site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   10892 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

https://archive.ph/IWYc8

A Western Mass. lesbian bar required KN-95 masks. When it changed the rules, all hell broke loose.

There's some real gems in here, and I feel bad for the one remaining owner and wish they/them the best, now that they've seen how positive, supportive, and inclusive their chosen subculture isn't.

This is also an example of the Internet showing me exactly what I want. Even when I'm browsing substack not logged in, it can somehow target me and my hobby horses.

A "Lesbian" Bar (which seems to really be a Queer Leftist establishment ridden with trannies) was until recently a Masks Required establishment; they planned to allow some days each week in which masks were optional rather than mandatory. Histrionics ensued. You'd think the article was a hit-piece from a right-wing rag, but the Boston Globe is only conservative if you're standing near the Left Pole.

I post it here at the risk of it being Boo-Outgroup, but I'm actually slightly gladdened. The neighborhood where I do most of my socializing is ridden with queer leftists who still mask, but "enforcement" is limited to the occasional DIY show or rave that's specifically targeted at maskies. However bad it is here, it's not as bad as a small town in Massachusetts.

So I guess today the Motte will just be bashing the outgroup's most ridiculous exemplars. Well, can't say they don't dserve it.

But it's not very edifying. Have fun guys. I'll check back in tomorrow.

the outgroup's most ridiculous exemplars

Does that also make them rare and irrelevant though?

I have so many questions. People are still wearing masks year-round? From the article pictures, it seems like the bar serves drinks, as bars sometimes do. How do you drink with your mask in place? If you were so immunocompromised that your life was in danger if other patrons were not wearing their mask, would you actually gamble your life on them wearing their mask correctly? What about lesbian Muslims wearing a burka, can you trust them to wear their KN-95 correctly, and would it be racist to not trust them?

Personally, I was very much on the pro mask side during COVID, I still remember Scott's article on how nCoV-19 was likely airborne and how there were clear mechanistic reasons to believe that mask would protect both the wearer and others even in the absence of hard clinical evidence. I still see the CDC's anti-mask statements as a clear betrayal.

But when the vaccine got approved, I got vaccinated and then got on with my life. Today I might consider wearing a mask if I am in the room with someone with a respiratory illness, or am myself infected.

Still, I suppose that masks were politicized enough that they formed a stable equilibrium for some. And I guess they are really targeting an audience big on performative virtue signaling.

The way they should have sold this would have been as a measure meant to include people who for reasons of mental disability can not wear masks. I mean, what kind of monster would be against the inclusion of people with mental problems? And only exempting them specifically would call attention to their status, so the compassionate thing is clearly to allow people not to wear masks more generally.

Guess you've never seen one of these: https://sipmask.com/products/sip-airtight-drinking-valve-safely-drink-through-mask-with-straw

Also, obviously, alcohol sterilizes your mouth so you don't have to worry about Covid while you're drinking. /s

…the Boston Globe is only conservative if you're standing near the Left Pole.

Pudge’s Pole is the preferred nomenclature.

Eventually, after 3 1/2 hours of discussion, the meeting wraps up. Noire has more to say, but when someone suggests he come to the next community meeting, he refuses. "There's a lot of emotional and physical labor that goes into this, so for you as a white person that asks for me to stay for another meeting for free," he says, is "incredibly disingenuous and racist. I'm not doing that."

"Then I think, unfortunately, this meeting has failed you," replies a facilitator, "and I'm sorry.'

Any meeting that lasts 3 and a half hours is a failure IMO.

Just today I was reading some theory about how groups run/composed by nerds sucked at excluding people (even if they really were causing a net drain of energy/enjoyment/efficiency) because nerds got excluded for giving the ick and so refrain from doing it to others... looks like these leftists have similar issue.

Disability (especially vague untreatable mental ones) just being the forever Trump card in this kind of social arena has to be a large part of it, too. It's very hard to cajole somebody who can just claim you're spiking their anxiety all day.

