RIP Culture War Thread
I&#x27;ve been a member of the sub since its inception, and I&#x27;ve long defended Scott&#x27;s analyses, but, as a longtime reader and (former) participant in the CW threads, I think he&#x27;s grossly missed the mark here in the first section.   I think if you read the first part of this article really closely, that should be obvious.<p>&quot;I will be honest and admit I rarely read the thread myself.&quot; - Scott<p>&quot;For all its awfulness...&quot; - werttrew<p>&quot;...practically ever criticism of the CW thread I have ever read is true...&quot; - yrrosimyarin<p>&quot;Very little was solved&quot; -rwkasten<p>&quot;I think the CW thread is obviously a huge lump of positive utility for a large number of people, because <i>otherwise they wouldn’t spend so much time on it</i>&quot; - darwin2500<p>&quot;...it does have a lot of full-time opinionated idiots squabbling, and is inarguably filled with irrationality, bad takes, contrarianism, and Boo Outgroup posturing. I agree with many of [the criticisms] of overtly racist and stupid posts in there.&quot; -c_o_r_b_a<p>I, too, once held a positive opinion on the thread, and so would anyone, having only the knowledge of its maxims and a bleary-eyed take on a small sample of posts.  But once you dig deeper, you get what ought to be obvious from the above quotes.  There are indeed many honest, well meaning, well informed people that post.  They end up getting absolutely pulverized under the millstone of &quot;power users&quot;.<p>The issue with the thread was never that an surveyable proportion of readers would split between left and right.<p>The issue was that the power users--the ones who post all the time in seemingly every thread--create an environment that drives away the the <i>best</i> posters.<p>The issue was that a single person clicking &quot;I consider myself left-wing&quot; on a survey (especially when they <i>know</i> the context of the survey is to show relatively even R&#x2F;L split and the political milieu of the sub is hard R) is <i></i>very<i></i> different than their sheer contribution to the social &quot;overton window&quot; of the thread.  Those &quot;left wing&quot; posters are the &quot;I believe abortion should be legal, but also I will post my pro-HBD takes forever, at every opportunity&quot;.  That is, it doesn&#x27;t really matter what they clicked, because their contribution to the aesthetic of the thread is not accurately represented by the survey.<p>The issue was that actual factual experts get drowned in a sea of whataboutism and people who think they know better because they have a study to the contrary (did no one else read Beware the Man Of One Study or Epistemic Learned Helplessness!?).<p>The issue is that there are so few <i>actual</i> left wing posters that they get called out <i>explicitly, by name</i> to answer for &quot;the left&quot; when &quot;they&quot; do something that the forum deems necessary of an explanation (seriously, darwin2500 has the patience of a saint).<p>The issue is that people who harass (as above), argue in bad faith or seriously contribute to a negative environment don&#x27;t catch bans except for extreme cases.  To the moderators&#x27; credit, I&#x27;ve seen some really bad stuff get posters banned, but to speak of the general thread&#x27;s failure, many of those posts are sitting on a well-into-the-positive amount of upvotes.<p>Personally, I&#x27;m <i>not</i> sad to see the thread go.  It was detritus, and it impelled many quality contributors to leave.  My favorite poster on the sub (who pretty much never posts there now) wrote a fantastic bit explaining the sub ~6 months ago.<p>&quot;The experience can be a little jarring because you’ll have some insightful, genuinely depth hub worth comment upvoted and then another highly upvoted comments next to it will be how we should bring back eugenics and how we should limit immigration to people from high IQ countries in Europe and East Asia&quot; - u&#x2F;yodatsracist as per below<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;DepthHub&#x2F;comments&#x2F;98jco5&#x2F;uinterversity_describes_the_benefits_of_street&#x2F;e4h7c8v&#x2F;?context=3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;DepthHub&#x2F;comments&#x2F;98jco5&#x2F;uintervers...</a><p>And, to be clear, none of this was explicitly Scott&#x27;s fault (and, to wit, anyone who harassed him personally&#x2F;professionally is an utter idiot).   It was simply Moloch acting on the machinery of the sub.