You provide me with an honest viewpoint that often differs from my own, but that is informed, thoughtful, and which I value. No one is perfect, least of all me, and we can never arrive at a wiser, better self without having our asses hammered on the anvil of life. A hammering we sometimes (frequently?) bring upon ourselves.
I am sorry you were on the wrong end of thoughtless, hypocritical, and self-serving turds who could not find self awareness if it walked up and kicked them vigorously in the crotch. Thank you for having the moral courage to give voice to your perspective in a candid, vulnerable way despite this type of aggressively bad behavior, and keep fighting the good fight, no matter the litany of schmucks who might stumble in your way.
In times past, The Dilbert web page had Dogbert's Mission Statement Generator. I being a wise-ass UNIX sysadmin wrote a script that pulled a random statement, and set it as the MOTD, the system Message Of The Day. Anyone who logged on got some random MOTD via Scott Adams.
Yeah, every time I worry I'm Internet Brain-poisoned, I'm reminded of Twitter. (Which wasn't particularly to blame; it just happened to have the lowest standards to join right about the time the current era of internet insanity began.
Same here. Freddie is in a world that until awhile ago I didn't know existed. Hell! I didn't use a smart phone regularly until last year. With the cheap Apple I can use wifi. We don't have cell reception at home. Those damn mountains and trees are in the way. LOL
I imagine that it must be very hard to be stuck in such a situation, where you write in order to be read, and as far as I can tell you are deeply sincere in your writing, but the wider audience feels no need to critique what you write based on what you actually wrote. It must be enraging. For my part I only started reading your writing when I bought your first book, about a year after it was published. I’m not concerned about what happened before, although I appreciate that you are. I subscribe and read your work because you write well about subjects that interest me. I hope you keep doing it.
I know you didn’t post this fishing for compliments or support. But I still feel compelled to let you know how much your work has meant to me. I recently finished your latest book, and eagerly read your Substack posts. I regularly disagree with you, but always find you to be thoughtful and interesting. This is mostly all I care about in finding writers to read. Your humanity always comes through in your writing. I love you man and wish you a very happy holidays.
Freddie, Steve has expressed my thoughts better than I could. You come through as an honest broker and you're always interesting, even when I struggle to follow you on a statistical journey. The purpose you serve in my life is as a beacon of sanity in a sea of self-serving lies.
"Print whatever you like about me so long as you spell my name right." - Will Rogers (my paraphrase)
You begin your response by discrediting the Daily Mail. You are offended by their having misquoted you and having given license to numerous others to spread the misquote. In the process you maybe have moved up to the C list. It's good to push back and maybe the Daily Mail will go another round (which probably helps elevate your profile further and might draw in others like Guardian) but don't let it get under your skin. Remember that when you wrestle with pigs in mud, eventually you learn that the pigs like it. (another paraphrase from somebody...)
Your situation of being unjustly accused and treated as a pariah for no good reason must be infuriating. Your essay also reminds me of a story:
About a decade ago, my son’s fourth grade teacher was caught with three joints in his car and arrested. Cannabis was not yet legal in Nee Jersey, where we lived at the time. The arrest split our school community, with some parents calling for him to be fired immediately, while others of us (I among them) wrote letters in support of him. He ultimately pled down to a misdemeanor, and was able to keep his job because, in the words of the superintendent, “we don’t fire teachers for misdemeanors.”
I talked with him after he came back to work, to let him know how grateful I was that he was back. He said that reading our letters of support was the first time he had felt like a human being since his arrest.
Now, of course, recreational cannabis is legal in NJ. I wonder how those parents calling for this teacher’s head feel about their vindictiveness now? Their rage and punitiveness certainly didn’t age well.
Your persecutors’ rage won’t age well either, Freddie, even if that is a poor consolation right now.
I am grateful to you, Freddie, for your honesty about two topics that are important to me: education, and the difficulties of living with mental illness and disability.
