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 -
It's an instance of the overly feminized rhetoric that is taking over the distributed sense-making apparatus of the West (And some other places).
Maximizing "Empathy" is just an aspirational value among the set of many values, nothing gives it authority over good judgment, truth for its own sake, practicality, etc.
Imagine you have a set of problems that maps to a set of solutions, which has corresponding elements in a set of values and male/female coding. If all your proposed solutions are from a certain cluster and does not make use of the mapping, you know some serious bullshit is afoot. And looking at the pattern of the LACK of mapping can suggest which direction things went wrong in. In simple words, if your solution to all problems is the maximization of a female-coded value, then you are being ruled by the Tyranical Mother.
Ever wondered why so few female libertarians? Or why was fun made illegal during the 2019-sars-coronavirus-2 pandemic?
And you don't need to look far and wide for the pernicious everpresent penetration of feminized rhetoric.
Ask Reddit what should a programmer know. A majority of the answers are "people skills", "empathy", and other soft skill horseshit. Are those things really more important than design patterns and version control? Or did we just get psyop'ed into thinking that being a people pleaser is the end-all-be-all to making the world go round?
This is a good post. Thank you. We need to meme the phrase "toxic femininity" as an equal counterpart to toxic masculinity. The traits that "toxic masculinity" exists to criticize do exist, though I'd quibble with the implicit claim that they are prevalent in our culture. Toxic femininity, though..
More options
Context Copy link
This could actually be unintentionally subversive and black-pilled advice in a way. That, for hiring and/or career advancement, it's better to be a people pleaser (and of the right demographics) than be competent.
Product management is much different than programming—but see for example, the TikTok video of that young female Meta product manager whose day-to-day chiefly involved "[trying] to look cute everyday," literally making coffee ☕, and "me being cuuuutte" (cue brief clip of her dancing on the office rooftop) while vocal frying left and right.
She doubled down on LinkedIn with: "I love romanticizing the daily grind that is my life, being a woman in tech, and being a recent new grad trying to figure everything out. Content creators like myself have the utmost power to influence how young people view corporate life, and working in these popular industries" before rage-quitting her social media damage control when it became too apparent the mockery was defeating the simpery.
Yes, yes—as she has shown, such a grind being a #WomanInTech.
There's a bunch of these sorts of videos going around, but I actually don't think they mean as much as the people highlighting them want them to mean. They all intentionally edit out all mention of the actual work they've done in favor of coffee, lunch, workouts, etc. But honestly, we all do most of that stuff, if maybe not quite as glamorously. We have no idea how hard she's actually working or to what extent she's actually accomplishing useful things.
Aren't they literally just advertisements for work? They get hateclicks and boosts from the "look at these millennial bitches doing NOTHING and getting paid!" crowd, which is a plus, but the true constituency is just getting more and more applications for work to choose from - after all, a lot of people would consider light work for good pay and benefits a great deal, subconsciously or consciously. And the idea that there's a workplace full of cute girls doing girl stuff and having plenty of time to chat is going to be attractive to a lot of men, too, obviously.
Her defense of the video showing her doing nothing yet getting paid, isn't consistent with this hypothesis: Were she merely an actress, making a video which in which true nature of being employed by Blizzard is distorted, she would have said so and be free of any condemation (few would call a person lazy, just because they played a lazy person), but in her defense she never posited she made the video at the behest of anyone but herself.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
People SKILLS are indeed what makes the world go round. Or at least what get people ahead. But not being a "people pleaser". Being good at technical skills makes you a good field slave, being good at people pleasing makes you a good house slave. The people skill that matters is getting people to follow you. That one is not feminine-coded.
This debate is basically half linguistic where 'feminine' subtly alters through a variety of different meanings whilst without making clear which is meant, best shown by the simple 'feminine = bad'. Is success naturally masculine? What about obstinacy? in the face of evident failure?
Feminine =//= Female. This is the core confusion. When Lieutenant Napoleon kowtows to his superiors it is 'feminine' in the sense that he's not being a brash dictator who attempts to trample over everyone and 'masculine' in the sense that this is the optimum social strategy to achieve his ends. IMO a Platonically 'masculine' man would be absolutely self-assured in all his acts, however wrong, and never go back on anything. This is not a recipe for success of any sort, political, military or anything else.
More options
Context Copy link
If you are founder. If you are middle manager the ability is to suck up. Richard Marchinco's corporate style leadership is dead.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link