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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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I don't really buy into there being a corrective "pendulum" when it comes to most progressive positions, but with the trans stuff it really feels like people are getting sick of it. Recently it feels like every week there is some new story that comes off quite badly for transpeople. The shooter targeting Christian children highlighting the militant anger of many transpeople (no demo fedposts online harder than they do), Dylan Mulvaney going mainstream/being sponsored by an all-American beer brand, and now this.

Every year, there are a thousand 'controversial news stories'. Let's say a third of them are progressive, and a third of them are conservative. If you mostly look at the conservative ones, it's easy to think 'every week, there's some new story that comes off quite badly for <my side's issue>'. And let's say 3% of the population switches teams per year, 1.5% left to right and 1.5% the reverse. It's easy to observe a steady stream of people entering your group, or public conversions, and think that 'people are becoming more conservative'. But, of course, these coexist with the other direction - tons of stories about ebil transphobes or conservatives becoming progressives.

So, yeah, dylan mulvaney, trans shooter, trans chris. But there's also homophobic shootings, saudi oligarch kidnaps trans daughter from US, trans daughter commits suicide, big protest at tennesse capitol about transphobia, etc.

That feels like where the post should end, but I said that I was surprised that the "MrBeast 6000" TikToks were allowed to stay up this long

social media censorship has always been incredibly inconsistent and poorly-run!

For the twitch debate scene - like 50% chance i'm wrong here but iirc Twitch censors right-leaning views way more than other platforms. There are a lot of very popula conservative debaters and video essayists on youtube.