Friend Infected With Right Wing Brain Worms - What to Do?

poor choice of words, maybe.

idk, i'd be interested to hear from educators about what efforts if any schools are making to resist this.

i think maybe child safety locks on all computers and smartphones

thats your answer to burnt soup and everything above it

I think the articles DJP posted are great, but not really relevant when a white kid is the minority in their school and is getting teased for it. akm otm:

there is a shitload of left-wing talk in Berkeley public schools...the only thing I worry about there is that there's so much of it, and some kids are so inherently reactionary, that having that present might exacerbate contrarian behaviors because kids want to rebel.]

I think that is basically what happened to the kid in the article I posted. That doesn't mean we should stop teaching kids about race and privilege, but it does mean that maybe we should knock it off with some of the more toxic forms of callout culture, especially when it comes to kids.

And don't let your kids have instagram! Especially not until they are 13, at least (even Instagram agrees with this)

yes otm

Idk what kinds of conversations you've already had with your son, DJI, to unpack the complicated stuff that is being packed into "I guess I deserve it," but maybe it's time to have another convo about it or probe a little more?

some kids are so inherently reactionary, that having that present might exacerbate contrarian behaviors

now this really is a force we will never get rid of no matter how we arrange our society. i was pro-iraq-war in 2003 just because i knew no one else who was. the cure turned out to be to collect information, not to accept the necessity of deference to a moral authority.

they need to have access to the right information sources though. the 2k19 internet has plenty of "information" that will lead them to become more entrenched in reactionary ideas

sure, and i read plenty of christopher hitchens columns.

idk, i'd be interested to hear from educators about what efforts if any schools are making to resist this.

― Trϵϵship, Tuesday, May 7, 2019 8:40 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In my school, we're majority immigrant, starting with Chinese, with Latinx as the second largest category, and then Russian, Georgian, various Arabic-speaking people, and a bunch more. Only about 10% of our students are African-American, which is not what ppl expect from an "urban" school.

Tbh I wish we did MUCH more explicit instruction in anti-racism but a) not everyone agrees that it's necessary, and b) this area is the most right-wing part of NYC and full of "Blue Lives Matter" stickers and NRA and Trump bumper stickers on cars, so evidence suggests that any white privilege language would have to be delivered extremely carefully from a trusted source. We do a lot of "equity" instruction and have LGBTQ supports and mental health supports and we have a very diverse staff with lots of POC, but we don't have the demographics to commit to more open racial privilege work.

Which is a shame because afaict everyone in the NYPD is from here so if we did a better job maybe someone would accidentally learn something.

Have you seem evidence of extremism among your students?

We’ve had two shootings this year—christchurch and san diego—that were linked to 4chan and the alt right. I wonder if and how this is on the radar of teachers

and like, what even would be done about it

However I did see a student declamation/performance at a school in a majority-Black part of BK that was a condemnation of police violence and a protest for racial justice and it was really motivating to see that that school is able to make an explicit commitment to, and celebration of, Black excellence.

xp I see evidence that kids are jerks and don't understand the issues they're conflating which is why I wish we could do more. But "extremism" -- not necessarily but since most of our white kids probably go home to racist environments we ought to be doing more about it, because they've probably already learned the other stuff.

sure, and i read plenty of christopher hitchens columns.

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, May 7, 2019 4:57 PM

isn't this how we connected

him and madonna

i say 2003 but full disclosure not that anyone cares: the last time i argued in favor of anything about the iraq war (the "well it was v badly handled but" position) was the evening of the u.s. midterm elections in 2010. by then i was arguing w educated people who could talk to me about history both iraqi and american and i could feel myself losing ground. later that night i vomited on a robert conquest book.

something that is actually way more complicated than it seemed to outsiders, because she's actually a completely shit teacher who never comes to work, and seriously does spend her time indoctrinating and trying to attract kids to BAM, which I think doesn't belong in the school and I seriously wish they'd just fire her

i feel dumb asking but what is BAM?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAMN

haha thanks -- did some googling and was wondering why it would be bad for a teacher to tell kids about the center for disease control's BAM! body and mind program

oops sorry I forgot to hit "N"

him and madonna

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, May 7, 2019 5:21 PM

not Pet Shop Boys videos on the beach?

