site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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.

The realm of responsibility falls on the parents. Just as they're responsible for feeding and clothing their kids and deciding what school/clubs/activities to send them to, they're just as responsible for what they choose to put online. Any personal videos you want to put out that you don't want any strangers to see should be private and access heavily restricted.

People can and will sexualize anything and everything, see rule 34. This is a touchy subject but I'm not sure we can or should do more than we already do, which is banning any explicit sexual content of children and socially ostracizing those with that kind of desire. But you can't stop or control what people think, and I draw the uncomfortable line at turning those desires into actions. If they're just engaging in masturbation in the privacy of their own home, then while disgusting, isn't doing any actual harm. But if they start compiling videos to make it easier for others to see, or invite others into their fetishes, or start reaching out to the parents/child then they are engaging in actions that actually have an impact on the person, and punishment should take place here.

Those girls will always have those videos on a stranger's hard drive at best, or at worst, end up as data used for ai generation.

Did you mean the other way around? I think I would be mortified if they were directly some captured in some internet stranger's hard drive, ai generation not so much since the output is not the same as the input. Maybe you meant specifically about deepfakes, that is something I haven't come to terms with myself since I haven't given it much thought yet.

The realm of responsibility falls on the parents. Just as they're responsible for feeding and clothing their kids and deciding what school/clubs/activities to send them to, they're just as responsible for what they choose to put online. Any personal videos you want to put out that you don't want any strangers to see should be private and access heavily restricted.

Indeed, It's a jungle out there and as a jungle it's full of predators

My opinions are mostly the same as yours, but there is a potential issue in that it's difficult to exist on the internet with literally no presence.

That is, pervs who never interact with children directly are still clicking on and watching certain videos that fulfill their criteria for desirable content, which boosts the metrics on those videos according to the algorithms on the website, be it Youtube or Instagram or something else. This both makes said content more visible to other people, and provides positive feedback that this is the sort of content that becomes popular. People who care about being a "successful influencer" pay attention to popular content from other people, and also popularity of their own content, and are more likely to replicate things that were successful. In a certain respect it's sort of like AI training but in other people's brains.

Therefore, an army of pervs attempting to be stealthy but still being caught by the algorithm still end up incentivizing young girls to produce less appropriate content, even if the girls themselves don't realize why said content is popular.