site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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.

33
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Oh wow, the fact that Byuu/Near might actually just have committed "virtual" suicide of his handle makes me quite happy. That seemed like a really unnecessary, sad and weird way to die for someone who is so obviously talented and driven.

But it also shows to me how easy it is to get fooled by these kind of "internet truths" where nobody checks anything and everything is proven by citations of secondary sources of flimsy evidence. It's definitely something I should be a bit more wary about in the future.

Regarding KiwiFarms: I don't think I have any love for the site and even less for its users. The site and its users might sometimes do marginally positive things by accident, but on average they seem unnecessarily cruel and antagonistic towards ... mostly random autistic internet strangers.

So if the site dies, I will not shed a tear.

But of course, it's always the jerk who had it coming (other example is the daily stormer) who gets censored first. We have come a far way from the old internet where "censorship is not the answer" (this was a left-coded position not too long ago). However, the fact that you can't have a mildly hated site on the internet anymore without being at least tolerated by one big tech company is certainly discomforting.