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 think it's worse than that. I think that if you have 99 infographics that talk about the values of western culture, and 1 infographic that talks about the values of white culture, the one about white culture will go viral and the rest will be ignored.
If there was a Coalition of Activists, and the Coalition of Activists had decided that the best way to achieve their goals was to sow racial grievances, then it would in principle be possible to convince the leadership of the Coalition of Activists not to do that. If it's "the most divisive stuff goes viral" though, you would have to convince every single activist to refrain from creating divisive stuff. There would be no single person, or small group of people, you could reason into making it stop.
I think we live in the latter world, and "can then be used to justify more activism" is attributing far more agency than actually exists to the structures that cause this sort of stuff to enter the discourse.
In the case of this particular infographic, there was in fact a hierarchical organization involved: The Smithsonian. The infographics in question were presumably selected, vetted, and approved, presumably by something approaching a "Coalition of Activists", who at least hypothetically could be "reasoned with to stop". I think in this case, a lot of why it's going viral is the number of failsafes it evidently blows through without apparent effort, not merely the content itself.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link