1) DJP OTM, as often

2) i think this is to do with teachers being clumsy messengers of a very complicated topic. and kids being black and white thinkers, sometimes. also i don't think i have the answer

― Trϵϵship, Tuesday, May 7, 2019 4:38 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark

see, i think you're totally incorrect on two accounts. first of all, teachers (especially in diverse school districts) directly and openly confront explicit, implicit, and structural racism single day! it's a huge part of the job. f'rinstance, when i request special education testing/evaluation for a struggling student, i've found it efficacious to follow one of three distinct paths –– dictated by the student's family background. when i make groupings to discuss many texts in my language arts classes, i have to account for race, native language, gender, disability, family dynamic, etc., etc. to optimize group dynamics. i'm aware of which groups of parents (broadly, reductively defined by ethnic identity) prefer to receive positive or negative news via email, which prefer phone calls, and which groups prefer in-person conferences. teachers aren't clumsy about a complicated topic. the job requires some deftness. the topic itself is clumsy, and teachers must often confront it despite others' awkwardness.

it's also incorrect that students are binary 'black and white thinkers.' kids - past a certain age - have deeply-nuanced, multifaceted understanding of the racial/cultural constructions du jour, and they're often thinking (and speaking) far more fluently about these things than their parents. they may lack historical grounding and academic language, but they make up for formal disfluencies by engagement in a wideass array of banter (digital and in-person) to openly expresses tensions that their adults are unable, unaware of, or unwilling to confront. kid-language is rich with aggression, microaggression, and toeing-the-line language in a million subtle ways that adults barely parse. a fortnite chat might use 'Sped,' 'sped kid,' 'tard and 'retard' to comedic, self-effacing, microaggressive, and outwardly hostile effect – but in such a way that it's all deniable to clumsy ol' dad. just 'rude language' besides, it's all just memes, and not the really racist stuff. memes/meme culture/4 chan/ben shapiro-lite shit is an onramp of the transgressive humor >> socially conservative >> right wing >> white supremacist highway.

which is to say: kids are complex, and some of them, from a very young age, are intrigued/titillated by 'transgressive' right-wing/racially coded language in a way that is deniable/downplayable to naive adults. the teachers who work directly with them are very aware of this, and confront it head-on, but aren't always backed up by parents/administrators who often thing the whole subject 'could be handled better.'

my uncle sent me this. it's "for dummies" but pretty good as a synopsis of where we're at i think?

https://points.datasociety.net/agnotology-and-epistemological-fragmentation-56aa3c509c6b

agnotology and epistemological fragmentation for dummmies

seriously, though, i guess i'm a dummy, because i thought this was great! i love the library science community, i wanted to be a librarian but tech has been doing a lot of work to deprecate that profession

i feel like a lot of the success of the right has been their implicit understanding that human beings aren't fundamentally rational and their according extremely savvy exploitation of human irrationality. what i love about folks like boyd and proctor and boal is that one of the opportunities for us is that the right don't necessarily have a schematic understanding of what they're doing, and merely the codification of the concept of agnotology is a powerful tool. naive enlightement rationalism is exploitable by weaponized ignorance. boyd, as i read it, doesn't respond to that, like some on the left have, by saying "fuck it, we're in the 'post-truth' era" or, worse, loudly complaining about how "stupid" people are, but by seeking to understand and express how weaponized ignorance works, and i feel this is wonderful.

(as a side note i do think there's a sense in which tech's usurpation of the profession of library science has unavoidable gender implications)

Tech has not usurped librarianship, it just has better advertising.

Librarianship, seen as "women's work" and unwilling to throw ethics away for short-term profit, could never see the influx of money the tech sector has. The tech industry took a deep foundation of information theory from library science and removed all scruples while throwing crazy money at it. So now we have chintzy big budget tools like Google that are optimized around advertising to you and helping you find things to buy. If you want to find deeper information than that, you often have to dive into databases that the general public can not access.

Librarians do still develop useful tools and technology but that's only a small part of the profession anyway. The reason librarianship will never be automated away is this: Librarians are educators FIRST. Public librarians are highly educated information specialists embedded in all kinds of communities in some of the only public spaces left in our late capitalist hellscape. No matter how much money you have, you can go to the library and access books, computers, and the internet. You can ask a librarian to help you figure out how to apply for a job in a language you're still learning, or access social services. You can borrow a meeting room for your book club or communist organizing group. You can take your baby to storytime programs to meet other young parents and expose your child to literacy at an early age.

Library science graduates do a hundred other kinds of vital jobs too. Academic librarians, UX researchers, archivists, law librarians, data librarians, taxonomists, digital repository developers, news librarians, the list goes on.

Anyway, total derail, but I had to defend my profession that gets constantly shat on by people who are eager to put us in the dustbin because their privilege keeps them from seeing why we matter. (that's not directed at you rushomancy, it's just something I've seen often out there!)

OTM.

This is somewhat counter to what’s happening with education reform and “data.” Techbros and their MBAs cherry-pick weaknesses of traditional education that are easily solved (in the short term) by the application of money and time, and head into underperforming districts. They trumpet promising early successes. These wins in hand, they promote “disruptive” techniques in place of conventional tools and wisdom to promote long-term solutions to thornier problems in exchange for more time and money. All of which come from the coffers of preexisting programs. However, techbros aren’t good af fixing systemic problems, and end up disenfranchising career teachers and administrators. To avoid shouldering the blame, they suggest that teachers/administrators haven’t implemented their solutions with fidelity. The solution is more data and more oversight, which they provide. More management, fewer teachers and traditional administrators . And new metrics — which confirm the biases and preferences of the techbros — always show the interventions working, in spite of the ineptitude of the teachers/allied admin.