"I can forgive everything, except That [insert badthoughtful/antisocial behavior" is the unofficial slogan of humanity. Sometimes, I wonder if we really are as forgiving as we claim, and all those people who we decide deserve to be launched into the sun just HAPPEN to have Crossed A Line, or if we're just a bunch of vindictive sadists, and mercy is the exception.
"In Chesterton’s The Secret of Father Brown, a beloved nobleman who murdered his good-for-nothing brother in a duel thirty years ago returns to his hometown wracked by guilt. All the townspeople want to forgive him immediately, and they mock the titular priest for only being willing to give a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection. They lecture the priest on the virtues of charity and compassion.
Later, it comes out that the beloved nobleman did not in fact kill his good-for-nothing brother. The good-for-nothing brother killed the beloved nobleman (and stole his identity). Now the townspeople want to see him lynched or burned alive, and it is only the priest who – consistently – offers a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection.
The priest tells them: 'It seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don’t really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don’t regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. You forgive a conventional duel just as you forgive a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn’t anything to be forgiven.'
He further notes that this is why the townspeople can self-righteously consider themselves more compassionate and forgiving than he is. Actual forgiveness, the kind the priest needs to cultivate to forgive evildoers, is really really hard. The fake forgiveness the townspeople use to forgive the people they like is really easy, so they get to boast not only of their forgiving nature, but of how much nicer they are than those mean old priests who find forgiveness difficult and want penance along with it."
A writer having his name used as a purely notional caricature for silly truth-optional discourse among the chattering class is reasonably common really.
For most left-of-center white men who often punch left, they are hungry for and gleefully participate in exactly that kind of Twitter fight, it seems like it's why they like the job in the first place.
Best to just ignore it if it doesn't spark joy, so to speak.
If I was sitting next to you at a barstool I would remind you of things you already know. This comes with the territory. You take strong positions, do not apologize for them, and that pisses people off. You can control what you put out in the world but cannot control how it is consumed. That people are too stupid to properly interpret what you say must be incredibly frustrating but, unfortunately, there are a lot of stupid people in the world.
I see too many people out there write interesting things, generate a following but once the money starts rolling in, they start feeding the subscriber base what they want to hear and the authenticity goes out the window. I would be more concerned if I start agreeing with everything you say.
Keep doing your thing. You write thought provoking stuff. I would imagine that the overwhelming majority of your subscriber base is prepared to read something they don't agree with from time to time and that's ok.
Wow- tough day at the office. As to the original point, I think you were plenty clear that you thought the movie was a failure because it was bad art and you explained well enough why you thought that. When you operate in the public domain you can’t control what comes back. You know that. Breathe brother!
1) In the culture war there is no nuance. I know nuance is a big part of your writing, but the culture war has no interest in this and it is poorly suited to a sound byte, headline, 280 character world. I appreciate you trying to illustrate nuance, but this is just how it is. People are lazy, most people don't read past the headline and don't care to do so.
2) The Twitter left, for lack of a better term, will never, ever accept you. You are asking what you could do for penance, but it's a trick question. There is nothing. Any religious movement needs a steady stream of apostates and heretics to condemn, and branding you as one is absolutely necessary in terms of ideology. It's a little like functional alcoholics pointing at the sloppy drunk so as to minimize their own drinking. You're Barney Gumble in this political analogy.
3) I think you, for a long time, have kind of wanted to have it both ways. You want to be able to critique what you see as the mistakes and excesses of liberals and the left while still being seen as part of the team. I am sorry, but this position is untenable. If the people collectively setting the agenda for liberalism/the left (and the two are almost the same on social media anyway) had any interest in integrity it wouldn't be in the sorry state its in today. I know that crowd, I was one of them as most people reading this probably were at one point. They chose crude branding, empty slogans, and fashionable posturing over rigorous political thought and there's no going back. It's over.
I personally threw in the towel years ago and became an accountant. I am mostly content to work and be left alone. I hate to say this, but living in the Twin Cities in 2020 made me never want to do anything political...ever again.
