site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 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.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

journalist Gil Duran

NPR

Tech has been eating journalists and will continue to do so. Who wants to advertise in a newspaper distributed to a few million people in one place vs google, facebook (or perhaps an AI) which is queried by everyone everywhere and can track users in exacting detail?

US newspaper industry revenue, adjusted for inflation, has fallen about 80% since peaking at $89 billion in 2000, with print advertising revenue collapsing from $73.2 billion to $6 billion

Journalists are aware of this, this is why they don't make much money! Their prestige and wealth is going to some SWE instead.

If ever there was a class war in history, it's this. The tech industry does many bad things but there's such an insane chorus of negativity. Go to https://futurism.com/

There is scarcely a single piece of good or even neutral-valence news about technology anywhere on the entire website, certainly none about AI. Journalists hate technology and especially AI because it is destroying the business model of their companies, it directly threatens their livelihoods. The natural countermove is to whip up anti-tech sentiment, create terms like 'tech-bro' to wield social and political power against the technology sector and try to siphon some of that money back. Not unreasonable as a survival strategy but deceptive.

Given how little analysis they do, how weak their articles are compared to rare moments of real journalism or even AI queries that can directly investigate primary sources, they're right to be worried. The average journalist is pretty stupid per the incessant complaints of my friends who talk to the media. They're constantly misunderstanding and mangling quotes, abstract points and semi-rare diction escapes them.

Anyway, journalists hate people like Elon Musk in large part because he refuses to pay for PR/advertising. If Tesla paid for ads, there would be a night and day difference in how he's treated by the media.

If journalism were actually trying to save the world from AI takeover, that'd be heroic. But they've been doing this for years and years before AI, they're trying to make some money, to restore the cozy NGO/govt/advertising landscape they think they deserve.