Feel like this post is an attempt to lure me into enumerating what are to me legitimate reasons as to why I dislike Glenn & Liz so I have to spend all day arguing with their stans. Nope! Not gonna fall for that! I left Twitter for a reason and I don’t miss it.
I thought I liked Glenn Greenwald for his journalistic integrity but now I’m thinking his dogs, his cute kids, handsome husband and vegan ways have something to do with it.
Damn, son! You're on fire today. I've heard the "Twitter is like a high school" comparison before, and I couldn't agree more. For years I constantly found myself agreeing with an IDPol-skeptical take or an article and going "oh no, what will my woke friends think of me if they knew? Would they disown me?"
But those days are over. I'm off Twitter and don't have to worry about it. I've met many other left-of-center people who went through the same thing and are enjoying the "Fuck You, Media" energy right now.
Yes, absolutely. And I would add this: the freest writers/people you see out there seem to be those who clearly feel loved by the small circle they truly care about, and this gives them the strength not to care about what anyone else thinks about them. Greenwald (with his husband, kids, and dogs) seems like a perfect example of this. And Sullivan, Weiss, Krugman, Bruenig, etc. ...
I think the "song and dance where you talk like he has Andrew Breitbart’s politics" is pretty well supported by Greenwald turning into a Fox News talking head. The music actually turns on when somebody tries to justify this - I believed he recently called Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon socialists.
It's also frustrating how this stuff goes back in time. People have a bunch of disagreements with Greenwald now (some of which I agree with and don't think are illegitimate reasons, though I think it's almost all unimportant online garbage now that I've mostly stopped following media discourse) so it must mean he was always a useless waste of space and they never actually valued his work.
Going to also use this as an excuse to remember Greenwald posting Tarek Mehanna's statement in full on his blog, which made me cry then and makes me cry now because there are very few people who would do such a thing even once and Greenwald was willing to do it all the time. Even when I was neck-deep in all that Twitter stuff and getting mad at Greenwald over some minor disagreement, I don't think I ever forgot how Greenwald was willing to get spitting mad over things like this.
I'm curious--was it always like this, or did something change?
I've always loved over-analyzing fiction, so I've been in fandom spaces as long as I've been on the internet. Around about 2014, there was a change. Before, if someone didn't like a character or a relationship, they'd just say that: that they didn't like the character, or thought the relationship had no chemistry, or what-have-you. Around 2014, this started to change. If someone didn't like a character, they would begin to invent reasons why it was *morally wrong* to like said character, including bizarre constructions like "oh, your favorite character from [show] is [white main character] and not [black tertiary character]? You're racist!" I kinda assumed it was just people learning a "more effective" way to argue, as at first people were blindsided by these arguments and didn't know how to deal with them, so they just agreed with them and the moralizers' arguments became fandom truth. But now I'm curious if it's something pulled in from Twitter, or reflections of a greater trend in media, or something that percolated out into media.
Another way to demonstrate this to the skeptical is to ask try a version of this with them:
“When you have a podcast/YouTuber/whatever that you love and that you are going to recommend to a friend, what do you say to your friends as your ‘pitch’ as to why they should listen/watch/whatever. Do you say ‘this person’s right about everything/on the right side of history?’ Or do you say ‘this persons funny/well-spoken/clever/open-minded/humble/ascerbic’ or ‘the production/visuals/editing is amazing?’”
Nearly everyone will admit that it’s a version of the latter. They recommend based on gut, lizard, aesthetic reasons. When they admit that, they’re usually open to conceding the following point: “if you’re recommending that someone DOES listen to _____ for emotional reasons, are you really asserting that, when you recommend that someone does NOT listen to _____, you’re suddenly accessing a completely different part of your brain?”
>>I remain baffled at how many adults seem to think that the point of life is to enjoy the meaningless mild approval of armies of strangers rather than to build a tight little network of friends and family who are passionately invested in you.
Well put.
