8 ms·

I'm a bit monomaniacal about this, but the current online culture wars (and the previous offline culture wars) make me wish that secession didn't have such a ba

I'm a bit monomaniacal about this, but the current online culture wars (and the previous offline culture wars) make me wish that secession didn't have such a bad name. It is obvious that large groups of people have irreconcilable differences of opinion on matters of free speech, sexuality, gun ownership and so on. It is a shame that rather than a firm handshake and friendly wave goodbye, we will end up with a totalitarianism of one ideology or another, violence, or both.

dasil003 11y ago
The problem is twofold: low bar to grabbing torches and pitchforks, and a high bar for recognizing someone else's humanity. In the old days you might not agree with your neighbor, but you had to live next to them. Now with the flick of a thumb you can denounce someone's entire existence before breakfast.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  It seems to me that in the old days, not that long ago, people literally formed a mob, and often the catalyst was about who got to live next door to who. Even the bad boys of twitter, which goes right up to mobs of people trying to ruin peoples lives with death threats etc doesn't seem quite as bad as bombing someone's church for example.
  - dasil003 11y ago
    Sure, I'm not trying to say it was all perfume and roses before, but they had to put some effort into it at least. The problem now is it becomes reflexive and casual—you don't even really need the strength of your convictions to attack someone online.
  - pyre 11y ago
    It seems like it's probably "lower" impact (i.e. no physical bombs) by higher participation (people are more likely to shout on Twitter than actually bomb some place).
- navait 11y ago
  Of course, the risks are minimal on twitter. At worst they can write a death threat, but nobody's going to come to your house. They'll spend more time arguing with your defenders. And the attention span is short, by next week your controversy will be gone. Contrast to getting into an extreme argument with your neighbor could result in a physical fight, destruction of property, or death. Ultimately, this is why I really don't want to see articles on Internet discourse dominated by "culture wars" topics; So little is at stake. I highly doubt mass tweeting and public shaming will ever have much power over anyone, or change national policy or thought. However, someone once told me though that the most vicious fights are often the pettiest, so I only expect culture wars stuff to be more common in the future.
  - 13thLetter 11y ago
    > I highly doubt mass tweeting and public shaming will ever have much power over anyone, or change national policy or thought. It only has the power that we give it. Which is to say, right now it has enormous power, because employers fall over themselves to defuse any hint of controversy by firing anyone who becomes the target of a mob. And conferences un-invite people, and et cetera, et cetera. If, going way back to 2009 or so, employers had stood firm and said "no, we're not going to waste our time policing what our employees say in their off hours, now go away" to the perpetually offended of whatever stripe, none of this would be happening. But they didn't, and it is. We need to reverse this state of affairs before we can afford to sit back and dismiss it as irrelevant bickering.
seren 11y ago
I don't know if it will prevail in the end, but I think that Reddit approach by splitting the community in small subgroups/communities has a better chance to last in the long run. Of course, you'll create feuds between communities but at least it is somewhat confined and not always spilling in the common public space. Unfortunately it also greatly increases the echo chamber / filter bubble but it seems you can not have a peaceful community without an heavy dose of groupthink. A long time ago, at the dusk of the XXth century, I used to believe that Internet would usher a new age of Enlightenment since every one would have access to many different opinions and unbiased sources. Arguably that was a pretty naive view, and instead we got new tribes disagreeing on almost everything conceivable.
- reitoei 11y ago
  In-fighting within communities is one of reddit's biggest problems.
  - vidarh 11y ago
    Yes, but then those who don't enjoy that infighting can, and often do, leave and form their own.
    - reitoei 11y ago
      Which fail in 99% of cases, so they come back to the original one more bitter than when they left.
  - DanielBMarkham 11y ago
    (Not directly applicable to Twitter, but to online communities in general) It'd be interesting if you could have two votes: whether you liked what the person posted (which would only be visible to them) and whether you'd personally share it with your friends (which would affect it's ranking only among your friends) Or put differently, I wonder if it's not possible to create a system that dynamically sorts content, instead of having static groups. Seems like static groups with a label on them inevitably end up arguing about exactly what the label means (grin). I don't want an echo chamber, and I want to be challenged -- but I don't want a daily rage fest against whomever the internet currently hates either.
MCRed 11y ago
As an anarchs-capitalist I'd be happy to have a society where anarchs-communists had their communes and lived under their own rules. This may seem off topic but its directly relevant- we regularly have these debates in the anarchist community. But at the end of the day, it seems the anarchs-communists don't want to live under their own rules for themselves, they want us to live under their rules too. (Yes, the irony is lost on them.) For people who are conditioned to believe it-- the others must be forced to live the way they think is appropriate--otherwise things are not "Fair". Jealousy, fear, all these emotions are easily manipulated by propaganda. To the detriment of tolerance. So, while I want to see gay married couples defending their marijuana crops with fully auto machine guns, and saying whatever they want online, because I believe in human rights, I must admit I am surrounded by two groups of people who do not believe in human rights and are increasingly seeing the other group as less than human. This will not end well.
- Absentinsomniac 11y ago
  Too simplistic, regional arrangements don't necessarily mean everyone in said community follows the ideology of that group. Moving outside of the realm of abstracted ideological thought experiments is kind of a difficult thing. So how do you handle folks breaking your version of human rights in separate groups? Just ignore it? How's that much different from nation states?
- vidarh 11y ago
  > But at the end of the day, it seems the anarchs-communists don't want to live under their own rules for themselves, they want us to live under their rules too. The main difference between the libertarian left and right tends to be whether they see property rights as some sort of special exception from the principle of maximising liberty, or a some form of theft because it limits liberty. I don't know many far left libertarians (anarchists or otherwise) who'd give a shit how you choose to live as long as you are not proposing systems that would limit the liberty of others. The right libertarian ideas that tends to be seen by the left as drastically limiting the liberty of others tends to be right libertarian ideas about strict enforcement of property rights and shared responsibility for externalities. E.g. if you see property as theft, then someone wanting to wall off land is not a simple matter of you wanting to live differently, but a matter of you wanting to deprive others of liberty. So from the left libertarian point of view, there is no irony, but the consequence of following the principle of maximizing personal liberty to the end, rather than making large carve-outs for property.
lkrubner 11y ago
Unilateral secession has to have a bad name or civilization would be impossible. But a peacefully negotiated and mutually agreed upon secession would definitely be a good thing.
david-given 11y ago
I came up with a joke a few years ago, which is becoming less and less funny as time passes: Everyone's an asshole. It's just that you're usually surrounded by people who are the same kind of asshole as you are. The internet makes it trivially easy for assholes of opposing kinds to get into contact with each other, thus guaranteeing maximum offense.
richmarr 11y ago
Personally I don't think there's any such thing as 'irreconcilable differences'. The idea of secession in that instance kinda scares me because it leaves you with a new foriegn nation on your doorstep with the exact same set of 'irreconcilable' differences and nobody to moderate them. Seemingly irreconcilable differences (e.g. US rep/dem, Israel/Palestine) are created by the narratives we're fed & let fester. Sure, narratives are elusive and sticky, but they're just narratives. In the past that's sometimes taken a global-scale event; like how the horrors of the Nazis swept away any remaining support for eugenics. Other times it's been smaller; like how Stetson Kennedy undermined support for the KKK by exposing its schoolboy ritualism to ridicule in a radio show. Change the narrative, maybe starting with your own. Whoever the "other side" are; humanise them, don't demonise them. Be the bigger person. Admit that your own perspective on things isn't 100% bulletproof (because nobody's is). Of course, if you disagree and want to win the argument you could always bring up Trump... I don't have an answer to that.
- orangecat 11y ago
  Personally I don't think there's any such thing as 'irreconcilable differences'. How would you reconcile the differences between the Western world and fundamentalist Islam regarding the rights of women? Should we "admit" that our perspective that women should be allowed to go outside with their faces uncovered is possibly wrong?
  - chippy 11y ago
    I believe the comment that was replied to contains an appropriate response: "Seemingly irreconcilable differences are created by the narratives we're fed & let fester. Sure, narratives are elusive and sticky, but they're just narratives." and "Change the narrative, maybe starting with your own. Whoever the "other side" are; humanise them, don't demonise them. Be the bigger person. "
  - richmarr 11y ago
    > How would you reconcile the differences between the Western world and fundamentalist Islam regarding the rights of women? Your comment reads like you disagree and are raising a counter-example, but the existence of a difference doesn't make that difference irreconcilable. > Should we "admit" that our perspective... is possibly wrong? Fundamentalist Islam in the 20th & 21st century seems (as far as I've read) to be largely a reaction against Western powers interference, or to use a tired term 'imperialism', with the natural evolution of Middle East nations... toppling democracies, installing dictators, etc. To get away from the influences of perceivedly 'evil' Western interference fundamentalists took Islam all the way back to the 7th century. In that context it's hard to see how a Westerner arguing that their views on women are "wrong" is going to bother them much; the opposite perhaps. You're arguing against the narrative. Should we admit that we're wrong about feminism? No, I think that'd be both dishonest and counter-productive. Should we admit that we have been wrong in the past about other important things? Maybe, perhaps that'd help undermine the imperialism narrative.
Perceval 11y ago
Federalism was supposed to enable pluralism within a single political entity. Each state could live the way they wanted to and have different rules/laws than their neighbors. The urge to use the federal level of government to impose uniform social rules on all the sub-units undermines the possibility of stable political pluralism. Once rules at the state level are no longer safe, the stakes for controlling the single central point of failure at the federal level rise to the point where political differences become intolerable.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  I was about to make the same comment, so I'm glad you did. I'll add that until we can discuss what a fair process is (as opposed to anecdotes of unfairness), the problem won't get better. Everything, including cash transfers, will be human rights and therefore national issues with no room for diversity of solutions between regions.
bzbarsky 11y ago
The thing is, the groups of people that have irreconcilable diferences on gun ownership are not the same as the groups of people that have irreconcilable differences on free speech. So now you're talking at least 4 separate countries, right? But worse yet, the people involved don't necessarily admit to themselves what their opinions on free speech are, so they wouldn't necessarily self-segregate properly... Add to that that there is significant geographical intermixing, and the multistate solution to these problems starts to look like the ethnic situation in the Balkans has at some points: several states with totalitarianisms of some ideology (ethnicity in the case of the Balkans) but also a significant minority of dissenters who are supported by neighboring states. It's not really that happy a situation.

