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 -
Rural communities are worried about flock cameras, yes, but they’re also worried about the pace of technological-cultural progress. They can remember when rap music was deeply controversial and bikinis weren’t thé norm(this is, literally, something middle aged people can easily remember, it was that recent). They may not want those trends reversed but they also don’t want them accelerated and they can easily draw the connection between big tech/entertainment(and they don’t see the difference between the two- their exposure to AI is mostly on social media) and cultural change- there’s a reason thé gays in Disney movies are such a visible there, there. The fact that they correctly identify the new computer doohickeys as associated with cultural change and controlled by their enemies is a much bigger factor than specific predictions.
¿Por qué tienes ese acento gráfico?
Anyway, anyone who remembers bikinis being normalized isn't middle-aged anymore; that mostly happened in the 1960s. The famous old-fashioned-style song, about even shy girls getting used to bikinis, hit #1 on the charts! Of the subsequent wave of 60s' "beach party movies" only a large minority had bikini in the title but most of the rest at least had bikini-clad characters, usually on the movie posters too. Bikinis weren't the norm in the sense that more than 50% of women wore them, but they still aren't: most women wear one-piece swimsuits still, and most of the rest wear tankinis.
Social media and Hollywood might be accelerating cultural change today, perhaps even relative to the 60s, but nobody's making their multi-billion-dollar datacenter investments because they need extra servers for Instagram clips or renderfarms for Disney movies, they're doing it because they really think better-trained bots can take a lot of jobs and/or immanentize the eschaton. If rural people think otherwise (citation needed?), I guess that's less of a stretch than the water use panic, but it's still kind of missing the point.
Strong disagree. Bikinis were at least mildly riskee when I was a kid, and twenty years later they are the default, to the point where the tyranny of the bikini is (in my mind) a women's freedom issue that isn't discussed enough.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link