OTM

I will add that I believe that the "disruption" of education with the above-described tech "solutions" fuels brain worms by reinforcing patterns of thinking that are not conducive to actually helping the educational endeavor succeed.

onesecondbefore and rb both otm, thank you for speaking up. i think there's a pattern in tech of taking "women's work", giving it to less competent and less qualified men with no ethics, and paying them exponentially more money. i believe this is a bad thing.

i’d like to give the immediately preceding posts in this thread a standing ovation. thank you. librarians do important, great work.

I have several friends who have degrees in library science, a couple of whom are acting librarians, and I extend my thanks in their behalf

The legitimacy and ethics of data is a sidebar to library science and it’s exactly what much of the tech world refuses to value because the very idea of legitimacy, ethical implications, and the privacy of data are things real librarians have tackled over time and they have an actual code!

My cousin is currently unable to choose between the two Conservative candidates

Boris is good because he is a disruptor and will put in place a dynamic team that has lots of ideas.

What sort of ideas, you might be thinking? Dynamic ones. and tax cuts

The other golden nugget, when asked about the differences between the two - "Oh, I don't listen or read to what they say"

I'm increasingly convinced conservatism is merely telepathy

m u r d e r t h e m

that would imply the presence of thoughts

The ideas one is a big one, but its difficult to get at what these ideas actually are. There should be a free marketplace of ideas, where the best ideas will rise to the top. But the left won't allow this to take place because they react to ideas they don't like with milkshakes, and by forming twitter mobs that get people fired from their jobs.

But getting at what these ideas are is really difficult. I think the concept is not that there are ideas out there right now, but that if we get smart entrepenuers together (and give them money?) they will come up with the ideas, because we will have fostered a 'start up like culture'. Its a lack of imagination that is the problem, these are the people who will be able to solve the Irish border issue and climate change

There should be a free marketplace of ideas, where the best ideas will rise to the top.

this is so painfully accurate as a caricature of a certain strain of right wing thought. looooool

we solved the irish border issue once we can do it again the same way if they like

anvil what does your friend think of silicon valley?

and I don't know what anyone else's brain-wormed people are like but in my experience they NEVER ask you anything in return. I think this is partly where interviews go wrong when going the adversarial route, socratic is always better. There is often almost nothing there more than one level deep (other than the secret knowledge which is somehow self-evident but never tangible) - so its "ideas", but we never find out what they actually are.

I try not to put my opinion across at all, and only ask open questions so there is nothing to react to (though I have to phrase any question super carefully). I'm amazed how shallow the soil on very strong opinions is, the permafrost underneath of "I don't know" is reached really easily. Modern conservatism is really only set up to play on the counter-attack, if you sit back and let them have possession its a different game entirely

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D64Q4MaW0AAnTom.jpg

I can reveal that one of the ideas is paying poor people to not have kids.

I'm increasingly convinced conservatism is merely telepathy

― anvil

no, dog whistles

free marketplace of ideas

why did Mark Field not simply defeat the protestor in the Marketplace of Ideas

— Mollie Goodfellow (@hansmollman) June 21, 2019

(for non-Britishers, Mr Field has been in the news of late for grabbing a peaceful environmental protestor by the throat and slamming her against a wall, which all right-wing commentators have agreed was a jolly good idea just in case)

My cousin was on the fence about that one. Went with the standard line that she was a potential threat but conceded (without prompting!), that the manhandling went on a bit too long and that this was bad optics. I asked why he had been suspended, the answer was "the twitter mob". I asked if this made Theresa May a snowflake for giving in, I think the answer was 'sort of'

The EU is going to tweak the backstop now, they didn't like May but they will see that Boris/Hunt mean business and also they will be gone and it will be some new people, change a few words, jobs done, will be the easiest job in the world

Sounds like your cousin's innate ignorance of government has been stuffed as full of misinformation as a Strasbourg goose, awaiting its turn to be made into paté.

It appears that a woke minority have managed to gain control of the public, and have imposed their will in decide what we can and can't say. The public are not allowed to say certain things anymore and no one can work out how this woke minority have managed to do it, even though people on the left and right are trying to answer. No disagreement or discussion is allowed, you're just not allowed to say certain things anymore

I found it difficult to get any further and find out more about what these things are and what will happen to me if I say them. I learned if I misgender someone I might get a visit from the police, but its unclear what will happen after that. I was unable to find out anymore about what this woke minority have. done