site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27724 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Have the campus protests had any sort of effect on Israel? It seems like no.

For top level posts in the culture war roundup there needs to be more effort and content.

In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:

  1. Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
  2. Interpretation and analysis. Add some of your own interpretation and analysis to these events. "The protests seem to have been treated a bit differently from other protests in recent memory, like the BLM. Police have been called up to break up some of the protests. Donors have threatened to remove funding from universities. Etc"
  3. Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."

boo

Yeah, but that’s like…your opinion, man.

Technically this does have points 1, 2 and 3. I get why the mods aim to have an effort filter for top posts but this isn't spicy and seems to have stimulated discussion effectively enough.

There should be a #4 for effort if they don’t want to be technically wrong.

Notice how this spurred discussion from a simple post…why don’t we vote on bringing back the bare links repository?

why don’t we vote on bringing back the bare links repository?

Eh. Might be interesting but I'm not really keen on bringing back the daily rage. I get as much current news through here as I can handle. I'm mostly happy with the site and @cjet79's formulation as-is, I just wanted to provide a little calibration in favour of 'this specific warning was too strict'.

Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."

Come on man. There is no goddamned way that anyone posting here is unaware of the core of the story.

Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."

Yeah, they did that - it's right there!

I don't think it's a good post, but it's a fine area of discussion, everyone is already familiar with the basics, and the bar to ride the ride shouldn't be that someone has to personally have a novel take. Adding a paragraph of blather about Columbia or quoting the New York Times would not improve this post.

Adding a paragraph of blather about Columbia

I'm confused by this attitude. Why do you assume it would be blather?

You have to find value in some of the writing on this site, otherwise you wouldn't be here. If you don't like the top level posts, then you must find value in the replies. Replies that often feature multiple full paragraphs. But you don't dismiss those as blather.

What's wrong with the idea of taking one of those paragraphs, like the ones you see in the replies, and putting them in a top level post? Why is that such an onerous effort? Why do you assume that there could be no value in that?

Someone could write something interesting about Columbia, but I don't think it would add any value to just restate the same thing that all of us have probably read or heard a half dozen times. If they don't have anything original to say, but do want to hear what others think, I am against compelling top-level posters to try to do a creative writing exercise rewording a point they already heard.

I think if you check my post history, you'll see plenty of long-form posts and that all of my top-level posts are pretty long. I like putting in the effort because I think it's personally clarifying and occasionally even have things to say that are worth reading. I'm not real inclined to do a, "and what say you?" style of post if I don't think I have original thoughts. Nonetheless, I think that's too high of a standard to hold all top-level posts to.

We have Sunday threads if someone just wants to throw out a short question.

Otherwise what Primaprimaprima said is kinda true we don't want people who cant contribute three sentences to a discussion to be the ones that dictate what gets talked about.

Some people don't care what is talked about they just want something. But many posters care a great deal about the specific topic, and thus a low quality entry on a topic they don't care about is a double negative. It's crowding out topics they might care about, and it isn't interesting enough to expand what they might care about.

I can see the point. Thanks for elaborating, and as always, thanks for moderating.

If they don't have anything original to say, but do want to hear what others think

Frankly, I'd rather that we have rules that select against those types of posters. If someone can't even write one paragraph of non-trivial thought in response to a news story - not world-historically original thought, not thought worthy of prestigious publications, but just a simple "hey I've been thinking about the Israel campus protests and how they compare to BLM, I wonder if this will help Trump in November because he's more of the law and order candidate, could tip the scales in some battleground states" - then they're probably unlikely to post worthwhile replies in response to other people's posts, and we really don't need them here.

Come on man. There is no goddamned way that anyone posting here is unaware of the core of the story.

There are other good reasons to ask for context:

  1. To avoid talking about nothingburgers. Sometimes people have weird news feeds and they get small incidents show up on their feed.
  2. For future readers. We do keep a list of old quality posts. The reader of a post is not just the people here this week.
  3. For additional depth and discussion. For example, if they had linked Brown University they could have started a discussion about divestment.

Yeah, they did that - it's right there!

Yeah they sort of did, which is why I half parroted their words.

Some of you seem to very much live in the culture war. You are very aware of what is going on and the latest news. And you also seem to want to replicate that newsfeed here?

