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Why do people engage in culture war though? I mean in some cases it is necessary like literal wars or a group actively holding hostile views against another and opposes thier rights on the basis of prejudice. But much of the discourse I have seen is more about attacking the group and pulling down even normal members of the group ignoring that they are not some genocidal murderers. Even though they bear some responsibilities for their own group or country it ignores that normal people often avoid conflict rather than holding the same prejudiced beliefs themselves.
I don't really think culture war is the solution, because whether one side is right or wrong it ultimately makes a breeding ground for hatred and nobody here will be listening to the facts and work upon a solution. It is sort of like our race, color, wealth, institutions etc .. all make up our identity of who we are. Any attack on these are an attack on the person belonging to that said group (and I am not talking about criticism of the group). Will anyone sit to think about thier position? Of course not because human nature is reactionary and much of out actions are governed by feelings. It would be unrealistic to expect the person being attacked to be reasonable, especially if it is actively hostile. But it will lead to a never ending war with each other without any solutions.
The 21st century escalation of the culture war is largely driven by social media. So a large part of the answer is "People engage in culture war because a small number of for-profit businesses show them that all the cool kids are engaging in culture war." Note show, not tell - social media algorithms curate your feed in a way which is optimised for engagement and ad revenue, and as part of that they are going to give you a potentially misleading impression of the kind of content your peers are posting.
Mark Zuckerberg burned the democratic commons in order to get people to click on more adverts. I actually believe this.
Not commenting on you in either way but I think believing:
vs.
is the primary division that makes somebody either 'centrist' or 'populist/far-/alt-/whatever-you-want-to-call-it'.
I think it's a bit more complicated than that.
Last week I started writing an effort post that was in part a response to @SneedNibba's post on the closure of the internet and some of the replies to @Lizzardspawn's post on the French Freezer hack only to loose it to a negligent refresh.
The post was about how a "high trust" environment turns into to a "low trust" one and the transitional phases in between. When @Lizzardspawn says that "there was never trust which could be betrayed" I know that they are wrong, because I saw it with my own eyes. I'm not quite old enough to be one of those "ancientfags" who pines for the days before the Eternal September but I am old enough to have watched the internet transition from open frontier to a collection of closed territories.
My first tax-paying job as a snot-nosed teenager at the electronics store back in the 90s was as much for access to the employee discount and manufacturers catalogs as it was for the money. I was one of those young BBS punks who, in the eyes of the ancients, was ruining the internet, and now with the benefit of hindsight I agree with them. While I may have been just one drop in a deluge, I did my part to make things worse, and recognizing that had a profound influence on the paths I would take later in life.
I have written before about how the thing that what made early LessWrong and the weekly discussion threads on SlateStarCodex.com special was that they were a neutral third space where genuine cross tribal communication could occur. While I can't really blame anyone deciding that they no longer wish to carry the burden of maintaining such a space, because make no mistake it is a burden, I can't help but feel like something of value has been lost. I am not angry, I am disappointed.
Where this comes back to you comment is that because as one of those young IRC/BBS punks turned "oldfag", I am conscious of the algorithm and it's nudges, I am aware that there is are entire internet eco-systems that might as well be made of dark-matter to the people who post here because the algo would never show it to them.
Point being that there are spaces online where Anime is discussed in Japanese, there are spaces where MAGA is the norm and any claim that "woke owns the discourse" would be met with derision and possibly a ban. The world (both online and off) is so much bigger than people know.
Yahoo? 2chan/8kun? I was never really able to find the native Japanese internet. Or were you speaking generally?
I was speaking more generally, but part of my point is that if you are typing your search in Latin characters rather than kanji the algo is not going to give you the native Japanese internet.
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