This, plus, they inveigle against the victim having to exercise any agency to rectify their situation. Everyone else has to change but not the victim. And this is bullshit and will get us nowhere.
My life didn't improve until began calling my own shots; until I decided that I didn't have to live inside of their definitions of me and I could define myself. It was long, painful journey to this realization but I am so glad that I found my way out of it. I had to be brave and risk people disliking me to reclaim my own space but it's the best decision I ever made.
The problem is that victimhood confers way too many benefits at present for anyone so subsumed to choose to move away from it. It's an excellent grift.
lmao thank you I feel like I'm the only person in the comments who seems to think that there's a massive power imbalance happening. Tuckers criticism of Lorenz was that she tweeted:
“For international women’s day please consider supporting women enduring online harassment. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the harassment and smear campaign I’ve had to endure over the past year has destroyed my life. No one should have to go through this.”
Ah yes, clearly she deserves to be called a liar on the most popular cable show on television, and if people harrass her after the segment apparently that's not the fault of the host, thats the cost of being online apparently?
I mean, that's a pretty depressing worldview man. No-one's responsible for the actions of their fans and the way to deal with harassment online is to just deal with it? Surely that's just a no-win scenario like Freddie says, an endless, pointless, toxic war?
When Stephen Colbert told some joke that some Asian activist found racist she tried to get #Cancelcolbert trending on Twitter. His fans responded with rape and death threats.
I am not a big fan of Colbert but there is some segment of his fan base who responds to criticism with rape and death threats then there is no large fan base, anywhere, that does not contain people who will resort to rape and death threats.
In any sufficiently large population there are going to be some crazies. If we let them set the boundaries of what is acceptable discourse then that means there is literally nothing that can be talked about in public.
Yeah, and I don't think he'd be at fault in that scenario unless I'm missing something?
I'm not saying public figures can never talk about anything, as you say there are crazy people in every fanbase. Look at KPop fans!
I'm saying there's a huge world of difference between Tucker Carlson putting someone on blast for a tweet on his show vs the general conversation about responsibility of public figures for how their fans react to them. There's a huge spectrum there!
What did Tucker Carlson do that was any different than what that Asian activist did? And do you think it's possible that some segment of Colbert's base is targeting the GOP politicians, like Trump, that he is so fond of criticizing?
Are you sure? I seem to recall that the issue was that she was trying to whip up mob action against people like Marc Andreeson and Carlson was just pointing out that she's a hypocrite.
Putting aside the Tucker angle for a moment, I find it extremely cringey that, on international women's day, her plea is that you support her own specific first-world problem. I mean, really? That's the most pressing issue for women internationally -- having cruel things said to us online? No. It's just another embarrassing data point on how hopelessly myopic and ethnocentric the modern American left has become.
Taylor Lorenz has the institutional backing of the most prestigious and powerful newspaper in the world.
Let's break this down. Is there a threshold for people Tucker is allowed to talk about on TV? If so, what is that precise threshold? Measure it however you want - platform, wealth, height, gender, whatever. Just give a precise measure.
As someone firmly on the side of "American MSM as the genuine enemy of a free society": there is a difference between hating the structure and incentives that exist in the MSM, and criticizing the leading and visible figures of it on one side, and a genuine, visceral hatred of the person (analogous with racism or bigotry). I mean, yeah, let's not be coy - there's an overlap. I believe the major media execs to not *just* be greedy and working within a Bad system, but also Bad for taking part in it. But that's a disagreement over what they're doing, not who they are. Anyone can be redeemed. Quit CNN, blow the whistle, devote oneself to truth. If you hate someone for being French or German or Basotho, they can't do that.
A human being can't transcend their race or nationality. (Religion is a bit messier.) A human can change their behavior, change their mind, change their worldview. Or to put it another way: we don't execute shoplifters, even though (outside of San Francisco) we don't like shoplifting.
Not necessarily saying all cruel people are socipaths, but FWIW, I fundamentally do not believe sociopaths can be redeemed (barring society making some terrifying strides in manipulating brain architecture). And I think society tends to underestimate their prevalence. They aren't all serial killers -- many are just everyday sadists.
I do believe sociopaths and psychopaths have either faulty wiring or a chemical imbalance in their brains. The cause of this - nature or nurture? Who knows? And how to fix it, just don't know. I do think that some day, we will know how to fix it. Neurology science is making great strides. And then it's going to be an interesting fight over whether the fix is ethical.
I don't know nearly enough about this to say with certainty one way or the other. I'm speaking more spiritually than anything. Perhaps there is a person who simply can't reckon with God, I don't know. But for those of us here on the spinning orb, I guess that's a luxurious question. If there can't be redemption, there can at least be restraining.
So, regardless of their mental state or circumstances, you would really try to entice a teenager into suicide for being mean to your spouse online? That seems a bit extreme, even for you.
See, when I said before that I don't get you, KT -- this is what I meant. Sociopathic online persona for the lulz? Or just a why-not-let-it-all-hang-out sociopath? Genuinely can't tell yet. Suspect the former, but that may just be wishful thinking. Guess that earns you a congrats on the trolling, though, if that's the point.
Of course the Brookings folks aren't actually concerned about harassment, they are concerned about how to weaponize third-party noise against people they don't like.
"Online violence" as the term for "some anonymous Twitter person saying nasty things" is an Orwellian construction on its own.
I'll go further: if you haven't received death threats and harassment on the internet, it's only because you've either said nothing, or the only things you say are so banal that nobody could ever form an opinion about them one way or another.
It's simply the price of admission for participation.
I went through a phase when I was a bit younger that I’d describe as… feeling that because I do the work of being diplomatic and inoffensive online, I deserve to never be harassed. And conversely, if I saw someone being more real and getting heat, I’d think, they probably deserved it for being worse at using the internet than I am.
hah! Those really are basically the two... if you love the internet, you will probably end up as either someone who gets off on being real and offensive or someone who gets off on being synthetic and inoffensive
Or like me, you've only said things safe in the area you're saying them. I've said cancel-worthy things in the Discords and forums of the cancelled, but I manage my online persona.
