site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

deleted

Pretty sure he's referring to the deep-blue nature of the populations in these fields, and the concomitant tendency to police their communities for any hint of crypto-Red tendency or sympathy. There's a good chance that the further down this road we get, the more untenable it's going to become for non-true-believers to survive in the tech industry.

Just as there's anti-black racism in the 'deeply subliminal and structural problems' sense and then there's anti-black racism in the 'will explicitly refuse to work with black people' sense, there's a difference between 'does exactly what's required to keep EEOC off them' and 'anti-racist layoffs'.

I got a ping today about a really inside-story drama from the modded Minecraft world, but one of the footnotes (archive) had Forge leadership getting pressured to leave a project by her employer over the Twitter Likes of an entirely different person on the project, and getting that person to step down from managing the project was the only way her employer would allow her to continue contributing. (archive link here).

This is insane cult behavior that makes maoist struggle sessions look measured and sensible. I have a hard time understanding what happened, but in the end the most rabid group won everything and purged all the competition? And these zealots are basically the self-appointed enforcers of community policy for all minecraft modding?

This collab program is occasionally misunderstood as a sort of "hit squad" attempting to "cancel" Minecraft community members and have them removed from as many servers as possible, largely due to rhetoric pushed by queerphobes, racists and other bigots that have been banned by communities taking part in the program. However, it does nothing of the sort

And then proceeds to narrate how they did exactly that

And these zealots are basically the self-appointed enforcers of community policy for all minecraft modding?

Perhaps not all, fabric is actually quite good these days

firearms manufacturing seems a lot more Red.

where, when, and what industry?