3 ms·

This is incredibly lazy writing for someone who is not only a researcher but a PhD. Instead of a well-researched piece with citations and supporting evidence, w

This is incredibly lazy writing for someone who is not only a researcher but a PhD. Instead of a well-researched piece with citations and supporting evidence, we get a half-assed questions-instead-of-answers style "reporting" using several inflammatory "questions" which are fleshed out with anecdotal, emotional and unsupported musings. Especially link-baity by asking if the It Gets Better project is causing harm to children. I can see the religious right warming up their copy-paste commands. danah boyd, if you really want to do something constructive, do some damn research. Which is your job title. This piece does nothing to advance our actual knowledge of bullying and suicide.

wisty 15y ago
So, asking questions (fleshed out with personal opinion and anecdotes) isn't research? OK, there's no study or links. It's not really her area. Her first point (moral panic has stopped LGBT youths from seeking advice from strangers in the LGBT community, especially online) is probably true. The second ("It Gets Better" could have an unintended affect) is tricky. The third (media harassment is bad) is obvious, and the forth (adults should also blame themselves and society) is kind of broad and meaningless. You're taking umbrage at the second point - that "It Gets Better" can make things worse. Just because it's a well intentioned (and in some ways effective) movement, does that mean that no-one can question it without bullet-proof evidence? Well intentioned movements often make things worse (in some way), and you can't rely on "real" research to uncover this if nobody is asking questions. I'm all for supporting "It Gets Better" until it's proven to be a bad idea, and supporting whatever it morphs into if a better idea is found. I also think that questions should be asked; even stupid ones. Creating an "us and them" mindset is the fastest path to groupthink.
- shaggyfrog 15y ago
  My point with It Gets Better is that she is suggesting there may be unintended negative consequences to the movement. First, this is sensationalism. Second, her own words ironically have unintended consequences since people who "oppose" LBGT groups will no doubt use this argument in the future. What would danah boyd think about giving the latest talking point to the likes of, say, the Westboro Baptist Church?
  - lkrubner 15y ago
    Your argument is irrational and incoherent. You write "This is sensationalism" but you don't bother to say why. boyd is a researcher who focuses on issues such as the effect online social services have on teen social pressures. In what sense is her question invalid? Why is this not a valid topic for further research? I gather that you are mostly worried about the unintended consequences of her words. To the extent that I can find a coherent line of reasoning in your words, it amounts to fear, and a desire to shut boyd up. The gist of your fear could be summed up as "boyd should shut up or her words might be used by the enemies of the LBGT community". You don't seem to consider that perhaps she has a loyalty to the truth that goes beyond her desire to give support to policies endorsed by some LBGT non-profits, and also, and more importantly, her research might ultimately do good for the LBGT community by pointing out that some of those policies currently being pursued by various levels of government and also NGOs (It Gets Better) might be doing harm. In other words, you are criticizing her without ever considering the possibility that what she writes might be true. You then try to make a point using the Westboro Baptist Church as an example. Your point amounts to "boyd should lie or otherwise the Westboro Baptist Church might misuse her research." Your argument is ridiculous.
lkrubner 15y ago
I don't understand your point, and I sure as hell can not imagine why you think a writer needs to stick to a formal style, rather than express thoughts both formally and informally, but this issue has come up before. Over the years there has been a set of people who reliably criticize academic writers who write in an informal manner on their blogs. The economist Paul Krugman gets this kind of criticism a lot -- that is his blog is not sufficiently formal for someone who has won a Nobel prize. All the same, danah boyd explained her reasoning before, on the matter of informality and blog writing. This is what she wrote (several paragraphs): I'm an academic but I'm also a blogger. For me, these are separate identities. I write formal papers that I spend months trying to find the language to properly express what's going on. In those papers, I try to balance precision and readability. My blog is a different story. I write in an off-the-cuff manner, trying to paint impressions rather than nuance. In academic writing, I have to outline methodology and background, assuming that no one has heard of me or the topic before. In my blog, I write with the assumption that people are familiar with my work and with the topic. In academic writing, I write for posterity. In my blog, I write to get an issue off my chest and to work things out while they are still raw. The informal language in my blog is intentional. The lack of citations is intentional. They are meant to signal that this is a work-in-progress. I want to signal that I'm thinking out loud. Unfortunately, many feel as though a blog must be formal and then they project this view onto my writing and then complain about the language and the lack of cites. I am capable of situating arguments in broader theoretical arguments, but I don't attempt to do that here while I'm working through things. I guess my signals are broken. The blog structure is not built for long essays. My blog itself is not formatted to take on a 3000 word essay (it breaks). When I started publishing conference cribs, I started making them separate webpages that I would link to from Apophenia and M2M. Following that, whenever I'd write a blog entry that was longer than 2000 words, I'd shove it off to the same messy directory with my papers and my cribs and link to it from my blog. They're all under the /papers directory simply because I started keeping track of things at the papers URL. You can see more than papers there. I started sub-directorying it a few months ago because it was getting messy. Essays are exactly that and the class piece was an essay. I added citations to everything under that directory because I was finding that people were taking that material out of context. They were copying/pasting the whole article without reference to where it came from because it looked like it stood on its own (folks didn't do that with my blog entries). I wanted people to know the context so all essays, cribs, op-eds, and papers got tagged with a citation. Unfortunately, this meant that people thought that it was a proper paper. http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ResponseToClassDivisions.html http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ResponseToClassDivisions....

