Tumblr is full of lies

In the past, I've been a vocal critic of Tumblr, particularly the reblogging format.  But in the past few years I've been "observing" Tumblr, much as a conservative politician might "observe" gay culture by going to gay night clubs every weekend in search of hookups.  As a result, I have a more refined critique of Tumblr.

For instance, I now see the strength of Tumblr: new blog discovery.  Finding new blogs is so easy that you'll find new blogs even if you don't want to.

On the other hand, reblog discussions are even more awful than I previously imagined.  You might as well try to argue with people over Twitter.

I also have an entirely new critique based on the content of Tumblr.  Tumblr will distort your perception of reality.

A typical discussion on Tumblr might consist of one person making a "politically incorrect" statement, and a bunch of people "calling it out" as just one more example of how messed up our societal attitudes are.  While people reject the politically incorrect statement, they simultaneously accept another hidden assumption: that the opening post represents "what people think".  Sometimes the opening post represents no such thing, but rather represents just one person.

Since the inception of the internet, people have complained that it doesn't really represent "what people think".  When there's no accountability, people become assholes.  Trolls are rampant.  The voices of extremists drown out moderates.  So on and so forth.

An excerpt from an SMBC comic

But upon further thought, doesn't the accountability of real-world conversations also distort how we think people are?  Assholes maintain a cover of politeness.  Extremists avoid confrontation.  Rarely is expressed an interest in politics or cat photos.  We are most likely to meet people of the same social class and education level as us.

So I realize that this leaves me on shaky ground.  If we have no good method of determining "what people think" (and in fact the very concept is ill-defined), how can I know that Tumblr is any worse than other parts of the internet, or any worse than offline?  Maybe Tumblr represents what people really think, and the things we hear offline are distorted.

I don't really have knowledge that Tumblr is worse than other parts of the internet, but I suspect.  More to the point, sockpuppets are rampant on Tumblr.  It comes from a combination of things:

• Tumblr encourages and facilitates individuals to have multiple blogs.  Identities are not traceable between the blogs.
• Because comments are replaced with reblogging, there is no moderation, and no one who can detect sockpuppets.
• Blog discovery and viral sharing is so effective that new accounts can gain a lot of attention easily.

I don't track tags, I only read tumblrs that I specifically subscribe to, but I've still seen several obvious sockpuppets on Tumblr (usually new accounts that have one or two posts).  I can only imagine how many non-obvious sockpuppets there are that I've missed.

My contempt for sockpuppets is far greater than my contempt for trolls.  Sockpuppets know that they cannot win on arguments, and therefore intentionally resort to cognitive biases (ie we are swayed by the opinions of a crowd).  If we discover a sockpuppet, then we should take this as evidence against their position, in hopes of neutralizing the bias they have created.  Sockpuppets deserve to automatically lose, and be stricken from the record.

If I may speak more specifically about Tumblr culture, there are, for reasons unknown, a lot of people in minority groups.  And because of the aforementioned blog discovery and viral sharing, minority groups interact a lot with their majority counterparts (who may consist mostly of other minorities).  Many critics seem to think that Tumblr has a unique brand of social justice, but I think it's just that people in the majority groups were previously unaware of what people in minority groups have been talking about all along.  From the perspective of a long-time blog-reader, none of it seems genuinely new.

In any case, there is a bit of a "social justice" culture, as well as a hyper-awareness of that culture, and therefore a backlash counter-culture, and then a counter-counter-culture, ad infinitum.  This dynamic is the setting of most sockpuppeting and trolling on Tumblr.  Most typically, there are people (usually part of a minority group, but not part of the particular minority group under discussion) trying to get a rise out of those "PC nuts", and the "PC nuts" fall for it.

I have some familiarity with feminist blogging, and I know that many people would be miffed by what I'm saying.  I appear to be telling them to ignore the wrongness, as if ignoring has ever led to a change in the status quo.  (See example of someone opposing the expression "Don't feed the trolls".)  I largely agree with the points made here.  I do not necessarily advocate ignoring sockpuppets or potential sockpuppets.  I don't think that ignoring sockpuppets improves the situation, or that giving attention to sockpuppets necessarily makes the situation worse.  I do not think that just because their identities are false, that the negative feelings they create are also false.