Not the bravest thing, but I don't have that much interesting to contribute -- aside from some bits and bobs on AI and maybe synthesis of interesting ideas.
If you haven't received death threats and harassment on the internet, it could be because you are one of about 4 billion people with little or no access to the internet.
Indeed - it's significantly more than that. "Presenting" implies simply serving up for scrutiny. In this case, Brookings is not merely incorporating this for study, but gave - and if you'd clicked the link, you'd know this - the microphone over to the NYU and IWMF authors to present *and defend* their own work.
Don't want to quarrel over semantics. They did more than provide a link, you are right, but it's not their own work. They did turn over the microphone, I agree. To my ear, one presents one's own work, but not someone else's. But my ear could be fallible. In any event, I greatly appreciate your work and enjoy engaging with the posts daily.
It's pretty ironic that the Brookings article will undoubtedly release a torrent of exactly the same behavior they call out Greenwald and Carlson for, but in their direction. And the authors will sleep soundly at night in blissful carelessness at best, or secretly pat themselves on the back for unleashing it at worst.
I mean, we can be honest and admit there's a huge difference between not being able to control how your fans/followers react to people one posts about and someone who has a FOX news show with viewership in the millions, that implicitly calls out people as enemies of a free society?
EDIT: trillions -> millions, that typo was bugging me
I mean if Sanders had a TV show were he had a segment where he put someone on screen and called them soft for talking about online abuse, that's a completely different situation than blaming Sanders for getting abuse from someone that had "berniebro" in their twitter.
Don't you think there's a mismatch of audiences and power that should be weighed when speaking out as a public figure? His criticism was that she tweeted about online abuse.
For the same reason you don't think it's a problem when Taylor Lorenz (or indeed any other nationally prominent journalist) writes about public people on Twitter (followers: more than the population of Boise) or in the American newspaper of record - because it's a phony objection used to chill legitimate criticism of public figures.
No, not really. She's was a reporter for the NYT. There are few people in the world with more influence than her, and she built a career partly by using that influence and audience in dubious ways.
The criticism was that she outright lied about the actions of an individual and sent a mob on them. When confronted with evidence that she lied, instead of apologizing, she doubled down and started playing victim.
She's infinitely worse by any measure except audience size, but leave that aside: yes, public figures are permitted to comment on what other public figures are doing in public and saying to other members of the public in public.
Infinitely worse? Than a guy who once had a segment on his show about how the liberals have made the green M&M unfuckable? What am I missing here, why does everyone in the comments hate this woman lol
What does this M&M segment have to do with calling someone out as the enemy of a free society? Try to keep your argument still if you'd like me to address it. If you don't know who Taylor Lorenz is then obviously you're going to struggle with this, but as I understand it Tucker's problem with her is that she occupies a hugely privileged position in society, has used on numerous occasions her bully pulpit at the NYT and on Twitter to criticize - fairly or not! - other individuals, but she and her employer believe that any criticism of her is *by definition* harassment. In other words, crybullying.
I didn't know who Taylor Lorenz was because I've currated my twitter feed to be entirely about baseballs and movies. I struggle to think of how a random NYTimes article can be "infinitely worse" than Tucker, a guy who regularly talks about the "great replacement theory" on his TV show.
I did read the study that Freddie linked and Tucker's segment on her was about the following tweet:
“For international women’s day please consider supporting women enduring online harassment. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the harassment and smear campaign I’ve had to endure over the past year has destroyed my life. No one should have to go through this.”
Which seems pretty tame to put someone on blast on a major TV show for?
If Carlson has reasons, or Brookings has reasons, to call out enemies, it's fair to attack those reasons. And insult the one calling out for doing so with such wimpy reasons. Trump was faced with essentially dishonest insults, lies, and illegal spying by the FBI against him since 2015 - with all but FOX news TV calling him out as an enemy. Along with lots of valid criticism. Those "against harassment" mostly failed to oppose harassment of Trump; or of Jordan Peterson, or now of Joe Rogan (who supported Sanders)
We need to be able to attack the policies, arguments, reasons, values, and especially the results - without so much attacking the people. But even "attacking" the people, in the UnReaL internet is not real violence.
I'd go even further than Freddie's final paragraph here and bring it back to the start - the "gendered" aspect. Women are, by and large, more likely to see things through a lens of experience and feeling and less in principle. (This isn't a value judgement one way or another, incidentally; just an observation.) As such if Taylor Lorenz suffers, and Taylor Lorenz is a woman, she's suffering through her womanhood, and womanhood being currency in the great market of victimhood, of course that's going to be front and center.
I've been online since the mid 1990s, when it was by and large geeky white males from North America and Europe and Australia who inhabited the English-speaking part of the internet. Since then the Anglophone internet has globalized and feminized. It's changed remarkably, and not just due to technology. What I won't say is that the increased feminization of the internet - and academia, media etc. - has made toxicity worse, per se. I don't think it has, or if it has it's incidental. What it *has* made - and this is, in my view, absolutely undeniable - is accusations of toxicity that much more valuable, and we all have to sit around with our big sad faces on not because the toxicity exists, but because the toxicity is targeted at someone with a particular status, e.g. "woman on the internet."
That this lends itself with absolute perfection to crybullies like Taylor Lorenz's increasing success and wealth is inevitable.
I'm sure there's a gendered aspect here too, that it's really costly for a man to admit if he's been psychologically damaged by online hate, so in mostly-male groups people (in general) avoid doing that. Women will get emotional support rather than contempt for the same behaviour, so even if a man and a woman feel equally bad about being abused on the internet, the woman will generally talk about it more.
