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Hm. About that: I feel like integrity demands I speak up here, even though I also feel like I'm going to regret it, but here goes:
I do have some reservations about the personal involvement, here, same as with the LoTT incident. I was under my lurker-vow-of-silence at the time, but hey, that's okay: it just means that I've longer to formulate my thoughts. Long enough? We'll see.
See: I feel like it's against the spirit of this place for it to house after-action reports by culture warriors returned from campaign. "Check out this scalp I just claimed" doesn't seem like "leaving the rest of the internet at the door," or something. Now, this certainly shouldn't be taken so far as to say that you can't speak from your own experience - Doglatine reporting on family conversations, and probably Obsidian's report from the trucker protest - but I do feel like there's a difference between speaking from your life and, I dunno, writing up the outcomes of trouble that one has deliberately instigated. Maybe someone can articulate a better boundary; I feel I've still only got a vague sense myself.
But on which side of the boundary does this fall? I don't know. There's less personal involvement this time - but I do feel like "TracingWoodgrains reports on his victory over a dishonest Twitter culture warrior [but with the political valence - and the reception - reversed]" maybe smacks enough of an incoming 'gotcha' that something needed to be said. Fortunately, with the political valence reversed, the personal involvement still does make me uneasy, so maybe I did have a principle, or maybe I've just tricked myself into assuming one since them. Either way, I hope it sticks iff it's worthwhile.
If you read the essay, the point is that all spaces love bullshit that confirms their priors. Whether MRAs convinced that people hire only women or racists convinced that people only hire white people, people want that kind of content, really bad. And everyone should ask themselves how they fit in that narrative.
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Trace was in the wrong with the LibsofTikTok story, a journalist should never become the story.
But I don't see this as a 'gotcha', more reporting on 'not enough hate crimes to fill demand, have to manufacture some' tendencies. Trace is a lot more liberal than I am, and if he is a Culture Warrior, he's generally on the other side of the fence - see TheSchism, which was set up for those driven off The Motte by the mouthy right-wingers 😁 This is different from the furry hoax, as Trace didn't set the entire thing up; this guy posted his (fake?) claims of "I am discriminated against because I am a minority, here's proof", and Trace (and by the accounts, some others) felt "hm, something fishy here" and being a journalist (abhorrent profession) he went digging. That's a legit story.
You may have a point about "sounds too much like boasting" when coming on here talking about it, but I feel it falls just on the right side of the line.
How is Trace a journalist? He's just some guy that posts online and produces a podcast for two people who are I guess quasi-journalists still.
FWIW Trace has consistently self-identified as a journalist
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That's close enough for journalism nowadays (boom-boom!)
He's getting paid for covering stories, so I guess that's being a freelance reporter? I don't know, he's making a quasi-living out of it and not just pulling pranks to post to /r/drama, that seems like a difference to me!
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When the "scalp" is calling out a 2-bit liar who just copied and pasted a /r/mensrights post that a bunch of sheep believed, it's a lot more like pulling a hair off someone's arm.
What was lost here? A grifter had their 15 minutes of virality and spent a couple of days feeling very seen and popular. Now that account is memory-holed and they've faced no real consequences. It's a pretty far cry from them getting fired or blackballed.
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I see your reason for concern, but I don't think it's accurate to stick this one in quite the same bucket. Specifically, I don't know that "instigating trouble" is an accurate framing here.
That my question contributed to him shutting the whole thing down was welcome, but unexpected. The role I expected to play was "onlooker investigating the veracity of suspicious-looking story." Increasingly, I reach out to the people involved as part of that sort of process. Is that instigating trouble? If it is, then no media outlet in the country would have cause to post here: getting commentary from the people involved in events is core to reporting.
I believe my behavior here was in line with the standard for anyone curious about a story and motivated to get to the bottom of it. That my digging led to more of a story than there would otherwise have been shouldn't preclude me, I believe, from writing that story or sharing it here.
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