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’ve sometimes heard that the left wing takeover of corporate America is a hollow one - they don’t REALLY cars about minorities, just look at umm their Middle East twitter accounts! They care about $$$ and aren’t true believers
I found an interesting counter point recently.
https://upstreamreviews.substack.com/p/high-republic-low-sales
This is what a corporation that has no idea what their audience is about, but does in fact know clearly what it’s ideology is about.
I’ll summarize the link but you really should read it for yourself, it’s astounding how bad Disney gets the Star Wars franchise: for instance, the books need to be (in addition to all the old touchstones of diversity etc) ANTI WAR. And then there’s the characters, who are somehow all androgynous.
The sales figures reflect an enormous lack of interest of enthusiasm. But it doesn’t matter for Disney - they get to spread the Good Word of gender ideology and anti fascism/anti traditionalism.
Saying anything along the lines of "The corporation wants/cares/etc about $foo" is always going to run into trouble. Individual people continuously fail to have coherent desires. Companies (at least, companies with 10+ people) are always going to be worse.
Here's what seems like a pretty sensible framing to me:
I'd be surprised if Bob Iger (or Mark Zuckerberg, or Sundar Pichai, etc.) were "true believers" in identity politics -- if nothing else, consider what Wikipedia has to say:
(For full disclosure, Wikipedia also mentions
though I don't think that's a good signal of whether he's woke).
At the same time this doesn't say very much about what their companies will or won't do. I'm sure there are woke decisions that get made to maximize revenue. Similarly there are woke decisions that get made because some random person in middle or upper management is a true believer and nobody wants to be "that guy" who says "no, we're not going to make the next main character a woman/black/etc.".
I still don't think it's meaningful to say Disney "really cares", since I'm still skeptical that the CEO and/or most of the employees care. At the same time I'm sure some percentage of employees are genuinely woke, including some of the leadership.
Personally I think that SBF summed it up the best if you want to hear what the people actually promulgating and implementing ESG think about it:
...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link