Are You Cut Out for Social Media?

Hmmm...

Great revive

ffs

i don't even own a social

What’s your social? *snaps chewing gum*

So...I read the Jia Tolentino blog post about her parents' legal troubles the other day, thought "Man, that sounds rough," and liked her tweet that linked to it. Today I searched her name to see what other people were saying about it, and found a LOT of tweets from people accusing her parents of being human traffickers and posting screenshots of court documents and clucking at the "blue-checkmark elites" who were sympathizing with her.

And so I suddenly found myself feeling the way Katherine did about the shallot pasta. I really like Jia Tolentino's writing, and so my initial reaction was to feel empathetic toward her and to take her side, so to speak. But when I saw all of these people voicing outrage -- it wasn't just one or two -- it made me think, "Is there something more to this that I should be mindful of? Is it OK to still like Jia?" Someone tweeted "Keep in mind that Tolentino has a vested interest in minimizing what happened," and that seemed kind of persuasive. Then I found someone else's thread about how the charges against her parents were a total joke and ultimately dismissed in court because they were so weak. So then that seemed persuasive. Mostly, though, I found it all kind of dizzying.

The thing that I'm still struggling to understand is why these people are so motivated to tear her down. I don't want to accuse anyone of "virtue signaling," but I genuinely don't get why random people on Twitter would become so invested in this case. And it makes me question whether my opposite impulse to believe her and take her side is justified, given that it's based on little more than liking her writing. Does she deserve the benefit of the doubt? I hope so, but I genuinely don't know. The whole thing makes me uneasy.

Online: it's bad!

Liberals love cops and the George W Bush administration I guess is the motivation

Except that I get the impression that most of the people outraged about this are leftists who are resentful of "media elites."

well, there are seemingly a very small number of slots for well-compensated high-profile media (read: writing) jobs, so aside from the other reasons for finding gratification in tearing down strangers online, or affiliating yourself with others by triangulation against those strangers' (images in the relevant circles), maybe a lot of people just feel resentment at these authors taking up the lion's share of their own attention. kind of the personal correlate of the much-noted now-we-only-look-at-five-websites phenomenon. as if there is some quiet bargaining going on—if we're going to have to pay so much attention to a limited range of thoughts and words and personae, they had damn well better be sturdy as vehicles for our ideals—and then angry retaliation as soon as those bargains are inevitably felt to be broken.

Except that I get the impression that most of the people outraged about this are leftists who are resentful of "media elites."

xpost Perhaps. One of the people offering sympathy to Tolentino was the academic/activist Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who replied "Solidarity, Jia." Some people clearly felt betrayed and disappointed by that response. Someone said "come on, keeanga. the rest of these media goofs don't have any credibility to lose, you're not playing for the same stakes they are. we actually need you..." To which someone else replied, "She's playing for the exact same stakes they are. She's a careerist and this is how this ilk maintains power."

By contrast, maybe I am too enamored of some of these "media goofs," idk.

Not sure what power Jia Tolentino has beyond a good job

Anyway, this is a lousy way to spend my holiday, so I am going to go back to reading The Great Believers. If Rebecca Makkai has been canceled, don't tell me.

Thank you jaymc for linking to that Jia Tolentino blog post. I hadn't read it, but had read some people tearing her down in my brief looks at Twitter recently, and was wondering what the story was.

What is interesting to me about Tolentino being a target of this sort of behaviour is my memory of her month-after-he-died post about Bowie on Jezebel, regarding an anecdote where Lori Maddix claimed to have lost her virginity to him at age 15. https://jezebel.com/what-should-we-say-about-david-bowie-and-lori-maddox-1754533894 The debate following this article was interesting, you've got Bowie super-scholars pointing out all the inaccuracies in Maddix's story-- that she claimed to have lost her virginity to Bowie after she was already in a relationship with Jimmy Page, that details about her story regarding Bowie's clothing, the hotel they were at, and so on were either mis-recalled or entirely inaccurate-- even that the notion that they would've said "hi" to Lennon and Ono was also posited as being an impossibility, given that it's recorded that Bowie only met Lennon a year after Maddix alleges these events took place (and it is also recorded that Ono and Lennon were not in L.A. when Maddix says these events took place.) On the other side of the debate, you've got Tolentino concluding, in the first three paragraphs, that Maddix's allegation (and an 80s rape allegation that was settled, with somebody else) are enough evidence for Tolentino to state that Bowie was "likely" fucking child after child, night after night.