I'll admit I just don't get it. If I didn't read this website I'd probably be unaware of a large portion of the culture war. I am not certain I would have known about the campus protests if I had not read about it here on TheMotte. I specifically need the context. I basically live under a rock. I hangout with my family and my neighbors, and we talk about local stuff mostly.

At the same time I don't want a scrolling doomlist of every item in the culture war. That is what twitter and mainstream news outlets are for. I don't visit those websites because I don't want the scrolling doomlist of every item in the culture war. If there is something novel and interesting to be discussed about a particular item, sure, lets have that conversation.

What do you want here exactly? Do you want this to just be a twitter clone (but with indents!) where we write a few sentences to performatively crap on our outgroup? I don't see the point.

I'm generally on board with all of the above and covered a little more on my personal preferences here. Nonetheless, on this specific topic, I just really doubt that there are many people that have missed the occurrence of campus protests in the context of Israel-Gaza. Maybe I am living in a bubble on this one though, I can accept that I might just be wrong. It's definitely true that the encampments have high salience for me locally because I literally ran by one of these dopey things a bunch of times (well, until it came down last week). I just kind of doubt that there are many people that haven't heard about this and don't think it's necessary that the standard for a subtopic be that someone needs to write a couple paragraph intro.

Context is ultimately a suggestion, not required. I happen to think it's a good suggestion, and I also happen to think that people will dismiss the need for it more than they should.

You having personal experience with one of these camps is interesting context! I don't go near a college campus on a regular basis.

Mods here are the final barrier between turning this community into the clone of rightist Twitter(you can also see long posts there sometimes) and they need to go even further. There should be a reasonable requirement for minimum number of words in the top level posts.

Parody of the protests from a satirical show in Israel.

I know it's just a TV show doing this for funsies, but I would really prefer if they actually steelmanned the pro-Palestine position before trying to mock it.

  1. Considerations to divest from Israel are becoming mainstream: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/05/13/metro/campus-protests-divestment-harvard-antisemitism/ [2].

  2. Youth shift against Israel: “Views of the Israeli people have soured among younger Americans in recent years. The share of adults under 30 with a favorable view of the Israeli people has fallen 17 percentage points since 2019”.

  3. Many formerly agnostic social influencers have come out against Israel specifically thanks to the protests, eg Jack Dorsey, Dan Bilzerian. Presumably many other wealthy and influential players are revising their opinions privately, not wanting to upset the clannish and powerful Israel machine.

They're maybe tangentially related to Biden stopping some shipments of bombs and threatening further restrictions.

Outside of the few actual connected Hamas terrorists do they even care? Or are they cosplaying civil rights leaders? They are heavily limiting who can talk about what they want. And there are enough videos online about people in the movement not really knowing all the details.

Perhaps they are happy they got their universities to largely do as they are told.

That being said they did get Biden to limit weapons to Israel. Without them Israel may have had more of a free hand to do as any other ME country would do if a rival population killed and raped 1500 of their people.

I think they’re largely cosplaying. Meaning is the only way through suffering, and these people are looking for some sort of meaning to help with their nihilism/depression.

I think there’s also an element of them getting to wear keffiyahs (which look cool) and do a big cultural appropriation without getting in trouble for it socially.

I think there’s also an element of them getting to wear keffiyahs (which look cool) and do a big cultural appropriation without getting in trouble for it socially.

It's too bad that the woke schoolmarms ruined cultural appropriation.

Some people really, really, love to play dress up. Its not for me, but it seems like harmless fun and now its just another fun thing that's been ruined so that some people can signal their own moral superiority.

If some bored college girls want to wear a keffiyah I say go for it. Let's make the keffiyah and low-cut blouse look a thing!

To steelman the original case against cultural appropriation, you really have to understand the context in which it appeared. Think back a couple of decades to when America was maximally hegemonic and arrogant. When I was growing up, it was accepted wisdom in Hollywood that any film that adapted British source material had to be set in America with American children, and the source was often mutilated to make that work: see The Seeker (an adaptation of my favourite childhood book) for a particularly egregious example, but they even tried to do it with Harry Potter.