You're right, to an extent, but it's incumbent on we men to look out for men. Not that I'd want a pity party, but men should be able to say to their friends something like, "I'm getting a ton of hate mail. I'm deleting it and ignoring it, but the volume of it is getting me down." Then his friends should say something to the effect of. "That sucks. These people are dicks and if they mess with you in a serious way, we've got your back." No need for a cry-a-thon. Instead some simple solidarity.
Absolutely. I think it's great when men do this in groups of other men. But part of the reason why men need to get support from other men is that there's a definite difference in the amount of emoting expected in groups of men versus women. As a not-very feminine woman, other women (perfectly nice women, who I like) sometimes freak me out with the amount of sympathy they'll express over setbacks - even setbacks which I/the person being addressed don't (seem to) think are that serious.
Culture and personality feed into one another - there are more women than men who really want others to feel their pain and to tell them many times that they feel their pain and are taking it really seriously. So they express that, other people see them express that, they think "I could do that too!", more pain comes out, more emoting about it, people (usually women) like that emoting ... and there you get the cycle.
I literally just today had an email exchange with a woman of color who has published multiple books, has a significant following online. I asked her to explain how it was ok for her to make generalized negatively valenced moral judgements about an identity group. (She said “white people are untrustworthy,” among many other things.) She accused me of minimizing her standpoint and making her jump through hoops to talk to me when I declined to talk via zoom.
I just recently had to try and explain to a composer I commissioned that my feedback on their work (we were contractually entitled to first approve the final work and request revisions if necessary) - that the work was not effectively written for the ensemble and needed some adjustments to be able to be realized desirably - was not an identity attack or implicit bias against black women.
They decided to pull from the project and forfeit their remaining pay because they received criticism from a performer, when they’ve never even written for the medium of ensemble in question. They forgot what was written in their own contract, and tried to gaslight us for giving feedback because it wasn’t proper etiquette when engaging in dei work.
Yeah I got to the point where to myself I was like “…maybe I am a fragile white?” But then I remembered prejudging someone based on phenotype is wrong.
I got to that point back in 2020, and realized about 6 months in that my egalitarian empathy was being exploited by the (neo)liberal idpol, (postmodernist influenced?) ideological seeds that were planted in a scattershot manner throughout my at-the-time primary and secondary academic studies. Unfortunately, that clashed hard with the intrinsic drive I’ve always found myself compelled towards, that is exemplified by Marxist philosophical thought.
I think I make clear which influence won out lol.
Cherry on top - the other composer involved in the project tried to back their peer up in our discussion meeting, but in private they admitted it was terrible writing for the ensemble. That composer also tried to assume things about me based on my identity, despite holding an ideological position that supposedly rails against that very notion, and attempted to lecture me on intersectionality and its derivative online-inspired pool of thought.
I tried to explain that I was already aware of such concepts - being a self-avowed Marxist who got a PoliPsi degree, keeps up with current political events, and studies theory/philosophy - and attempted to reason on a humanitarian level over the miscommunication. Alas, I’m not sure I fully got through the hypocrisy.
I'm sorry this happened to you. The one charitable thought I have is that because pressure to market an Identity if you have one is real, the composer may have thought she was simply doing what's expected of her now, trying on a role that didn't fit her, either, and floundering.
An arts organization adjacent to one I'm in had a huge "privilege" resignation scandal that led to calls for more art in some way relevant to its mission by people meeting a list of identity criteria. I met enough to count, and had a project planned for them anyhow, but I've shelved it indefinitely, since I'm not identity-y enough to be what they're probably looking for, to the point where if my project by some miracle got noticed, it could just cause another scandal for them.
From an early age, I was strongly discouraged from making the arts a living, so I'm just a hobbyist who sometimes makes pocket change. But if I were making a living at it, would I feel like I could turn down the chance to play a role I technically fit?
That second paragraph exactly. And yea, it’s a primary pressure in the market now.
I’m concerned that the identity-based marketing approach (at least in the classical music world, if not in general) just isn’t a tenable, sustainable position to keep. That it will just be a self-destructive implosion of people constantly vying to be the most interesting identity to listen to, when that says nothing of musical quality or interest. It’s subject to atomization and commodification in the culture industry, and is highly susceptible to perpetuating the standard fare of political or otherwise ideological propaganda/misinformation, as artists attempt to embody political messages recklessly.
Frankly, based on my academic studies, it’s a backwards way of even comprehending how identity is generated in the first place. I could go into this more, but people end up replacing personality with identity, to disastrous results.
Sure, I think sources of inspiration and influence are cool, but that’s just what they are. I agree, I think they just went a little bit in over their head. I’m not sure how much our composer felt that their ideological orientation on the matter was expected in the current industry zeitgeist, but we genuinely felt bad that the miscommunication happened, as it was the opposite of our intention. It worries me that that was their chosen response, however, especially in the context of how spectacularly they failed to adhere to contract terms. It came across as self-victimization in order to avoid criticism, and I’m not in the market of infantilizing someone (especially in a hypocritically racist way, the stance I felt the other composer took on her behalf).
I only think there’s something wrong in playing a role you so feel suited to fit, if that role is predicated on regressive stereotypes and backwards ideology that only serves to create more social divisions over religious-culture wars.
Certainly a conundrum. I plan to pursue fine art in my retirement (after years as a commercial designer/web developer/business owner) - metal and glass sculpture (custom, mixed-media lamps, basically). I am delighted that I won't need to submit myself to any arts groups gauntlets to survive because it's not about feeding ego. It's about creating, learning and playing - my kind of play. And I can sell via a number of venues online (including my own site) to make a bit of pocket change if needed.
I am glad to hear that you also have the choice to bow out. It's a good place to be right now. It is sad, that the arts, a place where vox veritas matters, has been subsumed. I hope this madness passes soon.
Yes, exactly. I’m a nobody when it comes to politics and culture, but I’m well read and my BA actually means something to me. So I couldn’t readily be befuddled by the lingo that, as has been noted prominently by others, is pseudo religious. I know the lingo. I know the “logic.” When it came down to simply answering my questions, the answer I got was a literal “it’s ok to generalize by identity group, even negatively.” I said, then this is where we part ways.