I myself don't deny the right for Tolentino to write what she wrote for Jezebel-- it is a valid perspective, was informative, and one that has coloured my own Bowie fandom. What I am more interested in is the motivation behind Tolentino's desire to posit instead of properly investigate-- just as she, in her blog posts, bemoans the inaccuracies between What Her Harassers Are Saying and the facts of her parents' legal struggles, a serious investigation into the credibility of Maddix's claims was not offered by Tolentino. I don't think she was wrong to write what she did. I just see a corollary between Tolentino's own behaviour and that of her own aggressors-- and I have empathy for her.

In my own interactions with people and their online content-- people who I've met online and then met in person, or people I've met in person and then become acquainted with online-- I have observed a consistent thread of projection in people's online posting. An individual who regularly cooked the books at his record label is online accusing others of cooking the books. A woman who was extremely abusive to several individuals in my social circle posts constantly about the behaviours of "abusive men", unwittingly exactly describing her own abusive behaviour. A publicly posted dick pic exudes confidence but is the product of deep insecurity. An individual who regularly posts problematic opinions is bemoaning the fact that other people post problematic opinions. Every Tweet is a metonym!! Even this post, as I type it! I feel as if it is less of a post about Tolentino, online behaviour, and more of a side effect of my own experiences, fears and insecurities.

And this was the main reason why I stopped posting on Twitter, in particular-- outside of my regular nerd humour and professional promotion, all I saw in myself and my own posts was projection. In my posts that engaged "critically" with topics, I only saw what shitheads would call "virtue signalling". In a weird moment of rage in early 2017 about a friend getting fired for requesting that Slaves's shows be cancelled, I myself engaged in online harassment of the band and the individuals promoting their shows-- I was angry about the stupidity of this band and their bullheaded excuses for why the were keeping the name, but I was LIVID about my friend getting fired for expressing their opinion about it. My acts of harassment were more a product of anger about the latter than they were about the former. (For months afterward, fans of the band, and random Quebecois racists, were calling me a "fasciste" for trying to "censor" Slaves.)

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that a photo of Elon Musk and Grimes (circulating on the occasion of their baby's birth) greatly resembled characters from "The Secret Of NIMH", and I searched for adequate images to make light of this fact for about ten minutes before I recognized that what I was doing was precluding an act of abusive harassment-- labelling something as "punching up" is an excuse for a lot of bullshit. And I tracked in myself a thread of narcissistic abuse-- I envy Musk's wealth, I envy Grimes's artistic achievements and visibility, and I was seeking to put them down to make myself look big, and make this rich man and this successful artist look, for a moment, small. The fact that I have the most passing acquaintances with the latter (and several mutual friends) gave me pause enough to recognize that what I was about to do-- although hilarious-- and probably justifiable-- was at the expense of a human being who is already so often a target. More to the point, I recognized that what I was about to do would only provide me with a passing dopamine rush-- it would not contribute in any way to my own desires to accumulate wealth and achieve artistic dignity.

And I start to realize that a lot of the justifications that people use when engaging in online harassment are verbatim the justifications used, historically, by violent men when they abuse their partners. "Don't worry, she'll be fine," they say after piling on a micro-celebrity chef who dared to afford to pay off her mortgage while still in her 30s. "You don't have to look at Twitter; if you're feeling harassed, just close your laptop"-- which in itself is shifting the blame for harassment on to the target. "She deserves it," over and over and over again, harassment is justified.

With every passing year, as I see the celebrities being "called out" on Twitter become more and more micro-, and their transgressions becoming more and more benign, I'm wondering how long it will take until something switches and people realize that What Is Happening Here Is Not Actually What People Think Is Happening Here. Two theories about "what is actually happening" are:

1. Social media puts people of disparate levels of visibility and means on an equal discursive playing field, which causes for friction and harassment; harassment that is oftentimes explained-away (quite well!) with discourse about intersectionality-- although it might be noted that the originator of the concept of "intersectionality", Kimberlé Crenshaw, recently had a moment in Time magazine where she spoke critically about how "intersectionality" as a concept is misused for the purpose of harassment: https://time.com/5786710/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality/

2. We are societally in need of a massive cultural revolution, and the online harassment we are seeing is a symptom of class upheaval. This is effectively "tankie-ism", I guess-- just as the "Right" has gone full nihilist with their acceptance of Trump, the "Left" is adopting a similarly nihilistic counterpunch. (I will not express here whether or not I personally support this idea.)

I have other theories as well that are mainly rooted in the psychological, but I don't possess enough education or knowledge in that field to express these instinctive thoughts with any usefulness.

One last thought-- to anybody who feels endangered in the online environment, to an irrational degree, which has led (in katherine's case) to theorizing about incompatibility with "human interaction as a whole", I'm reminded of my own tendencies toward irrational anxieties and feelings of endangerment. My irrational anxieties are the result of scars from past experiences. My therapist has told me, "if you were once beat up in an alleyway, you would have a subsequent irrational fear of alleyways". One's amygdala is rooted in irrationality, in instinct, and is trying to protect the self from harm. Once scarred, it leads to ongoing states of distress, even in situations where there is no threat. I think about this a lot when I read something online and feel distressed-- I try and remember that I'm sitting at my computer, and I CAN and WILL just close the laptop and actually get back to work.

