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 -
When's the last time you checked on your local, elder millenial foids?
They have thoughts on Data Centers and Democratic Socialism, don't you know?
One of the thing that keeps me coming back to the Motte is the lack of any algorithm-ing. Posts get upvotes in the original reddit style and that's all you need. Still, one notices patterns. One style of persistently highly upvoted post is that of the personal story or extended anecdote. It's no mystery. People relate to people and the writing quality here on the Motte is generally high enough that a "human interest" story generally weaves together that emotional resonance with content rich analysis of the pressing issues of our time.
I include this preamble as a means of introducing what will be an attempt to combine some thoughts on recent data center posts, DSA (that is, Democratic Socialists of America) wins, and the current state of local foid vibes.
Why the focus on foid vibes? Mostly because I noticed this post got a lot of good comments. It seems like my "Lauren" archetype struck something of a nerve, but a generative nerve.
So, let's talk about "Lauren" (Again, not her real name and, this time, also kind of a mashing together of a few different folks I have semi-regular contact with in my little town).
Lauren Doesn't Like Elon Musk's Rich Guy Data Centers.
Lauren, like most normies, doesn't know what Anthropic is. She knows that Claude is an AI chatbot and knows that "GPT" (meaning ChatGPT) is like, a different AI chatbot, right? OpenAI is some sort of an AI company, but the connection between OAI and ChatGPT may not be solidly in place in Lauren's mind.
But Lauren knows who Elon Musk, the person, is. And, obviously, he's a Nazi because he "literally did the Nazi salute!" His desire to go to Mars is just a rich man's self indulgence and there's no real need to go to space when we have so many problems on earth. People are literally starving!
Unsaid by Lauren is that Elon is just plain weird in a weird guy kind of way. She hints at it with little jokes, but she's pretty sure he's into weird sex (probably anime stuff), and smells bad. His autistic ouevre during interviews doesn't come across as "quirky sensitive boy" who will write her poetry but as "potentially dangerous engineer dude who might show up unannounced at her home."
She (Lauren) also knows that Elon is "doing lots of AI" and, therefore, has to build a bunch of data centers - including one in our area!
Data Centers are not good. They use a ton of water and also pollute the water. They're loud. Or they make a sound or something. Lauren isn't sure where she read it, but she knows she read that being around Data Centers can cause all sorts of cognitive issues. Plus (like Elon) they're so ugly!
I'll inject my a TollBooth editorial background comment here. Lauren has recently started seeing a new therapist. Lauren tells me this therapist (female, black) is literally so much better than her last therapist - whom Lauren stopped seeing in about 2021. She's very happy that the Therapist is helping her stand up for herself and focus less on people pleasing. Lauren looks forward to reporting to the therapist how much non-people pleasing she's been doing recently (primal scream from TollBooth: MY GOD, THE IRONY).
But back to Elon's Load Bearing AI Data Centers. So much yuck! I gently tell Lauren that the water usage issue is quite fake. There's enough trust between us that after I pull up a few stories on my phone - from sources she trusts (like Vox!) - that she shrugs and agrees. Water issue aside, however, the real issue is that the local government isn't being transparent enough with how they're dealing with the Data Center developers. That's the problem; transparency!
I ask her what that means. Lauren tells me that out of the three different public town halls that the local government has hosted, two of them were delayed by 30 minutes, but then finished at the scheduled time instead of extending! They couldn't even get through all of the public comments verbally and people had to submit their concerns to the specially created data center public commentary website. Zero transparency! Zero accountability!
I emote with Lauren. I agree that when things happen people feel things about those things that have happened. She loves that I "get" her - she tells me so.
Again, gently, I point out that having all of these town halls and creating a special website for public comment seems above and beyond, no? Aren't most issues around here handled through the normal city/county calendar of public hearings etc.
Lauren cedes the point before doubling down on it (a very underrated tactic). Yes, they're doing "more than usual" - but the data center issue is so big they need to be doing even more! And that lack of doing more means, of course, that the fix is in and a deal's already been made and so that's why there's no transparency! These greedy capitalists!
Which brings me (Lauren?) to the DSA. Have I, TollBooth, seen the fun wins all of the DSA members are racking up! Isn't it AWESOME! Lauren says this, funnily enough, tongue-in-cheek. Lauren knows I am a real life conservative. She knows I am not jazzed about the DSA wins. But Lauren also thinks that I am literally Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation. She thinks my conservatism is funny ha-ha "I like guns" conservatism. Lauren sees me as actually a totally good guy who is pretty much a White Dude for Kamala but also likes Jesus a lot. So Lauren isn't worried about me flipping out over the DSA stuff. And I don't flip out, because I am not a fucking psycho.
But I do point out that the DSA has listed, official factions and causes that are deadly serious actual Marxists and Communists. These people think Lenin had it right and we have to commie harder in America. Lauren pauses for a second - actually pauses - and states she didn't know about things like The Marxist Unity Group who advocates for:
They literally want to overthrow America, Lauren, I say.
Well, that's not Lauren's DSA. Her DSA just wants the obvious, basic things; free healthcare, free education, a living wage! Like, hello, why are we evening talking about this in 2026? Lol!
I order another beer, smiling. Lauren veers off topic again, this time about a "Mayoral Election" for pets that is a charity effort for a local non-kill shelter. She's really excited about it. More excited about that than Elon Musk, Data Centers, and the DSA. A while later, she tells me - with mischief in her eye - about her friend, Molly, who, yes, is 41 and divorced, but is actually so smart and really cute. I lament to Lauren that while I can easily envision saxophone-accompanied nights of passion with Molly (before watching Parks and Rec afterwards, of course) I've got a lot of business travel coming up (which is true) - so I can't risk falling in love all over again. Lauren, laughing, accepts my polite decline. She shows me some photos of her niece on her phone.
