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.
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service.
As I mentioned in converting to Catholicism, I'm in the process of reading more theological works with an attempt to better understand my own beliefs and the beliefs of my wife. I've lately been on a soteriology kick.
I am bemused by the many attempts to identify the "one" Christian soteriological method. Very few of these theories are mutually exclusive. There is infinite richness to Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and everlasting reign; and there is facets of meaning in every (orthodox) soteriology. For instance, I believe in:
- Imputed righteousness, with substitutional aspects. Relevant hymns: "How deep the Father’s love for us" (it was my sin that held him there, until it was accomplished), "Yet not I but Christ Through Christ in Me" (The future sure, the price it has been paid. For Jesus bled and suffered for my pardon), "In Christ Alone" (The wrath of God was satisfied)
- Christ as ransom. Relevant hymns: "In Christ Alone" (1) (Light of the world by darkness slain), "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" (Ransom captive Israel)
- Christ as the perfect Israel, recapitulating Israel but perfectly, in whom all the nations of the world may be blessed (representative rather than substitutionary). Relevant hymn: "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" (2) (O come, O Branch of Jesse’s stem, unto your own and rescue them. From depths of hell your people save, and give them victory o’er the grave. O come, O Key of David, come and open wide our heavenly home. Make safe for us the heavenward road and bar the way to death's abode).
- Christ as the Passover Lamb, providing himself as the feast that lets us commune with the Triune God and yet live. Relevant hymn: "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent" (Lord of Lords, In human vesture, In the body and the blood; He will give to all the faithful, His own self for heavenly food.)
Andrew Rillera's "Lamb of the Free" is one such recent example of a "new" perspective that intends to dispense with the "common" ("popular" as well as "low") soteriology of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA). Rillera seeks to correct the belief that Levitical sacrifices were substitutes for the peoples’ sins. This "incorrect" belief is what has (allegedly) lead to the proliferation of belief in PSA. Yet while Rillera brings plausible scholarship to the Levitical sacrificial system (I, a layman, am not an expert on the nuances there), I think his resulting conclusion on the soteriological import of Christ’s death is not adequately supported and ultimately incorrect (indeed, I think it heterodox). Rillera, unfortunately, also writes with some condescension, using epitaphs like "wrong-headed" and "debunked". Having recently finished Khaled Anatolios's excellent "Deification through the Cross", who also posits an alternative soteriology (and one that I believe is orthodox) but is much more charitable in his contrasting with alternative soteriological theories, this meanness is jarring.
And yet there is good work in this book. Rillera, I believe, is an Old Testament (OT) scholar, and feels more comfortable in the Pentateuch than in the New Testament (NT). The first half of the book provides his perspective on the Levitical sacrifices, and I don’t see any real issue with his description or the rationale behind them, outside of some circular logic (eg, page 91 where he assumes the conclusion). His major points are:
- Very few, if any, Levitical sacrifices were made to atone for moral sin
- Blood mattered more than death.
- Sacrifice is limited, and cannot atone for moral impurity
- Only exile or death can purge “the land” of moral impurity.
- PSA is not a natural extension or consummation of the Levitical sacrificial system.
I can buy most of these points (though Hebrews 5 implies that sin sacrifices had paramount importance in a priest's duties). However, Rillera makes a leap of logic when he then concludes that PSA isn’t supported in the Bible. Romans 3 states that God displayed Christ publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. Romans 5 says that Christ died for us (though it stops short of claiming he died in our place), and it is clear that we are justified through Christ’s blood which saves us from God’s wrath. Isaiah 53 says that the suffering Servant "was wounded for our transgressions, the chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed...the LORD [YHWH] has laid on him the iniquity of us all"; with clear substitutionary implications (3). Colossians 2 states that Christ "canceled out the certificate of debt....having nailed it to the cross". I'd be willing to say that there is no substitutionary death implied in the Bible but that the blood is the means of substitution. Rillera myopically calls out substitutionary death as if that is the only possible substitutionary aspect. He also characterizes PSA as substitution for death, and in the book’s conclusion says that the greatest danger in believing PSA is that it implies we don't have to follow Christ to the cross. But that is not what substitution means: indeed, we will all die and we are all called to take up our crosses. What we are now freed from is the consequences and penalty of our sin. (4)
While Rillera's OT arguments point to sacrificial atonement for ritual (but not moral) impurity, the NT forces him to acknowledge the moral atoning nature of the sacrificial element in Christ's life, death, and resurrection. But he argues that this is not the core part of the Gospel (the "good news") but is a subtle symbol linking back to the OT sacrifices. In Rillera's view, the Last Supper is a sacrifice of thanksgiving and inauguration of the new covenant, not a sin/atoning sacrifice. (Again, 1st Corinthians 5 and Rillera's own Anglican Communion Liturgy have a different perspective). As Rillera walks through 1 John and Hebrews (210 - 240), Rillera is forced to admit that Jesus’ non-Passover activities were also a sacrifice. While he initially states that "on behalf of sins" does not mean that he was an atoning sacrifice (224), he does relent (page 225) and says that the Christ’s blood’s potency gives it an atoning aspect despite the Levitical sacrifices not being morally atoning (a key point of his argument during the first half of the book).