I've been online since early 1990s, and it was as you describe. As a woman—we were a small minority at the time—I was comfortable there (though I had my little knitting niche and the like). But I do kinda wonder if some of the general gender toxicity of the present has its roots in the male subgroups that felt their clubhouse came to be overrun by the girls.
Oh, I'm 100% certain that's a factor. Being deliberately vague here but in the gaming subculture I was in, we - teenage boys - thought nothing of typing "man we totally raped that boss" or whatever. And if someone piped up saying it was inappropriate, yeah, we'd stop, but we'd among ourselves say "wtf is her problem, she's so uptight". There was a generational thing and also a gender thing.
I should say in 90% of cases we all got along and the banter was friendly, but women had to adapt to our young maleness WAY more than they would be asked to now, so unquestionably there was self-selection here. It's not even that women were invading out clubhouse - it was that if they *weren't* "just one of the boys" they'd not have fit in our group at all. And while we were generally happy to roll our virtual eyes and behave while a lady was in the room being a wet blanket (as we saw it), I am positive in lots of cases people - women - would have just suffered us in silence.
I believe this to be much less prevalent now, but I also believe that it's come with no small measure of resentment.
Edit: to be clear, while I don't think our little clan was particularly bad, and I can say with 100% truthfulness we'd never directed such comments *at* people, I look back on this with some embarrassment. Hence despite being a very conservative person, politically, I don't hand-wave away all feminist concerns in particular or inclusive ones in general. I believe, despite current excesses, these concerns are legitimate and come from a real place.
It was the same in the military back in the early 90s - 3-day passes offered to whomever could prove they took the biggest shit out in the field. I can speculate that it is somewhat tempered now even in that male dominated culture although I don't think the military will ever be a girls club.
I’m a woman and have been online since the early 90s and it’s definitely not *more toxic*, it’s just at an entirely, wildly different cross-cultural scale. The shit men sent me as a teen in the early 90s was of a caliber that I haven’t seen since.
That sounds right (and highly depressing, unfortunately.) Today's toxicity is maybe more... social? The days of plain text and grainy images, on the other hand, yep... a creep's paradise.
I think some people are just dicks. Since everything must be political, the claim "X is a dick" doesn't hold much water. Instead, you need to say "X is a causing violence" or "X is sexist" etc. Personally, I think Greenwald is a smug dick, and won't subscribe to his Substack because of it. But the idea that he's causing some grave social harm is dumb.
He's been a smug dick for a long time, but with the very unfortunate habit of being (IMO) correct about a lot of things I care about. I've been following him since the Salon days, and I like his long-form writing much better than his twitter, but I haven't joined the paid Substack as I think his twitter persona is starting to become dominant.
I've had similar mental experiences over the decades, but never in a public venue. In fact, few no of it.
All that to say... I can't express my admiration to You and this for essay enough. Do You wonder if suffering suffered "successfully" encourages resilience and strength? Dunno, may just be a nice fantasy.
I've been following the "tough love" crowd since childhood. Witnessing how unfair the "tough love" crowd finds it when "tough love" it habitually gives others is directed back at "its own" was an epiphany for me. I genuinely had not expected it, not least because I had internalized the "tough love" and felt a moral obligation to apply it to myself.
(I witnessed, for example, the reaction to Kevin D Williamson's "tough love" toward "Real America" at National Review. Thermonuclear farce. I believe Williamson's point was to persuade those who dish out tough love to reconsider how they do it. I now believe few people that matter in that sphere are capable of getting that point, though.)
I remember You, Midge. I just looked at the first on the Survivorship bias. Nothing of the sort. I'm one-a the few that know I'm here because 50% of it was pure unadulterated luck. (The other 50% was breaking ass.)
I've been poor, so have a little more empathy than You give me credit for, I suspect.
Simply wanting "tough love" to work can be empathetic. Whether and when it works, and what sort does, is harder. Most people seem to act, in their daily lives, at least, as if sometimes "tough love" is better and sometimes "soft love" is — probably because that's true. But when a partisan identity is invested in being "on the side of tough love" or "on the side of soft love", things get weird.
Ad-based social media does have the effect of eliminating free will. You can avoid this by never using it.
This, plus, they inveigle against the victim having to exercise any agency to rectify their situation. Everyone else has to change but not the victim. And this is bullshit and will get us nowhere.
My life didn't improve until began calling my own shots; until I decided that I didn't have to live inside of their definitions of me and I could define myself. It was long, painful journey to this realization but I am so glad that I found my way out of it. I had to be brave and risk people disliking me to reclaim my own space but it's the best decision I ever made.
The problem is that victimhood confers way too many benefits at present for anyone so subsumed to choose to move away from it. It's an excellent grift.
Unless of course, you log off.
lmao thank you I feel like I'm the only person in the comments who seems to think that there's a massive power imbalance happening. Tuckers criticism of Lorenz was that she tweeted:
“For international women’s day please consider supporting women enduring online harassment. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the harassment and smear campaign I’ve had to endure over the past year has destroyed my life. No one should have to go through this.”
Ah yes, clearly she deserves to be called a liar on the most popular cable show on television, and if people harrass her after the segment apparently that's not the fault of the host, thats the cost of being online apparently?
McFakename: She IS lying. Tucker is not responsible for what his viewers do after they watch his show. And it IS the cost of being online.
I mean, that's a pretty depressing worldview man. No-one's responsible for the actions of their fans and the way to deal with harassment online is to just deal with it? Surely that's just a no-win scenario like Freddie says, an endless, pointless, toxic war?
When Stephen Colbert told some joke that some Asian activist found racist she tried to get #Cancelcolbert trending on Twitter. His fans responded with rape and death threats.
I am not a big fan of Colbert but there is some segment of his fan base who responds to criticism with rape and death threats then there is no large fan base, anywhere, that does not contain people who will resort to rape and death threats.
