "a beer brand did a promo with a trans tiktoker as part of their plan to recruit more customers" and "the mnm is less sexy" then certainly they could rally around greater scandals. The issue is, those scandals, as silly as they were are at least true. Bud Light did do a promo with a trans tiktoker. The MMM could be considered less sexy.
So if it was real, we can either ask ourselves "do right wingers really care about more jerking off to candy than rotten tomatoes manipulating review scores?" or consider that there's so little meat in the claim that no one can get it taken seriously. I proposed the second, they aren't manipulated just because of a 2019 change to increase poll responsiveness among casual viewers.
Or consider that just like the false claims of manipulated review scores, these also lack anything actually substantial to rally around so everyone cared more about sexy candy.
"It turned out it was true all along" is one of my favorite type of arguments however. I hear the same thing from anti vaxxers, how it's finally been proven that they're dangerous and cause autism or whatever else. It happen constantly, 20/20 vision has finally validated all the conspiracies and the microchips that Bill Gates implanted into you are going to activate anytime soon. Ok fine the soon doesn't come, but it's been proven even more now! Yes, your low quality evidence belief is validated by further low quality evidence, but it's clearly not that convincing to the general population. People who have low standards for proof can't grasp why everyone else won't care about their "proven" worries.
It's not a greater scandal. Websites secretly manipulating their algorithms / whatever results they present is completely normal now.
Ok, let's consider it. In a world where these claims are completely false, I don't expect to see Twitter moderator frontend screenshots getting leaked with accounts being tagged with terms like "search blacklist" or "trends blacklist", and for external tools that check whether an account was shadowbanned to exist, or Google API documentation leaks that show that in their ranking algorithm they keep track of attributes they deny have any relevance (including one literally called "smallPersonalSite".
Yes, it's a great argument! Whether we're talking about the dual wielding Scottish girl having been sexually assaulted by migrants all along, Imane Khelif being a man, transgender medicine not being based on sound science, and the most renowned pro-trans medical association being fully aware of it, and deliberately hiding the fact, the "It turned out it was true all along" argument is popular as it shows how little regard for facts self-styled "anti-conspiracists" have.
If this was true at all, why does the accusation of manipulation against RT have to be so dogshit? If it's normal, certainly there would be better proof than "they started polling the normies"
It's very easy to conceive of them as anti spam bot/impersonation/algorithm manipulation etc measures that you would deploy in order to help hide how fast (and in what ways) you detect them while still not allowing them to deteriorate the typical user experience. This is a pretty common sort of thing in video games for instance, ban waves of cheaters and hackers so they don't know what triggered it.
I imagine basically every single mainstream social media site has such mechanisms (as they are all the constant targets of spam bots and other such malicious use) and thus the existence of them alone doesn't mean much.
Funny then that so many of your examples are still highly debated, even in conservative circles like Khelif. It's so weird how Algeria, a Muslim country with extreme anti LGBT policies to the point that you are probably woke compared to them, does not agree she is "a man".
But yes, this proves all the conspiracy theories are true after all. Vaccines do cause autism, Charlie Kirk was killed by Israel, and a 2019 change to poll casual movie watchers by RT was actually a secret plan by their woke seers to cover for The Odyssey actually failing. In retrospect, they've all been proven because conspiracy theorists have incredible track records.
Because the public does not have access to their source code, their communications, their frontend or backend., which is how we found out about the other companies manipulating their results.
It's very easy to conceive of any smoking gun evidence as something mundane, but when someone explicitly says they don't use a particular measures for ranking, and their leaked documentation says they do, a rational actor usually assumes bad faith on the part of the party making the declaration.
Khelif is highl debated in the same sense vaccines are highly debated, your attempt to dismiss a chromosome test with vague assumptions about the culture of a country you've never been to is probably worse than most anti-vaxx arguments.
You're the one that brought the "this is what conspiracists say in these other cases, therefore you're wrong argument". If it works one way, it works the other way as well (or, you know, it was dishonest to make it from the start).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link