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 want to talk about game mods.
I cut my teeth on Doom WADs back in the day. WADs that committed flagrant copyright infringment like Alien or Star Wars TC WADs. WADs that replaced all the pinkies with Barney the purple dinosaur so you could shoot him with your shotgun. I played wacky maps like border1 for Team Fortress. And lets not forget the nude hack for Drakan: Order of the Flame. Or the plethora of offensive or innapropriate character models modded into every Quake.
Back then, I don't remember there being any sort of centralized modding sites. The Doom wads I actually found at local computer shows, probably sold "illegally" on a handful of floppies. Many of the maps or models would just download automatically when you joined a private server in Quake 1/2/3. At least I think they did? Maybe not Quake 1. And it's utterly inconceivable to me that id Software would have issued any sort of statement about the offensive material being made for their game, counter cultural as they were. I sincerely doubt they would have put any thought to it what so ever. It was simply somebody else's business.
Perusing Based Mods, a collection of mods generally banned from everywhere else, paints a grim picture of the political landscape of modding. I hate that I even have to use the phrase "political landscape of modding". Doing whatever the fuck you want with something you own should not be a political act. Alas, here we are.
Many of the mods follow a theme. Removing LGBT flags or pronoun selection from games. A few go further and remove homosexuality as content from games. Some remove anachronistic or nonsensicle diversity from games. Some just make all the people white because fuck it why not? A few are more accurate localizations versus whatever Americanized nonsense activist put out stateside. Like restoring the submissive personality to characters which localizers decided had to be more girl bossy.
The latest one I've seen which hasn't been banned everywhere, but which none the less appears to be walking a thin line, is the Better Aesthetics mod for Baldur's Gate 3. I'll let it speak for itself.
I actually found this thread discussing the changes it made, and the lore reasons for them, interesting. In fact, it turned Baldur's Gate 3 into the Sword Coast I more or less recognize from Baldur's Gate 1 and 2! None the less, at an object level it makes Baldur's Gate 3 less "diverse", and thus it's problematic. I can't say for certain, but I find it suspicious there is zero mention of it on the Baldur's Gate 3 subreddit. The single mention of it on the Steam forums is locked. Zero mention on the GOG forum for the game. I can't say for certain the existence of this mod is being broadly censored from the usual captured spaces. But I can't rule it out either.
It's just all so tiring. I go back and play old games, and I'm reminded just how different and natural they are. They don't have weird diversity polemics oozing out of every nook and cranny. Or the crypto-racism of having every evil or stupid character look like me, and every cool, heroic and most importantly moral character look like a Gen Z Nonbinary Zirboss. You aren't constantly confronted with the equivilent of a pride parade every time you meet a new cast of characters. And all the gaslighting about how it's not a big deal, why are we so annoyed by it immediately becomes a huge fucking shut down the internet deal whenever someone takes it back out.
My wife and I have a lot of discussions about what we'll expose our daughter to, and we've more or less decided the cut off is the 90's just to be safe. There were still normal shows, books or games that generally depicted normal cis hetero white families like ours positively. To subject her to modern media feels like child abuse. To the 90's it is. Everything after that is just too damned gay for children.
It sounds like you were the cultural default for a long time, and enjoyed that.
Now people younger than you and different from you are the cultural default, and you're enjoying that less.
I know how you feel, it happened to me too.
You enjoying one thing less than another makes it feel like the other thing is worse. But be reassured, the people it is catering to like it just as much as you liked the things that were catering to you. Things aren't getting worse, they're just moving on.
Of course, you can believe that 'No, it's the children who are wrong' for as long as you want, it's a valid ego defense mechanism. Don't expect your daughter to thank you for trying to shield her from the culture that she is actually living in, though, any more than we thanked our parents for trying to stop us from playing Doom or listening to rap or w/e.
This comment makes an excellent point and the poor quality of replies and downvotes are telling of that.
It absolutely does not make an excellent point. Check history: if it's not darwin2500 it's his identical twin. The account alternates between manipulative negging and dogmatic consensus enforcement.
Which is irrelevant to the fact that they made an excellent point here that wasn't properly addressed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Where do you see the poor quality replies? WhiningCoil's is a bit short but he makes his point with supporting examples, The-WideningGyre is perhaps a bit low effort, but your's seems to be at about the same level.
More options
Context Copy link
"Old man yelling at clouds amirite? Afraid of change much?" is neither interesting or novel. Everybody here has heard it, nobody is ever persuaded by it. As somebody else mentioned in response, it's highly likely that tune would change if the OP (or anybody who says something so insipid) felt their ox was getting gored.
Your follow-up post is better than goodguy's.
Persuaded of what? I don't understand this disposition towards the topic.
People complain about the state of media and entertainment. It is pointed out to them that everything they have tacitly or fully supported for the last decades is the cause of their woes. They proceed to stick their head in the sand so their worldview can remain safe and sound whilst everything they held dear gets whisked away in a BIPOC LGBTQI+ friendly reiteration. Where every element of the creative process sees what you cared about as being a symptom of a problem that needs solving.
You can not have what once was because of what now is. The culture you like is dying a demographic death. You will never get it back. The final nail in its coffin being the culture makers themselves. Instead of writing a 'good' story, they write inserts that compliment modern victimary discourse. They do this because that is the dominant culture. It's the dominant culture because of the culture that came before it.
Once you start tracing the thread of the modern moral fabric back to its source you don't find what you are looking for, you find everything that the modern moral fabric has conditioned you to reject. Which is what a lot of people do, which makes their complaints sound extremely hollow.
Your first paragraph is the interesting bit. That many people who are negative on these newly-dominant strains of our culture may have inadvertently paved its way previously - and enjoyed the ride up until they didn't - is a thought I have reflected on a fair bit recently. I myself am torn between renouncing some of my previous sensibilities or arguing for their selective defense in contrast to 'wokeness'.
That's a neat thread to pull on, and also nowhere in goodguy's post, and so I am not sure what compels you to defend it against downvotes. It's like you're reading a superior argument they did not actually make, and then using that as an opportunity to dunk on some ignorant detractors for reasons I don't fully understand.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link