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 -
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1j1ye6n30no
(Non pay wall link)
Tragic end.
I feel bad for the dude - honestly a hearty laugh is all I want when people violate social norms like this and show us how frankly evil our institutions can be.
Sure I can blame the dude for every lie told but it only permeates my life several levels deep … the association of someone like Arday and my life only really touches when the walks start crumbling down.
What gets me mad is the institutions.
It’s their fault! Every step of the way someone, anyone, could have stepped in and stopped folly.
But things snowball and here we are.
I don’t even know what I’m supposed to learn from this, and I don’t know how I can help make the world a better place than I left it. People used to change the world I feel like, and I’m only changing the people around me … which is something!
I’m 100% reading the biography about this.
The guilty parties are probably brainstorming how to blame Whiteness, and the whistleblowers, for this death.
They're already doing it:
This is completely false. There is no evidence that “misinformation” contributed to Arday's death. The accusations of misconduct that lead to Arday's firing were true: he plagiarized his PhD thesis, the book he supposedly authored wasn't published at all, and in addition to that he made many extraordinary claims that were not corroborated by any evidence, while defying any logic, like his claim to run 6 marathons in a week and donating 5 million pounds to charity.
So what “misinformation” existed about Arday? It seems to me that the criticism he faced was based on true facts and reasonable doubts. To frame this as a “campaign of misinformation” is absolutely diabolical. Ironically, Ardays family are the ones spreading misinformation (it runs in the family I guess) when they claim that disinformation campaigns caused his downfall, and the BBC are accomplices when they copy these quotes uncritically and without commentary.
I'm not going to bother to take down the article sentence-by-sentence but it seems full of the usual bullshit that aims to disinform the reader in every way. But take for example:
Interesting how important it is to the BBC to discredit the person who correctly called out a habitual liar as a “race realist” who was “sacked”. If Cofnas was wrong about Arday, why not mention that? And if he was right, why does it matter why he was sacked? Of course, the entire point is to convince the reader that Cofnas was a bad bad person who should not be believed, while denying the fact that he was actually correct when he accused Arday of plagiarism.
Compare this with:
Given that we now know Arday was a habitual liar, and there are no other sources to back up these claims, why should we assume these claims were actually true? Why doesn't the BBC provide any caveats here, like they did for Cofnas? Of course the answer is that the BBC is fine with misinformation when they're the ones spreading it as part of their progressive propaganda campaign.
To make a long story short, for me this article is nothing but a reminder that I still don't hate journalists enough.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link