site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

"Cringe" is a super useful word, IMO. So is "creep". These words occupy the space that "gay" and "lame" used to occupy before they were cancelled.

The best way to defeat a label, of course, is to own it. You want to call me a Yankee Doodle Dandy? That's cool. I'm the gayest, lamest, Yankee Doodle Dandy you ever saw.

Still, in 2023, no one wants to be cringe or creepy. These words still have power.

You know what was cringe? Alt-right people dressing up in Hawaiian shirts and carrying Tiki torches. You know what's not cringe? Bill Ackman waging a crusade against Harvard wokists.

Wait a second, you say. Who gets to decide what is cringe, and what isn't?

Answer: The Elite. The elite gets to decide who is lame and gay cringe and creepy and who is not. Control of the narrative is what defines the elite.

Do you see where I'm going with this? Richard Hanania does. In one of his less annoying pieces he makes a great point about the possibility of a Jewish realignment.

When you correct for IQ, when you correct for tribalism, Jews are something like 30-50% of the elite population in the US. Look at university presidents, look at cabinet members, look at Nobel Prize winners. You're bound to notice something.

Jews are under attack in the Western World right now. We are seeing the largest outbreak of anti-semitism since WWII. And it's the far left that is responsible. If, and it's a big if, this results in American Jews abandoning the left, it could end with the biggest political realignment since the 1970s. Already we see the the strands of a nascent movement among the cognescenti. Is an intellectual, philo-Semitic conservative movement possible? I think, surprisingly, the answer is yes.

Populists are cringe and creepy. Elite realignments are cool and edgy. The fashion barber pole has made another rotation and the mustaches are slightly less ironic.

In the modern West, the elite only partly define what is cool. And it's not the political elites who do it, it's media elites - people like music journalists, influencers, and marketing professionals some of whom are elite in their fields, but who are not elites in the traditional sense of "super-rich people who have a lot of direct political power".

But cool also often emerges from organic movements. For example, rock in the 1950s, hip-hop in the 1980s, and grunge in the 1990s were organic movements that got accelerated significantly by music journalism and marketing, but were not created or made cool by those things. Journalism and marketing played a role in making those things popular, but journalism and marketing only latched on to them after they had already become popular at least in some subculture.

But cool also often emerges from organic movements. For example, rock in the 1950s, hip-hop in the 1980s, and grunge in the 1990s were organic movements that got accelerated significantly by music journalism and marketing, but were not created or made cool by those things.

Watching the past couple years unfold has made me very skeptical about the organic nature of anything that makes it to the mainstream. Them not creating it is irrelevant, and in my opinion they absolutely did make it cool. The fact that it was popular in some nieche begore that doesn't change the fact that they made it cool. Christian Rock was popular too (kind of massive, in fact) but it was cringe, while Ggrunge was cool. I see no reeasosn to think it couldn't be the other way around, if this is what the elites wanted.

I think post internet, the chances of organic discovery and development more or less died. The gatekeepers can simply downgrade a music type or movie or TV show in streaming services and never ever talk about it in journalistic articles, and suppress social media posts to quash new trends before they even start. In previous eras, you could pass around physical media like mix tapes and introduce your friends to a cool band. You could tape a show and hand it around.

I don't see how these alternative methods of distribution give you an edge over uploading something to Odysee, or Rumble. At the end if the day for something to go from the underground to the mainstream, it had to get the green light from some suit. This is why there were, and still are, things stuck in the underground for all intents and purposes, despite being popular.

I think the bigger factor here is the recent concentration of media ownership, there used to be more competition in the past.

Yeah, that makes sense to me.