site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

OP claimed ‘the vast majority of teenage runaways who went missing did so of their own accord and were not victims of serious crime’. In the sense that the vast majority of them probably never fell victim to murder and were thus never mentioned in various true crime stories about serial killers, that is correct. I pointed out though that probably a large number of them were victimized in other ways, ways that are technically crimes even if many of the teenage victims made up their minds from the moment they ran away to turn into drug mules and prostitutes (which is possible but doesn’t seem likely), crimes that are usually considered serious in the mainstream.

The actors were making rational tradeoffs here; that's kind of why they were never reported.

I’d say the main reason was that teenage runaways were aware that trying to report a rape or assault to the police was likely to be a futile effort on their part.

I believe the meme was "I was young and needed the money".

I believe this meme usually refers to young women – that is, young adults – who did porn or posed for titty mags while in college, usually with no outside pressure being involved, so the situation is slightly different.

(Just like the groupies, for that matter, but in a slightly different way.)

Again, those are normally adults. I know it’s sort of a fad among third-wave feminists to bring up the horrible reality of so-called baby groupies, but this is still a fact.

and conflating teenagers with children, which you do further below

No, I mentioned (teenaged) children in the context of children of traumatized war veterans running away.