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Good for you for doing the right thing. Let me ask you - did you feel like the hate thrown at you on Twitter was completely organic? Was there anything that ma

Good for you for doing the right thing. Let me ask you - did you feel like the hate thrown at you on Twitter was completely organic? Was there anything that made you question the motives of the involved Twits? I ask because the whole smear job vs Stallman felt quite manufactured to me; from the initial Vice article horrifically misquoting him, to the weirdly rabid hate towards anyone defending him on forums like this and Reddit.

DevKoala 5y ago
Doesn’t it always feel manufactured? What you are mentioning regarding the case of Stallman’s cancelling is the same pattern I have seen applied against every other voice that has a dissenting opinion of the current culture that dominates social media.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  > Doesn’t it always feel manufactured? No. Spacey, Weinstein, and Epstein, to name a few, felt the opposite of manufactured. Repressed? Those stories took years, or decades to break, even with high profile advocates. Now, you might say that they didn't have a "dissenting opinion of the social media culture" - but their actions would show otherwise.
  - DevKoala 5y ago
    None of those characters were individuals who were cancelled based on their opinions against the dominant culture in social media. Also, they weren’t cancelled, they got charged with one or multiple felonies, which is different, and there are plenty of apologists for their behavior. For example, this was a real tweet that got taken down. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E32Pup-WEAIhQvz?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E32Pup-WEAIhQvz?format=jpg&name=...
caddemon 5y ago
I agree that what Stallman said was misrepresented, and perhaps the later stages of the "cancelling" were more manufactured, but the initial anger that popped up on various MIT mailing lists felt very organic to me. A bit mob-like, definitely driven moreso by emotion than a good-faith reading of what Stallman said, and probably amplified by people who disagreed feeling afraid to speak out. But I wouldn't describe any of it as manufactured.
- Mediterraneo10 5y ago
  Wasn’t one of the MIT students seeking to strip Stallman of his positions, claiming that she had only heard of him acting inappropriately (as she was too young to ever interact with him herself), yet when challenged on the matter, refused to provide any specifics?
  - caddemon 5y ago
    Yes, IIRC the Medium post that made the situation go viral beyond MIT was written by a student that just compiled other peoples' stories about Stallman, not based on any of her own experiences. Personally I can't imagine initiating calls for someone's head without first hand knowledge, but I don't think she had any hidden incentive to make the post. My guess is she had her own negative experiences with someone else in the past and thought she was doing the right thing by speaking out for others here. I recall the post reading as very emotional, like a rant you might send to a private group chat of friends. So definitely not manufactured.
    - Mediterraneo10 5y ago
      Perhaps you are being too charitable in assuming that the student was calling for Stallman’s head out of past trauma. It could be that the calling for his head was a performative act for her own benefit, boosting her in the eyes of others.
      - 73gfg 5y ago
        Of course it was. Every single public attack is a status game. No easier way to status and power in 2021 than in the name of "social justice" .
      - caddemon 5y ago
        Maybe to the extent that anyone who participates in social justice mobs is being performative, but it definitely did not help her career or result in any material gain. She also had no incentive to take down Stallman specifically, of course she didn't even really know who he was when she made the post. I wouldn't be surprised if she was trying to get a bit of street cred with her in-group, but to me that's just an extremely human, often somewhat subconscious thing. I would be surprised if that was literally the only motivation though - the post comes across as legitimately emotional, not faux outrage. That doesn't mean she was right to make the post obviously, I just don't think it was any sort of active ploy on her part. I don't even think the anger was fake, from her or most of the initial responders. As it propagated maybe the outrage was more manufactured, but believe me I know people that felt just as heated as she did at the time, only expressed it in private chats. In some cases these were chats with just a handful of friends that had a spectrum of opinions on the issue, so no reason for it to be posturing. I hate cancel culture, and I understand feeling like some instances are very manufactured. But I feel it is more dangerous when it is organic, because it is very hard to deal with legitimate human emotions. I think usually when the organic mobs misfire it is a "straw breaking the camel's back" type situation: some minor offender becomes the target of pent up rage from a larger issue, and the punishment ends up being way disproportionate for the one, while many others get off scot-free.
slver 5y ago
There's no detectable difference between manufactured and organic "canceling" because the major component in both cases is a horde of people who are just looking for a hate bandwagon to hop on. Likewise if you are publishing to Vice or some other moderately popular publication, you're directly motivated to stir up drama both for clickbait and as a form of a personal power trip against those you don't like for whatever reason. The main issue is that our internet culture is extremely primitive. We're basically animals online, most of us. And it's very easy to spur a stampede and destroy someone, whether intentionally or not.
Udik 5y ago
> from the initial Vice article horrifically misquoting him, to the weirdly rabid hate towards anyone defending him on forums like this and Reddit In fairness those are both very common features of cancellations. Another that comes to mind is Damore, who never wrote what most people attributed to him. I've had perfectly clear for a long time that even smart people will misunderstand the clearest statement if it's what it's socially expected from them.
- caddemon 5y ago
  I think there are also some topics where people are conditioned to respond emotionally. Once responding emotionally of course a fair reading is out the window. I do think there is a lot of silence due to social expectations, also probably many of the likes/shares with little additional commentary come from such expectations. But IME the people that write the long rants tearing X person apart are either legitimately upset, or have an agenda way beyond trying to fit social expectations. Of course you can't have mob justice without both the instigators and the larger crowd giving passive support. But I don't think it's accurate to assume it's purely people wanting to fit in. Many of the cases that gain traction have an emotional core.
  - Udik 5y ago
    > the people that write the long rants tearing X person apart are either legitimately upset, or have an agenda way beyond trying to fit social expectations These would be the activists who are- as you call them- the instigators, and who might be close to the origin of the events. But the second level is the media- and here you have journalists and bloggers, who are already far removed from the original events and are supposed to report them to a wider audience in a neutral way. And yet you see them grossly misreporting the content of text they have read and that anyone can check: despite much less direct emotional involvement here (if there is any it should be acknowledged and balanced), and the fact that a news article takes much more effort and focus than a simple retweet. So the justification for the spread of obviously false information can only be either an actual wilful dishonesty (and I don't believe it) or it's nothing else than a selective blindness driven by an instinctive desire to align to the immediate peers.
radmuzom 5y ago
Many good points in the discussion below. However, when one of Stallman’s “crimes” was comparing US laws against that of Sudan (as mentioned in the open letter), I could not help but feel that people are looking for an opportunity to take him down for reasons other than his views on Minsky, adolescent sex, etc.

DevKoala 5y ago

Doesn’t it always feel manufactured? What you are mentioning regarding the case of Stallman’s cancelling is the same pattern I have seen applied against every other voice that has a dissenting opinion of the current culture that dominates social media.

mandmandam 5y ago
> Doesn’t it always feel manufactured? No. Spacey, Weinstein, and Epstein, to name a few, felt the opposite of manufactured. Repressed? Those stories took years, or decades to break, even with high profile advocates. Now, you might say that they didn't have a "dissenting opinion of the social media culture" - but their actions would show otherwise.
- DevKoala 5y ago
  None of those characters were individuals who were cancelled based on their opinions against the dominant culture in social media. Also, they weren’t cancelled, they got charged with one or multiple felonies, which is different, and there are plenty of apologists for their behavior. For example, this was a real tweet that got taken down. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E32Pup-WEAIhQvz?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E32Pup-WEAIhQvz?format=jpg&name=...

caddemon 5y ago

I agree that what Stallman said was misrepresented, and perhaps the later stages of the "cancelling" were more manufactured, but the initial anger that popped up on various MIT mailing lists felt very organic to me. A bit mob-like, definitely driven moreso by emotion than a good-faith reading of what Stallman said, and probably amplified by people who disagreed feeling afraid to speak out. But I wouldn't describe any of it as manufactured.

