It is funny how Twitter created a psychology that what we shared was public, but somehow private too. I think it’s why people are often shocked when they get push back or pile ons. As though people feel they are making great proclamations but only into a hole in the ground.
And on the subject of regretting tweets, I recently went back and manually deleted a load and I was amazed at how small and nit-picky most of them were (even ignoring the early days when we literally just shared whatever mundane nothing we were doing in that moment). It was a dispiriting experience. Like reading the diary of a dull pedant.
It sounds a bit ike teenage diaries: I kept one for a while but then realised one day when I was reading back that I wrote LOADS on days when I was unhappy, and hardly anything when I was happy. So the diary was just a journal of misery amplification. I stopped at once.
I have had similar with my old diaries. Although these days the problem is more that everything is “lovely”. My diary reads like the journal of the “Which was nice” man from The Fast Show.
Love how calling someone else a “bigot” has become code for yourself having unshakeable views which automatically exclude people from a conversation, with no intent of discussion. Is there a word for that?
This right here is the problem., you seem to think that identity is something to wax philosophical over and debate. Truly the mark of a most privileged person. 😖
I'm sorry it's absolutely fucking hilarious that you consider yourself a scientist but this is how you speak about your "research" hahahaha. Take a second to read about the Hirschfeld Clinic and ask yourself how comfy you are that your views so closely align with nazis. Have a BLESSED day kiddo
Charles, I must object to the "stakes are so small" saying. People's careers are indeed very large stakes to them, and I have often thought this remark to be an extremely unjust dismissal by the speaker of the concerns of the target (essentially expressing "What is important to you is of no interest to me, thus it deserves to be derided since my opinion matters not yours").
Note there are many deeply contentious political topics where "work off the data" is a much too simplistic recommendation. Pseudo-scientific racism, just for example, has a whole industry of pseudo-"data". And there's issues of values which really aren't fundamentally data-based but we often pretend they are - e.g. should ordinary citizens have a right to own guns?
Anyway, I suspect Downes fully knew about the possibility of archiving, etc, and felt she was right in her actions. She was mistaken according to the judgment, but it's a different argument to claim that one should never fight because one might lose (or is fighting on the wrong side).
After all - somewhat insert tongue in cheek - that same logic might apply to making any post at all about a controversial social issue (or, for that matter, a comment on such a post ...).
Fair observation as always, Seth. Though if you step back, what was really at stake for Downes (the less senior person, don’t forget) in allowing Phoenix to publish? One academic would have produced one set of research. Downes could have produced research arguing the exact opposite. Impasse. One could certainly argue about whether the number of people affected by the decision on where to house trans prisoners is limited to the trans prisoners, or all the people in the prison(s).
But if Downes et al (because there were plenty more of them) considered the stakes so *high*, they went about it in a very background manner. Though perhaps that says something about academia too.
And yes - never tweet, never write! Unless you think you can change something important. Though even then, consider your avenues.
"NPR’s new CEO Katherine Maher scrubs hyper-partisan posts: 'Trump is a racist'"
(notable that's deemed hyper-partisan)
This may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but I think it's won at least a small prize in what I call the "negative lottery":
"I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive. But it's hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property," Maher wrote in 2020 on Twitter ...
Oh my yes. We feel so much that by tweeting under our own name we will lend weight to what we think: that people will look up to our brave statements on Israel or Palestine or whatever. (Jamie Bartlett wrote a good Substack on this recently, titled "You are not an embassy" - the thrust being that actually you don't need to have an opinion about the Big Things in the world. Maher could well have thought that she'd never have to worry about those things she tweeted; who can imagine ever changing *jobs*? Well, I guess if she'd had an account called anon204595 she'd be fine.
It seems like the same story, except the Berliner piece (which I thought had some obvious flaws in its reasoning - eg perhaps NPR lost its right-wing audience because they all headed off to talk radio, Fox News, etc etc) has perhaps given it a little spice. Be interesting to see if NPR turns out to have a spine or not.
The difference is that while earlier it was just right-wing outlets calling her a kook, now the story is getting into mainstream outlets and being tied into seriously trying to get her fired. This bit, on npr.org itself, is a major metastasis:
"In an interview with me later on Monday, Berliner said the social media posts demonstrated Maher was all but incapable of being the person best poised to direct the organization."
Yes, it's formally only relaying what he said. But it's a change, to take firing her as worth mentioning, instead of just dismissing it as fever-swamp ranting.
The tweets didn't change. But they are being tied into the Berliner kerfuffle, and all of it used to ratchet up pressure against her.
If, only slightly hypothetically, an academic was publishing research which purported to show that more legal gun ownership by individuals leads to less crime overall, I think it's understandable why certain academic opponents might, even in public, be less than collegiality respectful to this person. And how those critics would not be content to publish dry rebuttals in journals. Moreover, it would massively miss context to conceive of this as simply an esoteric dispute over data quality and appropriate statistical testing, and then dismiss it as some sort of petty squabbling over arcana.
Why think this behavior is something about academia? It's common anywhere people have platforms and care about "ideas". Social Warming brings that to the masses, but there's many professions which have similar dynamics. Such as, for example, journalism (which note, where practitioners should know more than anyone about the potential destructive implications of a stray remark exploited by bad-faith actors).
It is funny how Twitter created a psychology that what we shared was public, but somehow private too. I think it’s why people are often shocked when they get push back or pile ons. As though people feel they are making great proclamations but only into a hole in the ground.
And on the subject of regretting tweets, I recently went back and manually deleted a load and I was amazed at how small and nit-picky most of them were (even ignoring the early days when we literally just shared whatever mundane nothing we were doing in that moment). It was a dispiriting experience. Like reading the diary of a dull pedant.