I've had the experience of excluding someone like this before from a neutral space. People in leadership need to bite the bullet and understand that threats never de-escalate themselves.

And to a volunteer organization anything in the form of "I am unhappy, therefore you should do more work to make me happy" is a threat. It can overwhelm the amount of work people are willing to take on for the organization.

I'd they respond with hostility to some formulation of "I'd like to keep you happy how about you work with me to appease your concerns" then fuck them.

Progressives have the language and understanding of this concept. They just also sometimes have a magical belief in the value of certain peoples.

Adeptness in excluding the awful parts of humanity is part of the game. And the skilled progressives play it just fine. It's the people that can't even run off to clown college that get left holding the bag.

I mean sure you can work around them, but you're still at peril of likeminded people reaching a certain critical mass and/or making a bad play then you're forever trapped into the Ableism Prison. Also good faith operations are going to be more vulnerable to this due to a certain naivety from the people operating them.

And to a volunteer organization anything in the form of "I am unhappy, therefore you should do more work to make me happy" is a threat. It can overwhelm the amount of work people are willing to take on for the organization.

If they respond with hostility to some formulation of "I'd like to keep you happy how about you work with me to appease your concerns" then fuck them.

I don't have much else to add here outside affirmation that this is indeed its own special kind of hell, and noting that this kind of behavior is in the Simple Sabotage Field Manual for a reason.

They just also sometimes have a magical belief in the value of certain peoples.

And hence one of the objectives of management is to make sure that magical belief is placed in the value of the peoples working for the organization. If they can't, then they must be excluded.

Just today I was reading some theory about how groups run/composed by nerds sucked at excluding people (even if they really were causing a net drain of energy/enjoyment/efficiency) because nerds got excluded for giving the ick and so refrain from doing it to others

Is that the geeks/sociopaths/MOPs theory, or the social gentrification theory?

No, it was just a simple theory: personal experience of exclusion fostering an unwillingness to actively exclude others.

I saw it on twitter, I scrolled on and now it's gone forever into the depths of time.

You might be thinking of a tweet downstream of Geek Social Fallacies.

Yes, that's right, you found the original source.

This steak is too juicy. The lobster: too buttery.

I feel bad for the one remaining owner and wish they/them the best, now that they've seen how positive, supportive, and inclusive their chosen subculture isn't

How are they going to get out of this? I suppose they could step up from this sub-sub-sub culture to just a straight up gay bar and use the notoriety to get back in the black, but since they signed on for this originally it may not occur to them.

When I read this or equivalent stories I need to check my ideological ego. So few of these freakazoid businesses really exist, and a ton of little mainstream or christian shops shut down because of community mismanagement or family fights all the time. I don't think there's enough data to suggest that any of these fail at different rates, or I haven't seen it. But watching supposed supporters thrash like sharks in chummed water to hate the owners of their spaces is hilarious.

These people were just not charging when people asked not to be charged. These kinds of self consciously far left revolutionary businesses usually fail not because of lunacy like their founders leaving to go to clown school or fights about masking but because of ideologically demanded poor business decisions like that one. Thats the common thread in these kinds of articles, is the coffee shops that decide payment is optional or workers don’t need to listen to management shutting down because that won’t keep you in business.

Christian or mainstream businesses don’t do stuff like that. They may go under because they don’t have enough customers or are bad at setting prices or can’t keep costs under control or any other more pedestrian- or dramatic- reason, but they’re very unlikely to decide that employees(writ large; some of them have sinecures) don’t need to do any work or customers don’t need to pay when they don’t feel like it.

because of lunacy like their founders leaving to go to clown school

It was crazy that this was actually in the story.

People are still masking in the year of our Lord 2026?! I had to check the date. I had expected it to be from 2022.

About 30% of black people and 10% of white people in my town still mask, and this is the rust belt, not Massachusetts.

