site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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.

33
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'm tired....

I don't really care, I'm tired of reading the coffee grounds to try and guess the destiny of the next weeks. Any moment something will happen that will turn this this around......right, right?

And then nothing happened and it kept not happening...forever!

Well I have read dozens of times on Twitter that Lyman has been taken but to this day that seems not to be the case. (Of course you're right it could change overnight.) But the quick victory seems to have stalled out at a well prepared defensive line that would lend credence to the intentionality of the move, even if it the retreat itself didn't go as planned.

Twitter is full of shit, Descriptions of an inevitable Russian victory and claims about how "Kiev is only days away from collapse" have become the new "two weeks to flatten the curve", no one who's been paying attention actually believes them.

pro russian twitter accounts are outnumbered by pro ukraine twitter accounts by an approximate ratio of 10-1. This ratio among bots has actually been confirmed. That doesn't take Twitter censorship into account.

https://theprint.in/tech/60-80-of-twitter-accounts-posting-on-russia-ukraine-war-bots-90-pro-ukraine-finds-new-study/1114878/

According to the researchers, 90.16 per cent of the accounts tweeting on the Russia-Ukraine war were “pro Ukraine” and only 6.80 per cent were “pro Russia”. “Balanced accounts” — those which showed mixed behaviour — comprised 3.04 per cent.

This claim has little to no bearing on whether or not twitter is, in aggregate, "full of shit"