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 -
I’m going back n forth about watching this with the fiancé. It seems like it may be a really interesting watch.
I’ve read the spoilers before and I honestly don’t get it - if my fiancé told me what this woman in the film told her fiancé I would laugh and shrug.
Reading your synapsis made me think that maybe it’s a class issue. The characters in the movie are well off intellectuals (more or less) and so are the actors and writers and director (more or less). I’m a dude that got his masters but I’ve been at store level retail my entire career. I just would have zero care that someone told me they thought about and planned to do a school shooting but didn’t. It’s not like they were stopped - they just didn’t do it.
To me it would be more interesting if that was the plot: she went through with it but got stopped immediately, no one as hurt, and got counseling or a few years in prison.
But the point is ((they)) would think that’s so abhorrent what’s the point of the film - meanwhile I think the actual plot point is so banal who gives a shit … Charlie seems like the weirdo. He actually fucking hurt someone!
I had the same reaction - who cares? This might really be a class thing. I think it's more about thinking of a gun as a legitimate tool than it is about how she planned to use it.
More options
Context Copy link
I had a similar reaction. Well, I wouldn't laugh, but I wouldn't be super horrified either. I haven't seen the movie but from this description, it just sounds like she was going through a dark time, had some revenge fantasies, did a little practice shooting with her dad's gun, but then ultimately thought better of it. The stuff that the other characters say seems worse, because they actually did things that hurt people in the real world, instead of just imagining it in their mind. But maybe I'm just biased because I can't imagine a pretty feminine woman like Zendaya ever really being a school shooter.
If recent news is any indication, a woman like her would be more likely to strangle her own children to death and then blame it on PPD while every woman on TikTok rushes to her defense.
sidetracking here - what makes you think PPD/psychosis was not to blame here?
I see decent evidence to believe it was a contributing factor, but she had enough presence of mind to send her husband away on an errand to make a time window for herself to do it, which strongly suggests that it was premeditated.
In any case, if PPD/female hormones really are strkng enough to cause them to murder their own children without consciously wanting to, as the TikTok crowd is suggesting, then that's a strong fucking argument against women's rights generally and suggests that they need to be strongly controlled by the gender that doesn't have such issues (testosterone causes plenty of its own problems, but not this).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You're not gonna believe this
Love how unironically people use this phrase. Wish "hate facts" would come back; that was a good one.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Come on. I'm sure there are a thousand 4chan shitposters who, after watching this movie, shouted "I could fix her" and started frantically directing their decensored local LLMs to generate erotic literature with that premise.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
It is highly unlikely that a young attractive woman would have planned a school shooting in her youth—but to the extent one somehow exists—it would be understandable that it piques young men’s curiosity, that for once a young attractive woman may have a perspective beyond make-up, gossip, teeheeing around in skimpy outfits.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is this supposed to mean Jews? If so, draw me a diagram, please. If not, what exactly do you mean by "they"?
No - the elitists writing directing and acting … the people I was mentioning in my post?
Although I guess I can see the jump about the Jews with the weirdly increasing anti Jewish sentiment here’s.
Maybe it’s just my need to be different, but im a big fan of the Jews - they seem like they have their shit together, care about their own, and every single nation around them wants to kill them fir psychotic reasons.
It was the "((they))" that looked like Joo-posting. Multiple parentheses are an online "Jew" tag, and "Jews responsible for all the liberal degenerate things I hate" is not an uncommon mind virus here, but other than generic "Jews=Hollywood" I was struggling to see the connection.
You know what - you’ve told me that before and I’m going to try and remember from now on.
Tho I’m kind of upset since Ive use (( )) a lot over the last 30 years online haha.
And here I thought it was at minimum 3 parenthesis. It must be real bad if even their critics are Jewing us out of the third one.
You know the economy's going poorly when we're down to clipping parentheses, not just coins.
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
On a partial second watch this weekend, I think it's a metaphor for trendy social media outrage and virtue signaling.
More options
Context Copy link
She was actually basically ready to open fire when a mall shooting stole her thunder and she decided against it.
Or, she was never actually going to do it and seized upon that as the best self-justification for inaction. Just like all those people totally, seriously, for-real are joining the gym this week - until completely unexpectedly, something came up which made it too inconvenient.
It would be much easier for her to say "I wasn't really going to do it" than to admit that she really was about to do it. I think the criterion of embarrassment should motivate us to believe her.
This is the opposite of the gym example - joining a gym is desirable and thus people say they will even if they won't, murdering innocents is not.
This could be a mostly unconscious rationalization. E.g., the id desperately wants to kill, the superego knows it is terrible, and the ego resolves the conflict by manufacturing a convenient rationalization, which becomes fact in the conscious mind.
"I wasn't really going to do it even though I was literally about to draw" is an even more convenient rationalization.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Just like the people who are easily manipulated by the 'meaning aesthetics' of school shooting activism, lonely kids can be manipulated by the 'meaning aesthetics' of the lone shooter. Neither is really thinking critically about what they are doing and why, they are doing it because it feels and looks powerful.
Her reasons for planning her crime are laughable, commonplace mean kid bullying, but to a kid with knee-jerk hormonal emotions, they will latch on to whatever looks like it will make them "cool." Many adults are no different, especially when they're online.
It's a shame that we don't shame, mock and bully school shooters even harder. If we did, there wouldn't be as many. Nobody wants to be remembered as a loser or be seen as uncool, and committing a school shooting is possibly the least cool thing you could do.
I fail to see how school shooters can be "shamed, mocked, and bullied" much harder than they already are. Nobody outside shitposters on 4chan and Kiwi Farms⁎ celebrates school shootings, and even the shitposters celebrate only the deaths of Chads/Stacies or nonwhites, not the deaths of random bystanders.
⁎And maybe the truly insane people on niche websites like Wizardchan and incels.is, but I don't read those, so I can't say anything about them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This particular situation is more than mere fantasy or contemplation, though. The character actually obtained a gun, practiced with it, and had concrete plans to use it. Under the "substantial step" doctrine, that's enough for her to be convicted of attempted murder in a trial.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link