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 wish we'd gotten some formal acknowledgement from the "if you're not zero-covid you want grandma to die" people that the "sensible position that all sensible people agree on" has reversed.
Because I still see them bring it up when they want to bash anti-lockdown people, blaming their noncompliance for COVID not being eradicated.
But the zerocovidists I mentioned are already fringe, a challenger faction, outside of the normie consensus - now more than ever, of course, but even during the period when there were active COVID measures they tended to be the ones forming organizations like iSage etc, always suspicious that the government is going halfway with measures and planning to drop them for "herd immunity" at any phase. In Finland the local ones have at this point moved on to openly conspiracy-theory speculation on how the Finnish government's policy of only offering the second booster to select groups (over-60s and/or underlying complications, basically) just might be a part of some secretive vaccine study with Finns as a test group for not vaccinating the great majority (with a second booster.)
In this sense, yes, they usually do acknowledge that the "sensible position that all sensible people agree on" has reversed, and state so openly - in other words, that the normie consensus where they don't place themselves has dropped even the insufficient measures enacted and is now barging head-first into permanent Covid apocalypse with mounting amounts of long covid etc.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link