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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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As a response to @Ioper and @Primaprimaprima as well:

If you define woke and DEI as "women having increased economic power relative to men" in such a way that it applies globally across East Asia and the global south then ok sure, but I don't think that's a particularly useful definition.

The decline of traditional publishing in favor of online entertainment is pretty clearly globalized; the phenomenon of men retreating to online and non-traditional reading (e.g the narou / qidian scenes, basically web serials for Japan/China) and of course video games and the myriad of digital pleasures, while only women continue to read traditionally published books, is a fully globalized phenomenon, not just contained to Anglo societies.

It seems fairly clear to me that this is a phenomenon driven by women gaining more economic power relative to men across the entire world, and revealed preferences given the general availability of internet and smartphones. If you want to call this woke or DEI then sure I guess, but I don't think saying that China or Pakistan is woke is a particularly useful definition.