A fallen hero
Some gossip about the Conceptual James v Twitter quarrel:
Even if you’ve never heard of James Lindsay, you probably know a few of his hits.
He was part of that “grievance studies hoax” a few years back, where he and a couple of other anti-woke activists published a handful of ridiculous papers (the most headline-grabbing was arguably one about “rape culture” at Portland dog parks) in academic journals. It became known as the “Sokal Squared Hoax,” and to its admirers it was a devastating exposé of how far the humanities in higher education had sunk in service of identity politics.
The couple of other activists were Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose.
At the time, in 2018, Lindsay insisted he was a “left-leaning liberal,” a fellow traveler of the erstwhile anti-woke collective that once called it itself the “Intellectual Dark Web,” and he was praised and promoted by some of its leading figures as an important and brave public intellectual.
But in 2022, he’s a Trump-supporting, Big Lie-espousing, vaccine-denying, far-right bigot who thinks Sen. Joe McCarthy “had it right” and “didn’t go nearly far enough” during his infamous (and near-universally repudiated) witch hunts of suspected communists during the 1950s.
And until the other day a very prolific composer of tweets.
It’s Lindsay’s style of trolling—his hundreds of shitposts per day which drew over 300,000 Twitter followers, and which has on more than one occasion manifested itself as straight-up harassment—that I consider a legitimate contender for platform moderation.
On occasion, I’ve mixed it up with Lindsay on Twitter, and I can attest that the resultant swarm of anonymous psycho @conceptualames fan accounts that floods your mentions for a few days isn’t fun. (Ask any woman who has run afoul of Lindsay online, his Twitter minions target those who displease him online with disgusting, misogynistic, and bigoted attacks—frequently earning Lindsay’s approvals with amplifying retweets.)
That’s where I first heard of him: Gamergate and all that. Practically a generation ago.
Another defender was Lindsay’s fellow “grievance studies” hoaxer Peter Boghossian, who tweeted that Twitter “arbitrarily” enforces its speech codes, and that the company did so when it banned Lindsay. He’s got a point. The tweet that supposedly got Lindsay banned wasn’t much different than thousands of other posts in which he’s spouted bigoted bile or sicced his followers on a target of his ire. (The Daily Beast reached out to a Twitter spokesperson for clarification on why Lindsay was permanently suspended, but has yet to receive a response.)
Who knows, maybe there’s a numerical cap on tweets of that kind and Lindsay blew past it.
Did Lindsay misgender someone? That’s a one-strike and you’re banned for life offense on Twitter.
I’ve never figured out whether Jimmy Concepts truly has brain rot, or if he’s just chasing the money.
Same. Also I almost called him Jimmy Concepts in the post, because I thought that was funny. He’s an asshole but he can be funny.
I think he’s spent so much time reading Queer Theory and whatnot that it’s warped his brain. My mind loses cohesion after only a little interaction with gender nutters, so I sympathize, especially when people ostensibly on my team slander and libel heretics as bigots; e.g., J. K. Rowling and Graham Linehan. The author’s “But in 2022” description strikes me as more of the same.
Okay, but Fisher is referring to a ban on transgender “affirmation surgery” as if it’s a bad thing.
It’s one of those areas that demonstrate that left and right are not really what they have been traditionally, and kind of meaningless (like the modern usage of the words “communism” and “socialism.” Some people call anyone who would vote for an education levy a communist, and others call all sorts of social programs socialism to try to sell it to Democrat types.)
I’m opposed to surgeries that cut off genitals or healthy breasts as affirmation, and even though I don’t know that the law should ban them they should at least be discouraged strongly.
I have trouble being on the same side of the issue as James Lindsay and Jordan Peterson on an issue, but agreeing with them on this does not make me a conservative.
I know, that’s why I left that bit out. I felt too lazy in the moment to do the “but I don’t think he’s wrong about gender surgeries” so I skipped over it.
I feel like fixation on and fetishization of labels kind of underlies both Genderism and a lot of political bickering. Problem is, labels seem too difficult for most people.
It’s not that Lindsay is faultless, but the Twitter bans are arbitrary, capricious, and grossly politically biased. If someone is a proponent of views that Twitter likes then behaviour worse than Lindsay’s gets overlooked.
We need to regulate social media companies, requiring political neutrality and a fair and independent appeals process as the price of Section 230 protection.
Yes, they’re a private company, but we can regulate near-monopoly-in-their-niche companies for the public good.
Or we can hope that Musk ends up owning Twitter.
As for “harassment”, a super-block would sort most of that (so if you super-block X then all followers of X, and anyone who has been a follower of X in the last 30 days, are also blocked).
Nah, blocking and muting just exacerbate the problem of echo chambers and paradigm bubbles.
So what’s your solution, then, NIV?
That’s a good question, o my brother, so viddy well: Do away with social media.
The nuclear option?
Yes, it’s the only way, not just to be sure, but to have any effect at all. There’s no combination of restrictions and features that can simultaneously render social media harmless while retaining its identity as social media. We are not ready for immortality, and we aren’t ready for mass, instantaneous pseudo-interaction.
NIV. Well as climate change accelerated and industrial civilization collapses into a Mad Max world, you may get your wish?
Nullius, I heard that same solution just yesterday, to my surprise (and delight). It was even more shocking that it came from someone in academia; even people who believe social media is a bad force for society usually won’t say it. The administrators think we should use social media heavily in our classes; I won’t. I am not prepared to fall into the cesspool, and if I have any students who aren’t on social media (and I always do), I don’t want to push them in.
I do agree that there really isn’t a way to create a social media environment that can keep the advantages and get rid of the disadvantages, and when I weigh the two, it looks to me that the disadvantages so far outweigh the advantages that it isn’t worthy of maintaining. I don’t go by my assessment most of the time, though, since I am not on social media.
One thing social media has done is to drive the final stake through the heart of the enlightenment idea that we are basically rational. It has also, at least to me, demonstrated quite conclusively the problems with democracy. And I’m not one of those who believes it is the best of a bad lot; I think there are plenty of ideas we haven’t tried yet that might be better.
I find it odd that the “nuke the site from orbit” view is not shared more widely. Social media just seems to be an intrinsically, irredeemably bad idea given what we know of human psychology, social dynamics, belief formation, etc., etc., ditto, ditto.