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 -
That sounds like good advice until you realize that practically anything could be considered incriminating given the right context. Take something as anodyne as a team of engineers exchanging emails about a product design. Sounds pretty benign, and 99% of the time it is, except when someone sues the company claiming the design was defective all those emails may give the plaintiff's expert all the fuel he needs to demonstrate that the team lead was incompetent and that the product's fatal flaw was a result of incorrect assumptions mad during the design process. Even in this case, all you really had was a bunch of TV journalists commenting to each other about stories that were run on their network, and if you're going to prohibit any such communications in any written form whatsoever (or have incredibly short document retention policies) it's probably going to hurt your business more than it will protect you from lawsuits. The reason so many companies use email and text messaging is because it's simply more efficient than running a 1970s-style office. If Fox wanted bang for their buck they could have had their legal team prepare a presentation about libel and how to avoid it, gotten buy-in from management, and put some kind of monitoring system in place to flag problematic content before it causes too much of a problem. Something along the lines of "If you're sending emails to your colleagues about how much of a crackpot someone is, you may want to take a close look at whether the bullshit she's spewing on your program could be construed as libel and give us a heads-up".
More options
Context Copy link