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 -
To be totally honest from time to time I go "Hmm maybe a tiny bit of TV could actually be useful", because the medium does have some actual advantages, but I would say my preference goes deeper than just politics -- I don't even like YouTube videos and will do almost anything possible to get tutorials/answers/information from written form instead. I do kind of wonder how alone I am in this, because a lot of people I speak to, and especially my age or slightly younger, vastly prefer YouTube. But I was raised in a house where the TV was rarely on (live programming), and certainly not tuned to the news. Also, not on TikTok either, so there's that. I imagine Scott is much the same.
YouTube is uniquely bad and transmitting information via video through what they incentivize and how they do it. A sub 2 minute video that gets directly to the point of its subject matter, for instance a how-to video on completing some task (car repair, video game level, homework question), while obviously superior at its intended function is less likely to appear in search results and offers next to nothing to its creator. What you tube actually incentivizes are 10 minute+ videos, with ads, that keep people watching. Effectively communicating information is, at best, a happy accident. This also occurs in text based communication as well, were a single sentence answer to a question (a personal example from recently: an excel formula I'd forgotten), will be stretched to 7+ paragraphs of useless words with at least 3 ads, one of which is a video that auto-plays, with the actual answer to the question (a single sentence often less that 10 words long) being buried in the 2nd to last paragraph. At least with text you can ctrl+F.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link