site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 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.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

One student told me the real car of choice amongst the Zetas is the Mercedes Benz G Wagon, which run upwards of $140,000. Driving those cars doesn’t necessarily mean you’re filthy rich, but it does mean you want to convey a certain level of wealth.

This makes me curious as to what the threshold for “filthy rich” is, in that, this isn’t an adult with a career buying a $140,000 car for themselves, but an adult buying one for a child of theirs with a still-developing frontal lobe.

Also the bit about the in-crowd rules reminds me of college. I’m from a northern state, and I was a pretty good high school football player, had some D2 interest, but went to a D1 school down south as I was’t delusional about my chances of being a professional athlete. The school had intramural flag football, and there was a separate Greek league for the frats to play each other and they took it rather seriously, held practices.

In the dorm league you have to play with guys from your dorm, so I joined that freshman year and did well. I got asked to play for an open division team my second semester that had three guys from the same frat who wanted to play more than once a week on their frat team. As before, I did quite well on that team, too.

I was also in a shitty rock band that I’d joined from answering a flyer.

Anyway, those three frat guys from my open league team, toward the end of that second semester, asked me if I wanted to come over “to the house” for some beers. The invite was for the same time as my shitty band’s practice, so I politely declined. Never got a social invite from them, again. Assuming I traversed one of those in-crowd rules.