site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Thoughts:

-- It's weird that they make St. Clair out to a/the victim in all this. I have approximately zero sympathy for her in all this. What's with all these conservative influencers being such weird sluts once you wave a few million in front of them? "We already know you're a whore, we're just haggling about the price."

-- There's a recent local crime story that I might or might not write a bigger piece about, but in a nutshell a local teenager ran away from home, her stepdad turned a little nutty harassing people, rumors swirled about allegations of abuse within the family, they found her and she was trying to hustle a living as some kind of e-girl selling pics. In local gossip, someone said something like "Oh, well I guess it turns out the stepdad wasn't abusive, she was just a crazy whore." And I was flabbergasted, "Dude, how do you think fourteen year olds turn into weird whores? It's normally because of abuse in the home..." P(B:A) is pretty strong here. Anyway, I feel the same way about Musk's trans-existence feud with his erstwhile daughter. The Jeff Younger story was illustrative to me: in the divorce proceedings it came out that Younger had done things like pretend to be a PhD uni professor during the dating process and tried to do some kind of weird pseudo boot camp shit whenever he got visitation with his sons. There's a point at which I feel like I run into all these conservative dads who become big culture war talking points saying their sons/daughters were stolen from them, and there's part of me that asks, my brother in Christ, who raised your kids? The sole trans kid I personally grew up with, and know at a family level, had extremely conservative parents.

-- Elon's harem-eunuch complains about problems they've had with "crazy women." Well, yeah, you're gonna get nothing but crazy women when you offer to father a kid on them, in exchange for a bunch of money but no commitment.

-- The reason lots of billionaires don't do this is because they don't want a bunch of heirs. Probably because they actually have some affection for their wives and/or children. Rupert Murdoch has only six or seven kids, and it's a fucking mess out there. Elon doesn't have those kinds of human feelings to worry about, I guess.

Oddly, CBS Viacom had an almost parallel series of succession crises when Sumner Redstone stepped down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumner_Redstone?wprov=sfti1#

Just one of those things about media billionaires I guess. All the more reason to imagine how it goes with 20 or more children who have mostly been formally or informally abandoned by their trillionaire father.

What's with all these conservative influencers being such weird sluts once you wave a few million in front of them?

It's not at all "slutting out" if he impregante you via IVF. That is well beyond any reasonable meaning of the word.

You're right, it's much creepier and weirder, and even less related to any kind of humanity or tradition.

I’m all about criticizing it in accurate terms :)

What's with all these conservative influencers being such weird sluts once you wave a few million in front of them? "We already know you're a whore, we're just haggling about the price."

Anybody tries that on you, tell them "Yes, but I'm not a CHEAP whore, shitbag" (or pick your own insult). Quantity has a quality all its own.