Oh and by the way shallot pasta is delicious I encourage everyone to try it-- Alison Roman has softened people to a lot of ingredients that they otherwise might not have a taste for. She substitutes sautéed fennel as a base for certain dishes where normally there would be a mirepoix, and it's wonderful

I envy Grimes's artistic achievements and visibility

i make it 1-0 fgti tbh ;)

great post though and it cuts through to the single major issue with online spectatorism: it is so hard to not just bend any given issue to fit your own perspective. but then again, if everybody refrained from having their say, dissent would be close to impossible. in summary, maybe all online discourse is cursed

I saw shallots during one of my infrequent visits to the supermarket yesterday and thinking about the discussion here I decided to buy some! they seemed big enough that they wouldn't be too fiddly. I guess I will try that pasta.

was also thinking of a shallot vinaigrette for salads

why would shallots in pasta be bad, they're just dainty onions

it entirely depends on what else you put in there. tonight for instance we had roast peppers, roast tomatoes and roast carrots in our pasta (with a base of fried onions and garlic of course) and it was amazing. alternatively you may put raisins and blancmange in your pasta and it will be bad. shallots are surely neutral! or am i projecting my infamous tolerance of unlikely ingredients

dainty onions is the description I was trying to think of

Danity Onions

xp -- yes, I was thinking about that as well, clearly the stakes are genuinely a lot higher in that case

but I guess my point was that all the stakes feel just as high, for everything

(a thing I have thought about a lot, recently, is how one of the most pronounced, but least remarked-upon, cultural shifts of my lifetime has been the shift back from moral relativism to moral absolutism. one of the rare shifts that's taken place across the board politically)

(another thing I think about a lot, constantly, is a throwaway line from some thinkpiece I don't even remember anymore besides this line, which I pasted and saved: "it seems increasingly likely that this generation will turn conservative not because they want to be rich, but because they want to be mean")

Moral absolutism allows for a much simpler worldview with far less thinking required, which is sweet, because thinking is hard work. Moreover, the brain's ability to compartmentalize incompatible ideas allows most moral absolutists to avoid noticing how often their moral absolutism produces opposing imperatives. This is, as our president would say, "winning"!

The message of absolutism finds its perfect medium in Twitter.

the shift back from moral relativism to moral absolutism

I think it's what it's always been: moral relativism for me, moral absolutism for you. Similarly, socialism for the rich, fascism for the poor.

"but I guess my point was that all the stakes feel just as high, for everything"

Only if you give a fuck

Seriously. Go a week trying not to give even the slightest of fucks. It's great.

Every form of social media can be used well, but I ain't cut out for Twitter.

I feel like human trafficking is something where it should be fairly uncontroversial to say people should give a fuck about it, but maybe that's me

only things Twitter is useful for, for me:

*trying to chat up rappers who would never talk to me in real life (been successful a few times)
*if something local happened that news hasn't gotten wind of, searching the most recent tweets featuring keywords related to the event to get an idea of what happened from people who were there (ie, when the Coheed and Cambria drummer collapsed at the Orlando show last year)
*trolling Trapt (but they blocked me)

xpost right but I don't know that people need to commit to an opinion one way or another on *that* specific issue (the author's parents' legal issues) until they've at least had a chance to catch themselves up to speed.

The Tolentino stuff is insane and why it's not necessary to have a public opinion (or an opinion at all) about everything all the time.

The Red Scare reddit (where it supposedly originated) - obviously, patently insane.
Tolentino's blog post could certainly be self-serving.
Fuck the feds, ACAB, etc. but not every prosecution is inherently discriminatory.

Trafficking in Twitter opinions to form a viewpoint about anything seems dangerous, an even more unstructured version of gleaning values and meaning from the editorial section instead of the news section. If you really care about it, you're going to have to wait for a good reporter to tackle it (unlikely because no one cares now) or read all the court documents yourself and why on earth would you do that?

So maybe her parents are dirtbags. But she pretty obviously isn't, so maybe just don't read anything her parents publish?

She really didn't have to defend them at all

I mean another way to illustrate Twitter's terrible telephone, for something more innocuous...I once was scouring Twitter trying to see if Meek Mill was giving the time he'd go on stage for a show he opened about 7 or 8 years ago. and he tweeted about a Miami show he was doing that night (whereas the show I was going to was in Orlando). never mind that this isn't unusual for rappers (to do a short opening set in one city, helicopter to another and do a late club appearance), the internet exploded immediately, with concert attendees freaking out that "Meek was cancelling his Orlando show without notice" and people starting to tweet about "how could this happen?" and trying to get info on refunds.

