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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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Saw it with Thatcher, saw it with Scalia.

Yeah.

Hell, we saw it with Queen Elizabeth, who’s got a much better reputation in the U.S. than either of those.

I’ve got a theory that one of the signs of a…good? healthy? site is people willing to say the boring thing. Small talk. Socially acceptable responses. Stuff that real humans would say to other real humans’ faces. Those make it more like a community and less like performance art.

Sometimes we do a good job of it. I like that.

I remember a twitch streamer I watch who's admittedly very left-wing but also genuinely doesn't act or seem mean at all otherwise, but when Barbara Bush died they did a celebratory stream in response. I really don't know how common it was to dance on graves in public discourse in the past but it really bothers me that the people that do it will claim that other behavior or statements they disagree with is "gross."

Specifically about Queen Elizabeth I was in a discord server about a video game where when it happened someone immediately responded with "good, she was a racist." Though, in real life nobody does that they just never mention it at all or say something equivalent to "oh, that happened." In my real life I see this in reverse for right-leaning political people, they're more likely to be political in real life than they are online. Admittedly I have a smaller pool of right-leaning people to pull from so I can't really tell if they're more civil.

It still bugs the shit out of me that people are so absolutely uncivil and rude in public forums online and rarely does anyone do anything. But I've gotten into arguments with them before and the response was pure defense, there's nothing to be ashamed at all about for being uncivil, mean or rude to people they consider uncivil, mean or rude. Even if I agreed, I don't know how they can sustain it without a bottomless well of anger.

Specifically about Queen Elizabeth I was in a discord server about a video game where when it happened

Had to read this twice. At first I was baffled as to how you were alive in 1603, let alone chatting on Discord