Matt Taibbi definitely plays a similar role, but I think he's leaned into it a lot harder, seems to relish his role as the bete noir of liberal America. Taibbi at some point realized his role was going to be an anti-woke spokesperson and just decided to run with it. He's also definitely another example of a 280 character media forcing everyone to pick sides and making sure we all get sorted into the appropriate bins. Bins which are sadly based mostly on the needs of media marketing, market segments that have been conveniently created based on the optimal profitability of the companies involved.
"Bins which are sadly based mostly on the needs of media marketing, market segments that have been conveniently created based on the optimal profitability of the companies involved."
I have noticed that internet marketers really do not know how to deal with users who don't fit neatly into their boxes. I like boxes, but only the ones that I choose.
Man does that final bullet point ever relate to me. I've felt a desire to be "part of the team" while still remaining a critic for years, but I've finally accepted that's not gonna happen. People on social media are too bloodthirsty.
I work in finance too, but not in MN. 2020 broke me in similar ways as well.
"2) The Twitter left, for lack of a better term, will never, ever accept you. You are asking what you could do for penance, but it's a trick question. There is nothing. Any religious movement needs a steady stream of apostates and heretics to condemn, and branding you as one is absolutely necessary in terms of ideology. It's a little like functional alcoholics pointing at the sloppy drunk so as to minimize their own drinking. You're Barney Gumble in this political analogy."
Stop worrying about what The Cool Kids Clique thinks. They don't like you. They never will like you and there is nothing you can do to change that. You could commit seppuku to atone for your sins named and unnamed and they'd bitch that you used the wrong kind of blade or something, so 2021.
The tragedy (or perhaps farce) is that, as they unconsciously replicate Protestantism, they left out Jesus. So there is no way to atone for being a Bad Liberal.
"3) I think you, for a long time, have kind of wanted to have it both ways. You want to be able to critique what you see as the mistakes and excesses of liberals and the left while still being seen as part of the team. I am sorry, but this position is untenable. If the people collectively setting the agenda for liberalism/the left (and the two are almost the same on social media anyway) had any interest in integrity it wouldn't be in the sorry state its in today. I know that crowd, I was one of them as most people reading this probably were at one point. They chose crude branding, empty slogans, and fashionable posturing over rigorous political thought and there's no going back. It's over."
Did not one FdB skewer, roast and toss to the dogs the charred carcasses of those same liberal hypocrites over "defund the police"? and was it not truly a righteous thing, verily a sight to behold, not to mention it was funny as hell besides?
Hi Freddie, I know the title of your post was a rhetorical question, but to answer it, you give me something well written and thoughtful a few times a week, you vary the topic in interesting ways, and you keep me informed about the insanity of social media so I don't have to dip my toes in. I've been following you since before your breakdown, when you were on . . . what was that platform? I love the work you do.
Fellow Purdue alum here. Echoing what nearly everyone else has written thus far, I have been deeply impressed and moved by your work over the years. Even when you have taken a position that I disagree with, I have found your thoughtfulness in your arguments compelling.
I know, secondhand, what it is like to be the target of a smear campaign. The family member this happened to prevailed legally against the accuser, but the emotional damage was done.
Some people obviously do not believe in forgiveness, ever, no matter how relatively minor the sin, how long ago it was committed, or how genuinely an apology was made. Please know that you are respected by so many of us out here, and I hope you may find peace from the madness of the world.
You provide me with an honest viewpoint that often differs from my own, but that is informed, thoughtful, and which I value. No one is perfect, least of all me, and we can never arrive at a wiser, better self without having our asses hammered on the anvil of life. A hammering we sometimes (frequently?) bring upon ourselves.
I am sorry you were on the wrong end of thoughtless, hypocritical, and self-serving turds who could not find self awareness if it walked up and kicked them vigorously in the crotch. Thank you for having the moral courage to give voice to your perspective in a candid, vulnerable way despite this type of aggressively bad behavior, and keep fighting the good fight, no matter the litany of schmucks who might stumble in your way.
Always good for a laugh: https://www.dailymailheadlinegenerator.com/
Love that generator.
