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 -
I don't think PMC Turbolibs disdain McDonald's because it is lower class, I think they disdain McDonald's because it is so American. A certain kind of urban blue triber hates actually existing American traditions, they hate baseball and football and fast food drive-throughs and Christmas and guns and elections and cars with V8 engines. They hate their own families and communities, they hate where they grew up and those they grew up with, they are sure that whatever somebody else has over there is better than what we have here. How much of this is a still-lingering hatred of the jocks and preps and pretty girls from high school is left as an exercise for the reader. The crossover between self-professed progressives who hate McDonald's and self-professed rightists who hate McDonald's is where you hit horseshoe theory, where the radicals and the reactionaries run into each other, the Hlynka-point.
My wife is American-born, but her parents are immigrants while my family has been in America (and basically in our town) for generations. Sometimes the difference in traditions becomes obvious, and it has made me recognize things that are American for me.
So just after we got married, some eight years ago now, and moved in together for the first time, I mentioned one day before I left for work that I was craving macaroni and cheese, just had a yen for it. My wife, being an excellent wife, went into one of her cookbooks and made an Ina Garten recipe for a five-cheese baked macaroni and cheese, picked up really nice cheeses from Wegmans, and presented me with this delicious dish when I got home. Truly spectacular dinner, it was delicious (if so rich that it was nap inducing), she's since made the same recipe for company several times but...I did have to tell her afterward that when I said I was craving macaroni and cheese, this wasn't really what I was thinking of. I wanted the yellow, boxed, artificial Kraft stuff. My wife was pissed, she still laughs about it, she'd never had boxed mac'n'cheese as a kid, it wasn't something her family would eat, and didn't even really understand what I meant. She thought I was just insulting her cooking, saying it wasn't as good as some processed bullshit.
I'm aware that my wife's five-cheese macaroni and cheese is better, but I still sometimes crave what my mom would pop on the stove when I was a kid. Honestly, even as an adult, I sometimes buy the cartoon-character Kraft boxes, because they're better, I'm not sure if it's just the pasta shapes transporting the cheese better or if the sauce packet is formulated differently. A few days later I got the boxed stuff and made it, and she understood: this is just a totally different food, and she got why I was craving it a little.
McDonald's and Wendy's and Burger King feel the same nostalgic way to me, but McDonald's is the alpha, the icon. I don't eat a lot of fast food. It's not something I fit into my weekly diet. But it still feels nostalgic to me in a deeply Americana way, and every now and then I have a craving for it. The drive through is so American, so ingrained in my mind with memories of the road trip, or hanging out at the mall, or in the car with your friends driving around to nowhere in particular American Graffiti style. Drinking a soda, cruising down the highway, on my way to wherever, it's ingrained in my psyche.
As an aside, I remember growing up a stock stand-up comedy joke, which I literally think I remember hearing from different comedians in Dane Cook/Carlos Mencia/Bill Engvall range, went something like: you know what's so unbelievably stupid? When you see someone at a McDonald's and they order a burger, and fries and then get a diet coke! You think the DIET coke is going to keep you from getting fat?! What a DUMBASS!
And as a ten year old I laughed at the joke, because duh the diet coke didn't make any difference! What an idiot that fat person is ordering a diet coke! For some reason we all despised diet soda, it was a mockable concept.
Now, as an adult, that's exactly my ideal drive-through fast food order on that road trip. Cheeseburger, small fries just for a taste, small chicken nuggets, large diet coke. (My actual order tends to be determined by coupons and online offers) A mcdouble is 390 calories and 22g of protein, not that bad occasionally on an IIFYM scale though I wouldn't recommend living off them. A small fry isn't great but it's only 230 calories. The McNuggets are even decent: 190 calories and 9g of protein. Eliminating the sugar and empty calories from the soda is the [single best way] to improve the nutrition of an occasional fast-food indulgence! I get all my nostalgia buttons pressed for the fast food I ate as a kid, and the final result is something like 800 calories and 35g of protein, too much in the way of salt and fat and whatever bad stuff, but not going to ruin my week or anything.
Man.
