site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

u/FPHthrowawayB argued at the old site that deep fakes are probably going to have pretty much this effect in the not so distant future anyway:

I do think in the very near future child porn will be naturally significantly reduced in scope if not largely eliminated by the general proliferation of deep fakes that are indistinguishable from actual CP and that society should not try to get in the way of this via regulating them (or requiring registration to view them, since that'll put them behind a gate that makes it clear they're fake, which eliminates their subversive effect of acting as counterfeit goods that drive the real goods out). Of course many if not most pedos will still prefer "the real thing", but if it's impossible to tell the real thing from the fake thing then what can you do? Are you gonna look through every clip of every single adult Chaturbate or MFC camgirl that's ever existed to find out if what you're looking at is an authentic webcam capture or a transformed version of an adult clip?

Basically, the "market" (which is actually, contrary to what most non-pedos believe, mostly a reputational and attentional market more than a financial one as most CP producers do it for kudos and prestige rather than to make cash) will be flooded by so many counterfeits that it will collapse. It will be so "bad" (or I guess good) that if most pedos knew it was coming I think many would try to stop it (as opposed to working toward it), treating it as an existential crisis for a significant sphere of pedo activity, but I don't think they can.