In times past, The Dilbert web page had Dogbert's Mission Statement Generator. I being a wise-ass UNIX sysadmin wrote a script that pulled a random statement, and set it as the MOTD, the system Message Of The Day. Anyone who logged on got some random MOTD via Scott Adams.
One purpose you’ve served in my life is to make me aware of all sorts of insane people I wasn’t aware existed
Yeah, every time I worry I'm Internet Brain-poisoned, I'm reminded of Twitter. (Which wasn't particularly to blame; it just happened to have the lowest standards to join right about the time the current era of internet insanity began.
Same here. Freddie is in a world that until awhile ago I didn't know existed. Hell! I didn't use a smart phone regularly until last year. With the cheap Apple I can use wifi. We don't have cell reception at home. Those damn mountains and trees are in the way. LOL
I imagine that it must be very hard to be stuck in such a situation, where you write in order to be read, and as far as I can tell you are deeply sincere in your writing, but the wider audience feels no need to critique what you write based on what you actually wrote. It must be enraging. For my part I only started reading your writing when I bought your first book, about a year after it was published. I’m not concerned about what happened before, although I appreciate that you are. I subscribe and read your work because you write well about subjects that interest me. I hope you keep doing it.
I pay for access because you often lead me to think about a topic with a perspective distinct from that which I might have landed otherwise.
'Zackly. If I wanted the late-November 2023 High Status NYC Media Received Wisdom on any subject, I could get all I wanted elsewhere for free.
I know you didn’t post this fishing for compliments or support. But I still feel compelled to let you know how much your work has meant to me. I recently finished your latest book, and eagerly read your Substack posts. I regularly disagree with you, but always find you to be thoughtful and interesting. This is mostly all I care about in finding writers to read. Your humanity always comes through in your writing. I love you man and wish you a very happy holidays.
Freddie, Steve has expressed my thoughts better than I could. You come through as an honest broker and you're always interesting, even when I struggle to follow you on a statistical journey. The purpose you serve in my life is as a beacon of sanity in a sea of self-serving lies.
100%
Can’t believe I missed screenshots of your dating profile, I would have sent it around to some folks for you.
"Print whatever you like about me so long as you spell my name right." - Will Rogers (my paraphrase)
You begin your response by discrediting the Daily Mail. You are offended by their having misquoted you and having given license to numerous others to spread the misquote. In the process you maybe have moved up to the C list. It's good to push back and maybe the Daily Mail will go another round (which probably helps elevate your profile further and might draw in others like Guardian) but don't let it get under your skin. Remember that when you wrestle with pigs in mud, eventually you learn that the pigs like it. (another paraphrase from somebody...)
Your situation of being unjustly accused and treated as a pariah for no good reason must be infuriating. Your essay also reminds me of a story:
About a decade ago, my son’s fourth grade teacher was caught with three joints in his car and arrested. Cannabis was not yet legal in Nee Jersey, where we lived at the time. The arrest split our school community, with some parents calling for him to be fired immediately, while others of us (I among them) wrote letters in support of him. He ultimately pled down to a misdemeanor, and was able to keep his job because, in the words of the superintendent, “we don’t fire teachers for misdemeanors.”
I talked with him after he came back to work, to let him know how grateful I was that he was back. He said that reading our letters of support was the first time he had felt like a human being since his arrest.
Now, of course, recreational cannabis is legal in NJ. I wonder how those parents calling for this teacher’s head feel about their vindictiveness now? Their rage and punitiveness certainly didn’t age well.
Your persecutors’ rage won’t age well either, Freddie, even if that is a poor consolation right now.
I am grateful to you, Freddie, for your honesty about two topics that are important to me: education, and the difficulties of living with mental illness and disability.
"I can forgive everything, except That [insert badthoughtful/antisocial behavior" is the unofficial slogan of humanity. Sometimes, I wonder if we really are as forgiving as we claim, and all those people who we decide deserve to be launched into the sun just HAPPEN to have Crossed A Line, or if we're just a bunch of vindictive sadists, and mercy is the exception.
