site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 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.

I think this is assuming a lot more development on the part of the 'average male' in history than existed. 3 and 5 both absurd when for a lot of human history the idea of a single male living space/doing meaningful household beautification chores was very rare, same going for stuff like childrearing. I've got a baby and my wife's Southeast Asian older family members are absolutely amazed that I participate in stuff like doing nappies/feeding the baby/proactively doing infant tasks, and even current generations have a greater expectation of it being women/nannywork.

4 I'd agree with, but I think digital communication changes the vibe with being 'overly persevering' since every attempt at communication gets rendered onto the permanent record, and if you've originally met through a dating app you're probably not getting the incidental contact to allow for old-fashioned prolonged pursuit. Online dating makes things way more cut-and-dry. I'd also assume 'Understand planning social events' probably code for woes in getting actual dates out of Online Dating that aren't 'meet me at 3AM', but that's its own tangled metagame of both sides being so unimaginably flaky that trying to perform great romantic gestures gets squeezed out of you pretty quick. Also the literal matchmaking of these things means that the most attractive guys (and therefore the ones that get the most mindshare) are happy to throw out the most casual non-date invitations since they've got economics on their side.

I think the main dynamic shifts are that women's liberation/financial equalization has made it less of a matter of just rolling with the above manchild since it was the only path to leaving the family home and having some independence in life, and that the mainstreaming of Online Dating has absolutely torched a bunch of key social feedback loops.