site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 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.

I don't think you're quite understanding the point @FtttG is making here. It's not merely gotchas and catchphrases, it's gotchas which are specifically unanswerable to people with contradictory or controversial viewpoints that they don't want to expose, forcing them into a catch-22 in which they cannot answer your question.

If you say “The Earth is flat, look out your window”, the round Earther can explain math to show how curved surfaces apear approximately flat when zoomed in far enough, or about GPS, satellites, orbital mechanics, and/or just ships disappearing over the horizon. They are not afraid of answering, because everyone around them will smile and nod approvingly. Even if the answer is complicated and simpler minds might make fun of them for having such a complicated answer to such a simple question/observation, there is an answer.

If you say "It's okay to be white", the correct response is "yeah, and?" The more sane leftist will then proceed to go on about how everyone already knows it's okay to be white so your statement is stupid and pointless but black lives matter is an important statement because police blah blah prison statistics etc.

But the radical leftist does not believe it's okay to be white. They can't/won't say "yeah, and?", they will become angry and try to cancel and censor you and expose themselves for anti-white racists.

The gotchas being promoted here ARE guided by the beauty of our weapons, because they're the specific type designed to exploit contradictions, lies, and cognitive dissonance. They're taking logical and truth based arguments like "you can't simultaneously promote peace, harmony, and anti-racism, while also being an anti-white bigot" and condensing them down into a more memeable form that has more visceral impact when made properly. We already have logical arguments, but some people don't care to listen. It'd be useful if we had plenty of logical arguments AND asymmetrical memes that have broad appeal and can only be used against illogical people.