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 -
Really, Elliot Rodger seems like the victim of his own coping mechanisms. His inability to attract women (and same-sex friends, by extension) seems to have been entirely social in nature - as he correctly noted in his video, he's fairly handsome, he was only an inch or two shy of six foot, physically fit, obviously of above average intelligence. Unlike many incels, he couldn't blame his lack of success with women on a physical deformity or a learning disability. There are many incels who, one suspects, would have had just as little success with women had they been born 100, 200 or 500 years ago, but I would not put Rodger in that category: born in another context he could well have ended up content and thriving.
Because socialising didn't come naturally to him, he must have found it awkward and discomforting. In the past, he would have had no choice but to power through this initial discomfort, awkwardness, and platonic & romantic rejection, and had he done so he most likely would have ended up a more or less well-adjusted young man. (This is no mean feat! By "initial", I recognise that it might have taken years of persistent honing of his social skills with very little immediate reward. But it would be quite surprising if he didn't eventually get over it.)
But because he found this awkwardness and discomfort absolutely intolerable and because he was born in the West in 1991, he had the option to, rather than powering through, instead opt out and retreat into online spaces, in which he had absolute control over how he presented himself and with whom he interacted. Spending time in these online spaces made it even more challenging and distressing for him to interact with people in meatspace, creating a vicious feedback loop. Besides depriving him of opportunities to develop his social skills, the other big drawback of spending time in these online spaces (social media, porn, video games) is, unbeknownst to him, how heavily curated and idealised their depiction of the real world is, which resulted in what Rodger wanted out of life becoming concomitantly unrealistic over time. As a teenager, he probably thought to himself "I just want to meet a pretty girl who's nice to me", but by the time of his rampage his goal had curdled into "I want a 10/10 blonde bombshell with DDs, and anything less is a travesty on a galactic scale. 'Everybody' of my social status has that, why can't I?".
Really, the modern "therapeutic" social paradigm criticised at length by Freddie deBoer among others - in which every discomfort or obstacle (no matter how trivial) is an injustice to be remedied by fiat; in which the powers that be must go to great lengths to ensure that every individual feels "valid" and "empowered" at all times; in which adversity is not a potential opportunity for growth, but something always to be ameliorated or avoided under the auspices of "self-care"; in which smartphones and social media to connect with like-minded people are an effective coping mechanism for the "neurodivergent" - seems tailor-made to produce an army of Rodgers. I've spoken to Americans younger than Rodger who've grown up fully immersed in this milieu, and they genuinely seem to see no distinction between "this made me unhappy" and "this is a social wrong". They legitimately talk about the guy they like not texting them back as if their civil rights were being impinged upon. I fear for this generation.
More options
Context Copy link