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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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and hallucinate, when imagining the event, things that did not actually happen

Not to call anyone out, but this community in particular had egregious problems with this when discussing the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Some people would start describing the situation and then add in a larger fictional context that would justify shooting a burglar.

I wasn't around when Arbery was a live issue, but the hallucination seemed to be limited to the non-traditional-conservative Trump-supporting circles of mine.

The hard core rightwingers pegged them as going down for murder 1 first day, so it is a bit odd that this place went for the weirdo side of it.

Frankly no one knows the full history re Arbery. I remain convinced Arbery was a criminal and the McMichals acted like idiots.

"Jogger" briefly became a meme! Just saying it feels cringe, but "both sides" love to claim that obviously the most recent CW incident fits neatly into my political claims and if you even doubted otherwise for a moment you're dumb / don't get it / are a useful idiot. But there's an awful lot of contingency and idiosyncratic attributes of individuals and situations that go into something like a homicide, that don't necessarily have anything to do with (black) or (racism). (And conversely, this means indexing too much on individual media incidents is a mistake, even if the last three big rape accusations were [true/false] it's still possible about half are [false/true]).

Not to call anyone out, but this community in particular had egregious problems with this when discussing the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.

This community has egregious problems with it in any fraught story, because it's a very human thing to do. It's just the game of telephone: people hear something and misinterpret it, don't realize they have, and continue to argue based on the misconception.

Although I agree with your point, this community has a specific mission not to do that. So "everyone else does it too" isn't an excuse.

Sure, but it takes the sting out of

this community in particular had egregious problems with this

When in fact it's a general problem and not particular to this community.