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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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The really funny part is banning people for describing the exact perspective of this user in terms he would agree with himself, re.

It is the common good for everyone that social conservatism, much like institutional Civil War era slavery, is no longer tolerated by civilized societies, and is socially ostracized. Such as, for example, Turning Point. I do not believe that organization has anything useful to say, and so I find the motivations for why someone would want to listen to useless things dubious, unless they found it useful.
progressivism cannot exist alongside conservatism, because all of the progress done by the former will always be challenged by the latter.
the value of a forum like this is that it allows progressives, at least such as myself, to observe a rich diversity of right-winged thinking to identify the more insidious and subtle dogwhistles indicating the traits of a conservative, so one may steer clear of them in IRL interactions.

There needs to be some discussion about this. I'd be happy with a rule requiring all claims of "this is what leftists believe" to be backed up by quotes. But there needs to be some way to say "look, they openly say they have no intention of communicating with you, let alone coexisting with you" without breaking the rules, especially when literally everyone involved on all sides agrees it's true.

I’m at the laundromat for context as to why I haven’t responded to other comments yet, since my main mode of using this site is lurking on my phone in-between things. Anyway, just to clarify, I am verily not a man. I’m just a woman.

Additionally, I try to be clear about putting subjective opinions as “I think” or “I believe” in the spirit of debate. Yes, I still believe not only subjectively but objectively social conservatism should be rejected by civilized society. But since I don’t have nor want to find the evidence suitable for making such a claim that “it’s not just my opinion, objectively social conservatism is social cancer and everyone here who believes it has drunk the Koolaid” here, and therefore can’t, I try to keep everything within the realm of what I personally think. It is just my opinion.

That is to say, a long winded way of saying I can’t represent all of leftism, anymore than I think you represent all of, uh, I dunno. Everything else? I don’t know you sincerely. I’ve lurked on here for years since reddit times and I only remember Walterodim because of the cheeky Witcher reference and Amadan because of the big red color on their name.

If you want to have a good faith discussion of this, I will be happy to discuss it with you. I just have low expectations because all previous attempts have resulted in you accusing us of running cover for leftists, being hypocrites, etc.

The key point you are missing is that what one person says is not representative of an entire group, and that's why we have an entire paragraph in the rules about being specific about who you're talking about:

Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible. General groups include things like gun rights activists, pro-choice groups, and environmentalists. Specific groups include things like The NRA, Planned Parenthood, and the Sierra Club. Posting about general groups is often not falsifiable, and can lead to straw man arguments and non-representative samples.

So when you say "look, they openly say they have no intention of communicating with you, let alone coexisting with you" - who is they? Because it's certainly not "leftists." It is definitely some leftists. Every bad thing you have ever said about leftists - everything you've ever been modded for for saying about leftists - if you said "There exist leftists who say and think this," I would agree with you. And if you said "That person who's posting is openly saying he has no intention of communicating with us," you would not be modded for that.

But when you take that person as an example and say "He's a leftist, therefore he proves that leftists are blahblahblah..." I mean, do you even see the distinction I am making here, or am I talking to air? You think we're ignoring the behavior of individual bad actors, when those bad actors usually get modded. But because those bad actors exist, you want us to treat every leftist as being the same, and then get mad that we don't ban leftists on sight.

And if someone comes rolling in with "Right-wingers are a bunch of racist, sexist, anti-semitic homophobes" - well, some people in this forum wear all those labels proudly! And yet it is clearly not true of all rightists, such generalizations are clearly intended to be derogatory, and we would mod someone who said that. And you'd be angry at us if we didn't mod someone for saying that.

I don't know why it is so hard for you to distinguish between "What this jerk says" and "This jerk is speaking for everyone who votes like him and thus they can all be treated as interchangeable."

accusing us of running cover for leftists,

https://www.themotte.org/post/1229/quality-contributions-report-for-october-2024/267191?context=8#context

Literally a quote from naraburns two months ago saying you guys do affirmative action moderation for leftists already. If you know me as well as you claim, you know nothing offends me more than "it's not happening and it's a good thing it is, you're crazy for noticing" tactics.
That's the level of good faith I expect from discussions about moderation here, which I suppose means I'm breaking my rule of not engaging with manipulation attempts

Just to add to @Amadan's take on this, it's hard for me to take you very seriously in a discussion about "good faith" when you link to that comment I made, without also referencing my direct reply to you in that thread where I elaborated:

...I have vague memories of this being something the mod team was maybe disunified about for a while (maybe still is). It's also possible I'm giving the wrong impression with the phrase "affirmative action." It's possible different moderators have had, and expressed, different ideas of what amounts to "affirmative action" in various cases. Zorba has always made it our top priority to make this a

place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases

which necessarily involves having people who don't all share the same biases. So we've always tried to moderate in ways that would encourage the development of such a community.