I wear a mask when I’m flying. I keep having the bad luck of being seated near people who are coughing and sniffling, and before I masked I would inevitably catch a cold whenever I’d go abroad.

Seems silly to make it a political issue, you’re breathing dry recycled air, in close contact to random strangers, for several hours. I got tired of every holiday or business trip leading to me being sick for a few days. If it helps, I started before Covid after seeing Asian people do it.

For what it's worth, airliner air is not recycled. The air coming through the fresh air nozzles is coming from the pressurizing system, which typically uses bleed air from one of the jet engine compressor stages. At the same time, a relief valve lets air out to maintain the overall cabin pressure.

According to this source it’s 50/50 recycled air but since it goes through HEPA filters it could actually reduce viral transmission compared to other indoor spaces. It’s probably moreso the low pressure/dryness that causes irritation, and being in a confined space for longer.

I'm curious about the actual mechanism by which this may work. I guess you could say I was of the belief that making could work if you were in the area for a short amount of time, and then moved on to other air. Like, the mask would keep your personal air supply cleaner for a brief time, but eventually more air would have to come into your mask space, so for longer amounts of time, it doesn't make sense to me. This might not be how it actually works, or is purported to work at all, but it's just how I kinda envisioned it.

Is the mechanism your pointing at that there are infected droplets of water from other people's bodies in the air, and the mask helps filter them out, meaning to can have a continuously safe air supply? That model could make sense to me, but only if the air was actually moving through the mask material. For the surgical and cloth masks that were common during covid, I never felt like that was the case. It always felt like the air was just coming around the sides of the mask, not through it. Are you supposed to press your lips right up against the mask, kinda kissing it all the time, sucking the air through the cloth itself?

People are still masking in the year of our Lord 2026?! I had to check the date. I had expected it to be from 2022.

I find it strange that there is a bar that requires masking. You would think the kind of hypochondriacs who are still scared of COVID (?) wouldn't want to go outside at all.

I occasionally mask when I'm sick but have some sort of unavoidable social event. I also interact with people who clearly mask as a sort of fashion statement and/or to obscure their gender. (Perils of being a furry and occasionally being around YNs.) The N95 wearers are definitely hypochondriacs tho

I live in the middle of nowhere in Trump country, and I often see 1-2 people in masks at the grocery store (flimsies or homemades, not (K)N-95 masks). I occasionally see people driving solo in their car wearing one.

I live in the Netherlands, in a progressive city, and I haven't seen a mask since the mandates were dropped. I haven't even heard of any place voluntarily keeping a mandate in place after the government stopped requiring it.

In fact I remember the relief when Putin invaded Ukraine, because everyone who was gung-ho about Covid restrictions could be gung-ho about waving Ukrainian flags instead and it all went away remarkably quickly after that.

Most of this is not that crazy if you accept some basic tenets of progressivism (though sounds crazy to a non-believer - "the entire world is made out of these tiny things called atoms and there are bunch of different types like in this periodic table. No they are really small, you can't even see them with this light microscope. The atoms for table salt are the for a poisonous gas and an explosive metal but they bind strongly together so it's safe")

Nonetheless, some of it reads like a conservative parody of progressivism to the point I really do wonder... ("he/him gender-expansive lesbian")

[in response to making masks optional] “people like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience,” posted another.

“I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists"

Last Ditch, which opened last year as a bar for “dykes, transsexuals, gender freaks, workers, and their friends,” is struggling.

One of the trio, Asa Rosario, a drag performer who uses it/its pronouns, envisioned a venue where it and its friends could perform.

No one would be turned away from the space for lack of funds. “Poor and unhoused people are welcome in the space.” The police were not.

“A lot of people are calling for an acknowledgment of harm and I’m hearing a WHITE therapist ... center[ing] the feelings of a majority white and white adjacent staff,” writes Noire, who is Black.

