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.

Reactionaries like this man, by his own words, are people who lost their faith in God and worshiped the devil. The analogy is quite the apt one: they did NOT stop believing in the creed of their peers and shrugged along, they worked and work along to actively support the opposite of whatever is the norm among their own people.

This isn't unique to uniquely online rightists, of course. The beating heart of radical SocJus advocates is the body of people who couldn't be happier to get the hell away from red tribe America; they do everything the opposite way they were raised because they hate the communities they were born into. These people, too, prove the old adage that reversed stupidity isn't intelligence, insofar a way of life that works for so many people is 'stupid'.

The difference, of course, is that people who want to get the hell out of the red tribe can and do go blue. It suits them fine, they adapt well, it isn't really an issue, it's a worn-out trope at this point. People like the blogger in the OP have nowhere to go: very few of them indeed live relatively normal red tribers' lives, instead preferring to be nostalgic over a past that never was or continuing to live in a culture they actively despise.

tl;dr: learn to weld lmao