site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It's kind of true. "Super good at rhetoric" is relative. Normies get BTFO by guys called Dirlewanger_Respecter on twitter all the time. When you adopt extremist and fringe political positions you have to develop at least some rudimentary rhetorical skills to defend them, which may not be all that much, but are still leagues beyond those of your average person who rarely thinks even that much about their politics.

I think another contributing factor might be that everyone else is using weighted clothing, so to speak. Dirlewanger_Respecter doesn't have to give a shit that his argument could be construed as racist or sexist or transphobic, and at the same time he doesn't have to dance around all the various inconvenient truths that lie in wait for non-shitlords. Adolf_Kekler_42069 can make the correct argument that having massive riots and burning things down isn't actually a method of protest that contributes to achieving political goals, but if you're on the left saying something like that is enough to get you fired, even if you're so non-racist you actually worked on Obama's campaign. A significant portion of the "good, useful arguments" space is just completely verboten thanks to social justice culture/purity policing.

The people in question are internet political and cultural commentators. Not normies. They're not those annoying prank channels, these are the people discussing ideology, philosophy, politics, etc. They talk a lot about ideas and theories, they only show their own incompetence when they demonstrate an inability to do rhetoric effectively.