In college, I worked at an on-campus institution that for some reason had a core group of leftist employees. Stridently leftist where they would talk about politics with random coworkers. They were older than me. I thought they were cool as hell. We happened to be on the same page politically but I was way too shy and insecure to form any meaningful relationship with them. Anyway, I think about that a lot when I consider the types of accounts I ended up following online.
I don't know if it's about "liking" you or not but I find in 2021 I can only read and support people I know are giving me a fair shake. What I mean by that is that they are not hiding their language behind some invisible curtain of code speak. They're being as close to honest as possible and taking heat for it, repeatedly. I can't read journalists or writers or critics who pander in their language so as not to offend. It is of no use to me. It is like attending a Christian rock concert. You know the songs are only going to be about one thing. They are never going to deviate from that one thing and they are never going to go anywhere beyond that one thing: loving Christ and building their lives around that. And so it goes with the modern cultural left, as that wonderful letter you sent out yesterday proves. The therapist only found meaning in being a crusader. And so what else is there? It turns my brain to cottage cheese.
By now I will listen to anyone who does not speak in coded language. Show me anyone. The Fifth Column, Quillette, or by now even Ben Shapiro. Your "Planet of Cops" piece is how I found you and I'm always curious about what you are wrestling with in a given day. I don't like what social media has done to us. I too have been swarmed and attacked almost as many times just as you have. It goes as quickly as it came. It doesn't define who you are. The best way to survive right now is simply this: you will agree with some things and not agree with others. Once you slip into dehumanization you have reached the danger zone and you must pull yourself back from the brink.
Speaking for myself, I don't care to interrogate the principles in the Harper's Letter because I think I can safely assume that my interpretation of the principles is very different from the signatories that, yes, I don't like. Do you think your interpretation of free speech or open debate is similar to Bari Weiss? I suspect not, we all know she built her career on silencing criticism of Israel. So what's the point in taking the proclamation at face value? If the signatories had been different people, the reaction would have been different. That seems like a good thing. If George Bush signs a letter in support of a free and democratic Iraq I'm not going to nod my head sagely and say yes I support that too, I'm going to use the context that I have for what he means by those words. And furthermore, I myself would not be signing a fucking letter *along with* George Bush about Iraq for just that very reason.
Also I think I didn't really know who you were before you got canceled, or maybe re-emerged from cancellation. "any press is good press" - Karl Marx
I can only speak for myself, of course, but as someone who has deployed the phrase "facts and logic" derisively in the past, it was as a way of highlighting that the person's opinions were not, in fact, based solely around facts and logic as they liked to believe, as though they were some sort of impersonal calculating machine that had arrived at The Correct Answer to the Question of Politics, but that they instead by and large arrived at their opinions in the same way as those they dismissively derided as being swayed by "emotion," by simply selectively paying attention to facts and using specious logic to justify their preexisting emotional reactions to things.
I like to think I can make the separation; I am surrounded by people with very different politics from me.
Of the Substackers I subscribe to: no, I don't really think I'd like to share a beer with you, Freddie, and I only really enjoy or agree with maybe a half to two thirds of what you write. But I heartily enjoy the rest of it and I appreciate your zero fucks given attitude. We need more of that.
Pretty sure I wouldn't want to spend much social time with Michael Tracey either.
I'd love to share a beer with Glenn Greenwald, but just one. I don't think I could take him for more than one beer.
I'd could spend an entire evening with Matt Taibbi, I think, though I suspect before too long he would ditch me out the back entrance on the pretext of visiting the men's room.
As for Astral Codex Ten, who knows? I understand he charges you to hang out with him.
Isn’t this is just another reason not to take people or their views seriously? We live in an anti-authority age, with the vanguard of that tendency now empowered and authoritative, ironically.
The reduction to animal/gorilla mentality is almost a kind of brutish caricature of how the old aristocracy viewed the rest of society. That said, if I grew up in the American high school system, I might make that judgement, it seems especially animalistic and frenzied. Other people around the world are more restrained, try Laos. Very civilised and charming children, eager to learn and very respectful of authority. They’d probably be called repressed by American crackhead college students.
I was forced to admit this when I realized that I liked Andrew Sullivan and always would no matter how wrong he was about absolutely everything.
