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 -
Now that we're off reddit, does anyone else remember when Reddit banned all links to Gawker.com because they ran this story back in 2012:
https://www.gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web
I'm not sure if the site link ban is still in effect. But if you're unfamiliar with this story, basically Gawker doxxed a prominent reddit moderator named Violentacrez, who had a lot of connections with the administration. This guy moderated a number of disgusting subreddits, the most notable of which was /r/jailbait, where Reddit users posted images of underaged girls. Moderators like Violentacrez even went so far as to remove images of females who looked 18 years or older. Reddit kept this moderator around under the guise of "free speech" but they even went beyond this: The admins gave him a unique "pimp hat" badge to commemorate his work, as he did offer tons of free labor and offered to moderate the seedy underbelly of reddit for free. And, for reference, this wasn't back when reddit was a small, unknown site. Rather, Violentacrez ran his own Ask Me Anything around the same time that Obama did, in which the former bragged about the time he got his 19 year old step-daughter to have consensual sex with him.
The only reason reddit forced out Violentacrez was because of increased public scrutiny, where they started to having to answer for providing institutional support for a pederast and a groomer. Yet if you throw the word around today, only a decade later, you're the one who will undergo the ban hammer.
Oh Reddit, may the next decade be as kind to you as the past decade has been to Deviant Art.
Well, that certainly prompted a quick double-take to check the order of the referents!
More options
Context Copy link
I have a completely opposite view of the Reddit /r/jailbait saga. Places like /r/jailbait and /r/coontown did not exist because the Reddit admins at the time secretly liked it, but because they had a legitimate ideological commitment to only ban things that were explicitly illegal. Reddit used to have all sorts of maximally offensive subreddits at the time, like communities dedicated to images of rotting kid corpses. Are you going to say the admins liked those too?
In my opinion you are projecting today's culture war lines onto 2012 culture wars lines, which were not "LGBT+ vs social conservatives" but "Tech libertarians vs anyone who wanted to impose minimal standards online". In a sense, the tech libertarians really were right. Banning legal but universally reviled places like /r/jailbait and /r/coontown did start the slippery slope which continues to this day.
I didn't say the reddit admins secretly liked that content. Rather, they liked the members who moderated those seedy subreddits. I would also disagree with your portrayal of my drawing of the cultural lines. Regardless of the more tech libertarian origins versus the more outright social liberal position today, Reddit has always been anti-social conservatives, specifically Evangelicals. R/atheism used to be one of the default subreddits and the thrust of its content was not atheists discussing atheism intellectually but rather them deriding Evangelicals as bigoted idiots. This theme continues today- just yesterday, the top post I saw on reddit was some secret gay conservative Christian getting outed.
I also don't agree banning jailbait led to a slippery slope. You can have site rules that are required to participate, without micromanaging the opinion of users on your site. So, you can ban images that abuse the bodies of children as a site rule. The problem is when these rules are applied inconsistently or in a biased manner. For instance, to Reddit, it's fine to saying completely bigoted things against Christians about how dumb they are because of a religious position they hold, but woe unto thee if you say anything slightly antagonistic about someone who is transgender. It's fine to make fun of people whose conscience has been seared towards a certain religious identify but not those compelled to a certain gender identity. And also, it's even fine to make fun of certain gender identities (see /r/femaledatingstrategy)! So, discrimination is bad except when it's not per reddit.
For me, the dye was cast when reddit banned the incels. There, one deranged individual on the subreddit, who was planning violence, was invoked as the reason to ban the whole subreddit, even though the subreddit had rules against that kind of behavior and would have banned that member for that behavior. We all know the reason Reddit banned it was because it was a zoo for them and was getting bad publicity. The subreddit /r/femaledatingstrategy is just as sexist and disgusting, but no bans for it.
More options
Context Copy link
Good point. Now, unless there are any objections, since we're finally off Reddit, I'll started on this site's Jailbait thread later today....
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Hot take: doxing is still bad actually.
I mean, I think banning all links is going too far, but if you think they're a danger to others, call the police - and if not, I think people should stay out of others' personal life unless explicitly invited.
More options
Context Copy link
Is there a longer story here I'm unaware of? I remember it used to be a popular site, but it's still around even if its luster has faded over time (plenty of other sites have seen this as well). Was there a particular moment or sequence of Tumblr-style self-immolation that I missed?
Not particularly. I cited it just because it used to be a top 50 site worldwide (or quite high at least) and now it is quite obscure.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I actually probably first started paying attention to Reddit due to this saga being covered in the Something Awful forums, with goons gunning hard for Violentacrez's removal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link