Rillera, despite being arm-twisted by the NT texts into acknowledging the atoning nature of the blood, does not appear to believe there is anything directly salvific in Jesus' death. The only reason for death is that it is required for the resurrection, which is the "proof" of Christ’s identify as the agent of moral and ritual purification (165-166). Rillera does say that Jesus' death is "soteriologically unique" (274), but solely due to its temporal precedence. Putting aside questions of substitution and sacrifice, the NT heavily leans on Christ’s death as the means of our salvation (5). Some example passages:
- Colossians 1:20 "Having made peace through the blood of His cross"
- Colossians 1:22 "Reconciled you through death"
- Romans 5:10 "Reconciled through the death of his Son"
- 1 Corinthians 11:26-27. "As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, your proclaim the Lord’s death...whoever eats or drinks...in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord."
While not desiring to attribute atoning or salvific import to Christ's death, Rillera doesn’t offer an alternative for the means of salvation. Rillera points to Christ as the "agent" of both ritual and moral purification without describing the mechanism. There seem to be three options that are consistent with the rest of Rillera's thesis.
- Christus Victor. There are certainly hints at Christ as victorious over death (eg on page 180) but the ransom component Rillera explicitly denies (203, 205).
- Vicarious (6). Rillera does state that Jesus lives a perfect representative life and his death is a "murder" as the ultimate moral sin which requires the temple to be destroyed to "atone" or "purge" the sin on the land. There is a "double participation" (240) where Jesus participates in humanity, and humanity participates in Christ's death and sacrifice. There is a "solidarity" with humanity (255). This isn’t perfectly aligned with the Vicarious soteriology, but at least rhymes with it.
- No salvific mechanism at all in the cross and resurrection. Rillera does say that God can forgive out of his own desire, which would mean there is no necessity for the cross other than as a ritual and as a proof of Jesus’ agency as the "forgiving one". This would seem to open the door to universal salvation, which Rillera hints at in his discussion of 1 John (214), though he more explicitly goes after the "Limited Atonement" of TULIP.
Outside of my theological concerns, Rillera introduces his book with culture-war fodder: that believing in PSA leads to authoritarianism, hierarchy, and support of the death penalty. Granting that these things are, in fact, bad, this by itself isn’t an argument for or against PSA. This odd and off-putting opening salvo is trivially refuted on two fronts:
- Historical: the countries that were the first to promote liberty and freedom as "us moderns" understand those terms were exactly those countries that were the strongholds of Reformed and Puritan theology, the leading adherents of PSA.
- Levitical: it doesn’t take an academic to see that outside of the detailed descriptions of the various sacrifices, Leviticus spends its time on how to correctly construct hierarchies and enact the death penalty.
I was disappointed by this book. I was hoping for a thoughtful book I could wrestle with even as a disagreed with the conclusion. Instead, the tone is brash and severe, the NT support in particular is unsatisfying, and he doesn't offer a clear alternative. I sense that he is searching for evidence for his pet theory, rather that believing the plain language of the Bible. And the soteriological implications of his pet theory he leaves to the side, perhaps due to its heterodox nature.
(1) Yes, you could do a whole soteriological study from "In Christ Alone"
(2) Yes, you could also do a whole soteriological study from "O Come, O Come, Immanuel"
(3) Rillera does talk about Isaiah 53 but only to say that the NT doesn’t consider Isaiah 53 to be about sacrifices. He does not attempt to cover the substitutionary aspects of Isaiah 53.
