site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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.

14
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

MIRI Researcher Don’t be a Quokka Challenge (IMPOSSIBLE).

Katja Grace posts “date me” document. Asks everyone to share.

I originally posted a similar link in the small-scale-questions thread in response to Tyler Cowen linking to the doc on MarginalRevolution. What I didn’t know at the time is that Katja apparently wants this to be spread everywhere?!?!?

Object-level thoughts: I quite liked it. The document makes a compelling case that will appeal strongly to a certain demographic of men. It’s pretty much exactly what you would expect from “mid-30s Bay Area rationalist woman ready to settle down and have kids,” expanded out into a full dating profile. It certainly caught my attention.

Meta-level thoughts: OH NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING? You can send out something like this to your blog readers. They’ll know how to interpret it, and they’re the kind of people you’d be interested in anyways. You can’t toss it out into the black void that is Twitter and expect to come out unscathed. She even dropped her personal email address at the end. Guess who’s going to need a new Gmail account next week?

”If you don’t hear back in two weeks, feel free to try again, or try other means.”

Protip: If you are a woman, do not ever put something like this in your dating profile. This will be used as an excuse for some weirdo on the edge of sanity to stalk you.

I feel bad for her getting dragged in the quote tweets, but like, what did she expect? Why, in response to getting a negative reaction, is she intent on spreading it even further? That’s the opposite of what she should be doing. Everyone who would be compatible with her has already seen it.

Yeah, she's going to reject all comers. I sincerely doubt this aging, mentally ill, town bike is going to net the sort of man she envisions thawing out her eggs for. Especially from how much she clearly thinks she's amazing, interspersed with all the giant red flags, in her open letter. If anyone I knew saw this and thought about emailing her, I'd pay for them to wrung out by a hooker first to clear their head. I don't know how thirsty and lonely you'd need to be to not see the red flags from orbit on this one.

Okay dude, this is a warning to both you and to @fuckduck9000, below, who just like you, expresses an opinion I largely agree with but chose to do so in a maximally unkind and inflammatory way.

Yes, I get it, it's fun to dunk on dorks and other members of your outgroup, and you particularly delight in dunking on chicks who could be TRP poster girls. @fuckduck9000's speculations about the pathologies that led you here were unnecessary, but he's not wrong that a woman posting a rant about unfuckable incel losers in response to a dude posting a sad dating resume like this would get reported to death. (And in fact, you have collected an impressive number of reports - six, to date - considering you're spilling venom in a way that's usually pretty popular with mottizens.)

I know you're going to get really mad at me because I'm spoiling your fun and you just don't understand why you can't just say that bitches be crazy lol. Frankly, I'm not having it - I'll bet you at least suspected before you clicked the post button that you'd get modded for this, and you chose to do it anyway because you enjoyed letting 'er rip too much.

Chads and stacies and incels, evolutionary psychology, TRP, the effects of social media and feminism and whatever else on the dating market, women regretting their life choices and turning into childless neurotics who see "The Wall" approaching - those are all valid topics of discussion, and we've certainly had enough threads about them in the past. What we do not want to become is a place to just dunk on the chads or the stacies because it's fun and someone made a fool of herself on the Internet. The OP was a reasonable top-level post. Lots of the discussion has been reasonable, even if not always kind or charitable. Your post was just "LOL delusional dried up slut" expressed with slightly more words.

Yeah, I chuckled. In fact, I admit your posts often make me chuckle and sigh before I mod you. But you still knew better. You've been warned often enough in the past. Considering your lengthy rap sheet and that @naraburns recently warned that we are going to start cracking down on cheap shot comments that degrade the quality of discourse, consider yourself fortunate you are not eating a ban for this.

What's "TRP"?

“The Red Pill.”

Yeah, I chuckled.

Good. Shows you aren't completely hollowed out. I hope you can hold onto that much of your humanity as long as possible.

Wait, what did fuckduck9000 do wrong? I can easily imagine things that could be said to WhiningCoil in response to his comment that would be much much more unkind and inflammatory than anything that I have seen fuckduck9000 write to him.

Sold - I was thinking how honest & open she was. She's probably insufferable but if you read my thoughts aloud you might think the same of me - true or not.

So: I enjoy paying college aged women to worship their feet. I usually pay 100-200$ an hour for this, varying between their self esteem levels. I've been this this for way longer than I thought I would and unless I fall in love or something I will probably be doing this until I'm a caricature of life.

Will you be Zelle or Venmo me the money? Or would it have to be a traditional hooker fuck like your post implies?

She's probably insufferable but if you read my thoughts aloud you might think the same of me - true or not.

You didn't read her thoughts though or,at least, you shouldn't have in what was clearly an ad - which typically carries the expectation of the advertiser putting their best foot forward, not their honest stream of consciousness.

Her putting her best foot forward wouldn't necessarily affect his perspective that much, if I had to guess. I won't try to speak for him but I'm guessing he's happy she's got enough feet that she can have a good one.

