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 -
I really like your point about journalistic standards. Did you come up with it or did some blogger? If it’s the latter let me know so I can follow them.
To add to your critique of the good old days of journalistic standards I’d like to point out that journalism wasn’t necessarily better (although there may have been more high-effort investigative work, I don’t know) so much as it was centralized to the point that heterodoxy was mostly invisible. It’s a common view that journalism was less political and more truth-seeking but I think this is mostly the result of the media being so powerful as to create the political water that discourse took place in. If you read Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent you can see many of the same criticisms that heterodoxers such as frequent this site make today. The journalistic standard of honesty can be stretched very far with some motivated pilpul. Maybe in the 19th century it was different.
Chomsky mentions centralization as one of the main causes of the state of affairs he critiques, and I have to agree. It doesn’t seem that news organizations are capable of being apolitical, in that case why not favor a decentralized media ecosystem wherein no organization has the power to shape the discourse?
The main argument against it I can see is the danger of ignorant plebs being manipulated by demagogues, which might have merit but cedes that capital J Journalism exists to manufacture consent.
The internet might give us the cure to Gell-Mann amnesia. I’m not sure it will actually be better but like many disaffected very-online people I dislike the current roster of media institutions and am happy to see them fail.
More options
Context Copy link