In any sufficiently large population there are going to be some crazies. If we let them set the boundaries of what is acceptable discourse then that means there is literally nothing that can be talked about in public.
Yeah, and I don't think he'd be at fault in that scenario unless I'm missing something?
I'm not saying public figures can never talk about anything, as you say there are crazy people in every fanbase. Look at KPop fans!
I'm saying there's a huge world of difference between Tucker Carlson putting someone on blast for a tweet on his show vs the general conversation about responsibility of public figures for how their fans react to them. There's a huge spectrum there!
What did Tucker Carlson do that was any different than what that Asian activist did? And do you think it's possible that some segment of Colbert's base is targeting the GOP politicians, like Trump, that he is so fond of criticizing?
Are you sure? I seem to recall that the issue was that she was trying to whip up mob action against people like Marc Andreeson and Carlson was just pointing out that she's a hypocrite.
This appears to be the clip in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pza9fRxW5WM
It doesn't seem to me that he's calling for anyone to harass her. What do you think?
Putting aside the Tucker angle for a moment, I find it extremely cringey that, on international women's day, her plea is that you support her own specific first-world problem. I mean, really? That's the most pressing issue for women internationally -- having cruel things said to us online? No. It's just another embarrassing data point on how hopelessly myopic and ethnocentric the modern American left has become.
Taylor Lorenz has the institutional backing of the most prestigious and powerful newspaper in the world.
Let's break this down. Is there a threshold for people Tucker is allowed to talk about on TV? If so, what is that precise threshold? Measure it however you want - platform, wealth, height, gender, whatever. Just give a precise measure.
What rules are you referring to, precisely?
I have both of them muted and the world is better for it.
As someone firmly on the side of "American MSM as the genuine enemy of a free society": there is a difference between hating the structure and incentives that exist in the MSM, and criticizing the leading and visible figures of it on one side, and a genuine, visceral hatred of the person (analogous with racism or bigotry). I mean, yeah, let's not be coy - there's an overlap. I believe the major media execs to not *just* be greedy and working within a Bad system, but also Bad for taking part in it. But that's a disagreement over what they're doing, not who they are. Anyone can be redeemed. Quit CNN, blow the whistle, devote oneself to truth. If you hate someone for being French or German or Basotho, they can't do that.
A less verbose version of my original response: Hate the sin, not the sinner.
A human being can't transcend their race or nationality. (Religion is a bit messier.) A human can change their behavior, change their mind, change their worldview. Or to put it another way: we don't execute shoplifters, even though (outside of San Francisco) we don't like shoplifting.
The like is for the SF reference. LOL!
"Anyone can be redeemed."
Not necessarily saying all cruel people are socipaths, but FWIW, I fundamentally do not believe sociopaths can be redeemed (barring society making some terrifying strides in manipulating brain architecture). And I think society tends to underestimate their prevalence. They aren't all serial killers -- many are just everyday sadists.
I do believe sociopaths and psychopaths have either faulty wiring or a chemical imbalance in their brains. The cause of this - nature or nurture? Who knows? And how to fix it, just don't know. I do think that some day, we will know how to fix it. Neurology science is making great strides. And then it's going to be an interesting fight over whether the fix is ethical.
This is an interesting series if you like to geek out on biological science: https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Hameroff/dp/B0009RM9KI
I don't know nearly enough about this to say with certainty one way or the other. I'm speaking more spiritually than anything. Perhaps there is a person who simply can't reckon with God, I don't know. But for those of us here on the spinning orb, I guess that's a luxurious question. If there can't be redemption, there can at least be restraining.
I value the idea of redemption. I think because even the best of us can be cruel or ignorant or merely ham-fisted, we need it.
I’d be burning down those teenagers’ houses.
So, regardless of their mental state or circumstances, you would really try to entice a teenager into suicide for being mean to your spouse online? That seems a bit extreme, even for you.
See, when I said before that I don't get you, KT -- this is what I meant. Sociopathic online persona for the lulz? Or just a why-not-let-it-all-hang-out sociopath? Genuinely can't tell yet. Suspect the former, but that may just be wishful thinking. Guess that earns you a congrats on the trolling, though, if that's the point.
Of course the Brookings folks aren't actually concerned about harassment, they are concerned about how to weaponize third-party noise against people they don't like.
"Online violence" as the term for "some anonymous Twitter person saying nasty things" is an Orwellian construction on its own.
I'll go further: if you haven't received death threats and harassment on the internet, it's only because you've either said nothing, or the only things you say are so banal that nobody could ever form an opinion about them one way or another.
It's simply the price of admission for participation.
I went through a phase when I was a bit younger that I’d describe as… feeling that because I do the work of being diplomatic and inoffensive online, I deserve to never be harassed. And conversely, if I saw someone being more real and getting heat, I’d think, they probably deserved it for being worse at using the internet than I am.
hah! Those really are basically the two... if you love the internet, you will probably end up as either someone who gets off on being real and offensive or someone who gets off on being synthetic and inoffensive
Or like me, you've only said things safe in the area you're saying them. I've said cancel-worthy things in the Discords and forums of the cancelled, but I manage my online persona.
Not the bravest thing, but I don't have that much interesting to contribute -- aside from some bits and bobs on AI and maybe synthesis of interesting ideas.
None of my 14 subs or 5 readers have sent me one yet!
your work here is not done
Die!
nou
saur?
I've got a real stinker heading to your inbox, tout de suite!
What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
BRB - sounding the beige alert.
ive seen biologist receive death threats, but not physicists . Assuming both are acting in professional capacities of course.
If you haven't received death threats and harassment on the internet, it could be because you are one of about 4 billion people with little or no access to the internet.
Not sure incorporating an outside study into a newsletter counts as "presenting."
Indeed - it's significantly more than that. "Presenting" implies simply serving up for scrutiny. In this case, Brookings is not merely incorporating this for study, but gave - and if you'd clicked the link, you'd know this - the microphone over to the NYU and IWMF authors to present *and defend* their own work.
