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.
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
Someone else may give you the longer history, but very short version:
Most old-timers here originally posted on Scott Alexander's Slate Star Codex subreddit. For that reason, we're sometimes considered part of the LessWrong/rationalist community, though that's not really accurate because most people here don't consider themselves rationalists.
SSC used to have a "culture war" thread for talking about culture war topics. Eventually SA requested that this thread be removed from SSC because he didn't want to be associated with it. (This was before his doxxing by the NYT.) So some people created a new subreddit called themotte which was mostly to continue talking about culture war topics. (There were a few other spinoff communities, some for those who thought The Motte was too right-wing, and some for those who thought it wasn't right-wing enough.)
Over time, we kept getting warnings from reddit admins about our culture war topics (specifically, for not banning people/allowing "hate speech") and we concluded we'd be booted off of reddit sooner or later, as so many other subreddits had for posting unacceptable views, so we (mostly @ZorbaTHut) created this community as an independent site which would be a lot harder to "cancel." We have inevitably lost a lot of members after leaving reddit, and with the passage of time, but it's still lurching along.
As for "ideological stance," we don't have an explicit one. Very broadly, the majority of people here would probably identify as being "anti-woke," but this ranges from disaffected Blue tribers who still consider themselves liberals and vote Democrat to very conservative Red tribers who are MAGA Christian Republicans. (And of course non-Americans with less American political views.) Because we police tone but not content (i.e., you can express almost any view, as long as you do it politely), we have attracted a few people with fringe views (e.g., Holocaust denial, abolishing the age of consent, white nationalism, etc.) This has led many critics to conclude we are "fascists" or the like, but in reality, we have a tiny number of fascists and a much larger number of people willing to tolerate the presence of fascists as long as they can be civil.
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