Too old is major red flag. Incomplete gaps in life. Screams damaged goods

Ok, I’ll bite. What are the red flags? Is it that she’s older and polyamorous? That’s certainly not ideal, but 36 with frozen eggs isn’t exactly “barren”. The main concern with polyamory is knowing the kids are yours. IVF makes that a non-issue.

Is it that she’s older and polyamorous?

Yes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/01/27/feature/she-championed-the-idea-that-freezing-your-eggs-would-free-your-career-but-things-didnt-quite-work-out/

Brigitte Adams caused a sensation four years ago when she appeared on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek under the headline, “Freeze your eggs, Free your career.” She was single and blond, a Vassar graduate who spoke fluent Italian, and was working in tech marketing for a number of prestigious companies. Her story was one of empowerment, how a new fertility procedure was giving women more choices, as the magazine noted provocatively, “in the quest to have it all.”

Adams remembers feeling a wonderful sense of freedom after she froze her eggs in her late 30s, despite the $19,000 cost. Her plan was to work a few more years, find a great guy to marry and still have a house full of her own children.

Things didn’t turn out the way she hoped.

In early 2017, with her 45th birthday looming and no sign of Mr. Right, she decided to start a family on her own. She excitedly unfroze the 11 eggs she had stored and selected a sperm donor.

Two eggs failed to survive the thawing process. Three more failed to fertilize. That left six embryos, of which five appeared to be abnormal. The last one was implanted in her uterus. On the morning of March 7, she got the devastating news that it, too, had failed.

With a bit of bad luck she might be practically infertile. Freezing, unfreezing and implanting into the uterus is rolling the dice repeatedly.

The main concern with polyamory is the main concern with dating single mothers, divorcees etc. - the involvement of other men in her life, be it other denizens of the polycule or the ex-husband/baby daddy, will be a constant source of unnecessary drama in your life. "Mom's boyfriend" is also a factor that correlates heavily with child abuse.

I think getting to the point in her life where she’s advertising herself on a Google form is a major red flag. I understand the argument of maximizing the number of people you encounter but frankly normal people who you can expect to have a normal happy productive relationship with do not do this.

Why is it any weirder than advertising yourself on a dating app? The only difference is the url.

I think like so many questions about social norms, it's just tautologically weirder because it's considered weirder. Back when dating apps were first taking off, they were considered weird, or at least weirder than meeting someone at a bar or in your friend circle or at work or whatever. Now dating apps are nigh ubiquitous, so they're not weirder - in fact, meeting someone at work would be considered quite a bit weirder nowadays. Posting your own personal "date me" doc isn't common, so it's considered weird, which makes it weird.

If we want to justify it more rationally, we might posit that an individual who is enough in-tune with the social norms of the culture to recognize what is and isn't considered weird to not do things considered weird is a more desirable partner than someone who isn't. But then there's countersignalling where people intentionally signal that weirdness to attract people who find that sort of weirdness more desirable in a partner. That's probably at least partly going on here.

The url being different is a big deal! We expect you to go to the thick market, if you don’t, we wonder why they didn’t work for you and make some inferences about you.

Also, the medium is very different. A couple sentences dating app profile versus for some reason feeling the need to wordswordswords about herself. Like I’m a cerebral guy who values that in a partner but you convey that by being cerebral and intelligent, not by writing a novel about how you’re cerebral and intelligent. Show don’t tell is like a writing 101 concept.

But also being honest I wouldn't care about any of this if she was hot lol.

Currently polyamorous but open to monogamy. Seeking primary partner, open to other things.

Re: She's the town bike.

High variance. Very happy sometimes. Very agentic sometimes. Very dysfunctional and inert sometimes. Very good at some things. Very bad at some things.

That captivating combination of arrogance and crippling self-doubt

Mental health problems (anxiety, OCD, probable depression). I'm neurotic across topics ranging from obviously stupid so my partner has to keep being like, 'no, you are not dying of a pulmonary embolism right now', and 'yes, the people who liked you last week haven't suddenly started hating you for no reason', and things that are extremely hard to dismiss, such as that everyone is plausibly going to die.

Probable ADHD: I’m bad at doing things I’m not interested in, which includes a lot of things that it would be strategic to do.

She's mentally ill.

Tend to either do things in a twenty hour blaze of action or a dispirited three month slog.

Into ‘spirituality’. Very unsure what’s up with that. Sometimes everything seems amazing in a spiritual way. (I’m an atheist.)

Probably yellow flags more than red flags. Still, there be dragons.

And then about 10,000 more words trying to paper over her obvious personality disorders into some sort of manic pixie dream girl persona... except she's almost 40 and that's only cute in 20 somethings who can ostensibly grow out of it.

I could see that working for companionship, but not necessarily for raising children. Both because it dramatically increases the chances of the children ending up with mental illnesses, and also because at least one partner should be reasonably emotionally stable so the kids still get taken care of, all the time.

