site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12563 thread views

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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

But I genuinely feel that some people (most likely including the person who created the petition) simply lack the imaginative capacity to generalise a hypothetical solution outside the narrow confines of the problem that prompted its proposal. During the 2010s, when conservatives were getting banned from social media left and right, a common smug refrain I heard from progressives was "Facebook is a private company, they can do what they want". I continually pleaded with these people to understand: it's in everyone's best interests for rules to be written in an ideologically neutral fashion. You really do not want to set a precedent that social media companies can ban anyone they disagree with and they have no recourse. Every company undergoes ideological drift, whether slowly or all at once: the fact that Facebook moderators share your worldview now is no guarantee that they will a year from now. "They're a private company, they can do what they want" will come back to bite you in the ass when some billionaire who doesn't share the progressive worldview buys a social media network and moulds it in his own image.

And then a billionaire who didn't share the progressive worldview bought a social media network and moulded it in his own image. There was much gnashing of teeth and rending of hair. What could I say other than "I told you so"?

As someone with high imaginative capacity, what's your vision for blocking 'private companies from doing what they want?' How do you thread the needle between not banning/algorithmically deprioritizing people for supporting Trump (sounds good), QAnon, holocaust denial (uh...), kiddie porn? I grant that it's probably feasible to separate out kiddie porn, actual terrorists and criminals from the rest, but you're left with a broad spectrum of shit that most normies just don't want to deal with.

Even themotte has to crack down on holocaust denial, HBD and other topics from time to time. And you're catering to a fairly niche and homogenous population that hasn't managed to muster significant disagreement on a culture war issue outside of the Russo-Ukraine/Iran wars in the last 5 years.

If you want to bring back the Fairness Doctrine on steroids for social media I'm on board, but I doubt most of the people complaining in the 2010s want to see their Fox News talk shows or facebook slop nuked by the FCC of a democratic admin.

Even themotte has to crack down on holocaust denial, HBD and other topics from time to time.

Sigh. You're baiting me, aren't you?

No, we've never "cracked down" on topics *. We've cracked down on obsessive single-issue posters and people turning their hobby horses into culture-warring and consensus-building. We've never forbidden Holocaust denial or HBD posting or even pedo-posting from the guys who want to abolish the age of consent.

  • (Once, many years ago on the old subreddit, before my time, the mods put a temporary moratorium on HBD posting because it was close to turning into open calls for race war.)

No, we've never "cracked down" on topics *. We've cracked down on obsessive single-issue posters and people turning their hobby horses into culture-warring and consensus-building. We've never forbidden Holocaust denial or HBD posting or even pedo-posting from the guys who want to abolish the age of consent.

You give a leeway for it for sure but my last ban was for posting a harmless visual novel top post. You have banned me too much under the wildcard rule which really just means per your discretion you don't like my posts. Obviously a big chunk of that is going to be the ideological substance therein. I won't deny that you do give voice to the people you mention, but I also won't deny it's only for a limited time. I think it's impossible to become a true forum regular while also being one of the types of posters you mention, just because sooner or later you will give a huge ban for posting a top level post that isn't even about one of the no-no topics. And that huge ban would obviously not be given to a regular.

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.

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.

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.

More comments

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats