Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

dude no one said the book must be good because the reviewer is dumb. no one here has read the book or plans to. we're just saying the reviewer is dumb.

― k3vin k., Monday, August 7, 2017 9:55 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Again responding to the idiot reader allegation, saying that's jumping to conclusions, no problem w the idiot writer allegation

Well you certainly think and write like an intellectual.

― Mordy, Monday, August 7, 2017 9:57 PM (eight seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You definitely have a narrow grasp of the conversation. & don't read my writing so why make it personal every time I disagree w you?

the idiot reader comment i think referred to her inability to recognize a literary construct known as "characters", which you yourself pointed out

"Transcend" was a bad word to use. I typed that in a sad pizzeria after a date cancelled on me. I just meant that artworks aren't always strictly reducible to the ideas they appear to be promoting. Is Madame Bovary the origin of the sexist "bored housewife" trope or is it a proto-feminist work that deals sympathetically with the limitations society imposed on women, even on their most private aspirations? It's obviously both of these things and it's way more.

Xp Alfred

this isn't a 10th grader's book report.

― k3vin k., Monday, August 7, 2017 8:50 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

all literary/media criticism is an attempt to monetize one's English class homework

The Ballad of the Sad Pizzeria

Treesh, if you're going on a date, don't pick the sad pizzeria. This is 101. We're here to help you.

No we weren't going there. I went there after she cancelled. I burned my mouth.

The gay thread hasn't been this tumescent in months.

Pizzeria Blueno

the moral of the story is sometimes i write my ilx posts in haste and i want to transcend accountability for that fact.

I feel like it's unfair that we poke more fun at posters who choose to communicate in paragraphs, with context, than at those who can barely commit to anything more than one-line snark attacks. But that's my anecdata, I haven't done the rigor.

I also have no problem believing that this book's treatment of racism might be flawed, and looking through that review the excerpts appear...not well-written. I'd have a hard time taking any worthwhile criticism from that particular review because the utter disgust that someone might write racist/sexist/ableist/etc characters seems so bizarre. I don't know how I'd feel as a minority reader being asked to follow a blatantly racist protagonist, but there's also some value in depicting racism not solely as an attribute of the black-hatted bad guys. And I just boggle at it being the most offensive book she's ever read. Even if she never picks up a book aimed at adults, half the children's lit canon...

I feel like it's unfair that we poke more fun at posters who choose to communicate in paragraphs, with context, than at those who can barely commit to anything more than one-line snark attacks. But that's my anecdata, I haven't done the rigor.
― El Tomboto, Monday, August 7, 2017 10:15 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whither nabisco

I doubt this reviewer would survive an encounter with Heart of Darkness.

So what do people think of the Google situation - a lot of these culture warriors seem to think this is an affront to freedom of speech.

according to NRO, it's the French Revolution again:

The Google firing confirms a working hypothesis I have been pondering recently. The French Revolution is attacking the American Revolution.

The American Revolution was sparked by the Enlightenment, Judeo/Christian moral beliefs, mixed with Greek and Roman philosophy and political theories. At its best, the American Revolution promotes universal human equality–a work still in progress–individual freedom, freedom of thought and speech, the rule of law, etc..

The French Revolution, in contrast, is Utopian, collectivist, authoritarian, intolerant, and punitive. It is anti-religion generally and anti-Christianity specifically. It accepts the belief that the ends justify the means.

At its worst, the FR unleashed some of history’s most vile and destructive tyrannies: The First Republic and The Terror, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Cultural Revolution, etc. In its more mundane iterations, French Revolution ideologies express as the social fascism we increasingly witness today, such as the stifling of free speech on college campuses and thought control pogroms that cost professionally competent people their jobs for expressing disfavored opinions.

And here’s its inherent weakness: The French Revolution is never satisfied. Wrongs are never fully remedied. It grows ever more extreme until, eventually, it eats its own. Just ask Robespierre.

Let's ask him!

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

It's probably a coincidence that all of these free speech arguments are defending the status quo/the Right.

I'd have a hard time taking any worthwhile criticism from that particular review because the utter disgust that someone might write racist/sexist/ableist/etc characters seems so bizarre.

It's a really basic-level misreading

This has come up before, but the review doesn't feel like a 'book review'. Rather it feels a lot like something you'd write if you bought some houseware off Amazon, and it didn't live up to expectations - there's a certain unconscious entitlement going on. Obvs that entitlement would be fine if you've bought a corkscrew and it fails to open wine bottles, or an iron that can't iron, or whatever, but feels very uncomfortable in a book review.

oy

I think my main take-away from the Vulture article and the original debacle it covered isn't that the YA fiction social circles on twitter/blogs are bad reviewers or writers, but that people are willing to dogpile on authors they view as bad actors when it comes to social issues. Although a few people replying to Rosenfield (the Vulture article writer) claim they read "the reviews" it's pretty obvious from skimming Amazon, Goodreads, etc. that a large portion of the negative reviews were from people who read the blog post lambasting the writer and echoed their take.

I think that's where I find fault with the whole mob mentality. Serious claims, like claiming a writer is malicious as opposed to just ham-handed in their handling of social issues, shouldn't be accepted from reading one blog post, especially if it's a YA writer with no track record. And if it's merely ham-handedness, and it looks like they're setting the book up for a sequel, then how about some constructive criticism?

To be fair, grandiose blog reviews aren't helping, either, but that figures into determining whether your sources are reliable or should be taken with a grain of salt. Even skimming a run-on, poorly-structured summary and dissection like that makes me consider buying a giant block of salt lick.

there's also a suspiciously large contingent of aspiring YA fiction writers who think themselves more tuned in to the zeitgeist who don't have book deals making a lot of noise!

mh otm

Re: Google firing I would need to know what he actually got fired for 'on paper'. Can't seem to dig this out. Like was it just the memo or was there more to it?

I hear about it, and then I remember all the people I've worked with who sit around venting stupid offensive opinions all day and never get fired or any challenges whatsoever, and this undercuts the idea of a leftist authoritarian takeover in the modern workplace. That's placing it in broader cultural terms, mind - the specific firing could still be well out of order/wrong.

we're ranting about it over here, might be a good place to ask:
Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

I don't know how I'd feel as a minority reader being asked to follow a blatantly racist protagonist, but there's also some value in depicting racism not solely as an attribute of the black-hatted bad guys.

ftr The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of my favorite books.

One of the things that bothers me in the YA war is that seemingly several YA authors are part of and encouraging the Twitter mobs. That's a weird position for a writer to be in, helping lead attacks on other writers. (Also seems risky, because who knows when they'll turn on you.)

There's a post from someone who's just left Google, and would have been in a position where he could fire someone like the manifesto's writer, which among other things lays out the grounds under which the writer would be fired immediately: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788

I'm not sure that makes sense, tipsy mothra - it's not like every book that comes out, the mob tosses a coin.

were you not invited to the last coin tossing

I don't think it would be too hard to run afoul of these always changing guidelines.

I wonder upon what grounds you'd fire someone who put his name in a professional context to the opinion that women are silly creatures and inferior coders.

I imagine breaching the no-fedora policy would be a promising start but possibly there are other loopholes he could be caught out on

hmm yes, I wonder *scratches chin*

at the very least, even if they're really into people publishing little manifestos about how projects can best be run, it really seems like there would be some guidance as to what's acceptable.

I think the giant hole in the middle of his logic is specific examples of how his, um, "philosophy" applies to specific staffing and HR decisions google has made, and the point where the rubber meets the road is probably where he got run over

t's not like every book that comes out, the mob tosses a coin.

Yeah, I just mean it seems dicey for authors to encourage author-harassment. Live by the call-out, die by the call-out.

You talked about a need for discussion about ideas; you need to learn the difference between “I think we should adopt Go as our primary language” and “I think one-third of my colleagues are either biologically unsuited to do their jobs, or if not are exceptions and should be suspected of such until they can prove otherwise to each and every person’s satisfaction.”