Sometimes people just don't like things because the things are bad. Or, given the insane adaptability of human aesthetics, because they haven't yet found a reason to cultivate the liking. In a world of impossible luxury, is it really surprising that people's preferences don't overlap?
More importantly, does it really say anything about a more fundamental hatred? Disdain for Americana is a heuristic, a shorthand for a bunch of material and cultural luxuries. Disdain for America, or for one's family, is something else.
I don't like Coldplay. I think their music is what they play in a waiting room for your vasectomy. I don't go around using Coldplay as a [prefix to indicate everything bad in the world]. Nevermind, I was going to link the wikipedia article, but the actual title of the article is too funny:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_terms_prefixed_with_Mc-_(derogatory)
I don't like Hockey. I try to like hockey, pretty regularly, but I don't like it. I don't go around complaining about the NHL for existing.
Yet the two ideas are tied together. "I love America, but I hate everything American and want America to be completely different" has some obvious illogic to it. Patriotism is Hegelian, it's about synthesis, glorifying both sides of a conflict. The patriotic American version of the Civil War isn't the Lost Cause or Marching Through Georgia, it is both. Within that ad, the Yankees and Red Sox hate each other, but baseball wouldn't be better off without either team, it needs both, both embody part of baseball's romance and joy. As ever, the success of Augustus wasn't at core about the brutal victory of one side in the Roman civil war, but about his success in glorifying the other side as brave Romans embodying Roman values who were nonetheless mistaken. The English aristocrats who descended from William's retinue came to honor the Anglo Saxon heritage of their conquered homeland. Russian patriotism today struggles to swallow a world in which both Lenin and Alexander were admirable, but it seeks it.
American patriotism today which does not contain McDonald's and the NFL and MTV isn't, at core, patriotism, because for most Americans it doesn't contain the traditions of your literal ancestors and the people you grew up with, your teachers and scoutmasters and little league coaches and the boss at your summer job. That doesn't mean you can't dislike McDonald's. To be honest, I don't really like McDonald's. I've been to a McDonald's three times in the past two years, and once was just a drink, while another time I just bought a medium fry to get change for a fifty so I could buy a velvet painting of JFK for $30 in the parking lot. I prefer Wendy's, when I do eat fast food, which is rarely. But I understand the appeal of it. (I'll note that by my own standard I'm far from perfect: I haven't seen a superhero movie since the Toby Maguire Spiderman)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I have a stash of cheap spicy ramen noodles in my house that I get a craving for once a few months. I personally blame this on my experiences in university where after training in the evening the hot cup of noodles just kept me going and now this flavor is stamped on my soul forever.
More options
Context Copy link
Diet Coke is also just a completely different drink. It tastes different, even than Coke Zero.
I used to have a lot of Diet Coke in my house as a kid, and the taste is something I can recall quite distinctly.
Diet Coke was sort of the first attempt at producing a zero-calorie alternative to Coke, and years later with better technology they found they could produce something closer to regular Coke, but by then Diet Coke had its own loyal customer base that would be dangerous to offend. In my own household, my wife loves Diet Coke, while I prefer Coke Zero.
It's interesting how the original goal was to make fake Coke, but then releasing a new product that was closer to real Coke didn't entirely supplant the original fake, because the original fake now had its own specific reputation and flavor.
Second attempt. The first was Tab, which managed to survive until 2020. Coke Zero isn't nearly as superior to Diet Coke than Diet Coke was to Tab, and the 2021 reformulation made it worse IMO.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm another that prefers Diet over Zero. "What I thought I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those full-calorie sodas."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yesterday I was about to post in a topic that it seems to me that the real Trump sin is that he has the audacity of genuinely liking America. And that this just unpalatable to the vobt (vonline blue tribers). Seems you have picked up that sentiment too.
I agree with you, at times, but not at others. Trump loves America, but too often it's an America that he remembers dimly from before he was born. Patriotism is to a large extent loving what your country is, not what you imagine it was or should be.
Trump’s patriotic vision of America is like an idealized version of mid-century NYC. It’s not pastoral or even suburban.
The comparison, elsewhere in this thread, to his Home Alone cameo is relevant.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link