Are You Cut Out for Social Media?

you're not reading this right

it's not that the result is choices that can't be right

it's that the result is you feeling like no choice can be right

but you're wrong about the relevance of these imagined situations (you, positioning yourself as a reader of this stream of media) to you and your actual choices and their rightness

you honestly sound like you are turning a seminar-room bout of radical skepticism into an operating principle and then challenging other people to talk you out of your impossible belief

but other people are not trying to prove you wrong to prove you wrong, they're trying to dissuade you from your attachment to a mis-estimation of the importance of some of these things that is clearly causing you distress. you cannot debate your way out of this!

what other people are asking me to do is to disregard people who are pointing out instances of harm because "lol fuck the haters, they don't even count as human"

that is not true
katherine i wish you didn't care so much about what other people think but i am def not going to argue.w you about it.
it's just hard to watch someone struggling like this.

xp no they are not, you are adding in the implication that any disregard for any reason (including irrelevance, or your own personal well being) is therefore dehumanization.

and by doing so you are simultaneously doing two things

1) parodying the positions of the people you're in conversation with, to make them seem callously insensitive to your real concerns and the concerns of the people you are worried about potentially being harmed

2) giving yourself an ilicit reason to double down on your concern for those harms because 'other people' don't even take them as seriously as you, the truly concerned person who is willing to subject yourself to this perfectly moral self-scrutiny

what other people are asking me to do is to disregard people who are pointing out instances of harm because "lol fuck the haters, they don't even count as human"

a) what j. said about disregard not equaling dehumanization
b) again, you are automatically accepting that if someone is "pointing out instances of harm" they are automatically right and you are automatically wrong, which is exactly not the way to go through life as an adult

hey katherine i'm not trying to be dismissive of your very real feelings — I myself am a person who craves affirmation and wants to "follow the rules" and not make anybody mad at me (which is hard because I am a very flawed person and sometimes very annoying and not everybody likes me!). But some people just can't be pleased. I'd say people the people who are stirring up this shallot pasta controversy are being way way OTT and it's not worth it to try to adhere to the toxic boundaries they're setting.

it does sound like you have a frustrated ability to think for yourself

This insistent use of "should" and "wrong" suggests that you believe there is some kind of objective truth managed by "other people"

I suspect these people would have more than a few thoughts if you told them they were setting "toxic boundaries"

who gives a shit

Sounds like they always have more than a few thoughts

toxic people always have a lot of thoughts they think you have to hear

katherine you're constantly arguing against yourself (in the sense of what would be in your best interests, your welfare) on behalf of the people who have no concern at all for you ('these people' you're trying to satisfy or live righteously before)

I suspect these people would have more than a few thoughts if you told them they were setting "toxic boundaries"

And the circle spins round once again. The "other people" are always right; their concerns are always to be considered before your own; and on and on and on.

You seem to be hankering after absolutes where there are but hues. You are bound to hurt yourself in the process.

it's not that, it's that in almost every case, these are expressed as absolutes; rarely do you hear "this article is awful and the writer is the worst, but it's OK if you don't think so"

you're a skilled critic and writer, you can see right now the difference between how things are expressed, and how they're meant or how they're taken; so why assume that everything that looks like an absolute must be regarded as such?

because they are clearly intended to be regarded as such? when 1000 people all reply saying, to choose another day's new rule, "you're disgusting if you don't wash your chicken and I hope I never have to be around you," it seems like an enormous stretch to interpret that as "it's OK not to wash your chicken"

K do you think everyone here is a jerk for not responding to other people's opinions like you do? Do you think every "morally upright" person agonizes over this stuff like you do? Or is it possible that there's another way to be a caring, loving, respectful, considerate, "good" human being?

(example chosen because there is an equally adamant counter-rule of "why would you wash your chicken, you're unsanitarily spreading it all over the sink, a bad cook, and disgusting if you do")

yeah people do speak in absolutes (incl. here on ILX obviously) because they think strong-arming people into agreeing with them is the most effective method

xp -- I don't necessarily think everyone here is a jerk, but I do think that those people, if they knew what you were saying about them, probably would

because they are clearly intended to be regarded as such?

Except this isn't always true, is it?

xp that would put us back in the territory of people's intentions not being prima facie sufficient to back the moral force of what they say. you might be right about how to interpret words like that, but you should also consider the seriousness with which the words are being published to the world. people in public fora adopt personae and stances that are determined by the ambient conditions, or by the fact that they are precisely NOT the usual contexts for some communication (like concerned moral speech between people who can be accountable to one another), so not everything with the appearance of serious, well-intentioned speech ought to be received as such by all who encounter it.

Well, ILX does need some new blood

xp -- I don't necessarily think everyone here is a jerk, but I do think that those people, if they knew what you were saying about them, probably would

well those people are jerks!!! (sometimes)

"intention" doesn't totally capture it; someone tweeting the reaction gif of people pointing and laughing at someone might be "intended" to get likes or make people laugh, but it only works because there is an underlying and strong moral imperative of "this is wrong, don't do it" toward the person it's directed at.