“There’s a lot of emotional and physical labor that goes into this [a community meeting], so for you as a white person that asks for me to stay for another meeting for free,” he says, is “incredibly disingenuous and racist. I’m not doing that.”

Matellian (who uses she/they pronouns) had been shedding “WHITE THEY THEM TEARS,” he [Noire] writes

Noire, who identifies as a gender-expansive lesbian and uses he/him pronouns

I've never personally interacted with a space at this level of wokeness, but I have come across public spaces with this kind of vibe before: inclusive yet pleasant to be in (gender-expansive Black lesbians and neopronoun users vs. thuggish black/brown youths and homeless people)

How come these spaces don't just get overrun with undesirables who are too low-functioning to participate in a "community meeting"? To re-quote:

No one would be turned away from the space for lack of funds. “Poor and unhoused people are welcome in the space.” The police were not.

They are explicitly advertising this place as a shelter for homeless people (amongst other things), does word not get around and then the homeless people... go there for shelter?

I suspect that rural western Mass doesn’t have tons of homeless people to begin with.

Most of this is not that crazy if you accept some basic tenets of progressivism physics

What exactly would be crazy according to you?

but I have come across public spaces with this kind of vibe before: inclusive yet pleasant to be in

Pleasant to be in??!

If you're a passing observer and don't do anything to enrage the hivemind they're probably perfectly fine

How come these spaces don't just get overrun with undesirables who are too low-functioning to participate in a "community meeting"?

Gangstas are culturally homophobic, like the vast majority of criminal subcultures that thrive on machismo and personal honor. No thuggish, unsophisticated black man is going to risk being seen in a gay bar, never mind a gay women's bar - nothing this place can offer him is worth the risk to his reputation among his peers.

I would imagine the N95 mask requirement functioned as a hidden mandatory fee. What homeless person has that?

More and more visitors said they didn’t have the cover fee; the bar let them in anyway.

Seems like word got out that you could get in for free if you pretended to be homeless, which is what caused the income of the bar to fall.

I imagine the masks serve in two ways, ingroup signaling for exactly "Those people" that wore a mask alone in their own car and the trans thing.

The first sentence here made me think it was some sort of Latin rite Catholic lesbian bar.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that 'Western Mass' means 'Massachusetts', and I am still disappointed, because this story could only be improved by the inexplicable involvement of the Catholic Church.

“A lot of people are calling for an acknowledgment of harm and I’m hearing a WHITE therapist ... center[ing] the feelings of a majority white and white adjacent staff,” writes Noire, who is Black.

I have a hard time believing this isn't satire.

“There’s a lot of emotional and physical labor that goes into this, so for you as a white person that asks for me to stay for another meeting for free,” he says, is “incredibly disingenuous and racist. I’m not doing that.”

“Then I think, unfortunately, this meeting has failed you,” replies a facilitator, “and I’m sorry.”

The facilitator speaks like chatGPT, and Noire sounds like a 4chan user LARPing to make fun of the libs.

I reach Noire, who identifies as a gender-expansive lesbian and uses he/him pronouns

No way this guy is serious.

The facilitator speaks like chatGPT

Where do you think ChatGPT picked this stuff up? It was trained on (the worst of) reddit.

I reach Noire, who identifies as a gender-expansive lesbian and uses he/him pronouns

No way this guy is serious.

Yeah I'd update my perception of leftists/progressives if this part is true (and the "guy" isn't trolling)

I reach Noire, who identifies as a gender-expansive lesbian and uses he/him pronouns

That's just a perfect line, isn't it? Leaves me completely unsure whether this is a straight guy who is taking the joke literally or if it's a butch lesbian or a transbian. "Yes, my pronouns are he/him. Yes, I am sexually attracted to women. No, I'm not a man, I'm gender-expansive and a lesbian".

I love it. I have no words. 10/10 honestly.

If by some awful twist of fate it turns out this is real and actually what the left wing parties want and are unable to speak out against, I am going hard fucking right though.