Commentary
I've said it before and I stand by it: Lauren is a Basically Good Person (BGP). She's divorced and clearly heartbroken but not actually bitter. She knows in her heart of hearts she's not going to be a Mom. I genuinely feel for her on that one. She doesn't hate men. She doesn't hate America. But she's so full of emotional incontinence that anything that isn't soft and cuddly (Elon, AI, data centers) becomes a target, and anything loud and passionate that resonates with her (DSA, Kamala back in '24, the World Cup (for some reason)) becomes her sacred, personal cause....
Until she gets into what really matters; things and people that make her feel at ease and comforted; Ted Lasso, animal city council elections, the potluck that Chris from the bar is having on Saturday afternoon, Words with Friends, being the "matchmaker" for her single friends (while STAUNCHLY refusing to date on her own ... unless, like, Mark at that coffee shop asked about her?)
Lauren's problems aren't whatever her therapist is telling her. Her problem (singular) is that she is utterly disconnected from the rest of society. It doesn't look like it from the outside, and doesn't feel like it to her personally; she's out and about all the time. Her social calendar is booked up! But that social calendar is just "vibing" with people. There's no deep interpersonal anchor. No commitments.
So this means Lauren doesn't experience social issues, politics, or anything else in the way that those words traditionally imply. Lauren isn't looking at issues and plausible outcomes of policy, legislation, and local development on her local or national community. This is even more true in how Lauren relates to technology. She isn't trying to think about the downstream consequences of disrupted knowledge work or the knock-on effects of physical world (data center) construction. She hasn't thought about the revolutionary potential of nuke energy because "Hiroshima was a tragedy."
For her, all of it - literally all of her waking time - is emotional pattern matching. "Does this thing go in the "make me feel good" bucket or the "make me feel bad" bucket?. That's it. That's the rubric. There isn't even the introspection done to determine how and why she has developed various emotional attachments. Not to "Freud a Foid" too hard, but does Elon remind her of the kind austic guy she dated in college who was bad at sex yet still ended up awkwardly dumping her? Is Trump "an asshole" because he is literally the same age as her estranged father?
Nope. It's finish-the-emotion all the way down.
Which brings me to the final stanza here - the LLMification of human brains. A small thread and exchange here.
AI fucking up the corporate or commercial life of people doesn't really bother me deeply. The person who, today, thinks it is acceptable to read back LLM output verbatim during a job interview is the person who, 5-10 years ago, was mainlining hustle slop from Gary Vee and Tim Ferris before launching a podcast about crypto automation. Same agent (thank you very much) different skin.
Lauren's situation is worse. She has adopted the (lack of) introspection of LLMs as well as their simple method of "complete the x with the y most probable next token." Where "x", in Lauren's case, is a emotional-judgemental-moral reaction loop to anything. Added to that pitiful epistemic model is the sheer superficiality of it. For example, Lauren was really into the World Cup. Because soccer is left coded but it's also a sport and sports mean hot guys might be around (it is astonishing how, in her 40s, divorced, Lauren's approach to dating is essentially unchanged from her mid teens).
But even though Lauren was into the World Cup, she never learned about soccer. She didn't really understand even the basics like off-sides (the concept, not how it is enforced, which truly is Kafkaesque) the extra / stoppage time situation, or corner kicks versus throw-ins etc. And that's because none of those details fit into the "emote-judge-moralize" loop that seems to govern her life.
Perhaps most chilling is the fact that Lauren is not at all a heavy user of AI. She doesn't have a secret AI boyfriend or a galaxy of prompts to write her on-demand romantasy. But, somehow, through the collective-insect-brain of popular leftist, mainstream culture, she has adopted so many LLM-like habits that it's hard not to point and scream at it.
It would be reductive to call Lauren and NPC and then dismiss her. This is a real person with a legitimate claim to human dignity and an actually strong social track record. Lauren pays her taxes, stays employed, doesn't break the law more than a speeding ticket here and there, and some technically still illegal marijuana at her apartment. This is exactly the kind of person who I want to have feel like they are engaged with society so that they are thinking about society. But that's not happening. What made Lauren feel bad today? What made her feel good?
Lauren is not x, she's y - and that's the thing no one else is talking about. We should try to surface the scaffolding of the heart of the issue. Open the door and walk through it.
If you'd like, I can continue unpacking this in the comments.
That shit already free, nigga.
People who cannot get a living wage in 2026 America are mostly people who are deeply unsympathetic, or have very high expectations. We have clunky expensive universal healthcare that people who can't afford it just don't pay for, and the system works fine.
Not quite. Soccer in America has a left-coded fanbase, yes, because 'soccer fan' in America is implied to be a premiere league fan, and liking English stuff as better than American is a weird blue tribe tick, MLS or Liga mx fandom isn't nearly so political. Internationally soccer is not a left coded sport, at all, and FIFA is real cuddly with Trump, Qatar, etc, and clearly making a play to get the American red tribe into soccer.
Soccer is left-coded because it's Euro, and Europhilia is a left-coded thing. There have been many attempts to make US men's soccer happen, and none of them have really gotten anywhere, so soccer remains Euro.
FIFA is cuddly with Trump and Qatar because FIFA is utterly corrupt and therefore speaks Trump and Qatar's language.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link