It's not fun to see your culture stolen or made into a theme park version of itself because Hollywood execs didn't believe that their audiences could tolerate anything too exotic. And it's worse knowing that, because American soft power outmatches yours by an order of magnitude, your children will grow up with the American version of your culture as the default while the original dies a slow death. In the same vein, Hallowe'en is now a much bigger deal than Nov 4th in the UK, and spell-check + Grammarly is slowly killing British English. I can imagine it's even worse for smaller, weaker countries and cultures.

Of course, the anti-cultural-appropriation movement overreached, mostly by refusing to see any difference between genuine appreciation and chauvinistic snatching. But in an age of increased migration and greater communication between cultures (via the internet) it's more likely that, say, Arabs will get upset about American girls using their national costume to slut it up.

(Obviously I'm simplifying and cherry-picking, see for example the chinese dress brouhaha where actual Chinese people didn't give a damn. I'm trying to give a sympathetic explanation of one reason why people started pushing back against cultural appropriation. I enjoy dressing up myself.)

When I was growing up, it was accepted wisdom in Hollywood that any film that adapted British source material had to be set in America with American children, and the source was often mutilated to make that work: see The Seeker (an adaptation of my favourite childhood book) for a particularly egregious example, but they even tried to do it with Harry Potter.

I have always found it distasteful the way Hollywood will import successful foreign properties by remaking them instead of just subbing or dubbing them (such as the Spaniard [REC] movie franchise turning into the American Quarantine film series).

Anime is the only major exception to this, although even then there were American import companies that tried their best to localize shows rather than simply translating them (most infamously 4Kids, which would do weird things like turning rice balls into sandwiches). And who can forget the near-misses of Sailor Moon and Gundam?

Right, that's also a big thing. Seems less prevalent lately: I wonder if it's to prevent accusations of cultural appropriation? Or simply because youtube means that people can watch (and become fans of) the original before the remake is available on television.

It's especially weird that it didn't happen with anime because anime art is actually directly American in origin. Maybe that's why.

but they even tried to do it with Harry Potter.

Do you mean they tried to cast North American actors/set the film in NA? That would have been hilarious.

Before the movies came out the books themselves were adapted for an American audience. The example, the first book renamed the philosopher’s stone to the sorcerer’s stone.

There were 2 versions of the audio books. The British version narrated by Stephen fry and the American version narrated by Jim dale.

Yes. It was well-known at the time but I can't seem to find an online source. This is the best I can do but the article has factual errors.

Let me be annoying and argue with your steelman case, which I acknowledge you are offering to keep the conversation moving.

Few woke people actually care about appropriation. For example, it's perfectly fine to talk in a silly Italian or British accent. "Its-a bigga pizza pie-a".

But it's actually worse. Woke people don't just appropriate. They want to actively erase non-Anglo cultures. Witness, for example, the use of the term "Latinx". Or the insistence that traditional people abandon their customs and religion to support LGBT ideology.

So why do they pretend to care? Status games. Accusations of "appropriation" are a convenient way to signal higher moral status. If you can get a high-ranking person to grovel before you, you are higher status than them. If you can get a competitor fired for wearing a silly costume, then your chance at the top job just increased. This is why woke status games are most extreme in situations where 100s of people compete for a sinecure such as a college professorship. It's a crab bucket mentality.

So why do they pretend to care? Status games. Accusations of "appropriation" are a convenient way to signal higher moral status. If you can get a high-ranking person to grovel before you, you are higher status than them. If you can get a competitor fired for wearing a silly costume, then your chance at the top job just increased. This is why woke status games are most extreme in situations where 100s of people compete for a sinecure such as a college professorship. It's a crab bucket mentality.

Yup, that's a big factor for sure. I have seen exaggerated Italian accents coded as racist, or at least very insensitive. Nobody cares about us Brits :(

Woke people don't just appropriate. They want to actively erase non-Anglo cultures. Witness, for example, the use of the term "Latinx". Or the insistence that traditional people abandon their customs and religion to support LGBT ideology.

Absolutely, it's the old chauvinism in a new form, with no excuses this time. For all its flaws, old Hollywood was just trying to make films that sold well at home, and the cultural appropriation was an unfortunate consequence. The woke should know better.

To oversimplify, I think that real complaints about cultural appropriation like mine or the Australian Aboriginals (which by definition come from cultures lacking soft power) got filtered through woke Americans who did have soft power, and were redirected by those people for their own ends. Often unconsciously.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats