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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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I've noticed a trend lately where TLC's on the culture war roundup are increasingly dominated by Indian issues and things that only Indians would be concerned about, and it’s becoming hard to ignore. I don't believe it's malevolent for Indian users to bring up topics relevant to their country, however there’s a real risk that the entire site starts to tilt toward Indian concerns, removing what was once sacred about this place. (Sheer volume notwithstanding)

Indians were sent into The Motte by the Cathedral in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy.

I hate to say it, because I do sympathize with and appreciate our Indian brothers, but it is something we probably need to guard against. It has destroyed other communities.

This only presages what's gonna happen to the whole of the internet in the next decade and a half. Both India and China on their own have more people than the entire western world combined. Now China has language barriers but for India and associated countries the English speaking internet is fair game.

If anything this world is a more fair one than the one of the 2010s where the internet was dominated by the concerns of average residents of WEIRD countries which make up an even smaller percentage of humanity (at least before 2010ish you could reasonably say the Internet was where the Western elite congregated and they deserve a bigger megaphone by dint of their eliteness).

Alright, psychology and sociology 201 it is.

People get attached to things they like, especially if they've liked those things for a while and those things have given off indications of catering to them. They don't like it when those things drift away from them and start catering to others in preference to them. This is the emotion of jealousy (in the proper, original sense, not the pop-culture synonym for envy it's become) - what you have, you hold on to, and you don't want someone else to take it from you.

And, to be frank, there's some merit to this kind of jealousy. The ideal Internet is one where different subcultures can all have their own spaces, but those different subcultures are of vastly-different sizes. That means that with a naïve policy of "let everyone in and always cater to whoever's the biggest chunk of the userbase", niche subcultures cannot have an enduring space - they'll be locked in a cycle of "start forum just for them" -> "forum grows" -> "despite self-selection, most of the new members are from more popular subcultures due to order-of-magnitude size difference" -> "forum's membership statistics slowly drift" -> "forum becomes genericised" -> "original userbase becomes disillusioned and secedes" -> "start forum just for them". It is not unreasonable to want a permanent internet-home, and that necessitates breaking the cycle somewhere.

"Growth" of that sort is growth of the site but not expansion of the community - it's colonisation of the site by a different and larger community. Denigrating the original community for failing to welcome their own marginalisation is effectively asserting that they have no right to a community at all.

(Disclosure: This is a copypaste of two posts I made on Questionable Questing about the site SpaceBattles transitioning from a hard-SF-sperging forum to an anime-fanfiction forum, with some specifics stripped out. All my words, though. Personally not confident that "Indians on theMotte" risks turning into an instance of that pattern, for reasons others have noted.)

My response is that western normies are already colonizers who savaged the original founding population of the internet which was tech nerd elites. The Eternal September happened in 1993! The true founding community of the internet is long dead and control being wrested from low tier Westerners towards low tier non-Westerners will just be fair comeuppance for them destroying the thinking man's internet and reducing things to the lowest common denominator.

I am not dead. I think.

Quora went down this way where all the productive people left once it became a mainstay for 90 iq south asians. @prungus had a decent point here with regards to the possibility of the discussion becoming too India-centric, themotte has Indians in the double digits so that is extremely unlikely to happen but it is a very real concern. There is no reactionary or rationalist sphere in India so this place will be fine lol. Seriously, you cannot compare the likes of Jonathan Bowden to anyone here in the past 100 years. I perosnally would not wish the forum to be run over by Indians either, I have been critical of mass migration and visa scams since the start.

This only presages what's gonna happen to the whole of the internet in the next decade and a half. Both India and China on their own have more people than the entire western world combined. Now China has language barriers but for India and associated countries the English speaking internet is fair game.

You overestimate a few things. Ethnic conflicts in India are scrutinized much much more than in the west and there are not many smart people or any texts, ideologies that would lead to productive discussions on most topics.

(at least before 2010ish you could reasonably say the Internet was where the Western elite congregated and they deserve a bigger megaphone by dint of their eliteness).

Quora, IG, and twitter to an extent became worse ever since they eternal septembered by people from the third world, and not the good kind. The internet being monopolised by 5 firms leads to people trying their best to appeal to untapped markets. Moldbug on his appearance on Justin Murphys podcast said that he could not have written his stuff this decade as the blog is dead. There were independent well run forums 15-20 years ago, not anymore.

Completely fair. I have posted about India thrice, twice if you talk about simply local events here. Indiaposting does get tiring.

My aim is mostly to point out some other worldly acts of social justice combined with corruption. I used to find headlines, absurd ones about courts in England letting go of obvious criminals due to these reasons, this is kind of like that.

Divroce rape is a very common thing, I learnt about it first from MRAs in the anglosphere. Never quite expected any news from my nation be talked about people beyond just the locals.

I wouldn't mind hearing more about gender dynamics in India, particularly as it relates to your personal experiences if you have anything more to share. It's admittedly pretty amusing to scroll through the twitter of 6FeetChadAryan and see beta vs. chad dynamics, gynocracy and boomers mentioned in between references to Hindu mythology like this. I'm curious about the references to Dowry Act. Are dowries still common, even in urban areas among upwardly mobile/educated people like the engineer in question?

Dowries are highly variable in commonality across India these days, and at least de jure illegal.

It's quite common to see them not even raised, but just as often, it's things like the family of the bride buying something along the lines of an apartment or a car for the new couple, or offering "gifts".

