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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   25149 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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Frats aren't men only spaces though. They may only allow male residents but a huge part of their whole reason for existence is to throw parties that hot women will attend.

But I do think "greek life" is legitimately harmful in many ways with their widespread hazing and drug and alcohol abuse. Never been in one though so I can't really say if having a gender segregated reaidential environment is good or bad.

Part of the issue is you only see the stories that are bad in the news and not the day to day life.

Night life of course becomes co-ed, but during the day and week it’s mostly men.

I think my school did it better where we had dorms that were male or female and you were required to stay 3 years and about 40% stayed all 4 years. They still did a lot of frat type things like organizing dances and events. I think it’s better because the assignment were random so you didn’t have only the cool kids in one frat and then lower ranked frats. Model wise I think this is better. And even Seniors who moved off campus would interact with the dorm they had gone to.

Hazing is stupid. But that’s a small part of frats and I don’t think all even do it.

Is hazing stupid or is it bonding?

The underlying psychology of hazing is likely to mimic an aspect of war. Basically training for war and we have a real evolutionary advantage for soldiers to feel brotherhood with their fellow soldiers. Sometimes in war it’s advantageous for a soldier to do things bad for their own health that benefits the group.

Therefore going thru painful hazing with your new frat friends helps you develop a feeling of being “brothers” or basically family from going thru the experience together.

I would still say it’s mostly stupid in the modern context…….but things usually don’t exists unless they fulfill a real benefit.

Stupid. Idk where but I remember studies show that group cohesion and performance is lower in groups with hazing versus not.

Intuitively there is some idea that hazing puts everyone through a common hardship that people can share, and this probably drives self reported claims of benefits from hazing, but honestly I think it's just cope and also rationalism of I got mine so you aren't getting a free pas sort of mentality.

Far better than hazing is just, you know, working together to complete some task or just doing activities together.

I trust studies very little

Yes sociology studies have mostly proven to have limited value. My guess is because p-hacking is easy and publish or perish in academia is largely true so you have intense pressure to do some p-hacking and writing commentary that sounds truish. With 10’s of thousands of social science academics there just aren’t enough new true things to discover.

My only concept of Greek life is "they throw parties that women know they will be raped at, yet still mysteriously attend"

It could just be true that going to the party is positive ev despite the possibility of getting raped. Like what if it was like a 2% chance of getting raped, 80% chance of nothing happening, and 18% chance of getting in a hot drug fueled gangbang with a bunch lf attractive men.

'Hot drug fueled gangbang' is unlikely to be something women value sufficiently to distinguish clearly from rape.

The real upside is likely a small chance of ending up in a relationship with a rich chad.

And if the hot drug fueled gangbang turns out to be socially deleterious then you've got final say on whether it was rape or not.

Revealed preferences has some similarities to Chesterton fence in that it’s giving you information that a behavior or rule might have a purpose. In this case it signifies majority of girls actually like and enjoy having frats. I think revealed preferences is often correct except with some limitations when you can make legitimately addiction arguments.

thatisthejoke.jpg

I didn't go to a college with frats. Yet I still had to hear the women in my social circles talk about frat party rape culture.

And the bear said to the man, "You're not here to hunt, are you?"

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