But by the time of Last Ditch’s monthly community meeting on September 11, only one of the original founders, Matellian, is still involved. The two others stepped back from the daily operation months before, Matellian says, citing various pressures and health issues. One had enrolled in clown school.

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it." - Voltaire

Enrolling in clown school is the least questionable decision I see in this story.

Ah, is this another one in that category of posts where the author seems to believe that openly stating the reason why he's about to get scolded by the mods will somehow prevent him from being scolded by the mods?

It implies he believes there's a chance of being scolded, but not that he believes there's a chance of being correctly scolded. "I think the moderators will violate their own rules in order to condemn this" is a perfectly consistent stance.

No I just accept that a scolding is a possibility.

I couldn’t get through the article in full due to painful cringing, but TIL that there is such a thing as the “Massachusetts LGBT Chamber of Commerce”. https://malgbtcc.org/about-us/

As far as culture war goes, what would be the right wing equivalent?

To some extent, the normal Chamber of Commerce is the right-wing Chamber of Commerce, but that's 'only' around 70-90% Republican. For the two-nines level, you'd probably want something like NSSF or local gun business-focused orgs.

With the caveat that CoC tends to be old-school "we want infinite immigration to keep costs down so big line go up forever" Republicans while NSSF or the local gun store are more likely to be pro-Trump/anti-immigration types.

Western society is easily more absurd at this point than what parodies looked like 15-20 years ago.

You can't rightly call this Western society.

This reads like satire. I'll grant you that such people exist but they're not mainstream. They're not even mainstream among LGBT people. This is the fringe of the fringe. It's like pointing at the Branch Davidians and calling it 'Christianity'.

They're not even mainstream among LGBT people. This is the fringe of the fringe.

Are you sure about that? Are they getting disowned and purged from the tribe?

Are you sure about that? Are they getting disowned and purged from the tribe?

No, they just straight up don't exist for many of us.

I'm a regular in a shitload of gay bars in my city and the only masks I've seen anyone wearing are biker or furry masks depending on the genre of man.

I don't know of anyone I could feasibly ostracise. I have been asked for my pronouns like, twice in 6 months, and both times my response was "use your eyes dude" and no more was said about it.

Among gay dudes, at least, this shit does not exist. Trans and lesbians may differ. I don't know where they hang out. Raves, I suspect. I periodically get updates about trans lesbian polycule drama from a friend and it sounds exhausting.

They are being held up for public ridicule in the Boston Globe, which is somewhat to the left of Pravda. That isn't exactly being disowned and purged, but the only more official way that the pro-establishment left could say "We're sick of these people" is to say it in the New York Times.

An ultra-leftist and trans discord I'm in called Noire a man (in the context of not being the target audience of the bar).

I'm asking myself whether, if elected President, Kamala would have admitted she finds anything silly about this if asked. Can't know, of course, but I suspect not.

Not a chance.

These clowns (and not just the ones that went to clown school) managed to flip Bernie Sanders, or at least get him to put up a "Workers of the World Unite" sign while doing lefty politics. And Bernie is a much bigger man than Kamala.

If someone said they were writing a parody of leftist spaces and presented that article to me, I'd tell them to tone it down because it was too over the top. That bit about Lady Gaga is a real chef's kiss to the whole thing.

And the bit about the masks. One night a week where masking is optional, and they're literally murdering all the disabled people who only (it would seem) can come out to socialise on that one particular night.

You couldn't write a parody of this from a conservative viewpoint, if you wrote this you'd be accused of booing the outgroup by presenting them all as completely, totally, incurably insane which is a terrible way to categorise the LGBT community.

I think it's only topped (um, if I can use that expression in the context of LGBT) by the bunch injecting themselves with their hormones outside the hospital. Morbidly obese trans person in a wheelchair shooting up HRT? If you saw it on South Park you'd say they'd gone too far.

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