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 -
Heaven forbid anyone be allowed to hold and express political or ethical opinions that clash with yours! Where would American democracy be then?
The salient characteristic of "wokeness" that right-wingers had a legitimate case against - the thing that needed, needs, to be wiped out - is cancel culture. It was the unprecedented defection from American norms around freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and peaceful coexistence with people from the other side of the aisle. If there are still wokes out there cancelling people, that's one thing. But the fact that people still hold beliefs of the kind that wokeness sought to enforce by illegitimate means, that is not relevant. It's normal. It's the equivalent of non-murderous German nationalists, who do not deserve to automatically be tarred with the Nazi brush just because they pursue similar aims to those that the Nazis committed horrific crimes in pursuit of.
Then someone should probably have figured out a way to wipe it out. But they haven't, and the best defense available depends entirely on mirroring its tactics. There simply is not support for any other form of response, and people are never, ever going to accept "heads we cancel you, tails you tolerate us" as a stable equilibrium. And yet, in values-incoherent environments, that is precisely the deal on offer from all sides.
1990s-style maximal-free-speech norms were an unsustainable confluence of one-off factors, and they are gone now and are not going to come back. They have no constituency, and Free Speech ideology itself is variously either wildly unpopular or wildly hypocritical (CP? Revenge Porn? Malicious code? Copyright? Deepfake porn? The N-word, or slurs generally?). People, speaking generally, do not actually want Free Speech. They want "Free Speech" for speech within a standard deviation of what they consider good and normal, and speech outside that island of tolerance they do not want to see or to know about or for it to exist at all. This is all they have ever wanted or ever will want, and impressions to the contrary are artifacts of large-scale, coordinated, and evidently unsustainable lies. One of the most popular lies you're cutting across in your comment: "you shouldn't censor, because if you violate the taboo on censorship then others will turn around and censor you." But this only makes sense if they actually will turn around and censor you; if "free speech" goes dormant when you censor, it can either stay dormant forever, prove the maxim correct and render free speech to the past-tense, or it can wake up, at which point the argument is falsified and your initial censorship was the correct choice after all. Neither horn of the dilemma results in durable free-speech norms; the argument was never anything more than a feel-good deepity.
But they are tarred with the Nazi brush, observably, in the real world we actually live in. At some point, "deserve" is just a word you've made up to describe things that aren't going to happen. People notice this, and they stop playing along or pretending otherwise.
People want more good things and less bad things. Speech is a thing. The math is pretty simple.
One can be a free speech absolutist and still think CSAM should be illegal. The thing that makes it evil is the manner of its production, not its distribution.
Banning mere possession (with no before-the-fact knowledge of production) is already on shaky ground, free-speech-absolutist-wise. As soon as you cross into "This should be illegal because it resembles actual CSAM" you have to turn in your absolutist card.
Actually, you've probably already lost your card when you ban production, because CSAM includes material produced by sexting teens.
I think this is an extremely noncentral example of what people talk about when they talk about CSAM.
Central enough to produce real felony charges, apparently.
Could you provide a citation?
Jane Doe v. Rice County was dropped after outcry, but did have charges brought to start with.
It's not the common mode: this study (caveat: 2012, mail survey of police, academic study) show around 15% of sexting-like cases with no aggravating conditions resulted in charges, though only a tiny number resulted in a felony conviction. But charges specifically aren't an extreme outlier.
((There are epicycles that make this legal doctrine, or even the contested legal doctrine restricting synthetic CSAM, defensible, but they're... a real big mess and I don't like thinking about the topic.))
Fair enough, mea culpa. I don't think teens sexting should be legally classified as CSAM. By "CSAM" I was referring to the narrow case of photos and videos depicting minor children being sexually exploited.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link