Feel like this post is an attempt to lure me into enumerating what are to me legitimate reasons as to why I dislike Glenn & Liz so I have to spend all day arguing with their stans. Nope! Not gonna fall for that! I left Twitter for a reason and I don’t miss it.
I thought I liked Glenn Greenwald for his journalistic integrity but now I’m thinking his dogs, his cute kids, handsome husband and vegan ways have something to do with it.
Damn, son! You're on fire today. I've heard the "Twitter is like a high school" comparison before, and I couldn't agree more. For years I constantly found myself agreeing with an IDPol-skeptical take or an article and going "oh no, what will my woke friends think of me if they knew? Would they disown me?"
But those days are over. I'm off Twitter and don't have to worry about it. I've met many other left-of-center people who went through the same thing and are enjoying the "Fuck You, Media" energy right now.
Yes, absolutely. And I would add this: the freest writers/people you see out there seem to be those who clearly feel loved by the small circle they truly care about, and this gives them the strength not to care about what anyone else thinks about them. Greenwald (with his husband, kids, and dogs) seems like a perfect example of this. And Sullivan, Weiss, Krugman, Bruenig, etc. ...
I think the "song and dance where you talk like he has Andrew Breitbart’s politics" is pretty well supported by Greenwald turning into a Fox News talking head. The music actually turns on when somebody tries to justify this - I believed he recently called Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon socialists.
It's also frustrating how this stuff goes back in time. People have a bunch of disagreements with Greenwald now (some of which I agree with and don't think are illegitimate reasons, though I think it's almost all unimportant online garbage now that I've mostly stopped following media discourse) so it must mean he was always a useless waste of space and they never actually valued his work.
Going to also use this as an excuse to remember Greenwald posting Tarek Mehanna's statement in full on his blog, which made me cry then and makes me cry now because there are very few people who would do such a thing even once and Greenwald was willing to do it all the time. Even when I was neck-deep in all that Twitter stuff and getting mad at Greenwald over some minor disagreement, I don't think I ever forgot how Greenwald was willing to get spitting mad over things like this.
seems like the personal fights in media are so intense because the stakes are so low
I'm curious--was it always like this, or did something change?
I've always loved over-analyzing fiction, so I've been in fandom spaces as long as I've been on the internet. Around about 2014, there was a change. Before, if someone didn't like a character or a relationship, they'd just say that: that they didn't like the character, or thought the relationship had no chemistry, or what-have-you. Around 2014, this started to change. If someone didn't like a character, they would begin to invent reasons why it was *morally wrong* to like said character, including bizarre constructions like "oh, your favorite character from [show] is [white main character] and not [black tertiary character]? You're racist!" I kinda assumed it was just people learning a "more effective" way to argue, as at first people were blindsided by these arguments and didn't know how to deal with them, so they just agreed with them and the moralizers' arguments became fandom truth. But now I'm curious if it's something pulled in from Twitter, or reflections of a greater trend in media, or something that percolated out into media.
Another way to demonstrate this to the skeptical is to ask try a version of this with them:
“When you have a podcast/YouTuber/whatever that you love and that you are going to recommend to a friend, what do you say to your friends as your ‘pitch’ as to why they should listen/watch/whatever. Do you say ‘this person’s right about everything/on the right side of history?’ Or do you say ‘this persons funny/well-spoken/clever/open-minded/humble/ascerbic’ or ‘the production/visuals/editing is amazing?’”
Nearly everyone will admit that it’s a version of the latter. They recommend based on gut, lizard, aesthetic reasons. When they admit that, they’re usually open to conceding the following point: “if you’re recommending that someone DOES listen to _____ for emotional reasons, are you really asserting that, when you recommend that someone does NOT listen to _____, you’re suddenly accessing a completely different part of your brain?”
>>I remain baffled at how many adults seem to think that the point of life is to enjoy the meaningless mild approval of armies of strangers rather than to build a tight little network of friends and family who are passionately invested in you.
Well put.
In college, I worked at an on-campus institution that for some reason had a core group of leftist employees. Stridently leftist where they would talk about politics with random coworkers. They were older than me. I thought they were cool as hell. We happened to be on the same page politically but I was way too shy and insecure to form any meaningful relationship with them. Anyway, I think about that a lot when I consider the types of accounts I ended up following online.
I don't know if it's about "liking" you or not but I find in 2021 I can only read and support people I know are giving me a fair shake. What I mean by that is that they are not hiding their language behind some invisible curtain of code speak. They're being as close to honest as possible and taking heat for it, repeatedly. I can't read journalists or writers or critics who pander in their language so as not to offend. It is of no use to me. It is like attending a Christian rock concert. You know the songs are only going to be about one thing. They are never going to deviate from that one thing and they are never going to go anywhere beyond that one thing: loving Christ and building their lives around that. And so it goes with the modern cultural left, as that wonderful letter you sent out yesterday proves. The therapist only found meaning in being a crusader. And so what else is there? It turns my brain to cottage cheese.
By now I will listen to anyone who does not speak in coded language. Show me anyone. The Fifth Column, Quillette, or by now even Ben Shapiro. Your "Planet of Cops" piece is how I found you and I'm always curious about what you are wrestling with in a given day. I don't like what social media has done to us. I too have been swarmed and attacked almost as many times just as you have. It goes as quickly as it came. It doesn't define who you are. The best way to survive right now is simply this: you will agree with some things and not agree with others. Once you slip into dehumanization you have reached the danger zone and you must pull yourself back from the brink.
Speaking for myself, I don't care to interrogate the principles in the Harper's Letter because I think I can safely assume that my interpretation of the principles is very different from the signatories that, yes, I don't like. Do you think your interpretation of free speech or open debate is similar to Bari Weiss? I suspect not, we all know she built her career on silencing criticism of Israel. So what's the point in taking the proclamation at face value? If the signatories had been different people, the reaction would have been different. That seems like a good thing. If George Bush signs a letter in support of a free and democratic Iraq I'm not going to nod my head sagely and say yes I support that too, I'm going to use the context that I have for what he means by those words. And furthermore, I myself would not be signing a fucking letter *along with* George Bush about Iraq for just that very reason.
Also I think I didn't really know who you were before you got canceled, or maybe re-emerged from cancellation. "any press is good press" - Karl Marx
I can only speak for myself, of course, but as someone who has deployed the phrase "facts and logic" derisively in the past, it was as a way of highlighting that the person's opinions were not, in fact, based solely around facts and logic as they liked to believe, as though they were some sort of impersonal calculating machine that had arrived at The Correct Answer to the Question of Politics, but that they instead by and large arrived at their opinions in the same way as those they dismissively derided as being swayed by "emotion," by simply selectively paying attention to facts and using specious logic to justify their preexisting emotional reactions to things.
I like to think I can make the separation; I am surrounded by people with very different politics from me.
Of the Substackers I subscribe to: no, I don't really think I'd like to share a beer with you, Freddie, and I only really enjoy or agree with maybe a half to two thirds of what you write. But I heartily enjoy the rest of it and I appreciate your zero fucks given attitude. We need more of that.
Pretty sure I wouldn't want to spend much social time with Michael Tracey either.
I'd love to share a beer with Glenn Greenwald, but just one. I don't think I could take him for more than one beer.
I'd could spend an entire evening with Matt Taibbi, I think, though I suspect before too long he would ditch me out the back entrance on the pretext of visiting the men's room.
As for Astral Codex Ten, who knows? I understand he charges you to hang out with him.
Isn’t this is just another reason not to take people or their views seriously? We live in an anti-authority age, with the vanguard of that tendency now empowered and authoritative, ironically.
The reduction to animal/gorilla mentality is almost a kind of brutish caricature of how the old aristocracy viewed the rest of society. That said, if I grew up in the American high school system, I might make that judgement, it seems especially animalistic and frenzied. Other people around the world are more restrained, try Laos. Very civilised and charming children, eager to learn and very respectful of authority. They’d probably be called repressed by American crackhead college students.