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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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The claim that Taylor Lorenz's coverage of the Oshry sisters was unethical doxxing depends on an understanding of "doxxing" which is not universal, even among online communities (which have a much stronger rule against doxxing than IRL ones). The Oshry sisters were running a social media influencer operation which made minimal attempt to conceal their legal names and very much traded on their family relationship with each other. Taylor Lorenz did not unmask an actively-protected pseudonym, and she did not share non-public contact information, which are the central examples of "doxxing". She signal-boosted the true, publicly-available, fact that public figure X was semi-public figure Y's mother.

If you wanted to defend Taylor Lorenz using the traditional rules of journalism (which I won't - the article was clickbait), there is a very obvious argument to make that she was unmasking hypocrisy - the Oshry sisters were making a big deal about how important family was while cutting out their mother.

The claim that this article was so unethical that Taylor Lorenz should be unemployable is the claim that there should be some kind of ethical rule against signal-boosting true but embarrassing publicly-available information about public figures - in other words it is a claim that journalists should not do journalism. The claim that it was a trashy article because it treated an Instagram influencer as if they were an important public figure is valid and accurate, but that isn't and shouldn't be a career-ending offence.

Does the Daily Beast even count as mainstream media anyway? The Wapo not holding it against Taylor Lorenz that she did tabloid shit when she was working at a tabloid is normal business ethics, even if they do think it was a trashy thing to do.

I'm under the impression that the connection between the Oshry sisters and their mother was not publicly known prior to Lorenz's article, which outright brags about how much effort the two put into hiding their mother. I may be missing context because I never even heard of them before I saw this article. With that said, nearly all dox can be described as publicly available information. It's connecting the dots with the information that's the threat to people.

I think with Taylor the bigger issue was Libs of tik tok AND Taylor being a cry bully demanding that any criticism of Taylor is evil misogyny.

I agree with you that women who start public fights (both verbal and physical) and then cry misogyny when a man fights back are beneath contempt.