Rather, I think we should devalue comments coming from new blogs.  And we should devalue comments whose strength comes not from substantive arguments, but from the mere fact that someone said it.  This is not just good practice against sockpuppets, but good practice in general.

(Also, we should escape from Tumblr but I'm not getting that wish any time soon.)

"Poisonous" words like "homophobe"

A few weeks ago, there was an interesting interaction on Slate Star Codex (found via Brute Reason). Apophemi complained that they felt excluded by the dispassionate discourse on triggering subjects within the Less Wrong/Rationalist community, and Scott Alexander defended the rationalist community.  I don't have anything substantive to say on that topic, since I don't regularly pay attention to Less Wrong, and also I don't experience triggers.  But many interesting points are brought up, and here I discuss one.

One of Apophemi's complaints was that people on Less Wrong would reject words like "racist", "sexist", and "ableist" out of hand.  I can believe this charge, because I've seen lots of people say things like that.  I recall one time someone declared "homophobe" to be a "poisonous" word, and then they proceeded to ignore any other words I had said.  Also on the large scale, there is a whole segment of Christians who say that they're not homophobic, they just think homosexual acts are sins under God.  (I'm focusing on "homophobia" since I have more relevant anecdotes, but my points could easily apply to the other words.)

Scott Alexander offered a general rationale for rejecting these words.  If you use a word like "racist", you are biasing the discussion with a loaded term.  It is reasonable to ask someone to taboo their words, to make sure that their argument is based on substance, rather than equivocation.

Personally, I think feminist/anti-racist/queer/disabilities activists can and should rise to the challenge, when necessary.  If someone is being homophobic, then there is a way to negatively describe their without using the particular word "homophobic".

For example, when I talked about how terrible the Catholic Church is, I did not use the word "homophobic" at any point.  I think "homophobic" is a rather squishy term, and therefore I am not committed to the claim that anything is or is not homophobic.  I am much more committed to the idea that the Catholic Church has terrible attitudes about LGB people, no matter how you describe them.  If you came up with any single word to describe the Catholic Church on that axis, I think it would become a bad word faster than you can say "euphemism treadmill".  This is basically why the phrase "hate the sin, love the sinner" has negative connotations.  Christians used that phrase to positively describe their views, but since their views are widely regarded as terrible, the description became pejorative.

I do not propose that everyone follow my example in all situations and contexts.  It's useful to have a shorthand word for "negative or harmful attitudes towards group X", and we're not going to find a non-pejorative word to do it.  The fact of the matter is that I could call the Catholic Church homophobic, and many of my readers would agree, and it would be a succinct summary of my opinion.

It's also worth noting that not every discussion is about mutual enlightenment.  It's cynical, but true that many arguments are really about power.  If I call someone homophobic, and they accuse me of shutting down the conversation with a "poisonous" word, maybe that's exactly what I'm doing.  And maybe I'm right to do it, because life's too short to argue with everyone.  I openly admit to occasionally being mean to commenters on this very blog, because some commenters are just more valuable as comic relief than as sources of ideas (present readers excepted).

But there are a few contexts where "homophobic" is not a useful term.  If someone says, "I'm not homophobic, because of [definition hair-splitting]. I just believe [terrible thing]," joining in the hair-splitting argument may not be the best strategy.  They admit to believing [terrible thing], so what do the technicalities of squishy words matter?

An example of application: A few months ago, Conan' O Brien made a joke about a Muslim superhero character being one of many wives, and people on Friendly Atheist argued over whether it was racist.  The joke was all about applying a negative stereotype to a character expressly created to counter such stereotypes (by an author who personally experienced the stereotypes).  This is not defensible regardless of what you call it.

Finally, I suggest that a similar approach should be taken towards other feminist terminology as well.  "Privilege", "Patriarchy", and "social construct" have underlying meaning (or they don't, if used improperly).  If people split hairs over the definitions of those words, the underlying thing being described remains the same.