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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I strongly disagree with this extremely overbroad assertion.
In the first place, /r/4chan is not a substitute for 4chan. 4chan is a discussion platform that happens to be humorous on occasion, while /r/4chan is focused exclusively on finding humor (not necessarily "the better posts") on 4chan. If you want to read a non-humorous discussion of electric cars or urban planning or Big Yud, you won't find it on /r/4chan—you've got to go to 4chan itself.
In the second place, it is not reasonable to say that pornography "is the vast majority of 4chan". Even assuming for the sake of argument that the statement is technically true—i. e., that, of all posts made on 4chan, "the vast majority" are pornographic (and I do not necessarily accept that premise)—it is not actually possible for a user to browse the entire category of "all posts made on 4chan". In practice, it is extremely easy for a person who uses the catalog view to ignore (1) the obviously-pornographic boards and (2) the few obviously-pornographic threads that are tolerated by the jannies on the non-pornographic boards, and to focus only on threads that actually contain discussion.
More options
Context Copy link