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Why is this garbage here? The author's tone is flagrantly antagonistic. If this wasn't meant to be satirical, then it is almost certainly a purposeful deviation

by sjp2705 12y ago

Why is this garbage here? The author's tone is flagrantly antagonistic. If this wasn't meant to be satirical, then it is almost certainly a purposeful deviation from civil and constructive discourse meant to provoke angry reactions from dissenters. It's precisely this kind of deplorable vitriol that hinders and sabotages the gender debate. I also disagree on a purely rational level that retreating to an echo chamber can lead to anything positive: on the contrary, this is precisely how strong beliefs and emotions can fester into something malignant. This is for instance why things like the Tea Party exist - because people who shut out dissenting voices quickly become unable to empathize with alternative points of view.

angersock 12y ago
I actually think it was a decent article--good points, some decent hands-on knowledge. I agree that slapping "feminist" as a modifier on everything was a bit odd, because the advice functions for any group you want to assemble. A point about the echo-chamber, though: Sometimes, if you are optimizing for humor or whatever, an echo-chamber is exactly what you want, because the social mores and cultural touchstones are the same. It's also very hard to have people with widely diverse viewpoints in these groups (worth it though!), because the tendency is just to turtle up and argue back and forth and back and forth and generally suck the air out of the place for anything else. This makes it not fun, and that drives people away, and then your channel dies. If you want to try that, you need people that are willing to find a point and say "Okay, we clearly agree to disagree here, and let's move on and not revisit this unless circumstances really change or we are just being academic". That's a sort of civility, though, that is very rare. It's also difficult because you have two people who are meeting and usually who have very different echo-chambers they subscribe to, and so even when they do enter into a discussion they are doing so from such divergent starting points that they're more likely to talk past each other.
jessaustin 12y ago
...people who shut out dissenting voices quickly become unable to empathize with alternative points of view. There is no environment that would lead the author of parent comment to "empathize with alternative points of view". That's why backchannels are valuable.

by sjp2705 12y ago

angersock 12y ago

I actually think it was a decent article--good points, some decent hands-on knowledge. I agree that slapping "feminist" as a modifier on everything was a bit odd, because the advice functions for any group you want to assemble. A point about the echo-chamber, though: Sometimes, if you are optimizing for humor or whatever, an echo-chamber is exactly what you want, because the social mores and cultural touchstones are the same. It's also very hard to have people with widely diverse viewpoints in these groups (worth it though!), because the tendency is just to turtle up and argue back and forth and back and forth and generally suck the air out of the place for anything else. This makes it not fun, and that drives people away, and then your channel dies. If you want to try that, you need people that are willing to find a point and say "Okay, we clearly agree to disagree here, and let's move on and not revisit this unless circumstances really change or we are just being academic". That's a sort of civility, though, that is very rare. It's also difficult because you have two people who are meeting and usually who have very different echo-chambers they subscribe to, and so even when they do enter into a discussion they are doing so from such divergent starting points that they're more likely to talk past each other.

jessaustin 12y ago

...people who shut out dissenting voices quickly become unable to empathize with alternative points of view. There is no environment that would lead the author of parent comment to "empathize with alternative points of view". That's why backchannels are valuable.