I am reminded of something good I read going into that somewhere else, from IIRC a writer who is a psychiatrist: https://web.archive.org/web/20200419232247/https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
"In Chesterton’s The Secret of Father Brown, a beloved nobleman who murdered his good-for-nothing brother in a duel thirty years ago returns to his hometown wracked by guilt. All the townspeople want to forgive him immediately, and they mock the titular priest for only being willing to give a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection. They lecture the priest on the virtues of charity and compassion.
Later, it comes out that the beloved nobleman did not in fact kill his good-for-nothing brother. The good-for-nothing brother killed the beloved nobleman (and stole his identity). Now the townspeople want to see him lynched or burned alive, and it is only the priest who – consistently – offers a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection.
The priest tells them: 'It seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don’t really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don’t regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. You forgive a conventional duel just as you forgive a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn’t anything to be forgiven.'
He further notes that this is why the townspeople can self-righteously consider themselves more compassionate and forgiving than he is. Actual forgiveness, the kind the priest needs to cultivate to forgive evildoers, is really really hard. The fake forgiveness the townspeople use to forgive the people they like is really easy, so they get to boast not only of their forgiving nature, but of how much nicer they are than those mean old priests who find forgiveness difficult and want penance along with it."
All morality is a facade over status games, it seems. Everyone agrees the people deserve rights...but they're not so certain who counts as people.
A writer having his name used as a purely notional caricature for silly truth-optional discourse among the chattering class is reasonably common really.
For most left-of-center white men who often punch left, they are hungry for and gleefully participate in exactly that kind of Twitter fight, it seems like it's why they like the job in the first place.
Best to just ignore it if it doesn't spark joy, so to speak.
If I was sitting next to you at a barstool I would remind you of things you already know. This comes with the territory. You take strong positions, do not apologize for them, and that pisses people off. You can control what you put out in the world but cannot control how it is consumed. That people are too stupid to properly interpret what you say must be incredibly frustrating but, unfortunately, there are a lot of stupid people in the world.
I see too many people out there write interesting things, generate a following but once the money starts rolling in, they start feeding the subscriber base what they want to hear and the authenticity goes out the window. I would be more concerned if I start agreeing with everything you say.
Keep doing your thing. You write thought provoking stuff. I would imagine that the overwhelming majority of your subscriber base is prepared to read something they don't agree with from time to time and that's ok.
Wow- tough day at the office. As to the original point, I think you were plenty clear that you thought the movie was a failure because it was bad art and you explained well enough why you thought that. When you operate in the public domain you can’t control what comes back. You know that. Breathe brother!
A few things:
1) In the culture war there is no nuance. I know nuance is a big part of your writing, but the culture war has no interest in this and it is poorly suited to a sound byte, headline, 280 character world. I appreciate you trying to illustrate nuance, but this is just how it is. People are lazy, most people don't read past the headline and don't care to do so.
2) The Twitter left, for lack of a better term, will never, ever accept you. You are asking what you could do for penance, but it's a trick question. There is nothing. Any religious movement needs a steady stream of apostates and heretics to condemn, and branding you as one is absolutely necessary in terms of ideology. It's a little like functional alcoholics pointing at the sloppy drunk so as to minimize their own drinking. You're Barney Gumble in this political analogy.
3) I think you, for a long time, have kind of wanted to have it both ways. You want to be able to critique what you see as the mistakes and excesses of liberals and the left while still being seen as part of the team. I am sorry, but this position is untenable. If the people collectively setting the agenda for liberalism/the left (and the two are almost the same on social media anyway) had any interest in integrity it wouldn't be in the sorry state its in today. I know that crowd, I was one of them as most people reading this probably were at one point. They chose crude branding, empty slogans, and fashionable posturing over rigorous political thought and there's no going back. It's over.
I personally threw in the towel years ago and became an accountant. I am mostly content to work and be left alone. I hate to say this, but living in the Twin Cities in 2020 made me never want to do anything political...ever again.
I think of Matt Taibbi. By pursuing the Twitter Files he has been ostracized by Team left. Team left had abandoned the First Amendment, but not Matt.
