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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm just going to refer back to what I wrote when this came up a few years ago, since nothing has really emerged that had changed my views on the subject (tl;dr Correia and Torgersen mostly precipitated the situation they claimed to be fighting because they were upset pulp wasn't winning awards, pre-2015 Hugo winners were totally fine):
Part 1
Part 2
If we are going to assign blame to anyone on the puppy side, I think the problem was Vox Day/Theodore Beale rather than Correia and Torgersen.
Beale is a prime example of why the Red Tribe doesn't produce good cultural products. He first came to my attention for his theology blogging - heresies as interesting as his views on the equal divinity of the Holy Spirit are rare nowadays. The Selenoth books are overly wordy and ultimately I couldn't read them, but they were not written by an idiot. And he has other mid-tier accomplishments in multiple fields (music, video-game development, hardware design etc.) I am happy to call him a genius. But in order to remain relevant, he gradually shifted his blogging output from serious theology and literary criticism to standard-issue midwit Confederate apologia and ultimately to antivax and conspiracy theories. Whatever incentives he was responding to were to be less interesting and less intelligent. Last time I bothered to look into what he was doing, his main project was putting out superhero comics with a crass political message in every panel, which is as unappealing to a normie reader as the left-wing equivalent.
The only one of the Puppies who I found plausibly award-worthy was John C Wright. Correia writes technically competent schlock which plays the same role for his male readership that romance novels do for their female readership. It is valuable work and harder than it looks, and he fully deserves the money he made, but that kind of book has never been supposed to win awards.
How is this different from transgender blm lockdown posturing taking over previously cogent blogs?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link