I pointed out this was ridiculous and that he was probably doing both shows and I had a bunch of people clown me, only for Meek himself to basically tweet in response to the commotion "y'all trippin, i'm doing both shows".

we went from "cool, seeing Meek Mill in Orlando later" to IT'S CANCELLED in a matter of 5 minutes.

Also, don’t feel bad for wanting to clown on right-wing billionaires. Jesus.

I feel like human trafficking is something where it should be fairly uncontroversial to say people should give a fuck about it, but maybe that's me

― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine), Monday, May 25, 2020 7:45 PM (seven minutes ago)

well "human trafficking" is also sometimes a real thing but sometimes (more often??) a phrase abused as a wedge by anti-sex-work activists

Also, don’t feel bad for wanting to clown on right-wing billionaires. Jesus.

I also remember seeing a news story once where someone had been reported as receiving death threats on twitter. story was legit, but the Tweet they used as evidence of the death threat read "you ripped my family apart and made my momma cry. So when I see you n**** it's gon be a homicide", which is a Meek Mill lyric.

(sorry don't know why all my dumb Twitter stories are about Meek Mill)

lol Meek ain't no billionaire, I knew who ya meant

well "human trafficking" is also sometimes a real thing but sometimes (more often??) a phrase abused as a wedge by anti-sex-work activists

― silby, Monday, May 25, 2020 10:55 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this doesn't involve sex work

I mean, I just read this: https://historicly.substack.com/p/trick-mirror-a-reflection-on-mass which rhetoricizes that Tolentino believes the BTK Killer is innocent, extrapolated from the logic of her blog post.

I have no opinion on Tolentino and her parents— I dated a Filipino for 13 years and became intimately aware of the processes of sponsorship of overseas workers, and it’s sketchy at the best of times. I have an opinion on articles like this one (which highlight the cost of Tolentino’s education but gloss over, let’s say, US Imperialism’s role in the upholding of the Marcos regime) and the opinion is: this is bad writing. The mere idea that a “blue check” makes a person responsible for impossibly attainable nuance when addressing as complicated an issue as “my parents’s trafficking scandal, which was expensive and intrusive and ended by default” is a transparent act of throwing stones as somebody’s Twitter Mansion

Oh just for the sake of complete transparency: my grandfather was a whip to Diefenbaker, was at first a hugely popular politician, was at one point tipped to be president of the PC party, but then played a part in shutting down the Avro plant and subsequently resigned under justifiable suspicions of cronyism in the construction of YYZ. I spit on the ground every time his name is mentioned no I don’t I miss him and wish he hadn’t died when he did— oh, full disclosure, he died while on a hunting trip on a shady resort island that has a history of mistreating their employees, can’t forget that, he died of a brain aneurysm

I don’t even think this is about moral absolutism, it’s just bullshit pretending to be moral absolutism, it’s a posture of moral absolutism to smokescreen something else. Is Jia’s writing any good? If we want to see her cancelled, cannot we cancel her on the basis of her shit writing and otherwise let her write in peace without all of this?

I feel like human trafficking is something where it should be fairly uncontroversial to say people should give a fuck about it, but maybe that's me

This is a serious question, Katherine, although it is a very elaborate one.

Now you have heard some people accuse someone else of human trafficking, with most or all of whom you have only the most tenuous and incidental connection, most or all of whom you have never met and may never meet, and with whom you probably will never have any meaningful interaction, what exactly is the practical significance of your giving a fuck to the people who may have been harmed by the people who were accused (or they may not, you have no certain knowledge one way or the other), or to the accused perpetrators of that crime, or to you in any likely way in the foreseeable future?

I hope you can suss what I am getting at in all that convolution, which is that your giving a fuck leads nowhere and has no benefit to anyone, and your not giving a fuck harms no one. It is simply a state of mind that you carry with you. If that state of mind is causing you harm, then the net effect in reality is not benefit, but harm.

Compassion is excellent. Compassion for those you have not met is very fine. But compassion must extend to yourself, too, for your limits in time and space and your inability to save all sentient beings from suffering. You are human. Treating yourself within anything less than compassionate understanding is form of self abuse. Try to find a balance.

then this is just an irreconcilable argument because I believe that in virtually all cases "not giving a fuck" is a toxic viewpoint, and the majority of the problems in the world are caused by people not giving a fuck

there's a difference between caring and caring in a way that is effective.

my grandfather was a whip to Diefenbaker

You definitely have to be Canadian to be smiling ear-to-ear at this.

and there's a difference between both those things and not caring