(4) There are myriad other verses. Hebrews 5:1 on the OT Sacrifices for Sin, Hebrews 7:27 on Christ as an offering that atones for Sin, Hebrews 9 12-14 on how purification can atone for sins, 9:26 again having Christ as Sacrifice, Hebrews 10:10 on Christ as a sanctifying offering. Rillera intentionally does not engage with "all" the verses that can be marshaled against him, seeming to treat them all as falling under a broader set of categories that he can dismiss. Yet if a plain reading of essentially the entire NT needs to be explained away, it does suggest that the original argument may have some flaws. To his credit, Rillera does wrestle with the Hebrews passages, and does seem to agree that there is some atoning aspect to Christ as sacrifice (even if there is no salvific aspect).
(5) The resurrection is necessary (and in fact, not at all surprising) given Jesus' deity. If the incarnation is true (God as Man), then the shock is God dying, not his coming back to life.
(6) Vicarious is perhaps my least favorite soteriological theory, positing that the Incarnation was sufficient for our forgiveness due to God now "understanding" us. Where Christ’s death plays into this is left as an exercise for the reader.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
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A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.
Ground Rules
- Remember that we're all just Internet randos. Don't bet your life savings on a hot tip from this thread.
- Keep culture war in the culture war thread. Yes, global events may impact our personal finances, but that does not mean we have to incessantly harp on culture war aspects here. If you are going to discuss it, please stick to the practical impacts of it on an individual level.
- Be kind. Remember that everyone here comes from different circumstances. We all have different resources available and different risk tolerances.
- Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Better is better. Celebrate people when they take a step up and work to move their finances in the right direction. Don't flame out because they haven't followed what you consider the optimal path. Everybody has to start somewhere.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service.
I just found this place on an idle lurk through /r/slatestarcodex. As far as I can tell, it's a surviving remnant of the more iconoclastic elements of the rationalist/postrat/lesswrong sphere, similar to the community surrounding Scott Alexander in the pre-AC10 days.
I've visited a lot of similar communities that splintered off of Reddit and Twitter during purges or censorship escalations, and seen them live out their lifespans. Voat, the original, was the most interesting, since it started out in the era when free speech was still acknowledged as universally a good thing, and had majority support, with Pao being seen as a single bad actor acting independently. Unfortunately, it coincided with the crackdown on the entire infrastructure stack, and it eventually became too expensive to keep online.
Since then, a bunch of other communities showed up, each with technically interesting stories.
- .win, anchored by The_Donald's still fairly sizable userbase, is reasonably healthy but has one big community, a few minor ones that are semi-active, and little else.
- TRP and its surrounding subreddits all made independent sites, some of which came together under the banner of TRP.red. It doesn't really seem active at all, though the big subreddits in it are still not banned, even after everything else was.
- A number of Voat clones, all pretty unremarkable, cropped up here and there. Poal.co, which gradually petered out, Voat.xyz, likewise, and Ruqqus, whose admins decided to ban edgy speech after journalists doxed one of them and closed the site due to lack of interest shortly thereafter.
- On the infrastructure side, Kiwi Farms deserves a mention, surviving attacks (both DDOS and infrastructure loss - related) that would have killed earlier attempts handily, rolling their own DDOS mitigation system when Cloudflare backed down.
- During the peak of Twitter censorship, something called the Fediverse cropped up, aiming to solve the fundamental coordination problem of countless tech-savvy dissidents all being willing to throw their hats into the ring, but no one individual having the pull or funding to do it singlehandedly. A number of servers, all set up and branded independently, could connect with each other and aggregate their posts and users. In practice, a few servers exist, but Gab would have been the flagship and it shut off federation early on. Poa.st is the current flagship, largely hosting a core group of imageboard-adjacent users, but the vaunted robustness of the system didn't count for much when it briefly went down a little while ago and, as far as I could tell, most users just went quiet in the meantime rather than jumping to other instances. Most instances don't have open signups, even. Kiwi had its own instance at some point, but no longer does.
- Nostr took the Fediverse idea a step farther, using a bunch of cryptography to establish a protocol that lets users tie their accounts to a file on their computers, and use it across a wide variety of services. It had all manner of very impressive guarantees against censorship, but the onboarding friction was high enough that the only users I could find were a small handful of diehards talking to themselves and each other.
- Amusingly, a bunch of lefties whose views weren't remotely targeted by Reddit's administration made a bunch of federated Reddit clones during the API fiasco. As far as I know, they still exist and are 90 percent low-effort political slop, with the remaining 10 percent amounting to low-effort memes that aren't very good. I'd expect that activity is largely botted, simply because it doesn't pass the Turing Test.