Don't want to quarrel over semantics. They did more than provide a link, you are right, but it's not their own work. They did turn over the microphone, I agree. To my ear, one presents one's own work, but not someone else's. But my ear could be fallible. In any event, I greatly appreciate your work and enjoy engaging with the posts daily.
I'm not Freddie! (He'd be mad if I was.) I like it here too.
I'm sorry, Freddie, that you had to deal with such a thing. As the Wicked Witch of the West said, "What a world, what a world!"
It's pretty ironic that the Brookings article will undoubtedly release a torrent of exactly the same behavior they call out Greenwald and Carlson for, but in their direction. And the authors will sleep soundly at night in blissful carelessness at best, or secretly pat themselves on the back for unleashing it at worst.
I mean, we can be honest and admit there's a huge difference between not being able to control how your fans/followers react to people one posts about and someone who has a FOX news show with viewership in the millions, that implicitly calls out people as enemies of a free society?
EDIT: trillions -> millions, that typo was bugging me
Remember when they did that to Sanders? At multiple debates, he was asked why his supporters were mean.
I mean if Sanders had a TV show were he had a segment where he put someone on screen and called them soft for talking about online abuse, that's a completely different situation than blaming Sanders for getting abuse from someone that had "berniebro" in their twitter.
Why wouldn't it matter if there was more malicious intent involved?
What would it look like, for Carlson to criticize a journalist in a way you wouldn't find guilty of that?
Don't you think there's a mismatch of audiences and power that should be weighed when speaking out as a public figure? His criticism was that she tweeted about online abuse.
no
Why do you think that?
For the same reason you don't think it's a problem when Taylor Lorenz (or indeed any other nationally prominent journalist) writes about public people on Twitter (followers: more than the population of Boise) or in the American newspaper of record - because it's a phony objection used to chill legitimate criticism of public figures.
Huh? When did I say that people aren't allowed to criticise her lol
No, not really. She's was a reporter for the NYT. There are few people in the world with more influence than her, and she built a career partly by using that influence and audience in dubious ways.
The criticism was that she outright lied about the actions of an individual and sent a mob on them. When confronted with evidence that she lied, instead of apologizing, she doubled down and started playing victim.
Tuckers criticism of her wasn't about this though, it was because she tweeted about online harrasment?
It was because she tweeted about online harassment while she herself was a ringleader for online harassment.
Taylor Lorenz being, of course, an intensely private person who'd never use a bully pulpit of her own.
So alls fair because she's just as bad?
She's infinitely worse by any measure except audience size, but leave that aside: yes, public figures are permitted to comment on what other public figures are doing in public and saying to other members of the public in public.
Infinitely worse? Than a guy who once had a segment on his show about how the liberals have made the green M&M unfuckable? What am I missing here, why does everyone in the comments hate this woman lol
What does this M&M segment have to do with calling someone out as the enemy of a free society? Try to keep your argument still if you'd like me to address it. If you don't know who Taylor Lorenz is then obviously you're going to struggle with this, but as I understand it Tucker's problem with her is that she occupies a hugely privileged position in society, has used on numerous occasions her bully pulpit at the NYT and on Twitter to criticize - fairly or not! - other individuals, but she and her employer believe that any criticism of her is *by definition* harassment. In other words, crybullying.
I didn't know who Taylor Lorenz was because I've currated my twitter feed to be entirely about baseballs and movies. I struggle to think of how a random NYTimes article can be "infinitely worse" than Tucker, a guy who regularly talks about the "great replacement theory" on his TV show.
I did read the study that Freddie linked and Tucker's segment on her was about the following tweet:
“For international women’s day please consider supporting women enduring online harassment. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the harassment and smear campaign I’ve had to endure over the past year has destroyed my life. No one should have to go through this.”
Which seems pretty tame to put someone on blast on a major TV show for?
Ice cold take here: MSM and Fox News are both bad.
How many years have prominent liberals been calling Fox News the enemy of free society? Many of us remember what life was like before the escalator.
Don't forget billionaires and Super PACs! Both now amazing.
> Many of us remember what life was like before the escalator.
I honestly don't understand what this means
I'm not the guy who posted that but anyway: Trump announced his campaign after coming down the golden escalator at Trump Tower.
Totally tangential, but that reference makes me think of Livia Soprano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0-q3KXpfKQ
If Carlson has reasons, or Brookings has reasons, to call out enemies, it's fair to attack those reasons. And insult the one calling out for doing so with such wimpy reasons. Trump was faced with essentially dishonest insults, lies, and illegal spying by the FBI against him since 2015 - with all but FOX news TV calling him out as an enemy. Along with lots of valid criticism. Those "against harassment" mostly failed to oppose harassment of Trump; or of Jordan Peterson, or now of Joe Rogan (who supported Sanders)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnstaceyennis/2020/01/26/joe-rogans-endorsement-the-stain-on-bernie-sanders-that-some-voters-think-makes-him-more-attractive/
We need to be able to attack the policies, arguments, reasons, values, and especially the results - without so much attacking the people. But even "attacking" the people, in the UnReaL internet is not real violence.
If the bocce set is still going, I'm interested.
I'd go even further than Freddie's final paragraph here and bring it back to the start - the "gendered" aspect. Women are, by and large, more likely to see things through a lens of experience and feeling and less in principle. (This isn't a value judgement one way or another, incidentally; just an observation.) As such if Taylor Lorenz suffers, and Taylor Lorenz is a woman, she's suffering through her womanhood, and womanhood being currency in the great market of victimhood, of course that's going to be front and center.