Matt Taibbi definitely plays a similar role, but I think he's leaned into it a lot harder, seems to relish his role as the bete noir of liberal America. Taibbi at some point realized his role was going to be an anti-woke spokesperson and just decided to run with it. He's also definitely another example of a 280 character media forcing everyone to pick sides and making sure we all get sorted into the appropriate bins. Bins which are sadly based mostly on the needs of media marketing, market segments that have been conveniently created based on the optimal profitability of the companies involved.
"Bins which are sadly based mostly on the needs of media marketing, market segments that have been conveniently created based on the optimal profitability of the companies involved."
I have noticed that internet marketers really do not know how to deal with users who don't fit neatly into their boxes. I like boxes, but only the ones that I choose.
I think MT was genuinely disappointed and decided to follow the truth.
Yes, but I think Taibbi has the personality to ride the bete noir, ride it hard, put it away wet.
Good point. Everyone could not do this.
What I take away from this post is that Freddie should have moved to MN.
Ha...moving out of NYC to wherever he did ( I can't remember if it was upstate or Connecticut) is more or less the same thing.
As someone who has lived in both places, no, no its not.
Man does that final bullet point ever relate to me. I've felt a desire to be "part of the team" while still remaining a critic for years, but I've finally accepted that's not gonna happen. People on social media are too bloodthirsty.
I work in finance too, but not in MN. 2020 broke me in similar ways as well.
"2) The Twitter left, for lack of a better term, will never, ever accept you. You are asking what you could do for penance, but it's a trick question. There is nothing. Any religious movement needs a steady stream of apostates and heretics to condemn, and branding you as one is absolutely necessary in terms of ideology. It's a little like functional alcoholics pointing at the sloppy drunk so as to minimize their own drinking. You're Barney Gumble in this political analogy."
Stop worrying about what The Cool Kids Clique thinks. They don't like you. They never will like you and there is nothing you can do to change that. You could commit seppuku to atone for your sins named and unnamed and they'd bitch that you used the wrong kind of blade or something, so 2021.
The tragedy (or perhaps farce) is that, as they unconsciously replicate Protestantism, they left out Jesus. So there is no way to atone for being a Bad Liberal.
"3) I think you, for a long time, have kind of wanted to have it both ways. You want to be able to critique what you see as the mistakes and excesses of liberals and the left while still being seen as part of the team. I am sorry, but this position is untenable. If the people collectively setting the agenda for liberalism/the left (and the two are almost the same on social media anyway) had any interest in integrity it wouldn't be in the sorry state its in today. I know that crowd, I was one of them as most people reading this probably were at one point. They chose crude branding, empty slogans, and fashionable posturing over rigorous political thought and there's no going back. It's over."
Did not one FdB skewer, roast and toss to the dogs the charred carcasses of those same liberal hypocrites over "defund the police"? and was it not truly a righteous thing, verily a sight to behold, not to mention it was funny as hell besides?
What did you want this post to accomplish, if anything?
I never want my writing at accomplish anything.
Really? At minimum, don’t you want your writing to *convince* some readers of the rightness of socialism/Palestine/whatever you’re writing about?
Have you written about this before? If not, I would be fascinated to read more on this from you, Freddie.
Hi Freddie, I know the title of your post was a rhetorical question, but to answer it, you give me something well written and thoughtful a few times a week, you vary the topic in interesting ways, and you keep me informed about the insanity of social media so I don't have to dip my toes in. I've been following you since before your breakdown, when you were on . . . what was that platform? I love the work you do.
Fellow Purdue alum here. Echoing what nearly everyone else has written thus far, I have been deeply impressed and moved by your work over the years. Even when you have taken a position that I disagree with, I have found your thoughtfulness in your arguments compelling.
I know, secondhand, what it is like to be the target of a smear campaign. The family member this happened to prevailed legally against the accuser, but the emotional damage was done.
Some people obviously do not believe in forgiveness, ever, no matter how relatively minor the sin, how long ago it was committed, or how genuinely an apology was made. Please know that you are respected by so many of us out here, and I hope you may find peace from the madness of the world.