By virtue of sheer stubbornness and dedication to the (worthy) cause of free discourse, The Motte seems to have a core group of devoted users who followed it here from Reddit, but most of what I see is automatically-created weekly discussion threads. I've certainly seen many individuals out there who share its demographic and general sentiment, but all of them are basically individual bloggers or Twitter users who established themselves pre-Closure of the Internet.
All of that said, it seems to me like the survival of our culture depends on finding a way to not just preserve an archipelago of different communities' remnants, but to find a way to re-create the frictionless, organic internet that could easily onboard new people. It seems like that would be a common topic of discussion here, and that people would have opinions on how to achieve this.
As it stands, my best proposal would be something like the ill-fated Dissenter extension, which added a separate comments section to every website as a tacked-on sidebar, but done more elegantly. Dissenter's failure case was that it was banned from Google's app store, but Brave is used widely enough, especially among our core demo of tech-savvy 20-something men, that sideloading a browser extension is no longer a huge hurdle. As for doing it more elegantly, I was thinking of something like:
- Every major social media website gets its own custom integration, bundled with a bunch of quality of life features that users ask for. E.g. region-blocking and a chronological timeline on Twitter, better post filtering on imageboards, and so on.
- When users post to these social media sites, their content is mirrored to a separate, federated service of their choosing (with a default for users who don't want to set up their own), and users of the extension can see when another Reddit/Twitter user is a fellow user of the extension, as their posts will be highlighted in the native view. This provides a backup of their posts and OC, limiting the chilling effect of a high-effort post potentially being removed or deboosted. Additionally, posts can be made exclusively to the extension's Fedi instance, visible to other extension users but not ordinary users of the social media website being interacted with, so that conversations can be had on e.g. Reddit without the local moderators stepping to say that "Y'all can't behave".
- Users can go directly to a given instance's URL and see (and message) other users across all platforms, with extension-specific notifications visible in the notification feeds of all augmented sites.
- As far as onboarding, I think the various anti-censorship social media people have missed the mark by treating friction as a weed-out. People are exhausted with the state of the world, and aren't going to take an hour of their day to figure out what Nostr is on their own. Instead, a simple, memetically-transmissible onboarding image outlining the process in simple steps, flattering the user as a cyberpunk hackerman rather than a refugee or tech enthusiast, could do a lot better. Dating myself, I remember the fun of the first days of 8chan, where users reveled in being technically hardcore and somewhat exclusive while still being happy to get new lads up to speed. I think that kind of culture is vital to anything that wants to bring back what was lost.
Essentially, the minimum viable product is the equivalent of being able to draw a fish in the sand back in the early days of Christianity - a way to indicate to fellow users on Closed websites that they aren't alone, and that there's a place they can get in touch with you if you get b&.
Do people have other ideas, in this general direction? I feel like we're in a critical time, where enough people remember the free internet that it can be brought back without the need to remake everything from first principles.
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:
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Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.
Ground Rules
- Remember that we're all just Internet randos. Don't bet your life savings on a hot tip from this thread.
- Keep culture war in the culture war thread. Yes, global events may impact our personal finances, but that does not mean we have to incessantly harp on culture war aspects here. If you are going to discuss it, please stick to the practical impacts of it on an individual level.
- Be kind. Remember that everyone here comes from different circumstances. We all have different resources available and different risk tolerances.
- Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Better is better. Celebrate people when they take a step up and work to move their finances in the right direction. Don't flame out because they haven't followed what you consider the optimal path. Everybody has to start somewhere.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
Contributions for the week of August 31, 2026
Contributions for the week of September 7, 2026
Contributions for the week of September 14, 2026
Contributions for the week of September 21, 2026
Contributions for the week of September 28, 2026
"Battle" of the "Sexes"
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service.
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:
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Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
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Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
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Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
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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.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.
Ground Rules
- Remember that we're all just Internet randos. Don't bet your life savings on a hot tip from this thread.
- Keep culture war in the culture war thread. Yes, global events may impact our personal finances, but that does not mean we have to incessantly harp on culture war aspects here. If you are going to discuss it, please stick to the practical impacts of it on an individual level.
- Be kind. Remember that everyone here comes from different circumstances. We all have different resources available and different risk tolerances.
- Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Better is better. Celebrate people when they take a step up and work to move their finances in the right direction. Don't flame out because they haven't followed what you consider the optimal path. Everybody has to start somewhere.