I never weigh in on this, recognizing my own ignorance; but I've sure been left thoughtful by some arguments I've seen. I really like and respect David Roberts, of "Volts.wtf", who podcasts about clean energy. But on Twitter, he vents about every political issue, very much from the "Republicans aren't just wrong, they're horrible" end of…
I never weigh in on this, recognizing my own ignorance; but I've sure been left thoughtful by some arguments I've seen. I really like and respect David Roberts, of "Volts.wtf", who podcasts about clean energy. But on Twitter, he vents about every political issue, very much from the "Republicans aren't just wrong, they're horrible" end of the spectrum.
For whatever reason, he took up the issue indirectly, a long Twitter thread on how that guy at CPAC was not just giving himself cover against genocide cries by saying that "TransgenderISM" must be eradicated, he was attacking all minorities, attacking women, since he was really attacking any "ism", like feminism, that works to provide the same rights to minorities as to cis white men.
Below the thread was a pile-on. David was out of his lane, should get back to it, it was terrible that he "parsed" the statement and read a lot more into it, when the right thing to do was just cry genocide, that the "ism" thing was still calling for genocide of all transgender people. Any other take than "condemn the genocide" - even a deeper take - made him not just wrong, but awful, a genocide-enabler.
There must have been 100 comments, not a single one was equivocal, they were just scorching him, one and all. I can imagine that David indeed will get back to his lane, never bring up transgenderism again, even if he does keep commenting on Republican awfulness in other areas.
Same here.
I just heard Kara Swisher on a podcast, who used to get along with Elon Musk and spoke well of him, saying that "now, what used to be 10% of his character has become 99%". One wonders whether Rowling has changed because she was very stung by criticism and backed into a corner, or if the issue has just been revealing of where she always was.
In defense of the comment section: Every person who replies to a tweet is acting as an individual. For the person who sent the tweet, they often experience the response as a mob. One person being over-the-top is one thing, but 100 people being over-the-top at the same time genuinely feels like the pitchfork'd masses showing up to burn down your house. It's a really strange position to be in. And it makes you loopy, even if every one of those 100 people went about their day and never thought about it again.
Thanks. I went back to it and looked at time-stamps. A bunch of them did pile in in the first 40 minutes after he posted, perhaps unaware of the others. (Also, I noted a quiet little post, 'I am trans and agree with your analysis, thank you' that was of course worth more than 10 of the rest...)
But, there were about 20 more that were (a) late enough that the point had been made, David berated, and (b) were quite unpleasant, often with a meme picture of something ugly.
I just hope that Mastodon's more federal nature keeps these kinds of actions smaller.
I never weigh in on this, recognizing my own ignorance; but I've sure been left thoughtful by some arguments I've seen. I really like and respect David Roberts, of "Volts.wtf", who podcasts about clean energy. But on Twitter, he vents about every political issue, very much from the "Republicans aren't just wrong, they're horrible" end of the spectrum.
For whatever reason, he took up the issue indirectly, a long Twitter thread on how that guy at CPAC was not just giving himself cover against genocide cries by saying that "TransgenderISM" must be eradicated, he was attacking all minorities, attacking women, since he was really attacking any "ism", like feminism, that works to provide the same rights to minorities as to cis white men.
Below the thread was a pile-on. David was out of his lane, should get back to it, it was terrible that he "parsed" the statement and read a lot more into it, when the right thing to do was just cry genocide, that the "ism" thing was still calling for genocide of all transgender people. Any other take than "condemn the genocide" - even a deeper take - made him not just wrong, but awful, a genocide-enabler.
There must have been 100 comments, not a single one was equivocal, they were just scorching him, one and all. I can imagine that David indeed will get back to his lane, never bring up transgenderism again, even if he does keep commenting on Republican awfulness in other areas.
Same here.
I just heard Kara Swisher on a podcast, who used to get along with Elon Musk and spoke well of him, saying that "now, what used to be 10% of his character has become 99%". One wonders whether Rowling has changed because she was very stung by criticism and backed into a corner, or if the issue has just been revealing of where she always was.
I think that's a very astute read.
In defense of the comment section: Every person who replies to a tweet is acting as an individual. For the person who sent the tweet, they often experience the response as a mob. One person being over-the-top is one thing, but 100 people being over-the-top at the same time genuinely feels like the pitchfork'd masses showing up to burn down your house. It's a really strange position to be in. And it makes you loopy, even if every one of those 100 people went about their day and never thought about it again.
Thanks. I went back to it and looked at time-stamps. A bunch of them did pile in in the first 40 minutes after he posted, perhaps unaware of the others. (Also, I noted a quiet little post, 'I am trans and agree with your analysis, thank you' that was of course worth more than 10 of the rest...)
But, there were about 20 more that were (a) late enough that the point had been made, David berated, and (b) were quite unpleasant, often with a meme picture of something ugly.
I just hope that Mastodon's more federal nature keeps these kinds of actions smaller.