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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 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.

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Tyson seems like a bad example.

I mean, Tyson was groomed to be a professional fighter from a young age. Who then went on to be exploited by a lot of different people. Then you have to start talking about things like CTE... To me, it makes sense that the standards are a little different for someone like Allen or even Cosby.

Plus, Tyson admits wrong doing and did the time for it... Boxers also have a short career window, Tyson doing time hurt him a lot more than someone like Cosby. Say what you will but Tyson actually paid a price for what he did.

Maybe we exist in different bubbles but most leftoids I know don't like Tyson at all. While Allen gets the 'it was a different time' treatment...

Alright, I actually am going to push back on this. (Ping @AhhhTheFrench so you don't feel like you're grumbling into the void.)

Courtesy is the first section in the rules. That's not an accident, it's literally the first goal. And yes, this sometimes - probably often - means that we tell people not to speak as if they're in a group of friends, but rather as if they're in a group of professional colleagues. The reason is that incivility gradually corrodes what we're going for here. Not all at once, but one step at a time; it gets normalized, it gets standardized, and a significant part of the possible community finds that the place is now hostile.

From the rules:

Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument.

Some of the things we discuss are controversial, and even stating a controversial belief can antagonize people. That's OK, you can't avoid that, but try to phrase it in the least antagonistic manner possible. If a reasonable reader would find something antagonistic, and it could have been phrased in a way that preserves the core meaning but dramatically reduces the antagonism, then it probably should have been phrased differently.

"Leftoids" is dismissive towards roughly half the population and there's just no good reason for it; you're not getting anything out of it for the argument, you're just using a slur against your outgroup.

Don't do that, please.

It's internet slang... It's how I talk and I use rightoids just as freely.

you're just using a slur against your outgroup.

Is this really where the bar of a slur is?

Edit: Do you really know what my outgroup is? (I'm a trans centrist... I guess everyone is my outgroup, lol). Are you going to apply this level of sensitivity to everyone?

This really seems like an overreach. In my opinion anyway...

Is this really where the bar of a slur is?

Yeah, frankly. We keep it pretty low.

Are you going to apply this level of sensitivity to everyone?

Yes. If you think someone's pushing the line, report it; if it gets approved and you disagree, you're welcome to ping modmail if you feel strongly about it.

Plus, Tyson admits wrong doing and did the time for it

Three years seems like a slap on the wrist for raping someone so severely they end up in the emergency room.

While Allen gets the 'it was a different time' treatment...

Really? In 2019, Amazon Studios cancelled their contract with him. In 2020, his publisher cancelled his memoir in response to public outcry. A year ago I was on a bus with my girlfriend telling her how I thought the allegations against him were unfounded (based on this article by Cathy Young), and a woman turned around in her seat and stared at me in shock. The consensus in my social circle is that he's a paedophile who escaped the long arm of the law because of his money and connections.

My point was Tyson was a poor example.

I don't understand what your social circle has to do with it (In context of the original argument)?

I just don't think your claim (that people have generally forgiven Allen and excuse his behaviour as the product of a different era) is true.

Ah, I get you now.

Maybe it's because I live in LA (around a lot of proper film buffs), that our social bubbles are completely different.

And I still say that 3 years in prison and a destroyed career is not a slap on the wrist.

But that's Freddie's entire point: Tyson's career wasn't destroyed. To quote from the original article:

Mike Tyson, Kid Dynamite, 1980s heavyweight boxing champion, has settled into a role as a beloved cultural figure. Once uniquely feared for his ferocious style (which has led to him being constantly overrated as a boxer in the all-time ranks), he’s come to be seen as a lovable, even cuddly presence. His fearsome reputation has strangely helped his new career as a wacky, “random” celebrity. At 57 years old, he’s fighting YouTube sensation Jake Paul later this year, in another sign that we’re living through the fall of Rome. He enjoyed a major career resurgence with his famous cameo in the raunchy 2009 comedy The Hangover. Since then, Tyson has appeared on talk shows, started a podcast, made comedic television commercials, and as you can see in the image at the top, starred in an animated television show for Adult Swim. Broadcast from 2014 to 2019, Mike Tyson Mysteries had that mid-period Adult Swim quality of attempting to substitute a wacky premise (ferocious-turned-adorable Mike Tyson solves crimes) for actually being funny. The show does serve, though, as a good symbol of how Tyson’s public image has become kitsch, his resurgence based on nostalgia for his boxing career and the fact that the entertainment industry loves both established names and unpredictable personalities.

