site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This is going to land badly coming from a stranger on the internet but as far as I can see it's because you combine very strongly-held opinions that you don't seem to be able to examine along with an immense self-regard and a persecution complex that becomes self-fulfilling. You have views (and so do I) that the mods don't like but you don't seem to be able to debate them, you just assert them harder.

When cross post discussion tends to converge into a debate, mods tend to crack down on them because of the inherent combative nature of beating up on the beliefs of the other side. You could argue there are ways to be tactful without being aggressive, but not really, and that involves a lot of personal taste. TM is more of a serious discussion forum in that regard but I’ve never thought of it as a debate forum. Debate is blood sports.

This is going to land badly coming from a stranger on the internet

Actually, it's fine. We're both anonymous, obviously I'm not trying to network on this account so I don't need to save face.

You have views (and so do I) that the mods don't like but you don't seem to be able to debate them, you just assert them harder.

Where at? Last time I got banned for posting about Doki Doki Literature Club, not for debating wrongly. I got banned in the middle of a «debate» with a guy who was wrong about marriage statistics, but he wasn't citing anything. I ended up not citing anything because I was lazy, but I didn't assert harder, I referred to the correct statistics. I almost came back with a top level write up on it but I figured amadan would ban me for that and it doesn't matter because it won't change the type of mind that got to this point anyway. I got banned for not citing sources in response to a guy that was being rude and also wasn't citing sources. If I recall correctly I think he may of lazily linked to the European marriage pattern article but not much more. I told him correctly that that started only in the last 400 years and even then was only in some classes of a small corner of Europe, not all of Europe. To me, asserting harder would be just repeating my previous claims.

I can't think of any other example close to this. And even there I was being held to a higher standard than the other poster because of the side I was arguing on, which is unfair and is what I'm talking about. If you want to claim Europeans never married teenagers, you can be snide and dismissive and link at most to a flawed wikipedia article. If you want to claim otherwise with the same level of sophistication and attitude you get banned and then told you're not a good debater. Not fair.

EDIT: I found the comment. I misremembered how many sources we exchanged. Neither of us cited any. Only I was banned for this behavior. I must have been remembering the PM I almost sent to amadan before deleting it upon realizing that it would be pointless.

I was not asserting my views harder, rather I was objecting to specific claims made in response to my views. I objected without evidence because of Hitchens's maxim.

You were banned for being antagonistic and obnoxious, not because of the side you were arguing or for lack of citations.

The claim that you have been banned for what you are arguing might be something you genuinely believe (lots of people come in with a hot take, call people who disagree with them names, and then insist they were banned for their hot take and not for their name-calling), but it is not true.

Your lack of self awareness is unfortunate.

Your lack of self awareness is unfortunate.

The sass and disrespect probably feels cool to you but delegitimizes your authority and makes the quality of the forum a little worse. I usually don't disagree with your modding or your points and I'm sure it's very stressful and irritating to get abuse all the time but you're not setting a great example of civility.

A lot of people seem to have the idea that mods are bots and we are not supposed to express personal opinions, or respond to bitching at all except with a customer service voice. While we strive for civility, most accusations of being uncivil boil down to "You told someone who's being a jerk to stop being a jerk." When someone who's already been extended more grace than he deserves several times over is told he lacks self awareness, that is not incivility.

I do have the idea that at the very least, a mod's personal opinion expression at the moment of acting as a mod should not itself verge on breaking the rules.

You have a particular tendency for snide quips that I notice.

I looked over my bans and I see for some I call Trump names and stuff like that, so I can agree that that qualifies as obnoxious. But the ban during the marriage statistics exchange was bad as was the ban for my Doki Doki Literature Club post.

Person who gets banned a lot thinks his bans are bad. Many such cases.

If half your bans are bad, people who get banned a lot will take a lot more bad bans than people who get banned rarely.

But half our bans are not bad.

All your bans were deserved.