wisty 15y ago

So, asking questions (fleshed out with personal opinion and anecdotes) isn't research? OK, there's no study or links. It's not really her area. Her first point (moral panic has stopped LGBT youths from seeking advice from strangers in the LGBT community, especially online) is probably true. The second ("It Gets Better" could have an unintended affect) is tricky. The third (media harassment is bad) is obvious, and the forth (adults should also blame themselves and society) is kind of broad and meaningless. You're taking umbrage at the second point - that "It Gets Better" can make things worse. Just because it's a well intentioned (and in some ways effective) movement, does that mean that no-one can question it without bullet-proof evidence? Well intentioned movements often make things worse (in some way), and you can't rely on "real" research to uncover this if nobody is asking questions. I'm all for supporting "It Gets Better" until it's proven to be a bad idea, and supporting whatever it morphs into if a better idea is found. I also think that questions should be asked; even stupid ones. Creating an "us and them" mindset is the fastest path to groupthink.

shaggyfrog 15y ago
My point with It Gets Better is that she is suggesting there may be unintended negative consequences to the movement. First, this is sensationalism. Second, her own words ironically have unintended consequences since people who "oppose" LBGT groups will no doubt use this argument in the future. What would danah boyd think about giving the latest talking point to the likes of, say, the Westboro Baptist Church?
- lkrubner 15y ago
  Your argument is irrational and incoherent. You write "This is sensationalism" but you don't bother to say why. boyd is a researcher who focuses on issues such as the effect online social services have on teen social pressures. In what sense is her question invalid? Why is this not a valid topic for further research? I gather that you are mostly worried about the unintended consequences of her words. To the extent that I can find a coherent line of reasoning in your words, it amounts to fear, and a desire to shut boyd up. The gist of your fear could be summed up as "boyd should shut up or her words might be used by the enemies of the LBGT community". You don't seem to consider that perhaps she has a loyalty to the truth that goes beyond her desire to give support to policies endorsed by some LBGT non-profits, and also, and more importantly, her research might ultimately do good for the LBGT community by pointing out that some of those policies currently being pursued by various levels of government and also NGOs (It Gets Better) might be doing harm. In other words, you are criticizing her without ever considering the possibility that what she writes might be true. You then try to make a point using the Westboro Baptist Church as an example. Your point amounts to "boyd should lie or otherwise the Westboro Baptist Church might misuse her research." Your argument is ridiculous.

lkrubner 15y ago

I don't understand your point, and I sure as hell can not imagine why you think a writer needs to stick to a formal style, rather than express thoughts both formally and informally, but this issue has come up before. Over the years there has been a set of people who reliably criticize academic writers who write in an informal manner on their blogs. The economist Paul Krugman gets this kind of criticism a lot -- that is his blog is not sufficiently formal for someone who has won a Nobel prize. All the same, danah boyd explained her reasoning before, on the matter of informality and blog writing. This is what she wrote (several paragraphs): I'm an academic but I'm also a blogger. For me, these are separate identities. I write formal papers that I spend months trying to find the language to properly express what's going on. In those papers, I try to balance precision and readability. My blog is a different story. I write in an off-the-cuff manner, trying to paint impressions rather than nuance. In academic writing, I have to outline methodology and background, assuming that no one has heard of me or the topic before. In my blog, I write with the assumption that people are familiar with my work and with the topic. In academic writing, I write for posterity. In my blog, I write to get an issue off my chest and to work things out while they are still raw. The informal language in my blog is intentional. The lack of citations is intentional. They are meant to signal that this is a work-in-progress. I want to signal that I'm thinking out loud. Unfortunately, many feel as though a blog must be formal and then they project this view onto my writing and then complain about the language and the lack of cites. I am capable of situating arguments in broader theoretical arguments, but I don't attempt to do that here while I'm working through things. I guess my signals are broken. The blog structure is not built for long essays. My blog itself is not formatted to take on a 3000 word essay (it breaks). When I started publishing conference cribs, I started making them separate webpages that I would link to from Apophenia and M2M. Following that, whenever I'd write a blog entry that was longer than 2000 words, I'd shove it off to the same messy directory with my papers and my cribs and link to it from my blog. They're all under the /papers directory simply because I started keeping track of things at the papers URL. You can see more than papers there. I started sub-directorying it a few months ago because it was getting messy. Essays are exactly that and the class piece was an essay. I added citations to everything under that directory because I was finding that people were taking that material out of context. They were copying/pasting the whole article without reference to where it came from because it looked like it stood on its own (folks didn't do that with my blog entries). I wanted people to know the context so all essays, cribs, op-eds, and papers got tagged with a citation. Unfortunately, this meant that people thought that it was a proper paper. http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ResponseToClassDivisions.html http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ResponseToClassDivisions....