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 -
No, I'm not. "I think Sydney Sweeney is hot" is a subjective value judgement. "Sydney Sweeney is considered exceptionally attractive by millions of people" is a statement of fact, as is "millions of men would give away all their worldly possessions for one night with Sydney Sweeney". If "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", it logically follows that a person considered beautiful by 1 million independent beholders is 100x more beautiful than a person who is only considered beautiful by 10,000 independent beholders. Given that, to the best of our knowledge, Sydney Sweeney's appearance is ultimately the product of her genes, it follows that Sydney Sweeney was born with genes which produce traits which are considered highly desirable by a huge proportion of the population – traits that a huge proportion of the population would either like to have for themselves, or would like their romantic partner to have. A reasonable compression of the previous sentence is "Sydney Sweeney has good genes".
Schizophrenia is estimated to be between 70-80% heritable. If presented with the option, would anyone choose to be schizophrenic?
There is no "differently abled": some traits are just intrinsically less desirable than others, and nobody actually believes that we're all created equal, much as they might pretend to (or cope by so doing). You can play this "no one is 'disabled', society has simply chosen to accommodate certain traits and not others" game as long as you please, but it's nonsense and everyone knows it.
The belief that "some people are more attractive than others" does not lead inevitably to Auschwitz.
Autistic savants are the obvious case of a package deal with good and bad qualities.
Yes, and exceptionally tall people sometimes bang their heads when walking through doorways. And yet, curiously, men are willing to shell out a quarter-mil to make themselves taller. You don't see a lot of people spending money to make themselves shorter.
Autistic savants are exceptionally rare (as my sister, a paediatrician, pointed out, the likelihood of an autistic child being a genius is roughly the same as that for an allistic child, which is to say, staggeringly low), and not a central example of how the term "differently abled" tends to be used. There are disadvantages associated with being exceptionally numerate, exceptionally strong, exceptionally fast, exceptionally attractive etc.; there may even be certain advantages on the margin associated with being disabled (blind people save a lot on their electricity bills!). But on net, virtually everyone would still prefer to be exceptionally fast vs. wheelchair-bound, exceptionally strong vs. paraplegic, sighted vs. blind and so on.
AIUI eidetic memory is quite common among the autistic, though admittedly not universal. Eidetic memory is actually, legitimately good, not in the kind of jackass-genie way you're using. I can pull off shit like this; while I'm given to understand that my memory is unusually good even by autistic standards, according to everything I've seen it's bullshit-tier by neurotypical standards.
It's a motte on an exceedingly-large and ridiculous bailey, but the motte is what allows the bailey to be claimed. Note how "neurodiversity" started with autism.
My understanding is that even the existence of eidetic memory is a controversial proposition among psychologists and neurologists, making me sceptical about any claims of its incidence within any given demographic. If you have any non-anecdotal evidence backing this up I'd love to see it.
No offense intended, but am I supposed to be impressed by the fact that you were able to recognise an extremely popular YouTuber? Surely this isn't what most people are talking about when they throw around terms like "eidetic" or "photographic" memory. If you have more impressive examples of your ostensibly eidetic memory, I would also love to hear about them, but if this is the best example of your capabilities, I'm highly dubious.
I don't think she counts as "extremely popular".
Shoe0nHead may have two million subscribers, but I hardly ever see her referenced on /pol/, /r/kotakuinaction, or /r/kotakuinaction2 nowadays, and I doubt that I've ever seen her referenced elsewhere. Red Letter Media has one million subscribers, and I don't think I've ever seen it referenced outside /tv/.
Actual "extremely popular YouTubers" are those who regularly make Reddit's front page and have people post memes featuring them in Reddit comments—e. g., Markiplier (38 million subscribers), penguinz0 (18 million subscribers), and (I guess formerly) Pewdiepie (109 million subscribers).
Only two million subscribers? Gosh, that only puts her in the 99.94th percentile of all YouTube channels. What a nobody!
ChatGPT tells me the videos on her channel have been watched a collective 247 million times. Even assuming that only one-tenth of those are unique viewers, a population bigger than Florida has laid eyes on her at least once. Maybe "extremely" was overselling it, but she's a very popular YouTuber by any reasonable definition.
Your own article says that there are tens of thousands of YouTube channels with at least one million subscribers. My point is that a random person not already immersed in the relevant niche of the Internet is not likely to recognize one of those tens of thousands of YouTubers.
Yes, there are ~70k YouTube channels with 1 million subscribers or more, against a population of 115 million YouTube channels. She's more famous and well-known than more than 99.5% of all YouTube channels. That seems "popular" to me.
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