site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

That political solution will not occur unless there is already a cultural solution in place. In order to instantiate an effective regulatory body for social media, you need people to lobby for it; in order to get people to lobby for it, you need cultural organizations that create awareness. Next, you need to generate enough billions of dollars that your lobbying is greater than Meta et al. Why shouldn’t Meta, with a profit of $40b, spend all of that profit and more on lobbying against your solution? They will then selectively show you influencers who are against regulation on all your social media feeds.

Luckily there’s another way to regulate social media. Establish a tight-knit culture and create your own social media. Like how churches have always created their own media and social organizations against secular culture. It doesn’t have to be advanced. It would take a weekend to make an early MySpace clone. Now you have your own social media. Defectors who attempt to continue using mainstream social media are excommunicated and shunned.

This “out there” solution of crafting microcultures is the only way forward as capitalism becomes more and more intent on degrading human life quality. We will now always have gambling and loot crate mechanics because gambling companies are now able to lobby. We will always have marijuana because marijuana dispensaries can lobby. It is just going to get worse and worse. Nothing will be the same. You won’t be able to beat them in a lobby-off, but you will be able to beat them by banning them from your community, because at the end of the day there will always be reasonable people who listen to other reasonable people and are persuaded by reasonable arguments — and when these people form a community with rules then they will have a huge advantage over Consumer-Americans.