site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

'Good portion' is a vague word that doesn't mean plurality and it definitely doesn't mean large number (you cannot interpret a proportional claim as a claim of absolute size).

In my experience, mainstream publications who write about this stuff tend to not link to the crazy abusers on their own side that they paint as victims, but instead 'summarize' the situation, which are often actually lies. Which makes sense, because if you actually send people to the Twitter of the crazies, they can see that the person is quite crazy, which undermines the narrative. So low like counts are not necessarily inconsistent with being held up as a hero and having influence.

So you can have extremists who are followed by relatively few people, but journalists are among them and they turn them into martyrs for their side. The complaint is actually about the media and other signal boosters doing this. No one would care one bit about Nyberg or Alexander if they weren't held up as heroes in places with a decent amount of reach, while being anything but heroes.

Anyway, I did a quick google search and found that even the Washington Post lied about it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/14/if-we-took-gamergate-harassment-seriously-pizzagate-might-never-have-happened/

The writer is the infamous Sarah Jeong, an anti-white racist who was hired as part of the editorial board of the NYT, until the truth came out, which is itself evidence of how good that side of the aisle is at criticizing their own.

I also found the QZ article mentioned above. I didn't find any mainstream media articles telling the truth. So in my completely unscientific half-assed 'study,' I found that 100% of mainstream media sources had lied.

That said, Nyberg seems to be very obscure overall. But I do find it illustrative that the media can't even be honest when it costs them so little. Simply switching up the narrative to explain that this person is bad, but wasn't at all central to anti-GG would have cost them nothing but a loss of one opportunity to bash the other side.