Difficult not to concur although again, there's a discomfort in applauding the firing - I suspect someone higher up the chain at Google could make such statements and not be fired for them, although granted this is more to do with how much job security you get at different levels of the hierarchy, than with what is and is not acceptable to say

Did you just hi 5 your post

I wish people were better and learned to actually ask questions of their peers, and recognize others as their peers even if they don't look and sound the same or lead the same sorts of lives. If this aggrieved guy had a peer group that wasn't focused on angrily proclaiming some bizarre logic/emotion divide on messageboards that's messing with their lives, they might talk to real people and figure out their ideas need some work... and are based in an emotional response, not a logical one.

There's so much underlying anger and frustration in rants like these that it really outlines who is working from emotional responses and not rational discussion. Rational doesn't mean cherry-picking a list of "facts," it means examining your premises and using reason, not didactic language

That's laudable but it p much always imo comes from a position of "I'll change u u fucker" afaict

xp Yuh. This def seems like someone that's been hanging around MRA/redpill sites or at the very least getting building a view of life based on information about gender from questionable sources almost definitely online

In fact - if that's the case we're looking at same underlying problem with both this guy and that YA fiction drama story

Yeah. The YA thing and the Google thing are an interesting contrast, because they are both being shared in right-wing social media as examples of political-correctness-run-wild, but from a liberal standpoint they raise really different questions.

not sure I follow, darragh. if I ask my friends if I have a point here, are they really going to pounce on me like that?

Call it deeperlying than that perhaps.. But the p under the mattress has an ounce attached def

An example of the pea under the mattress perhaps. Again from that Zunger article:

Engineering is not the art of building devices; it’s the art of fixing problems. Devices are a means, not an end. Fixing problems means first of all understanding them — and since the whole purpose of the things we do is to fix problems in the outside world, problems involving people, that means that understanding people, and the ways in which they will interact with your system, is fundamental to every step of building a system. (This is so key that we have a bunch of entire job ladders — PM’s and UX’ers and so on — who have done nothing but specialize in those problems. But the presence of specialists doesn’t mean engineers are off the hook; far from it. Engineering leaders absolutely need to understand product deeply; it’s a core job requirement.)

^ this makes tons and tons of sense and is a very nice rebuttal to the idea that engineering isn't about 'people', but Zunger also admits:

People who haven’t done engineering, or people who have done just the basics, sometimes think that what engineering looks like is sitting at your computer and hyper-optimizing an inner loop, or cleaning up a class API. We’ve all done this kind of thing, and for many of us (including me) it’s tremendous fun. And when you’re at the novice stages of engineering, this is the large bulk of your work: something straightforward and bounded which can be done right or wrong, and where you can hone your basic skills.

'The novice stages' is a nice way of saying 'When you're making a lot less money than me and have to do lots of work in the uncertain hopes you'll be promoted to my level eventually'. Zunger sort of lets slip that this guy that got fired would have been doing a grunt job at the time, in which people skills and empathy probably would look surplus to requirements.

So, like, I dunno. It sounds like the fired guy was putting out a load of stupid, insulting ideas in his manifesto (effectively slagging off a chunk of his colleagues on the grounds that they were women). But I'd be willing to bet working at Google comes with certain pressures.

there are only so many higher-level positions available, and he probably learned he lacked the soft skills for them, and his response was to write a rant about how soft skills are bad

Yup that's a likely scenario too, although my experience of work leads me to be suspicious about the idea that the higher level positions are handed out to people based purely and cleanly on their possession of these 'soft skills'

There is no such serious contention

oh every organization is broken in its own ways and there's no meritocracy

tbh the best soft skill is making a high-level person think you're promotable

^^^

Yuh I take it we've all met that type of 'people person' who is at the same time barely human. None of that really justifies Google man's saying that women should all go away. I do find myself wondering if these high profile ... breachers illustrate deeper, less visible patterns of prejudice that many of their peers hold, but don't express so crassly, and so get away with