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People are starting to realize (en masse now), this is the downside of permitting group identity-based "discussions" to flourish. Whatever you say, people are g
by Udo 10y ago
People are starting to realize (en masse now), this is the downside of permitting group identity-based "discussions" to flourish. Whatever you say, people are going to try interpreting it against the group you are perceived to belong to, eagerly pouncing on things that are in "conflict" with their own group identity. I put conflict in quotes here because this ultimately empty conflict is what actually drives both sides. Facts and open discussion are utterly irrelevant in this process, instead your words just get parsed for trigger phrases.
There is an argument to be made that internet discussions have always been at risk, and I think it's indeed a known pathology. However, subjectively, it seems to me this has escalated in a massive way within the last two years - to the point that important issues have effectively been taken off the discussion table because the participant pool is entirely made up of people fighting content-free meme wars.
In my opinion, the only way to combat this is to violate the rules of these meme wars and start talking about content again. But I wouldn't recommend it for high profile personalities whose job entails getting along with as many people as possible, because the fears of backlash are absolutely justified even if you might garner more respect this way in the long term. Worse yet, once a discussion has been taken over by mindless reactions like this, it becomes very difficult to form your own opinion rationally because it involves separating what the memes want of you from whatever the facts and your internal thoughts say.
As a rule of thumb: if both parties are angry at you, you're on the right track.
Personally I think the current state of things is either unsustainable, meaning the group identity thing is going to burn itself out over time, or it's a new low-energy state as far as human thought process goes which means it's going to be permanent. Either way, at least some influential people need to fight this, even if it means you'll be perceived as having rough edges.
- rntz 10y ago> As a rule of thumb: if both parties are angry at you, you're on the right track. No; this is an excuse to pat yourself on the back for being contrary. Don't validate your beliefs by how much they make others angry, any more than you validate them by how much they make others happy. > the group identity thing Group identity and culture wars are not new (and are certainly not going away). It's plausible to me that the internet is making this worse - a premise of your post - but I'm not yet convinced. It's possible they're merely coincident. What concrete reasons are there to believe the internet is a primary cause of today's increasingly vitriolic culture wars, rather than merely a new venue in which they are being pursued?
- msabalau 10y agoGiven that the 20th century is the century of genocide, it seems less than certain that the long term trend is "increasingly vitriolic".
- jacobush 10y agoWe always have nukes
- ysavir 10y agoThe 20th century isn't the century of genocide; it's the century of media covered genocide.
- rntz 10y agoThis is true. It does seem, however, like that is the short-term trend of the last decade or three. Things don't have to be as bad as the mid 20th century to be worrying.
- Udo 10y agoNot sure how to reply to this, it seems I certainly failed to get the point across here. > No; this is an excuse to pat yourself on the back for being contrary. Don't validate your beliefs by how much they make others angry That was absolutely not what I intended to say with this admittedly tongue-in-cheek quip. There is a kernel of (subjective) truth in there though: if you find yourself agreeing with one side of a meme war 100% on everything, it's most likely time to rethink some assumptions. Conversely, if you're not agreeing wholesale, you just have a target on your back, that's a given. So I could have worded that better, it doesn't have anything to do with being contrarian for the sake of causing offense. > Group identity and culture wars are not new (and are certainly not going away). I thought I addressed that. Again, I probably worded it too obtusely.
- mst 10y agoIn defense of your quip, if I get called both a misogynist and a radfem for the same opinion, I can fairly reliably expect that over the subsequent few days I'll get a number of people with moderate opinions contacting me privately to thank me for saying what they were thinking but were too scared of internet shitstorms to post publically.
- wodencafe 10y agoTo your point about online discussions, it's made worse by most websites getting rid of usernames, and replacing them with your real name. Or worse even, they use a Facebook discussion plugin, so whatever you say is attached to your Facebook account.
- bduerst 10y agoHow is that? I thought that adding a potential reputation cost to discussion actually helped curb anonymous trolling.
- mgkimsal 10y agoit also makes it easier to associate views with someone, whether they want those views known outside of a smaller group or not.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gohrt 10y agoIt curbs privacy and the ability to explore controversial ideas.
- gohrt 10y agoIt curbs privacy and the ability to explore controversial ideas. As Facebook shows, there are more than plenty non-anonymous trolls.
- nitrogen 10y agoIt's possible that the actual effect is to limit discussion to those who don't care about their reputation.
- chillingeffect 10y agoI generally agree, but would suggest amending "permitting group identity-based 'discussion' to flourish." The issue IMO, is not the activity of the discussion, but the impoverished shortcut of identity as a classification. My apologies if this is what you intended. It came out to me as if the discussion were to be avoided, rather than the lens of identity. All "identities" are crude prejudice. They're a pair of glasses we put on to try to perceive things a certain way. This is an artifact of "Motivated Reasoning." Anticipating someone's vote based on their melanin is harmful and self-defeating in the long run. As you say, we should discuss content, or "issues." Instead of negating everything e.g. YouKnowWho does, we need to debate each bill on its own merit.
- maxxxxx 10y ago"As a rule of thumb: if both parties are angry at you, you're on the right track." That's the same fallacy as saying "The truth is somewhere in between". If everybody is angry at you, maybe you just said something universally stupid. Or maybe you were right. You can't make this a rule.
- Udo 10y agoI addressed this in the other comment. It was a shitty way to convey a slightly different point. Sorry about that.
- ScottBurson 10y agoIt's fine. It's a rule of thumb -- the very phrase you used -- not an absolute.
- mentat 10y agoPerhaps expands to "in a world where anger is a proxy for nonconformance, and where even nuance is nonconformance, and if nuance is good because reality is not two sided, then having people angry at you is indicative of maturity in an immature world". There's a lot to disagree with there, probably mostly around two sided-ness though there's mostly a lack of tech in meme wars, they haven't figured out how to make smaller groups and dynamically manage them effectively. I know that nuance as a sign of maturity is also directly under attack and that there's no apriori way to justify it.
- EdHominem 10y agoThe logical complement is more reasonable: "If everyone is happy with you you're likely doing things wrong." And the more general: "If idiots are happy with you, you're likely an idiot too - or just acting like one."
- maxxxxx 10y agoI think both of these can't be generalized . Sometimes they are true, sometimes not.