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 mean I’m able to predict that I don’t know those things because in that case, it’s a known issue for me. I’m also not exactly up to speed on a lot of other topics, including things that I think I know. And if everyone around me has the same blind spots and misbeliefs about a given topic, the chances of something getting on the screen that’s obviously wrong to an expert, or even a layperson interested in the subject goes up quite a bit.
I’ll be the first to tell you I don’t know much about the law. Most people don’t. The problem is that because of the popularity of legal shows and crime dramas, most people think they know the law. Any draft readers will have the same ideas about the law you do. And so it gets into police and crime dramas where most people think that’s how the law works. Any knowledgeable lawyer or even anyone who’s been in a real courtroom knows that the courtroom scenes of most crime dramas are bunk. Jury trials don’t work that way, at all. The lawyers are not allowed to pontificate as they do in crime dramas. The rules of what kinds of evidence and testimony and questions you can ask are far stricter than what TV has taught American audiences about criminal law. It still shows up on TV every week.
Right, and that phenomenon of getting things wrong due to being around people who are similarly ignorant as oneself is also common knowledge. I'd wager, for instance, that most Hollywood writers would characterize Evangelical Christians in red enclaves as suffering from this (some of them might think "Oh, those poor ignoramuses might fall prey to echo chambers, but a smart cookie like me is safe," which would be a stupider act than everything else I've written about combined). If there are some details that are important to get correct in one's script for the sake of keeping the audience invested, then it seems rather stupid to me not to avoid this kind of echo chamber effect by intentionally seeking out advice from people outside one's social circles, ideally from actual subject-matter experts.
I'd argue that part of the phenomenon here is that American media and American audiences have created a sort of fictional system of law shared within these various media properties that relies on just-barely-plausible suspension of disbelief that both the creators and the viewers have decided to agree upon in order to make things more entertaining. I categorize the legal systems we see in these shows in the same bin as the trope of a knock in the head being a reliable way to reliably make them lose consciousness for a few hours without any other health implications or sounds of explosions in space.
Funnily enough, one of the many pieces of criticism against the recent Disney+ show She-Hulk: Attorney at Law seemed to be how unrealistic its legal proceedings were. Perhaps they were no less realistic than what we normally see in legal shows, but maybe the show probably didn't respect the agreement of suspension of disbelief and just threw up there whatever was convenient for the plot, which was what lost viewers. If that's what happened, I think that would be stupidity; you don't need to check that the legal system in your script is accurate, but you do need to check that it is believable to your audience, which means checking what constitutes believability to your audience.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link