… which can be carelessly invoked and exploited by people for any number of reasons, such as the likes or laughs you mention. which does not signal any significant attachment to the moral judgments that are involved, as it were merely for their functional role.

Literalism isn't the be-all and end-all of human communication, thank Christ. We must account for ambiguity, irony and the like, as they are always looming in the background. These also provide us with the wiggle room we need to breathe and play and think and create.

am i right in understanding katherine's argument that you should take any anonymous person on the internet seriously no matter what opinion they express if they express it with a tone of moral absolutism? what about all the obvious counterarguments like people who make obviously immoral arguments with a tone of moral absolutism? you wouldn't treat a neo-nazi seriously just because they seem to truly believe their holocaust denialism, or feel bad about believing the holocaust was a real event just because they told you you're a naive idiot asshole jewdiazed collaborator for doing so. ok obviously that's an easy case but once the principle is set that just bc someone says something sincerely online doesn't mean you need to accept it (or even treat it seriously) you can move onto edge cases like should you feel bad for liking shallots when some idiot online said liking shallots is racist?

I have a question: Are people on Twitter expressing these opinions to you directly and saying that YOU specifically are a bad person? Or are you seeing a bunch of Twitter replies and interpreting them as a party line that you now must adhere to, lest someone possibly think of you as a bad person?

If it's the former, then I get feeling defensive and confused when things like that happen (even if I rationally know that I shouldn't take it so personally, and that I shouldn't care so much about what others think). If it's the latter, then it feels like you're going out of your way to feel guilty and bad about yourself.

If some people say washing chicken is bad and some say it's good, how do you determine who is correct? Just add up the numbers on each side, majority wins? And more importantly, how does your own, uninfluenced view on the subject factor in?

there's this enlightenment idea of judgement

it's hard

and necessarily compromised

that's why kant's motto is in latin

xp -- I don't necessarily think everyone here is a jerk, but I do think that those people, if they knew what you were saying about them, probably would

I think I'll live.

am i right in understanding katherine's argument that you should take any anonymous person on the internet seriously no matter what opinion they express if they express it with a tone of moral absolutism? what about all the obvious counterarguments like people who make obviously immoral arguments with a tone of moral absolutism? you wouldn't treat a neo-nazi seriously just because they seem to truly believe their holocaust denialism, or feel bad about believing the holocaust was a real event just because they told you you're a naive idiot asshole jewdiazed collaborator for doing so. ok obviously that's an easy case but once the principle is set that just bc someone says something sincerely online doesn't mean you need to accept it (or even treat it seriously) you can move onto edge cases like should you feel bad for liking shallots when some idiot online said liking shallots is racist?

I addressed this upthread but they generally are not neo-nazis and are on the right side of history

I have a question: Are people on Twitter expressing these opinions to you directly and saying that YOU specifically are a bad person? Or are you seeing a bunch of Twitter replies and interpreting them as a party line that you now must adhere to, lest someone possibly think of you as a bad person?

the former has happened to me, not to as great a degree as some people I can think of, and not always on twitter. but mostly it's the latter. which makes sense, it has even been stated as such: "every day on twitter there is a main character and your job is to never be that person"

We are all the main characters in our own personal dramas

"I addressed this upthread but they generally are not neo-nazis and are on the right side of history"

Yeah so you've found moral guides (in the form of a nebulous grp of ppl who have "enlightened" humanistic views) and once you had that you completely offshored/contracted out your own ability to engage in moral judgments to them.

for the last fucking time they aren't "nebulous," they have names and faces, which makes them less anonymous than a person who goes by "Granny Dainger"

i just want to echo what ll is saying, it's really hard to see you struggling like this. i get where you're coming from on this. i have my own beliefs but i don't know that expressing my beliefs would help here. i hope things get better for you soon. :(

It's not unreasonable to assume the people posting here are more familiar with each other than with the people on your Twitter feed that we know next to nothing about.

K it's nebulous because it's not an actual organized grp, not because they're not anonymous. The members come and go, have differences of opinion among one another, etc

Not because they're anonymous

But my point still stands of you remove the word nebulous there

rarely do you hear "this article is awful and the writer is the worst, but it's OK if you don't think so"

Because the “but it’s OK if you don’t think so” is implied in nearly all situations by virtue of being an adult who can think for themselves

It would be like requiring “imo” appended to everything before having your own opinion

have you ever noticed how ppl who grew up in families where ppl didn't listen to each other often talk louder

Because the “but it’s OK if you don’t think so” is implied in nearly all situations by virtue of being an adult who can think for themselves

― some vast airy pantaloon is required (PBKR), Friday, May 22, 2020 11:55 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

not when saying something is right or wrong