Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
So I was talking with a leftist friend recently about race-swapping in movies, as well as the general topic of racism, and we clashed on a bunch of things. I'm not sure how well I did, and I'm worried I capitulated too much - I usually take more moderate stances when speaking with leftists IRL than I do online, since I'm usually trying to persuade and shift them towards a point of view which is more critical to wokeness and the usual mainstream narrative.
If you go "Your entire worldview and perception is wrong, here's the evidence" from the outset all you're going to have is an opponent that won't listen to you. It's a fine line you have to tread and I'm still finding my feet as to how to navigate real-time debate. He did capitulate to quite a good portion of my points too (or at least seemed to, from my perspective), but again it's hard to know how hard to push your ideas. There's also the fact that they've got a lot of "common wisdom" on their side which is a big boon in conversations because they can simply make statements and disproving big claims in real-time communication can't be effectively done, as opposed to online where you can take the time to organise things and fully make your case against certain common preconceptions.
What are your methods of debating with people in the real world, and how do you know how hard to press your point?
It's difficult for me to think of a lower status take than consternation about, say, the casting decisions in the Little Mermaid remake. There's a few layers to that -- the content is for children, and these live action remakes are kind of shameful to have any investment in even before getting to the politics that is easily read as a kind of adolescent, race-fragile myopia.
With low-status, I mean something a little more subtle than just oppositional to the general social mores that might define my own social circle (or how I might ascribe that to a kind of cosmopolitan hegemony writ large). There are plenty of subcultures which define themselves oppositional to the dominant culture without degrading themselves in the process. There are orthogonal axes here that signal a kind of noble worthwhileness outside simple questions of alignment, and these takes seem to me to naturally occupy whatever the distal pole of magnanimity and taste is.
The ensuing conversations can accordingly be less of a debate and more of a slightly embarrassing condescension as if one is explaining social niceties to a child -- not a particularly productive frame for bringing others to one's worldview. What can be read as conciliation or reluctance to gore sacred cows, from one side, may simply be efforts to find tactful ways to bring an embarrassing conversation back to a kind of civility.
Lower status by far is consternation about people's consternation; "why do you care so much?" is, as always, a malicious trick of a phrase, designed to shame people into not noticing or being silent.
It is appropriate to care about the Little Mermaid and oppose it for the same reason the shepherds of culture support it and promote it: control over the building blocks of culture is significant.
Honestly thinking you can opt out of status games, or that obstinate refusal to 'play' doesn't impact how you and your arguments are perceived, is just cope. There's an autistic tendency to conflate a social illiteracy with the kind of practiced sprezzatura that seems effortless on the surface level, or writing off deviations from the norm (a real and valuable thing -- see the 'basic' sneer) as essentially the same.
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