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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24393 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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I used to be in a circle of friends that formed over the shared attributes of being shiftless teenagers who liked drinking outdoors until nightfall and then hitting the local antifa club. I consider it a third space because practically anyone was invited and accepted, and it was always very public. But the drinking gradually gave way to weed, which was still illegal at the time, and the people slowly grew old enough to move out of their parents' homes, so the whole group shifted to staying indoors, smoking up the place until the walls grew yellow and the windows couldn't be seen through, and discussing very little other than where to get more weed, and which underground rave to go to where other drugs could be obtained and consumed. I trundled along for a while because of residual friendship, but eventually checked out. The drugs never did it for me. I'd rather be alone than clean black snot out of my nose and listen to UNZ UNZ UNZ UNZ all day and night.

A few years later I stumbled into Historical European Martial Arts, and found a new third space. It's a niche sport, so you end up knowing every practitioner in a 500km radius. Almost useless for meeting girls, since there's very few of them around, they're usually shacked up already, and the social norms are very, very woke, but that was never my goal to begin with and it does the job for recurring social interaction in general. Of course, it's also very time-consuming, requires travelling a lot, and the friends you make live hundreds of miles away, so YMMV.

I've somewhat noticed that as well, but that "Historical European Martial Arts" are woke is so weird on its face. You'd think that it might be full of RETVRN types, or at least chill conservatives. But nope. I guess it's just too far from anything practical, so it appeals almost only to the neuro-atypical, which are very disproportionally woke.

Doing something unusual (unless it is locally usual in the place/subculture you grew up in) implies high openness to experience, which is correlated with political liberalism (and also IQ, education and whiteness). Any weird hobby will be full of WEIRD people.

Also one or two woke types getting in tend to be far more militant about spreading their preference, especially if rare women in a male dominated space

I guess the RETVRN types, or at least chill conservatives are to be found mainly among the Viking/Gladiator reenactors instead. I admit I have no idea what "Historical European Martial Arts" are.

Somewhere in between the outright RETVRNers and the chill conservatives (who would never do such low-status things as HEMA or reenactment) are the much more populous pagan LARPers, and those are well-represented among reenactors.

So it is. Now to be sure, there are lots of people around who just want to grill fight, and those are my crowd. Hell, I can even gel with the openly antifa guys as long as we're talking shop and they're not trying to shoehorn their political jokes into everything. Doesn't mean I approve of their wearing flags and banners to tournaments, quite the contrary, but I know well enough to keep quiet on that. And yes, HEMA is primarily nerds doing nerd things. Open conservatives, even chill ones, are actively pushed out. RETVRNers show up sometimes by accident, and are usually given sufficiently cold shoulders to get the message. And the "neuro" crowd is indeed practically everyone present.

I'm strongly considering switching clubs, since my old club (from which I have moved away geographically anyways) has really fallen off in terms of tournament focus and has gone far more woke since the generational shift following the "pandemic", and there's a closer one (it only costs me about 2,5h and 30€ to get there and back rather than 4h and 50€) in which people are much more motivated to actually go to competitions and spend far less time taking tiresome potshots at the political outgroup. Can't quite get myself to pull the trigger, loyalty is a bitch, but the option seems more appealing by the season.

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