This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
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Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
Contributions for the week of September 28, 2026
Contributions for the week of October 5, 2026
@kky:
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Notes -
I'm kind of sad that I missed all the Malfoid discussion. Glad to find it here though.
It was good fun, but to be honest my main takeaway from it is that I hate culture warriors.
Malfoid is a cute premise and led to lots of adorable creativity, and within approximately five seconds discussion around it was hijacked by 1) right-wing morons who think that it's somehow evidence that the masses yearn for their retarded combination of racism and ethno-nationalism, and 2) left-wing morons who think that the whole thing is evidence of incel misogyny and radicalisation.
It really makes me want to strangle both camps.
Can you not just... let nice things be nice?
Let people have good things. For once. You parasitic idiots.
I do find the far right versions of this to be cringe, but as usual I find them to be tamer and less harmful than the far left. Note the asymmetry in the parasitism: it's fanfiction and memes. They're not getting access to the Harry Potter License and making canon works with racist Malfoid. They're not infiltrating an ongoing series and then degrading the quality, making a cringe propaganda piece and preventing authentic version of the work from existing. When the left claims something they get into the canon and ruin it. We don't have good Star Wars 7-9 because the left ruined it. They're not making woke fanfictions, they are subverting the canon and the IP, effectively pushing out the original, neutral creators.
Meanwhile, when the right claims something they make fanfiction. All of the wholesome, politically neutral Malfoid content still exists, and then the right wing stuff exists too. It's not parasitism because they're not denying anything, they're not squatting on an IP, they're just making their own versions alongside the others. The threat is that when the right claims something, the left will threaten to cancel people making and enjoying it. If you don't like the right wing culture warriors you can just ignore them and enjoy the wholesome version of the content. If you don't like left wing culture warriors you are screwed because they are unavoidable.
That's probablt a fair point to make, but it is highly contingent on the present terrain, that is to say, the left dominates the culture industries, and the right doesn't. I don't view the right as morally superior to the left when it comes to opportunistically parasitising media like this, because the right's abstinence is not coming from any kind of virtue. It's just coming from a lack of power.
The active ingredients here are not 'left' and 'right'. The active ingredient is power, and nothing else.
I tentatively agree, which is why I identify primarily as a centrist (albeit a right leaning one). Back when the right had more cultural power they went around censoring and cancelling things they didn't like. But... that was decades ago. It is contingent on the terrain, but the terrain shifts slowly, so we should act in accordance with the present terrain. I'm not going to get upset at zoomers getting excited about racist Malfoid or Anakin because that's going to correlate with good immigration policy and maybe in a decade or two the terrain will end up more central and we can get some sanity and balance for a bit. THEN if it starts to go too far right I can start pushing in the opposite direction. But we're so far from that I'm not going to worry about it now, there are bigger priorities in the opposite direction.
I'm a bit ambivalent here. On the one hand, as a fellow moderate, I agree that there is some merit in the idea of siding with whoever's currently out of power in the hopes of dragging the polity back toward the centre...
But on the other, I'm not sure it's as linear as that. I think it's possible for far-left to flip to far-right, and vice versa, without ever passing through the sane middle, and that it's therefore better for the cause of moderation to stand up for moderation regardless, even if that means criticising the extremists who are currently out of power. If Team Open Borders is in power, then I'm not actually convinced that siding with Team Let's Eat Immigrants is a route back to sanity. I suspect it is better to continue to disavow Team Eat Immigrants while still fighting against Team Open Borders.
Prioritisation is important, you're right, and I'm potentially vulnerable to being suckered by whichever lunatics are currently in power, but at the same time, you might be vulnerable to being suckered by whichever lunatics aren't currently in power.
At any rate, in this particular context I am anonymously whining on the internet. I feel more license, on the Motte, to just say what I genuinely feel without consideration for how it might affect the wider political landscape.
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