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 -
John Carter: The Bud Light Military
(Or, to use the better title from the comments: "Achilles Shrugged")
I'm not familiar with the author, who seems to be yet another online right substackker. He asserts that America's military capabilities are being stretched increasingly thin (Ukraine, possibly Israel, potentially Taiwan) while the armed forces are missing their recruiting targets. This is the background to his main claim: that the core demographics of America's fighting force ("the Scots-Irish of the Appalachian regions, the good ol’ boys of the South, and the farm boys of the Midwest. Hillbillies and rednecks") have become so sick of the sneering racist abuse that they aren't signing up to fight any more, and while the US Army has tried to go back to a more "traditional" style of ad where white men parachute out of a helicopter, it's failed to bring back the volunteers. Carter compares a previous ad for the US Army ("Emma", the girl with two moms who operates Patriot missile defense systems, roundly mocked at the time by comparisons to a Russian recruiting ad) to the new ad that dropped on 11/6, "Jump" (Twitter, YouTube). Carter parallels it with the attempt at brand rehabilitation like the one Bud Light tried after the Dylan Mulvaney boycott, and if the comment sections of Twitter, YouTube, and his article are anything to go by, it's not going to work either.
All I ask is that these ads be more or less representative of reality, and the reality is that there are plenty of black men in the military; more than enough for an ad to include one without it being political. Messaging that the military is for women is on balance harmful imo, while messaging that the military is for men of all races is much better than the alternative, especially if done in a way that doesn't alienate white men.
Why should they be representative of reality?
Like, literally asking, they are not a documentary, nor even an intricately crafted worldbuilding exercise. They're just marketing tools, trying to accomplish a goal.
Obviously one of their goals is increasing recruitment among women, which I'm guessing makes sense in a modern army that's as much about piloting drones and filing paperwork as it is about carrying a hundred pound pack 40 miles through the desert or w/e.
Maybe it was a bad strategy to try to recruit women with that type of ad (though I wouldn't conclude that based solely on this blog's argument), but I don't see why it's bad for an advertisement to not be reflective of reality?
Most ads are not.
A second-hand anecdote, for what it's worth:
Shortly after I graduated high school, but while both my younger brothers were still attending the same institution (a little over 20 years ago now), our mother began volunteering in our school's (small, poorly-maintained) library. And after Middle Brother graduated, Mom undertook to fix up and update the library's rather terrible collection of college prep/research/application materials, having then helped two kids through the process.
As a result of this, she also ended up with students asking for help searching the materials for schools of particular interest. And in one memorable incident, one girl (for context, an upper class white girl), after looking through the materials from various schools with an eye to their ethnic make-up, asked my mother for help in finding a school that wasn't "too white," since the best she could find was "only" a quarter black. How, my Mom asked, was that "too white"? Well, you see, this high school senior didn't want to attend a university that was "boring" and "racist," and so wanted one whose school body reflected the American population — you know, about one third black.
So my mom attempted, with the help of handy reference books containing government-sourced figures, to inform this young women as to the country's actual demographics. She didn't want to hear it, insisting that those figures had to be wrong, because she could clearly see for herself that America has a lot more black people than that any time she watches TV.
(So my mom just dug out the brochure they had for a historically black college, handed it off, and moved on.)
Yes, one teenager a couple decades ago does not alone a pattern make, but media representation does indeed influence people's views, for better or worse.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link