dasil003 11y ago

The problem is twofold: low bar to grabbing torches and pitchforks, and a high bar for recognizing someone else's humanity. In the old days you might not agree with your neighbor, but you had to live next to them. Now with the flick of a thumb you can denounce someone's entire existence before breakfast.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
It seems to me that in the old days, not that long ago, people literally formed a mob, and often the catalyst was about who got to live next door to who. Even the bad boys of twitter, which goes right up to mobs of people trying to ruin peoples lives with death threats etc doesn't seem quite as bad as bombing someone's church for example.
- dasil003 11y ago
  Sure, I'm not trying to say it was all perfume and roses before, but they had to put some effort into it at least. The problem now is it becomes reflexive and casual—you don't even really need the strength of your convictions to attack someone online.
- pyre 11y ago
  It seems like it's probably "lower" impact (i.e. no physical bombs) by higher participation (people are more likely to shout on Twitter than actually bomb some place).
navait 11y ago
Of course, the risks are minimal on twitter. At worst they can write a death threat, but nobody's going to come to your house. They'll spend more time arguing with your defenders. And the attention span is short, by next week your controversy will be gone. Contrast to getting into an extreme argument with your neighbor could result in a physical fight, destruction of property, or death. Ultimately, this is why I really don't want to see articles on Internet discourse dominated by "culture wars" topics; So little is at stake. I highly doubt mass tweeting and public shaming will ever have much power over anyone, or change national policy or thought. However, someone once told me though that the most vicious fights are often the pettiest, so I only expect culture wars stuff to be more common in the future.
- 13thLetter 11y ago
  > I highly doubt mass tweeting and public shaming will ever have much power over anyone, or change national policy or thought. It only has the power that we give it. Which is to say, right now it has enormous power, because employers fall over themselves to defuse any hint of controversy by firing anyone who becomes the target of a mob. And conferences un-invite people, and et cetera, et cetera. If, going way back to 2009 or so, employers had stood firm and said "no, we're not going to waste our time policing what our employees say in their off hours, now go away" to the perpetually offended of whatever stripe, none of this would be happening. But they didn't, and it is. We need to reverse this state of affairs before we can afford to sit back and dismiss it as irrelevant bickering.

seren 11y ago

I don't know if it will prevail in the end, but I think that Reddit approach by splitting the community in small subgroups/communities has a better chance to last in the long run. Of course, you'll create feuds between communities but at least it is somewhat confined and not always spilling in the common public space. Unfortunately it also greatly increases the echo chamber / filter bubble but it seems you can not have a peaceful community without an heavy dose of groupthink. A long time ago, at the dusk of the XXth century, I used to believe that Internet would usher a new age of Enlightenment since every one would have access to many different opinions and unbiased sources. Arguably that was a pretty naive view, and instead we got new tribes disagreeing on almost everything conceivable.

reitoei 11y ago
In-fighting within communities is one of reddit's biggest problems.
- vidarh 11y ago
  Yes, but then those who don't enjoy that infighting can, and often do, leave and form their own.
  - reitoei 11y ago
    Which fail in 99% of cases, so they come back to the original one more bitter than when they left.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  (Not directly applicable to Twitter, but to online communities in general) It'd be interesting if you could have two votes: whether you liked what the person posted (which would only be visible to them) and whether you'd personally share it with your friends (which would affect it's ranking only among your friends) Or put differently, I wonder if it's not possible to create a system that dynamically sorts content, instead of having static groups. Seems like static groups with a label on them inevitably end up arguing about exactly what the label means (grin). I don't want an echo chamber, and I want to be challenged -- but I don't want a daily rage fest against whomever the internet currently hates either.

MCRed 11y ago

As an anarchs-capitalist I'd be happy to have a society where anarchs-communists had their communes and lived under their own rules. This may seem off topic but its directly relevant- we regularly have these debates in the anarchist community. But at the end of the day, it seems the anarchs-communists don't want to live under their own rules for themselves, they want us to live under their rules too. (Yes, the irony is lost on them.) For people who are conditioned to believe it-- the others must be forced to live the way they think is appropriate--otherwise things are not "Fair". Jealousy, fear, all these emotions are easily manipulated by propaganda. To the detriment of tolerance. So, while I want to see gay married couples defending their marijuana crops with fully auto machine guns, and saying whatever they want online, because I believe in human rights, I must admit I am surrounded by two groups of people who do not believe in human rights and are increasingly seeing the other group as less than human. This will not end well.

Absentinsomniac 11y ago
Too simplistic, regional arrangements don't necessarily mean everyone in said community follows the ideology of that group. Moving outside of the realm of abstracted ideological thought experiments is kind of a difficult thing. So how do you handle folks breaking your version of human rights in separate groups? Just ignore it? How's that much different from nation states?
vidarh 11y ago
> But at the end of the day, it seems the anarchs-communists don't want to live under their own rules for themselves, they want us to live under their rules too. The main difference between the libertarian left and right tends to be whether they see property rights as some sort of special exception from the principle of maximising liberty, or a some form of theft because it limits liberty. I don't know many far left libertarians (anarchists or otherwise) who'd give a shit how you choose to live as long as you are not proposing systems that would limit the liberty of others. The right libertarian ideas that tends to be seen by the left as drastically limiting the liberty of others tends to be right libertarian ideas about strict enforcement of property rights and shared responsibility for externalities. E.g. if you see property as theft, then someone wanting to wall off land is not a simple matter of you wanting to live differently, but a matter of you wanting to deprive others of liberty. So from the left libertarian point of view, there is no irony, but the consequence of following the principle of maximizing personal liberty to the end, rather than making large carve-outs for property.

lkrubner 11y ago

Unilateral secession has to have a bad name or civilization would be impossible. But a peacefully negotiated and mutually agreed upon secession would definitely be a good thing.

david-given 11y ago

I came up with a joke a few years ago, which is becoming less and less funny as time passes: Everyone's an asshole. It's just that you're usually surrounded by people who are the same kind of asshole as you are. The internet makes it trivially easy for assholes of opposing kinds to get into contact with each other, thus guaranteeing maximum offense.

richmarr 11y ago

Personally I don't think there's any such thing as 'irreconcilable differences'. The idea of secession in that instance kinda scares me because it leaves you with a new foriegn nation on your doorstep with the exact same set of 'irreconcilable' differences and nobody to moderate them. Seemingly irreconcilable differences (e.g. US rep/dem, Israel/Palestine) are created by the narratives we're fed & let fester. Sure, narratives are elusive and sticky, but they're just narratives. In the past that's sometimes taken a global-scale event; like how the horrors of the Nazis swept away any remaining support for eugenics. Other times it's been smaller; like how Stetson Kennedy undermined support for the KKK by exposing its schoolboy ritualism to ridicule in a radio show. Change the narrative, maybe starting with your own. Whoever the "other side" are; humanise them, don't demonise them. Be the bigger person. Admit that your own perspective on things isn't 100% bulletproof (because nobody's is). Of course, if you disagree and want to win the argument you could always bring up Trump... I don't have an answer to that.

orangecat 11y ago
Personally I don't think there's any such thing as 'irreconcilable differences'. How would you reconcile the differences between the Western world and fundamentalist Islam regarding the rights of women? Should we "admit" that our perspective that women should be allowed to go outside with their faces uncovered is possibly wrong?
- chippy 11y ago
  I believe the comment that was replied to contains an appropriate response: "Seemingly irreconcilable differences are created by the narratives we're fed & let fester. Sure, narratives are elusive and sticky, but they're just narratives." and "Change the narrative, maybe starting with your own. Whoever the "other side" are; humanise them, don't demonise them. Be the bigger person. "
- richmarr 11y ago
  > How would you reconcile the differences between the Western world and fundamentalist Islam regarding the rights of women? Your comment reads like you disagree and are raising a counter-example, but the existence of a difference doesn't make that difference irreconcilable. > Should we "admit" that our perspective... is possibly wrong? Fundamentalist Islam in the 20th & 21st century seems (as far as I've read) to be largely a reaction against Western powers interference, or to use a tired term 'imperialism', with the natural evolution of Middle East nations... toppling democracies, installing dictators, etc. To get away from the influences of perceivedly 'evil' Western interference fundamentalists took Islam all the way back to the 7th century. In that context it's hard to see how a Westerner arguing that their views on women are "wrong" is going to bother them much; the opposite perhaps. You're arguing against the narrative. Should we admit that we're wrong about feminism? No, I think that'd be both dishonest and counter-productive. Should we admit that we have been wrong in the past about other important things? Maybe, perhaps that'd help undermine the imperialism narrative.

Perceval 11y ago

Federalism was supposed to enable pluralism within a single political entity. Each state could live the way they wanted to and have different rules/laws than their neighbors. The urge to use the federal level of government to impose uniform social rules on all the sub-units undermines the possibility of stable political pluralism. Once rules at the state level are no longer safe, the stakes for controlling the single central point of failure at the federal level rise to the point where political differences become intolerable.

humanrebar 11y ago
I was about to make the same comment, so I'm glad you did. I'll add that until we can discuss what a fair process is (as opposed to anecdotes of unfairness), the problem won't get better. Everything, including cash transfers, will be human rights and therefore national issues with no room for diversity of solutions between regions.

bzbarsky 11y ago

The thing is, the groups of people that have irreconcilable diferences on gun ownership are not the same as the groups of people that have irreconcilable differences on free speech. So now you're talking at least 4 separate countries, right? But worse yet, the people involved don't necessarily admit to themselves what their opinions on free speech are, so they wouldn't necessarily self-segregate properly... Add to that that there is significant geographical intermixing, and the multistate solution to these problems starts to look like the ethnic situation in the Balkans has at some points: several states with totalitarianisms of some ideology (ethnicity in the case of the Balkans) but also a significant minority of dissenters who are supported by neighboring states. It's not really that happy a situation.