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 -
let_them_fight.gif
The actions of US nurses in recent years have updated my priors against them, for they have gassed themselves up as “essential workers” while posting tikthot dances on social media.
Which is darkly hilarious: Imagine being a bed-ridden patient with a request pending to your nurse while she’s out in the hallway attention-whoring for social media, where you can hear the shitty music being replayed over and over again and thumping through your room again and again (like you’re getting tortured like a prisoner of war), the recurring cacophony of giggles, squeals, shrieks, bumps, and crashes while she repeats takes with her coworkers until they get a sufficiently cUuUuUte take for social media… before she deigns to return to you when she has a spare moment. She’ll roll her eyes, "Ugh, stupid patient, so needy and thirsty. Can't he see I’m a BUSY essential worker."
US white women should know by now that race generally trumps sex when it comes to idpol considerations. If they didn’t know from undergraduate admissions affirmative action statistics, they should at least know from anecdotes such as Central Park Karen.
Nurses benefit from the women are wonderful effect.
For me the dancing videos are propaganda to distract normies from pulling back the curtains and being horrified at the nature of reality.
Here are two of my favorites
Dancing Coup
War in The Ukraine
More options
Context Copy link
This piece of flash fiction is pretty low-effort booing. Maybe somewhere there is a nurse neglecting her patients while she does a TikTok dance in the hallway, and it's fine for you to say you hate nurses for reasons, but this is not contributing anything but a snarl in badly written prose form.
More options
Context Copy link
Covid hit NYC. All non-essential surgeries in the country were then cancelled.
Many hospitals in other parts of the country found themselves no major covid outbreak and no elective surgeries.
The nurses had fuck all to do. So they made TikTok dances.
Nurses have fuck all to do most of the time...like lots of classes of workers.
Firefighters have fuck all to do most of the time. Cops (outside of a select few neighborhoods in a select few cities) have fuck all to do, whence their ability to respond to midday noise complaints and ability to camp bars waiting for a guy to slightly stumble or blow a .06. Lots of lawyers do fuck all most of the time, they just cram everything around trials. There are lots of "congestion professions" where the flow of work is very much irregular, but not having enough personnel at critical times is extremely negative, so the average period of time is a person doing nothing.
I pretty strongly disagree with this statement, at least when it comes to nurses. I cannot speak to the other professions, but all the nurses I know are fairly overwhelmed and overworked, and when they ask management to hire more nurses, this request is almost uniformly denied. Perhaps the one unifying theme among these nurses is that they all work in large hospitals, and as a result there is probably a much more steady stream of patients coming in, and therefore management is better able to select the appropriate number of nurses without needing to hedge for irregular patient flow. Perhaps in other settings, such as at a small-time pediatrician's office or in hospice care, the work is more variable and thus there exists more downtime.
Lots of people say their job is overwhelming and hard. IDK. I recently spent 5 days in the hospital and anytime I'd go get water from the water station there'd be a half dozen nurses just chilling. Also whenever you press your little button they typically come in less than a minute even for the trivial "this machine is beeping" reason.
I think the reasons for nurses feeling this way are pretty obvious: 1) 12 hour shifts are standard, and horrible; 2) The average shift probably will have at least one "surge" period where all the patients a nurse is assigned press their little buttons at almost the same time; and 3) Nearly all-female workforce creates a strange dynamic where that kind of victim mentality enters a feedback loop, as also seems true of schoolteachers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This has always been a weak argument. People who do stressful work want and need to unwind sometimes. It's why soldiers get rotated out of the front lines rather than being there continuously. The TikTok dances say little to nothing about how busy and essential the nurses were.
On the other hand if you’re really overwhelmed with deathly ill patients, it would seem like you wouldn’t have time to elaborately choreograph and perform dances. And the dances I saw were not the kinds of things you might film in two minutes of spare time between patients. They were highly produced, filmed well, and the costumes were coordinated. No one was out of rhythm or forgot the dance. It had all the hallmarks of something people had put significant time and energy into, had clearly practiced, and had coordinated outfits.
That’s not something that you could reasonably do in between dying patients.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is childish and stupid. You've "updated your priors" far too far, in a way you obviously know better than if you're capable of walking down the street without having a sperglord meltdown at every passing mote of dust.
Okay, this bit of personal antagonism, combined with openly admitting that this is a troll account, means I'm just going to retire this one for you. Have a nice day.
That's why we have the clarity rule, aka "write as if everyone reading you is a high-functioning autist".
More options
Context Copy link
So I'd like to discuss this. I haven't yet, but I absolutely agree that regurlarly changing your account is just good data hygiene and provides some protection against doxxing. Especially on a contrarian forum, this should be valued. I recognise that this makes your job somewhat harder and has negative effects on community-building.
The problem of making this argument is usually that all the prominent and prestigious users come out against it. And of course they would. If they had good secop, they wouldn't be prominent users.
Changing accounts isn't against the rules. We would prefer people stick with one, because this place basically runs on reputation economy, and if you keep changing your accounts, you start from scratch every time (unless you're deliberately trying to obscure your alts and ban-evading, which is frankly why most people do it).
The OP wasn't banned for using an alt account. He was banned for already throwing many red flags as a troll and likely being a previously banned poster, and then admitting that yes, he's just cycling through accounts. If you tell me you're cycling accounts for "data hygiene," okay, whatever. If you're being trollish and cycling accounts, I see no reason to make that easier for you.
More options
Context Copy link
So why are you still deleting your stuff? You’re making the last glorious bits of human internet unreadable. Destroying priceless artefacts, cave paintings of the new age.
Nonsense. Your writing is first rate, and deletion allows Hlynka to make stuff up. Then I have to remember and look for my replies to your comments, and play reverse battleship on your positions to correct him.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If he regularly changes his accounts, nothing is lost by banning this one.
That which is picked up without regard can be discarded just as readily.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link