I've been online since the mid 1990s, when it was by and large geeky white males from North America and Europe and Australia who inhabited the English-speaking part of the internet. Since then the Anglophone internet has globalized and feminized. It's changed remarkably, and not just due to technology. What I won't say is that the increased feminization of the internet - and academia, media etc. - has made toxicity worse, per se. I don't think it has, or if it has it's incidental. What it *has* made - and this is, in my view, absolutely undeniable - is accusations of toxicity that much more valuable, and we all have to sit around with our big sad faces on not because the toxicity exists, but because the toxicity is targeted at someone with a particular status, e.g. "woman on the internet."
That this lends itself with absolute perfection to crybullies like Taylor Lorenz's increasing success and wealth is inevitable.
I'm sure there's a gendered aspect here too, that it's really costly for a man to admit if he's been psychologically damaged by online hate, so in mostly-male groups people (in general) avoid doing that. Women will get emotional support rather than contempt for the same behaviour, so even if a man and a woman feel equally bad about being abused on the internet, the woman will generally talk about it more.
You're right, to an extent, but it's incumbent on we men to look out for men. Not that I'd want a pity party, but men should be able to say to their friends something like, "I'm getting a ton of hate mail. I'm deleting it and ignoring it, but the volume of it is getting me down." Then his friends should say something to the effect of. "That sucks. These people are dicks and if they mess with you in a serious way, we've got your back." No need for a cry-a-thon. Instead some simple solidarity.
Absolutely. I think it's great when men do this in groups of other men. But part of the reason why men need to get support from other men is that there's a definite difference in the amount of emoting expected in groups of men versus women. As a not-very feminine woman, other women (perfectly nice women, who I like) sometimes freak me out with the amount of sympathy they'll express over setbacks - even setbacks which I/the person being addressed don't (seem to) think are that serious.
Culture and personality feed into one another - there are more women than men who really want others to feel their pain and to tell them many times that they feel their pain and are taking it really seriously. So they express that, other people see them express that, they think "I could do that too!", more pain comes out, more emoting about it, people (usually women) like that emoting ... and there you get the cycle.
I literally just today had an email exchange with a woman of color who has published multiple books, has a significant following online. I asked her to explain how it was ok for her to make generalized negatively valenced moral judgements about an identity group. (She said “white people are untrustworthy,” among many other things.) She accused me of minimizing her standpoint and making her jump through hoops to talk to me when I declined to talk via zoom.
I just recently had to try and explain to a composer I commissioned that my feedback on their work (we were contractually entitled to first approve the final work and request revisions if necessary) - that the work was not effectively written for the ensemble and needed some adjustments to be able to be realized desirably - was not an identity attack or implicit bias against black women.
They decided to pull from the project and forfeit their remaining pay because they received criticism from a performer, when they’ve never even written for the medium of ensemble in question. They forgot what was written in their own contract, and tried to gaslight us for giving feedback because it wasn’t proper etiquette when engaging in dei work.
This type of thought is pure delusion.
Yeah I got to the point where to myself I was like “…maybe I am a fragile white?” But then I remembered prejudging someone based on phenotype is wrong.
I got to that point back in 2020, and realized about 6 months in that my egalitarian empathy was being exploited by the (neo)liberal idpol, (postmodernist influenced?) ideological seeds that were planted in a scattershot manner throughout my at-the-time primary and secondary academic studies. Unfortunately, that clashed hard with the intrinsic drive I’ve always found myself compelled towards, that is exemplified by Marxist philosophical thought.
I think I make clear which influence won out lol.
Cherry on top - the other composer involved in the project tried to back their peer up in our discussion meeting, but in private they admitted it was terrible writing for the ensemble. That composer also tried to assume things about me based on my identity, despite holding an ideological position that supposedly rails against that very notion, and attempted to lecture me on intersectionality and its derivative online-inspired pool of thought.
I tried to explain that I was already aware of such concepts - being a self-avowed Marxist who got a PoliPsi degree, keeps up with current political events, and studies theory/philosophy - and attempted to reason on a humanitarian level over the miscommunication. Alas, I’m not sure I fully got through the hypocrisy.
I'm sorry this happened to you. The one charitable thought I have is that because pressure to market an Identity if you have one is real, the composer may have thought she was simply doing what's expected of her now, trying on a role that didn't fit her, either, and floundering.
An arts organization adjacent to one I'm in had a huge "privilege" resignation scandal that led to calls for more art in some way relevant to its mission by people meeting a list of identity criteria. I met enough to count, and had a project planned for them anyhow, but I've shelved it indefinitely, since I'm not identity-y enough to be what they're probably looking for, to the point where if my project by some miracle got noticed, it could just cause another scandal for them.
From an early age, I was strongly discouraged from making the arts a living, so I'm just a hobbyist who sometimes makes pocket change. But if I were making a living at it, would I feel like I could turn down the chance to play a role I technically fit?
That second paragraph exactly. And yea, it’s a primary pressure in the market now.
I’m concerned that the identity-based marketing approach (at least in the classical music world, if not in general) just isn’t a tenable, sustainable position to keep. That it will just be a self-destructive implosion of people constantly vying to be the most interesting identity to listen to, when that says nothing of musical quality or interest. It’s subject to atomization and commodification in the culture industry, and is highly susceptible to perpetuating the standard fare of political or otherwise ideological propaganda/misinformation, as artists attempt to embody political messages recklessly.
Frankly, based on my academic studies, it’s a backwards way of even comprehending how identity is generated in the first place. I could go into this more, but people end up replacing personality with identity, to disastrous results.
Sure, I think sources of inspiration and influence are cool, but that’s just what they are. I agree, I think they just went a little bit in over their head. I’m not sure how much our composer felt that their ideological orientation on the matter was expected in the current industry zeitgeist, but we genuinely felt bad that the miscommunication happened, as it was the opposite of our intention. It worries me that that was their chosen response, however, especially in the context of how spectacularly they failed to adhere to contract terms. It came across as self-victimization in order to avoid criticism, and I’m not in the market of infantilizing someone (especially in a hypocritically racist way, the stance I felt the other composer took on her behalf).
