site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Regular user, I just like to make new accounts once I start to get too attached to the previous one and want a clean psychic slate.

I'm very curious who and what exactly you think this psyop is. Tell me the whole story, I especially want to see the Dasepost in response.


Edit since banned: Hlykna (and to a lesser extent Amadan): you've perfectly misinterpreted both this (not posted to be racially inflamatory, more Moloch and classic general culture war; I made a mistake with a thin single layer of sarcasm I thought would be obvious enough to everyone here, I was clearly mistaken and I apologize) and that other comment (which is quite literally the exact opposite of "whining about da joos").

We have a rule against sarcasm. One advantage of adhering to the rule is that it imposes an intellectually interesting exercise.

Write a sarcastic comment. Remember the rule. Now what?

You can start over and write the comment directly. The story goes: err, actually I'm not touching that story, I'm all sarcasmed out

Giving up on the particulars, sarcasm generally works as a cognitive tax. Enough effort gets wasted on the inversion, writing as well as reading, that little is left over to notice dangling threads. One creates/latches-on-to the opposite meaning to become one of the in crowd that makes/gets the sarcasm, and one misses the telling details that are worth exploring.

I can't be bothered to get into another scuffle. But I second @Amadan in that it was a needlessly confusing way to frame the event. For a moment I actually thought that American progressives have found their Holy Grail, the man-bites-dog story with some mentally ill white woman stealing a damn bike from a black youth; this was substantially weird to make the topic a bit interesting. But reality is often disappointing.

You're only dirty to the degree you dirty yourself. What you're telling me here is that on some level you recognize that your participation is a net negative, and that is why you habitually change your username.

As for the psyop, isn't it obvious? Like @yunyun333 the post seems explicitly designed to undermine race relations, and given the smugness that permeates your post and that the only other comment you've ever made on the motte was whining about "da joos" I think it's reasonable to assume that this is not a coincidence, it's enemy action.

the post seems explicitly designed to undermine race relations

More and more, it seems reality is explicitly designed to do that.

In as much as race-baiting people are part of reality, yes.

Race-baiting people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have been around for decades. WorldStarHipHop has done more for race realism then either of those two hucksters. So who is race-baiting here? The thugs trying to steal the nurse's bike under threat of getting cancelled/fired/beaten? The grifters posting the video claiming "white tears get innocent Scholars killed"?

Just in terms of raw numbers, which category of people do you think is larger?:

a) black people watching this thinking for the first time, "yet another Karen trying to kill black bodies"

or

b) non-black people watching this thinking for the first time, "why do we have to live with these animals?"

I don't think this video converted very many new people to the idea that white women overreacting gets black people killed. That's basically 99% of black people already and is the progressive dogma. I think vastly more people were converted to, or became more sympathetic to, the idea that black people are out of control in the West.

Given that this was posted by blacks, it looks like a massive self-own. The people most harming race relations are these people posting gleeful videos of their own misbehavior. How many of these kind of videos will people see before they decide having blacks around is a terrible idea?:

https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1660148662385922049

That's from the same account that shows him entering random people's homes and walking out of the library with books he didn't check out. He's posting that for social status. If this is "race-baiting" it's of the "I'm black and untouchable" kind.

Look at the replies. What percentage are black people saying, "knock this shit off you cretin!"?

So who is race-baiting here? The thugs trying to steal the nurse's bike under threat of getting cancelled/fired/beaten? The grifters posting the video claiming "white tears get innocent Scholars killed"?

Yes, both of those.

Just in terms of raw numbers, which category of people do you think is larger?:

a) black people watching this thinking for the first time, "yet another Karen trying to kill black bodies"

or

b) non-black people watching this thinking for the first time, "why do we have to live with these animals?"

Neither. The largest group by far is

c) non-black people "thinking" how horrible this woman is for picking on poor innocent black people, and what a terrible racist she is and how we have to "do better".

I dunno, man. This one had such a short viral-to-debunked cycle that I'm not sure how many left-leaning (but not all-in progressive) normies even saw it. That's who I think makes up the bulk of your category c). I don't think we can include non-black generic lefties because they're going to follow the progressive hive mind regardless of the specifics. Some people still buy the "fine people on both sides" story and "hands up don't shoot" but that isn't the group I'm talking about here.

However, I would be very interested in a serious breakdown of who actually saw this video and where they saw it. All of the twitter (spit) threads I saw were overwhelmingly in blind support of the blacks or exasperated support of the pregnant woman. National Review had news about it and the comments there were not credulous of the "teens." Do you know whether this got posted anywhere normies would see it before the (mostly?) full story came out?

Do you know whether this got posted anywhere normies would see it before the (mostly?) full story came out?

At least locally (I'm in the NYC area) it made the radio news.

I need to reassess the net contribution I bring to hair salons, as I never go to the same one twice in a row.

Yes you do, or rather you need to find a hair salon and stick with it

What you're telling me here is that on some level you recognize that your participation is a net negative, and that is why you habitually change your username.

And only a criminal has any reason to oppose a police state.