On the other hand, the mod team is accused somewhat regularly of going too easy/too hard on red tribe/blue tribe posts, and we have often cited this fact as evidence that moderation is not actually especially biased in one direction or the other; everyone always feels like their ox is the one being gored. Thumbing the scales a bit in favor of including heterodox views does not rise to the level of nuking the rules, any more than QCs do. And I don't think we've ever thumbed the scales for tribal reasons (either pro or con)--just for specific users in specific cases, where it was, say, understandable that someone might get a little hot under the collar.

So I would suggest that the way to parse all of this is that moderation is a qualitative and adaptive process in a reputation economy. We do go easier on new users, generally. We go easier on people who make QCs or otherwise contribute to the health of the community (e.g. by expressing heterodox views), for the most part. We go harder on people who habitually make bad posts, or express unwillingness to abide by the rules. We moderate tone rather than content. What that amounts to, in the end, is... what we have here. If you're getting moderated occasionally, it's probably nothing to worry much about. If you're getting moderated a lot, it's definitely because you're breaking the rules and showing no inclination to even try doing better.

(Emphasis added.) Your refusal to engage in open, honest, charitable discussion of these nuances is a far, far cry from us engaging in "manipulation attempts." When you ask a question and get an answer, then pop up months later writing as though you never read or understood that answer, like... I don't know what more I can possibly say to you about it.

I mean, your answer was "it depends on what you mean," and you confirmed that you do go out of your way to give extra leeway to "heterodox" posters who get "hot under the collar," which obviously seems to include posters like "antifa" and the kind of rude behavior that results from hot-under-the-collarness.

I don't think you're manipulative, and don't have a problem extending mod charity to real minority posters rather than ones that show up to troll and bait; notice it wasn't me complaining about your moderation in that thread--it was 4bpp, and I only jumped in to ask that question because other mods had denied it before.

Most of that is that you moderate without the snarky comments amadan uses to bait out behavior he can ban people for

No one gave antifa extra leeway for being a leftist. I figured out who he was almost immediately, nonetheless extended a little benefit of the doubt (as I do to most sockpuppets) and told him to chill the fuck out. He of course did not, and barely lasted a day.

Most of that is that you moderate without the snarky comments amadan uses to bait out behavior he can ban people for

Oh, we're back to this false, disproven accusation again, are we?

In this latest round of you accusing mods of bad faith and manipulation, multiple mods have patiently explained your errors. And do you admit your error? No. You double down on the accusations.

Even if by "mods" you mean only me, I have repeatedly responded to your accusations by inviting you to post a link. You either whistle and exit, stage left, or you post a link that doesn't show what you say it does, and when this is explained to you, you whistle and exit, stage left.

One might say, this is manipulative and gaslighting behavior.

Literally a quote from naraburns two months ago saying you guys do affirmative action moderation for leftists already. If you know me as well as you claim, you know nothing offends me more than "it's not happening and it's a good thing it is, you're crazy for noticing" tactics.

I think @naraburns and I disagree on this issue, but it depends on what you mean by "affirmative action moderation for leftists." Personally, I have never (consciously) modded leftists differently than rightists. The thought has never crossed my mind "This person is a leftie, therefore I should go easier on him." The closest I might come to agreeing with this take is that leftists are observably downvoted and reported en masse, and so when I see someone is being dogpiled and everything he posts gets reported for left-leaning wrongthink, I am more likely to disregard all but the most egregious reports.

(It may surprise you to learn that this applies to some of our fringe right-posters too, such as @SecureSignals, who is reported constantly but only modded on a tiny fraction of the reports he draws.)

That's the level of good faith I expect from discussions about moderation here, which I suppose means I'm breaking my rule of not engaging with manipulation attempts

Well, you are very close to doing what you were warned not to do very recently, which is attacking the mods and accusing them of bad faith.You could have posted the above link and asked me "Don't you think this counts as running cover for leftists?" And I would have answered you reasonably and in good faith (as I did above). Instead you jumped straight to "You're a liar, hah caught you, you manipulator!" So now you got an answer, but you have also annoyed me and eroded the tiny sliver of charity I have left to extend to you.