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 -
Even better move would be do it all before you acquire Twitter, to have ready new management and new staff from day one.
Instead, it looks that Elon learned from Bush's success in Iraq.
1/Take over
2/Fire all management and personnel
3/???
4/Profit!
Elon's actions will lead directly to profits in a way that is easy to understand.
Twitter was bleeding money, losing $1.1 billion in 2020 alone.
They had a $13M meals program that was feeding less than 10% of the staff because no one showed up to HQ. It was costing hundreds of dollars per meal, with more people preparing food than eating it. It's laughably stupid.
My sense is Twitter was hyper-bloated, with ~10x more employees than they needed, so 90% layoffs seem about right. It's a microblogging website that grew to have a bunch of completely superfluous positions with people who literally contributed nothing.
Right-sizing the staff, cutting needless expenses, adding a revenue stream with a re-imagined Twitter Blue, reducing trolls/bots—these are all common sense. The advertisers will come back, as the only metric that matters is user engagement, and it's at an all time high & will continue to grow through 2024 with what will be the most "entertaining" election in U.S. history.
Elon will turn Twitter into the profitable Center of the Internet, and a certain tribe will be pretending the sky is falling the whole time.
#RIPTwitter & #Twitterisdown was trending during the highest engagement period in Twitter's existence. It's the fakest news that's ever been.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link