site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I haven't even watched the show myself, it's just been floating around on social media for years about "people so far removed from the actuality of the situation they may as well be living on another planet".

It has also been a favourite gambit of media in the UK to ask politicians who try to lean too hard on the "man of the people" bit questions such as "so how much does a litre of milk cost?" and watch them squirm as they have no idea, never having gone grocery shopping themselves or if they have, never having to care about the cost of whatever they want to grab off the shelves.

Do most people who buy groceries every week know the current price, offhand, of every single one of the 30+ items they buy?

Of the staples like milk and bread? yeah.

Maybe not the exact price, but they do have a general idea of the staple groceries and will notice if the price of milk goes up by more than a few cents (and they can't switch to the cheaper version because that's gone up too).

Not to the cent, but they'd probably have a few brackets that they break items into and be able to say "a buck each, something like that" or "about $5", especially for frequently-recurring purchases like milk. Particularly people for whom the price of groceries is a meaningful fraction of their budget.