naraburns nihil supernum
2yr ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Apparently some left wing organizations are revealing themselves. Here is an X account claiming to represent “BLM Chicago” implicitly (but very nearly explicitly) declaring their support for the terrorist attacks: https://x.com/BLMChi/status/1711793142742073573?s=20
My questions are:
Who actually runs this account?
Have they tried to articulate what they actually mean by this?
I’ll be honest that my opinion of BLM, especially after the 2020 riots, is quite low. This seems to fit a little too well into the right wing hatred of them.
Ok the other hand: are there any stories in Jewish folklore about creating a monster and then having it turn on you?
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
firmamenti 2yr ago
“Revealing themselves”? What do you mean by that? Revealing their power level?
I think most of The Discourse on this event, as with others, has an easier explanation. It looks like what one might expect from handing 15 minutes of fame to the edgiest and most extreme takes. Survival of the fittest, except for scissor statements.
I don't think Twitter is the issue, here. If Twitter had exploded as predicted by All The Tech Writers the day after Musk moved a server, we'd still have had portions of the Harvard student community writing that they "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence"; we just wouldn't have known about it.
netstack
The horse embodies the wings a person feels inside.
gattsuru 2yr ago
Would you say that Twitter and its ilk are the issue?
On one hand, I have to agree that even without anything remotely similar to modern social media, there would still be people making such extreme takes. At least judging by the 70s.
On the other, the very fact that you and I wouldn’t hear about it is of some value. Not just in letting us feel better, but by limiting its reach.
I’m torn on how much this is really worth. Instinctively, half our modern CW issues are predicated on the importance of platforming, speech, the Overton window. The arc of the 20th century was that broadcasting to millions can matter. It feels like social media should have a similar effect, and that injecting feedback directly into Tweeter’s veins should only accelerate any trends. Especially regarding the formation of consensus. And yet, to some extent, it kind of sucks? The firehose of content means that everyone gets to pick and choose what they consume, which may well not be what you intend. Dunk and counterdunk proceeded at the speed of light. Every scissor statement that riles the base is fueling your enemies, too.
The only reason I’m this sanguine complaining about Twitter is because I don’t think there’s much to be done. Not sure how this sort of high-velocity, incredibly competitive speech could be restricted, and not sure if I’ll bite the bullet and say that it even should be.
Would you say that Twitter and its ilk are the issue?
I don't think so.
Trivially, I'm not sure how much the 1970s actually restrained 'reach' for a lot of the crazy activists. Hradzka's Days of Rage recaps give a lot of examples of absolutely nutty leftists who were praised and cause celebres across their fields, but it's not like the Birchers were any more restrained. It had a lower velocity, and that mattered a bit when trying to avoid grifters (though there still were a lot of those, too!), but there was absolutely a ton of consensus that established from the behavior of a small handful of absolute nutjobs. And that's, if anything, more present for the people today: Harvardites are pretty much selected to be the sort of people who can coordinate backstage communications well amongst themselves, we have a Washington Post writer who's devolved to saying that the pictures of decapitated babies could have come from /anywhere/, and the National Lawyer's Guild has shown its ass with exactly the same level of coordination as in the 1970s. Somehow.
At a deeper level, I've seen a lot of groups who either operated before social media, or now operate in exclusion from it, or both, and they're as or more prone to disappearing up their own asses; it's just not visible to outsiders until everything explodes. Indeed, even with social-media dependent groups, a lot of the real crazy positions and behaviors are still being coordinated by e-mail or face-to-face discussions.
More broadly, I'm generally pretty skeptical of Overton Window and related concepts: while they probably real in some cases, my objections to deplatforming are more about free speech and what happens when people don't understand each other's positions. And a lot of the 'success' stories are pretty transparently results of the Texas sharpshooter's fallacies (deplatforming took out Milo twelve times, donchaknow).
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Notes -
Apparently some left wing organizations are revealing themselves. Here is an X account claiming to represent “BLM Chicago” implicitly (but very nearly explicitly) declaring their support for the terrorist attacks: https://x.com/BLMChi/status/1711793142742073573?s=20
My questions are:
Who actually runs this account?
Have they tried to articulate what they actually mean by this?
I’ll be honest that my opinion of BLM, especially after the 2020 riots, is quite low. This seems to fit a little too well into the right wing hatred of them.
Ok the other hand: are there any stories in Jewish folklore about creating a monster and then having it turn on you?
“Revealing themselves”? What do you mean by that? Revealing their power level?
I think most of The Discourse on this event, as with others, has an easier explanation. It looks like what one might expect from handing 15 minutes of fame to the edgiest and most extreme takes. Survival of the fittest, except for scissor statements.
Twitter delenda est.
I don't think Twitter is the issue, here. If Twitter had exploded as predicted by All The Tech Writers the day after Musk moved a server, we'd still have had portions of the Harvard student community writing that they "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence"; we just wouldn't have known about it.
Would you say that Twitter and its ilk are the issue?
On one hand, I have to agree that even without anything remotely similar to modern social media, there would still be people making such extreme takes. At least judging by the 70s.
On the other, the very fact that you and I wouldn’t hear about it is of some value. Not just in letting us feel better, but by limiting its reach.
I’m torn on how much this is really worth. Instinctively, half our modern CW issues are predicated on the importance of platforming, speech, the Overton window. The arc of the 20th century was that broadcasting to millions can matter. It feels like social media should have a similar effect, and that injecting feedback directly into Tweeter’s veins should only accelerate any trends. Especially regarding the formation of consensus. And yet, to some extent, it kind of sucks? The firehose of content means that everyone gets to pick and choose what they consume, which may well not be what you intend. Dunk and counterdunk proceeded at the speed of light. Every scissor statement that riles the base is fueling your enemies, too.
The only reason I’m this sanguine complaining about Twitter is because I don’t think there’s much to be done. Not sure how this sort of high-velocity, incredibly competitive speech could be restricted, and not sure if I’ll bite the bullet and say that it even should be.
I don't think so.
Trivially, I'm not sure how much the 1970s actually restrained 'reach' for a lot of the crazy activists. Hradzka's Days of Rage recaps give a lot of examples of absolutely nutty leftists who were praised and cause celebres across their fields, but it's not like the Birchers were any more restrained. It had a lower velocity, and that mattered a bit when trying to avoid grifters (though there still were a lot of those, too!), but there was absolutely a ton of consensus that established from the behavior of a small handful of absolute nutjobs. And that's, if anything, more present for the people today: Harvardites are pretty much selected to be the sort of people who can coordinate backstage communications well amongst themselves, we have a Washington Post writer who's devolved to saying that the pictures of decapitated babies could have come from /anywhere/, and the National Lawyer's Guild has shown its ass with exactly the same level of coordination as in the 1970s. Somehow.
At a deeper level, I've seen a lot of groups who either operated before social media, or now operate in exclusion from it, or both, and they're as or more prone to disappearing up their own asses; it's just not visible to outsiders until everything explodes. Indeed, even with social-media dependent groups, a lot of the real crazy positions and behaviors are still being coordinated by e-mail or face-to-face discussions.
More broadly, I'm generally pretty skeptical of Overton Window and related concepts: while they probably real in some cases, my objections to deplatforming are more about free speech and what happens when people don't understand each other's positions. And a lot of the 'success' stories are pretty transparently results of the Texas sharpshooter's fallacies (deplatforming took out Milo twelve times, donchaknow).
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