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 know if there are any metrics but from what I can tell most conversations and activities happen on the weekend (The number of comments seems to routinely double after Friday from my casual observation). Probably because people have jobs and family and stuff. What a surprise, people with interesting and intelligent takes have real world responsibilities... the Motte isn't a place you can make a living off so, of course, you're not going to have people here full-time to discuss all topics that could be discussed. If you aren't going to engage in the comments you could just wait for the monthly quality posts and save yourself the time and just read those instead. You're going to have more lively conversations on X because of the simple fact of X having a much much larger userbase, to the point where people can make a living just talking about political stuff. It also has a lot of low-take, crap opinions on there.
Personally, I do think there is some merit to having some low-level fruit for discussion, which is why I made a post about the recent viral man versus bear question. In the grand scheme of things this viral question has almost no real-world consequences compared to say half the items on your list but why did that post generate a good amount of discussion and a lot of these you just posted about hasn't (yet)? Because I made a post about the topic. I also took some effort to put a spin to it, did a little bit of research, gave my opinion, posed a question, and gave multiple angles of possible discussion points, and it got a decent amount of conversations going. The more information you give on the topic, the more chance there is something in it that someone might be interested in to respond to.
In general, the posts I've seen get the most responses have one of these things going for them:
Also there are some guidelines about culture war posts:
I don't think it takes that much work - just post a link to the article with the topic you want to discuss, quote a few relevant lines, then give your opinion and ask a question. If you want a particular type of discussion/insight put in more effort so there is something for people to respond to. What particular about these topics do you want to hear people's take on? High-level discussion requires some effort, otherwise, how would the responses be any different than the average comment on the news site, Reddit, YouTube, X, or any other discussion platform with low-level reactionary comments?
Personally, I'm not interested in philosophical musings, anything about AI, or ratsphere inside-baseball (isuch as anything about Aella), all of which make up a substantial number of each week's postings. I'd love to see more focus on current events to balance the Washington Post and Reddit shoving the woke perspective down people's throats.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link