site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

'Genius autistic MtF transitions' appears to be an exclusive phenomenon observed among residents of the digital landscape (Esports players, Programmers, Wikipedia editors).

My pet theory is that autistic geniuses blitz down to the bottom of rabbit holes faster than anyone else, and digital rabbit holes always end in Paraphilias. Furries, Wiafus and Trans MtFs are the exact same thing. It could have been something innocuous like trains, tanks or bonsai tree cutting. But on the internet, it always ends up being 'chicks with dicks'.

I'm a degenerate internet dweller, and I have navigated deep into some pretty glarly rabbit holes. Thankfully, my curiosities have been limited to geo-politics & cars. But even there, I've had to develop a strong filter to scroll-past futas, impossibly proportioned waifus, 500 year old loli vampires and furries. They are everywhere ! I can't imagine how bad it would be if I was into a hobby that WAS tangentially to any of those topics.

Now even 'normal' people have a fondness for paraphillias. S&M, Voyeurism, exhibitionism, (name you favorite porn category) are all paraphillias too. If the appeal of sexual-deviation has something to do with the taboo-ness of it, then a no-social-filter having autistic person is more likely to end up 'an expert' by getting to the bottom of it. A trans person might be into niche-and-odd sexual fetishes for the same reason that they install arch-linux and build compilers. Next, austic people are often obsessive (trans OCD seems to be pretty big area of discussion by itself), and you can see how they'd start obsessing over trans / furry / futa-dom.

To me, the final piece is community. Autistic people struggle to fit in or find their own. They find their people deep in sewers of the internet, and some of them are feeling pretty Trans. Now you have a group of people, who think like you do, feel like you do, and can explain the obsessive source of their condition in the exact words that make sense of tanother autstic person. That is a recipe for indoctrination. Now, I don't believe this is malicious or intentional. But, I do believe this phenomenon is an emergent property of 'internet sewers'.


I believe that some base population is trans.

I belive that autistic men are most pre-disposed to gender dysphoria.

I also believe that the social patterns of internet sewers lead to dysphoria, mlp-fandom & furries as a social phenomenon.


These people are the sole reason for the survival of the internet or the tech industry. I wish them a happy life. I hope they continue contributing 100x every FANG engineer.

But, I don't think we should normalize their condition among 'normies'. These people are kinda different, doing their different thing. I don't judge, but it is fine to keep it out of mainstream media.