She’s the town bike

This is bad, but it’s more of a negotiable than a non-negotiable. I’d much rather be with someone with a high body count than say, raise another man’s child.

She’s mentally ill

These aren’t the mental illnesses you need to be worried about. I don’t see bipolar, BPD, or schizophrenia anywhere.

manic pixie dream girl persona

Idk seems like she might be fun.

RE the bipolar, numerous of her statements could be viewed as describing manic and depressive episodes. Specifically

Tend to either do things in a twenty hour blaze of action or a dispirited three month slog.

High variance. Very happy sometimes. Very agentic sometimes. Very dysfunctional and inert sometimes. Very good at some things. Very bad at some things.

That captivating combination of arrogance and crippling self-doubt

“If you can’t handle me at my worst, then you don’t deserve me at my best”-vibes.

Very agentic sometimes

Not sure if this is a not like other girls nod toward the hypoagency of women, or if she thinks being agentic is something men would also feel is necessary to point out about themselves.

Unkind.

Reality is unkind. I won't be wrong.

Ever heard of decorum? 'I won't be wrong' is the lamest possible defence to rudeness, we lie all the time for the sake of common courtesy and that's just as it should be.

The entire rest of the internet is top down enforced "polite lies". This place was supposed to be different. Alas. It's become "rationalism, unless it hurts another self described rationalist feelings."

I dunno, the Internet at large used to be "mean as hell, with optional grounding to Truth." Still kinda is, in a way.

The entire rest of the internet is top down enforced "polite lies". This place was supposed to be different. Alas. It's become "rationalism, unless it hurts another self described rationalist feelings."

Stop prevaricating. You didn't get modded because the woman who triggered your Dave Sim outburst this time happens to be a rationalist, or because it might (hypothetically, in the unlikely event that she reads this thread) hurt her feelings.

I second @HaroldWilson. Your statements about how this woman is a "town bike", a "whore", and so on are not some virtuous demonstrations of honesty and reason, they are angry emotional outbursts. If they were not, you would have chosen more neutral language.

Your comment about how "There is no polite way to point out to an old barren whore..." is deflection. You are obviously not writing all this here on The Motte in order to be helpful to this woman who, as far as you know, will never read anything that you write.

There a difference between not shying away from important truths and pointless, mean-spirited personal rudeness.

Calling someone an 'old barren whore' is just obnoxious shit-slinging that serves no purpose that could not be otherwise easily achieved with much less inflammatory and loaded language.

No, this place was always "you can talk about any idea, as long as you're civil". The "hurt feelings" things was only a criticism of people who felt hurt by ideas, not by actual insults.

There is no polite way to point out to an old barren whore that the kind of guy she wants to have geriatric pregnancies with isn't interested in an old barren whore or the risks of geriatric pregnancies. He has better options. Those things are just true. There is no conceivable way you can explain this to a woman who is in that situation, and not have them take offense. You're fighting an uphill battle against decades of lies they've been told about how they can have it all. They wouldn't have been in that situation otherwise.

Unless you want to just pretend whores aren't a real thing, or barrenness isn't a real thing, or male preferences aren't a real thing, and join that chorus of liars that got her into that situation in the first place. As though lies have no consequences.

There is no polite way to point out to an old barren whore that the kind of guy she wants to have geriatric pregnancies with isn't interested in an old barren whore or the risks of geriatric pregnancies. He has better options.

"A woman who is so advanced in age, and had so many sexual partners, will have a lot of issues attracting the kind of mate she wants because having had so many sexual partners tends to be unattractive to most men, and because a pregnancy at such a late age comes with a lot of risks. The hypothetical man simply has too many better options"

Amateur.

More comments

No reason to insult her. Whole thing’s rat gossip anyway, our People Magazine. And while we’re playing the personal trivia game, you’re not exactly kindly disposed towards women, are you Coil? I doubt her male counterpart would encounter so much hostility from you. She didn’t do anything, she’s even adjacent to our tribe. If she doesn’t get kindness, who does? When they smashed your last hobby, did you swear to deny all womankind kindness?

This is silly. Men are going to have a different reaction to female dating strategies compared to males because men have spent a lot of time thinking about the former and much less about the latter (unless you are gay).

It's not about your opinion on dating strategies, or mine. A woman expressing the same level of hostility would get the same response from me. It wouldn't be strictly necessary, because the same guys would be smashing the report button and screaming incoherently at the witch.

Let's check! @WhiningCoil do you have similar feelings regarding Jacob Falkovitch

It's not good. But I also don't see the same "I HAVE A PERSONALITY DISORDER" red flags. Three short, afraid to offend, needy paragraphs. Clicking through to the form... yikes. The photo at the time couldn't be more "M'lady" and I wouldn't want to admit I wrote those questions. I'd blame some matchmaker to try to distance myself from any medical liability for cringe induced sterility.

or Chris Olah?

Well lets see here

We're sorry. You can't access this item because it is in violation of our Terms of Service.

Based and red pilled.