To quote from his Wikipedia article:

After his release [from prison] in 1995, he engaged in a series of comeback fights, regaining the WBA and WBC titles in 1996 to join Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali, Tim Witherspoon, Evander Holyfield and George Foreman as the only men in boxing history to have regained a heavyweight championship after losing it.

"leftoids", come on man. Great comment, and then you just throw that in there to make sure we know what side you're on. I own some property and when I get with other landlords the most pejorative term for lease holders is "rentoids" for the real bad ones. Dehumanizing to the max. Dial it back before the Rwandan machetes come out eh?

Dial it back before the Rwandan machetes come out eh?

Good to know some people still understand humor.

My guy, this is not how you solve your downvotes problem.

If you think a comment breaks the rules then just report it.

I ain't no snitch. I tested out the report feature, it didn't take.

It's a pretty common rdrama.net term. In my experience usually people who use it on rDrama are just as happy to call people on the other side "rightoids", so even if it doesn't necessarily meet this site's rules, it's generally not a partisan statement.

On rDrama "leftoid" and "rightoid" are certainly terms of mockery, but generally the "-oid" suffix is specifically meant to single out leftists and right-wingers who are are perceived as following their ideologies in rigid, conformist, and/or unintelligent ways. They're not necessarily terms that are used to refer to all left-leaning or all right-leaning people. Although sometimes they are.

Thanks for reading my bit of cultural ambassadorship. Come to rDrama, we have fun over there.

Come to rDrama, we have fun over there.

Yeah, right now we have Donkey Kong December going on too so there's extra special flavour (yes, I know it's April, don't ask).

This forum isn't rDrama and I would hope that it doesn't turn into it.

We do owe them a debt of gratitude, since in the Great Trek Westwards Eastwards Northwards Southwards from Reddit proper, the basic template and code for this place was adapted from rDrama and built on top of its bones.

Are we not Dramatards and -oids of all descriptions ourselves?

me too thanks

Everyone you’re talking to here is already on rDrama.

  • -13

I'm not.

I definitely am not, and thats after going to take a look. The whole place looks deeply unappealing to me

I am sure lots of people enjoy it, but the overlap with here seems to much less than 100%

Least closeted rDrama user.

  1. False
  2. Part of the problem

This is racism. Reported.

  • -11

Low effort shitposting is not the sort of engagement we're looking for here. Neither is false reporting. Lots of red flags in the mod history, including a note about a previous attempt to false-report, and no QCs. Last action was a Tempban.

@jkf is correct: this is not rDrama, and we ask that you not post here as you would there. Please apply more effort to your interactions when you return.

Tempbanning for three days.

Everyone I talk to in real life regularly goes to the toilet, but that doesn't mean I want them to drop their pants and do their business as I talk to them.

You really haven’t pooed until you’ve pooed with friends.

Never setting a foot there.

No need; rDrama is gentrifying this neighborhood as we speak. Enjoy your cultural enrichment.

  • -11

-oid is the new -ist. Time is a flat circle.

Language changes, it also has meaning. If I start calling people demoRATS and repubtards etc...etc.. it very quickly makes this place pretty terrible and a lot closer to facebook boomer town. Leftoids or rightoids is in the exact same tradition as calling people NPCs.

If you seriously think that zoomers won't be calling themselves leftoids and rightoids in serious political debates when they eventually are old enough to hold office, you have a poor ability to extrapolate from the past.

For what it's worth, i think your oidophobe prejudice is still correct, it is silly and uncooth to use this verbiage at this time including around these parts, despite rDrama colonizer protestations. But it's really a question of time.

Post ironic dehumanization laughs at our silly ideas of civility and endless euphemism treadmills from its throne of hyper-reality. And all shall bow.

Oh it may happen, I mean clearly it already is happening. Just hoping to keep that kind of banter out of this particular corner of internet discourse.

Detterman, D. K. (2010). What happened to moron, idiot, imbecile, feebleminded, and retarded?