Mediterraneo10 5y ago
Wasn’t one of the MIT students seeking to strip Stallman of his positions, claiming that she had only heard of him acting inappropriately (as she was too young to ever interact with him herself), yet when challenged on the matter, refused to provide any specifics?
- caddemon 5y ago
  Yes, IIRC the Medium post that made the situation go viral beyond MIT was written by a student that just compiled other peoples' stories about Stallman, not based on any of her own experiences. Personally I can't imagine initiating calls for someone's head without first hand knowledge, but I don't think she had any hidden incentive to make the post. My guess is she had her own negative experiences with someone else in the past and thought she was doing the right thing by speaking out for others here. I recall the post reading as very emotional, like a rant you might send to a private group chat of friends. So definitely not manufactured.
  - Mediterraneo10 5y ago
    Perhaps you are being too charitable in assuming that the student was calling for Stallman’s head out of past trauma. It could be that the calling for his head was a performative act for her own benefit, boosting her in the eyes of others.
    - 73gfg 5y ago
      Of course it was. Every single public attack is a status game. No easier way to status and power in 2021 than in the name of "social justice" .
    - caddemon 5y ago
      Maybe to the extent that anyone who participates in social justice mobs is being performative, but it definitely did not help her career or result in any material gain. She also had no incentive to take down Stallman specifically, of course she didn't even really know who he was when she made the post. I wouldn't be surprised if she was trying to get a bit of street cred with her in-group, but to me that's just an extremely human, often somewhat subconscious thing. I would be surprised if that was literally the only motivation though - the post comes across as legitimately emotional, not faux outrage. That doesn't mean she was right to make the post obviously, I just don't think it was any sort of active ploy on her part. I don't even think the anger was fake, from her or most of the initial responders. As it propagated maybe the outrage was more manufactured, but believe me I know people that felt just as heated as she did at the time, only expressed it in private chats. In some cases these were chats with just a handful of friends that had a spectrum of opinions on the issue, so no reason for it to be posturing. I hate cancel culture, and I understand feeling like some instances are very manufactured. But I feel it is more dangerous when it is organic, because it is very hard to deal with legitimate human emotions. I think usually when the organic mobs misfire it is a "straw breaking the camel's back" type situation: some minor offender becomes the target of pent up rage from a larger issue, and the punishment ends up being way disproportionate for the one, while many others get off scot-free.

slver 5y ago

There's no detectable difference between manufactured and organic "canceling" because the major component in both cases is a horde of people who are just looking for a hate bandwagon to hop on. Likewise if you are publishing to Vice or some other moderately popular publication, you're directly motivated to stir up drama both for clickbait and as a form of a personal power trip against those you don't like for whatever reason. The main issue is that our internet culture is extremely primitive. We're basically animals online, most of us. And it's very easy to spur a stampede and destroy someone, whether intentionally or not.

Udik 5y ago

> from the initial Vice article horrifically misquoting him, to the weirdly rabid hate towards anyone defending him on forums like this and Reddit In fairness those are both very common features of cancellations. Another that comes to mind is Damore, who never wrote what most people attributed to him. I've had perfectly clear for a long time that even smart people will misunderstand the clearest statement if it's what it's socially expected from them.

caddemon 5y ago
I think there are also some topics where people are conditioned to respond emotionally. Once responding emotionally of course a fair reading is out the window. I do think there is a lot of silence due to social expectations, also probably many of the likes/shares with little additional commentary come from such expectations. But IME the people that write the long rants tearing X person apart are either legitimately upset, or have an agenda way beyond trying to fit social expectations. Of course you can't have mob justice without both the instigators and the larger crowd giving passive support. But I don't think it's accurate to assume it's purely people wanting to fit in. Many of the cases that gain traction have an emotional core.
- Udik 5y ago
  > the people that write the long rants tearing X person apart are either legitimately upset, or have an agenda way beyond trying to fit social expectations These would be the activists who are- as you call them- the instigators, and who might be close to the origin of the events. But the second level is the media- and here you have journalists and bloggers, who are already far removed from the original events and are supposed to report them to a wider audience in a neutral way. And yet you see them grossly misreporting the content of text they have read and that anyone can check: despite much less direct emotional involvement here (if there is any it should be acknowledged and balanced), and the fact that a news article takes much more effort and focus than a simple retweet. So the justification for the spread of obviously false information can only be either an actual wilful dishonesty (and I don't believe it) or it's nothing else than a selective blindness driven by an instinctive desire to align to the immediate peers.

radmuzom 5y ago

Many good points in the discussion below. However, when one of Stallman’s “crimes” was comparing US laws against that of Sudan (as mentioned in the open letter), I could not help but feel that people are looking for an opportunity to take him down for reasons other than his views on Minsky, adolescent sex, etc.