site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 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.

Ok, maybe my disclaimer had the opposite effect from what I intended. Sorry for not being more clear.

In general I am opposed to the naive libertarian line of "just build your own X". I know very well that you can't build your own university system, you can't build your own DNS, you can't build your own facebook. That's why I'm not a libertarian.

But! There comes a point where you have to make an assessment of the situation, and you either decide you're going to do something about it, or you need to just live with the consequences. It should be assumed at this point that any cultural space that is in any sense "mainstream" or "corporate" is leftist by default. It's omnipresent; so don't be surprised when they come for you and your favorite thing. That's the default assumption.

So you have two choices: you can either do something to influence culture, or you can accept the culture that other people have made for you. Yes, you can't just set up your own parallel culture overnight, but you can't say that you're just condemned to inaction either. I mean, look at Stonetoss. He's creating a cultural product that is to the right of even what the majority of mottizens would want, with all the attendant controversy, but he's still out there doing his thing. Why can't you do what Stonetoss is doing? If culture is that important to you, why aren't you making something?

I know exactly what it's like to have something you love colonized and ruined by wokeists. I'm not just glibly dismissing the issue. It's just that I can only see this narrative play out so many times, the narrative of "I can't believe those leftists came for X classic wonderful thing AGAIN!" before I ask, ok yes we know that this is their M.O., so what are YOU doing about it?

I actually do make things: I'm a writer, but the content I make is perhaps too spicy for here, being 4chan-adjacent. :P