It sounds a bit ike teenage diaries: I kept one for a while but then realised one day when I was reading back that I wrote LOADS on days when I was unhappy, and hardly anything when I was happy. So the diary was just a journal of misery amplification. I stopped at once.
I have had similar with my old diaries. Although these days the problem is more that everything is “lovely”. My diary reads like the journal of the “Which was nice” man from The Fast Show.
Jo phoenix is not trans supportive lmao she's a bigot and the way you've reported this, so are you ;)
Love how calling someone else a “bigot” has become code for yourself having unshakeable views which automatically exclude people from a conversation, with no intent of discussion. Is there a word for that?
I'm sure your kind will pull, twist, and gaslight the English language until there is lol
By the way, I think you consider yourself educated, so you should know by now that an identity is not a "view." It's an identity. :) hope this helps!
Distinguish between an “identity” and an “unshakeable view”. Though on consideration we know that identities aren’t actually unshakeable.
This right here is the problem., you seem to think that identity is something to wax philosophical over and debate. Truly the mark of a most privileged person. 😖
Scientist don’t accept anything at face value.
I'm sorry it's absolutely fucking hilarious that you consider yourself a scientist but this is how you speak about your "research" hahahaha. Take a second to read about the Hirschfeld Clinic and ask yourself how comfy you are that your views so closely align with nazis. Have a BLESSED day kiddo
Charles, I must object to the "stakes are so small" saying. People's careers are indeed very large stakes to them, and I have often thought this remark to be an extremely unjust dismissal by the speaker of the concerns of the target (essentially expressing "What is important to you is of no interest to me, thus it deserves to be derided since my opinion matters not yours").
Note there are many deeply contentious political topics where "work off the data" is a much too simplistic recommendation. Pseudo-scientific racism, just for example, has a whole industry of pseudo-"data". And there's issues of values which really aren't fundamentally data-based but we often pretend they are - e.g. should ordinary citizens have a right to own guns?
Anyway, I suspect Downes fully knew about the possibility of archiving, etc, and felt she was right in her actions. She was mistaken according to the judgment, but it's a different argument to claim that one should never fight because one might lose (or is fighting on the wrong side).
After all - somewhat insert tongue in cheek - that same logic might apply to making any post at all about a controversial social issue (or, for that matter, a comment on such a post ...).
Fair observation as always, Seth. Though if you step back, what was really at stake for Downes (the less senior person, don’t forget) in allowing Phoenix to publish? One academic would have produced one set of research. Downes could have produced research arguing the exact opposite. Impasse. One could certainly argue about whether the number of people affected by the decision on where to house trans prisoners is limited to the trans prisoners, or all the people in the prison(s).
But if Downes et al (because there were plenty more of them) considered the stakes so *high*, they went about it in a very background manner. Though perhaps that says something about academia too.
And yes - never tweet, never write! Unless you think you can change something important. Though even then, consider your avenues.
An interesting case just now:
https://nypost.com/2024/01/25/business/nprs-new-ceo-katherine-maher-scrubs-partisan-posts-trump-is-a-racist/
"NPR’s new CEO Katherine Maher scrubs hyper-partisan posts: 'Trump is a racist'"
(notable that's deemed hyper-partisan)
This may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but I think it's won at least a small prize in what I call the "negative lottery":
"I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive. But it's hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property," Maher wrote in 2020 on Twitter ...
Oh my yes. We feel so much that by tweeting under our own name we will lend weight to what we think: that people will look up to our brave statements on Israel or Palestine or whatever. (Jamie Bartlett wrote a good Substack on this recently, titled "You are not an embassy" - the thrust being that actually you don't need to have an opinion about the Big Things in the world. Maher could well have thought that she'd never have to worry about those things she tweeted; who can imagine ever changing *jobs*? Well, I guess if she'd had an account called anon204595 she'd be fine.
It's not going well for her:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/business/media/npr-chief-executive-criticized-over-tweets.html
Her prize in the "negative lottery" seems to be getting larger - let's see if she hits the jackpot, of losing her job.
It seems like the same story, except the Berliner piece (which I thought had some obvious flaws in its reasoning - eg perhaps NPR lost its right-wing audience because they all headed off to talk radio, Fox News, etc etc) has perhaps given it a little spice. Be interesting to see if NPR turns out to have a spine or not.
The difference is that while earlier it was just right-wing outlets calling her a kook, now the story is getting into mainstream outlets and being tied into seriously trying to get her fired. This bit, on npr.org itself, is a major metastasis:
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1244962042/npr-editor-uri-berliner-suspended-essay
"In an interview with me later on Monday, Berliner said the social media posts demonstrated Maher was all but incapable of being the person best poised to direct the organization."
Yes, it's formally only relaying what he said. But it's a change, to take firing her as worth mentioning, instead of just dismissing it as fever-swamp ranting.
The tweets didn't change. But they are being tied into the Berliner kerfuffle, and all of it used to ratchet up pressure against her.
If, only slightly hypothetically, an academic was publishing research which purported to show that more legal gun ownership by individuals leads to less crime overall, I think it's understandable why certain academic opponents might, even in public, be less than collegiality respectful to this person. And how those critics would not be content to publish dry rebuttals in journals. Moreover, it would massively miss context to conceive of this as simply an esoteric dispute over data quality and appropriate statistical testing, and then dismiss it as some sort of petty squabbling over arcana.
Why think this behavior is something about academia? It's common anywhere people have platforms and care about "ideas". Social Warming brings that to the masses, but there's many professions which have similar dynamics. Such as, for example, journalism (which note, where practitioners should know more than anyone about the potential destructive implications of a stray remark exploited by bad-faith actors).