I only think there’s something wrong in playing a role you so feel suited to fit, if that role is predicated on regressive stereotypes and backwards ideology that only serves to create more social divisions over religious-culture wars.
Certainly a conundrum. I plan to pursue fine art in my retirement (after years as a commercial designer/web developer/business owner) - metal and glass sculpture (custom, mixed-media lamps, basically). I am delighted that I won't need to submit myself to any arts groups gauntlets to survive because it's not about feeding ego. It's about creating, learning and playing - my kind of play. And I can sell via a number of venues online (including my own site) to make a bit of pocket change if needed.
I am glad to hear that you also have the choice to bow out. It's a good place to be right now. It is sad, that the arts, a place where vox veritas matters, has been subsumed. I hope this madness passes soon.
Yes, exactly. I’m a nobody when it comes to politics and culture, but I’m well read and my BA actually means something to me. So I couldn’t readily be befuddled by the lingo that, as has been noted prominently by others, is pseudo religious. I know the lingo. I know the “logic.” When it came down to simply answering my questions, the answer I got was a literal “it’s ok to generalize by identity group, even negatively.” I said, then this is where we part ways.
That’s pretty based of you 😎
You reached out to her!! Man, what a disappointing response, though. :(
I've been online since early 1990s, and it was as you describe. As a woman—we were a small minority at the time—I was comfortable there (though I had my little knitting niche and the like). But I do kinda wonder if some of the general gender toxicity of the present has its roots in the male subgroups that felt their clubhouse came to be overrun by the girls.
Oh, I'm 100% certain that's a factor. Being deliberately vague here but in the gaming subculture I was in, we - teenage boys - thought nothing of typing "man we totally raped that boss" or whatever. And if someone piped up saying it was inappropriate, yeah, we'd stop, but we'd among ourselves say "wtf is her problem, she's so uptight". There was a generational thing and also a gender thing.
I should say in 90% of cases we all got along and the banter was friendly, but women had to adapt to our young maleness WAY more than they would be asked to now, so unquestionably there was self-selection here. It's not even that women were invading out clubhouse - it was that if they *weren't* "just one of the boys" they'd not have fit in our group at all. And while we were generally happy to roll our virtual eyes and behave while a lady was in the room being a wet blanket (as we saw it), I am positive in lots of cases people - women - would have just suffered us in silence.
I believe this to be much less prevalent now, but I also believe that it's come with no small measure of resentment.
Edit: to be clear, while I don't think our little clan was particularly bad, and I can say with 100% truthfulness we'd never directed such comments *at* people, I look back on this with some embarrassment. Hence despite being a very conservative person, politically, I don't hand-wave away all feminist concerns in particular or inclusive ones in general. I believe, despite current excesses, these concerns are legitimate and come from a real place.
It was the same in the military back in the early 90s - 3-day passes offered to whomever could prove they took the biggest shit out in the field. I can speculate that it is somewhat tempered now even in that male dominated culture although I don't think the military will ever be a girls club.
The word "prove" here does so much heavy lifting, yet I don't want to know what of.
Just a photo. No hand carry! ;-)
I like your username :)
I’m a woman and have been online since the early 90s and it’s definitely not *more toxic*, it’s just at an entirely, wildly different cross-cultural scale. The shit men sent me as a teen in the early 90s was of a caliber that I haven’t seen since.
That sounds right (and highly depressing, unfortunately.) Today's toxicity is maybe more... social? The days of plain text and grainy images, on the other hand, yep... a creep's paradise.
That sounds awful and I’m sorry it happened.
I think some people are just dicks. Since everything must be political, the claim "X is a dick" doesn't hold much water. Instead, you need to say "X is a causing violence" or "X is sexist" etc. Personally, I think Greenwald is a smug dick, and won't subscribe to his Substack because of it. But the idea that he's causing some grave social harm is dumb.
He's been a smug dick for a long time, but with the very unfortunate habit of being (IMO) correct about a lot of things I care about. I've been following him since the Salon days, and I like his long-form writing much better than his twitter, but I haven't joined the paid Substack as I think his twitter persona is starting to become dominant.
Like many men his age he got rich and isolated and a little nuts.
I've had similar mental experiences over the decades, but never in a public venue. In fact, few no of it.
All that to say... I can't express my admiration to You and this for essay enough. Do You wonder if suffering suffered "successfully" encourages resilience and strength? Dunno, may just be a nice fantasy.
TY again, sir.
It could just be a nice fantasy, indistinguishable from survivorship bias.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
I've been following the "tough love" crowd since childhood. Witnessing how unfair the "tough love" crowd finds it when "tough love" it habitually gives others is directed back at "its own" was an epiphany for me. I genuinely had not expected it, not least because I had internalized the "tough love" and felt a moral obligation to apply it to myself.
(I witnessed, for example, the reaction to Kevin D Williamson's "tough love" toward "Real America" at National Review. Thermonuclear farce. I believe Williamson's point was to persuade those who dish out tough love to reconsider how they do it. I now believe few people that matter in that sphere are capable of getting that point, though.)
I remember You, Midge. I just looked at the first on the Survivorship bias. Nothing of the sort. I'm one-a the few that know I'm here because 50% of it was pure unadulterated luck. (The other 50% was breaking ass.)
I've been poor, so have a little more empathy than You give me credit for, I suspect.
I wasn't thinking of you as lacking empathy.
Simply wanting "tough love" to work can be empathetic. Whether and when it works, and what sort does, is harder. Most people seem to act, in their daily lives, at least, as if sometimes "tough love" is better and sometimes "soft love" is — probably because that's true. But when a partisan identity is invested in being "on the side of tough love" or "on the side of soft love", things get weird.
Yeah, I can see where it would. Me? I've been guilty of both. Some of each worked and didn't. Dunno.
Not the biggest fan of “I’m sorry that happened to you” but nonetheless completely heartfelt in this case.
Your work makes a tremendous difference. It provides very unique, meaningful insight. Whether you need to hear it or not, it’s true.