It’s been pointed out recently that the topics discussed in the Culture War thread have gotten a bit repetitive. While I do think the Motte has a good spread on intellectual discussion, I’m always pushing for a wider range (dare I say diversity?) of viewpoints and topics in the CW thread.
I was a lurker for years, and I know that the barrier between having a thought and writing a top level comment in the CW thread can loom large indeed. Luckily I’m fresh out of inspiration, and would love to hear thoughts from folks about effortposts they want to write but haven’t gotten around to.
This of course applies to regulars who post frequently as well - share any and all topics you wish were discussed in the CW thread!
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
If something is bothering me enough I'm usually able to get out a post about it. The writing process can be therapeutic.
There are some things that don't bother me quite enough to get a post out, but they have been kicking around in my head.
When to NOT be inclusive (3 votes). I have a small group of neighborhood guys/dads that I like hanging out with. There is a larger group of neighborhood women/moms that also hangout. I was recently chastised for being exclusive by one of the neighborhood moms, cuz I wasn't inviting the whole group of dads to events. This bothered me a lot more than it should have, and I had some thoughts on why. But talking it out with people in person was generally enough to calm me down. I think it has wider implications, and I might have spun it out to be about people having tribes/families where they belong.
Road name changes. I live on a street that had its name changed. I watched the whole process. I thought it might have been of some interest for people to see a real life culture war play out. Alas, I was too bored and annoyed with the whole thing to even bother following it in real life, much less follow it online. I also would have semi-doxed myself.
Doxing myself (1 vote). Speaking of doxing, since we have moved to this website, and since I have a job where I feel pretty safe from unjustified online harassment. I have considered going public with my identity here. I use a real image of myself in my profile. The danger of someone going after my job is close to zero, but I still have a family and personal security. So I've mostly decided against doing this. About 8 years ago I started writing online as if I'd have to defend anything I wrote to family/friends/co-workers. I live online as if I am about to be doxxed. Its possible I could write a post about this without doxxing myself, but I find I'd be tempted to do it anyways just to make the post slightly more interesting.
A divided family (2 votes). My mother votes democrat, my father votes republican. They have long disagreed on politics. It was scary to see how close the Trump presidency got to actually causing my parents to get a divorce. A divorce over politics! They've mostly gotten over that, and they are back to pre-trump levels of political disagreement. I considered a post where I'd go over their history and political beliefs. And then how Trump has been the perfect scissor subject for them.
Beliefs Post. I thought about nominating myself to do one of the posts where you describe all your beliefs. I realized I shouldn't because it looked like a lot of work, and of the 20ish previous posts I only read maybe 2 or 3 of them. I do love navel gazing though.
I work at a libertarianish non-profit. Multiple other people in the organization have gone through online harassment campaigns. One of the people in the organization has had multiple New York Times writers go after him. Quite a few people have gotten death threats, and having an online stalker that hates your guts is pretty normal to them. They have also been the target of federal government tax status investigations, legally harassed by local government entities, and have had national bureaucratic institutions ask media outlets to go after them. Many of these "cancellation" attempts have just resulted in more donations to the organization.
Functionally I'd be pretty hard to replace. I'm the only one with my job title and skill set at this place. It wouldn't be impossible to replace me, just difficult, and probably expensive.
One of the higher ups that works there and would likely have input on my firing is one of my best friends.
I can't say anything and get away with it. There are probably still fireable things I could say or do. But mostly anything in the range of what I want to say is speak-able.
I think even being self employed wouldn't offer this level of job security (you can go after customers for self employed people).
And as I mentioned above I generally don't say anything online that I'm not willing to publicly defend with my name behind it. I'd write this same stuff on facebook with my full real name attached. I don't do that because facebook discussions seemed to be mostly a circle jerk or a cess pit of terrible arguments.
At worst, some of my pseudonymous writings would be awkward to attach to my name. I've talked about things you normally don't share in polite company, or on your facebook timeline. Drug use, dating life, family drama, etc. But I think the fact that I attempted to not publicly air these things in my own social circle would absolve me of most of those issues. Close associates would read it like they read a leaked private journal.
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