I wouldn't mind hearing more about gender dynamics in India

I'll write something original soon then lol, they are fucked here

I'm curious about the references to Dowry Act. Are dowries still common, even in urban areas among upwardly mobile/educated people like the engineer in question?

Very, earlier, you didn't have banks so a father would send his daughter off to get married and the division of property was only done among male heirs, dowry was money that was sent to help the bride and the groom out. Post 1947, traditional society broke down, dowry became more inflated so did wedding expenditure as people used them both to signal.

Nowadays it's still a thing, parents of the bride send money out of their own goodwill in a lot of cases but at the same time most cases of it are well and truly evil. Most people here aren't nice, they extort the bride so the laws are 100 percent in the right theoretically. It's that the low trust, scarcity based society leads to people literally scamming others.

In most urban upper middle class or higher cases, the dowry is voluntary and not a super significant amount of the girls parents assets. It's a way to signal status and many communities don't practice it. Otoh, urban middle class uses these laws the most for extortion.

It's admittedly pretty amusing to scroll through the twitter of 6FeetChadAryan and see beta vs. chad dynamics, gynocracy and boomers mentioned in between references to Hindu mythology like this

Lol, Hindu twitter is not the smartest, it's quite stale but it's super funny at times. I used to be a hallowed anon poster until I quit in 2021 out of frustration.

I don’t think I’ve noticed such. Maybe a relative increase due to the lull in American presidential politics? But no absolute flood.

I was gonna say, I think it's literally all because of the very OP of this TLC. Vanillasky posts a lot about India.

As a user: Culture War is not unique to America. We welcome contributions from other countries, and have had a number of long-running contributions from England, Ireland, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, the Nordic countries, etc. I see no reason why Indian concerns should not be welcome here, nor any benefit to concerns about rate or volume of contributions by nation of origin generally.

The OP in particular seems directly relevant to both sides of the general debate over Feminism as an ideology. It seems obvious to me that the situation they're describing arrived through attempts to solve valid, legible problems identified by feminism, and is a demonstration of how Feminist solutions aren't sufficient in and of themselves.

Specifically, my understanding is that second/third world laws written by westerners to ‘protect women’ are often actual causes for serious complaint by men in countries like India and Mexico, where in the U.S. and Western Europe divorce rape mostly isn’t a thing and most other examples are things where someone has to get the short end of the stick.

As a user: Culture War is not unique to America. We welcome contributions from other countries, and have had a number of long-running contributions from England, Ireland, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, the Nordic countries, etc. I see no reason why Indian concerns should not be welcome here, nor any benefit to concerns about rate or volume of contributions by nation of origin generally.

To steelman: There's an argument, and a pretty solid one, that SJ is mostly the same across US/England/Ireland/Canada/Australia/NZ/France/Germany/Scandinavia (as a product of its online emergence) - there's a lot of variation in the strength and some variation in the type of movements opposing SJ, but the issues are mostly the same. My understanding is that while there is some cross-pollination, India's culture wars are substantially different.

India's culture wars are substantially different.

They aren't that different since humans share quite a bit and India was under British rule for a while whilst also having had a native morality not far off from the north west, closer to scandis than to ancient Greeks.

I mostly post non Indian stuff since India simply adopts and reacts to whatever happens in the west but there are some things where it's ahead, for instance one of the worst run not bioleninism infested state is named Bihar where transsexuals can get government to pay for gender reassignment surgery. NHS doing so or even the US having massive subsidies for this is an outcome I'd bet on if it isn't already there.

Thanks. I do not want themotte to become an extension of Indian culture war or have a signficant presence either. I post some links mostly to show the downstream effects of the western world and its values. Divorce Rape is a very common threat that was introduced here by liberal secular influences.

I see no reason why Indian concerns should not be welcome here, nor any benefit to concerns about rate or volume of contributions by nation of origin generally.

Appreciate the sentiment. I think op was slightly worried since other places in the past got run over and not by the good kind of south asians. Median mottizen is a west dweller so an inkling towards matters closer to thier turf is understandable though I am fairly confident that this wont turn into indiachan.

The OP in particular seems directly relevant to both sides of the general debate over Feminism as an ideology. It seems obvious to me that the situation they're describing arrived through attempts to solve valid, legible problems identified by feminism, and is a demonstration of how Feminist solutions aren't sufficient in and of themselves.

Precisely. Most feminists motte and bailey around this, so I kinda saw this story as a universal thing. India explains the pitfalls of bioleninism better than the west, in ways that can also demonstrate the destructive potential of having rabid feminist laws and having a state interfering with your domestic matters. Spandrell in his essay on the post mortem of neo reaction noted that the allure of a "strong government" is frightening as of today with covid being a good demonstration of it. No matter where you live, governments will try to meddle with your life more and more, bureaucratic setups need to find more problems to justify their existence and increase their scope of power.

Power is like money, if you dont then someone else will grab it. It was quite common to see ludicrous statements and judgements from english courts on twitter where they would let some south asian rapist walk without proper punishment or go light on women. Its effects are literally seen in the opposite ends of the world thanks to globalisation and tech growth.

For what it's worth I appreciate that you post stories about India (and similarly I appreciate that @Folamh3 posts about Ireland). This site tends towards American events but that isn't inherent to its mission and I'm glad we get these perspectives on other parts of the world. It's true that sometimes I will scroll past posts about other countries because they aren't interesting to me, but the same is true just as often of the posts about America too.