“We are all victims of fraud in the marketplace of ideas”

August 28, 2018 10:10 AM

Today, The Verge is publishing an interim edition of Sarah Jeong’s The Internet of Garbage, a book she first published in 2015 but has since gone out of print. After a year on The Verge’s staff as a senior writer, Sarah recently joined The New York Times Editorial Board to write about technology issues. The move kicked off a wave of outrage and controversy as a group of trolls selectively took Sarah’s old tweets out of context to inaccurately claim that she is a racist. This prompted a further wave of unrelenting racist harassment directed at Sarah, a wave of coverage examining her tweets, and a final wave of coverage about the state of outrage generally. This is all deeply ironic because Sarah laid out exactly how these bad-faith tactics work in The Internet of Garbage.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon (15 comments total)

Good on The Verge for doing this as a show of solidarity if nothing else. What's been going on with her is nothing short of horrifying, and yet a common feature of life on the internet for women with any kind of public face at all.

It is truly depressing how prescient this book is.
posted by lumpenprole at 10:32 AM on August 28, 2018 [18 favorites]

Sarah's great. I own the first edition but haven't read it yet because I generally prefer to grapple with long-form stuff in print rather than eBooks. I really hope the second edition, when it's finished, will be available in print form.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:33 AM on August 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I feel like the same thing happened to Quinn Norton?
posted by neat-o at 11:05 AM on August 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I feel like the same thing happened to Quinn Norton?

No. Norton chose to fall down the chan culture abyss, and when that all came out, the Times understandably fired her. That's a far cry from the piling on that Jeong is on the receiving end of.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:19 AM on August 28, 2018 [26 favorites]

I feel like the same thing happened to Quinn Norton?

Well, except Sarah doesn't pal around with literal Nazis, so...
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:29 AM on August 28, 2018 [14 favorites]

The THE INTERSECTION OF COPYRIGHT AND HARASSMENT was an interesting read but I'm excited to sink my teeth into her book when I get home. The irony of her experiencing worse version of what she predicted in her book is as fascinating as it is infuriating. I'm glad the book is being published more freely here, without having read it yet, it seems like a important thing people operating in todays internet communities should read. I hope the updated version gets published online too. I'm much more inclined to read something through my browser than I am a physical book, or the dusty Kindle I probably still own.
posted by GoblinHoney at 11:43 AM on August 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

she doesn't deserve this ongoing wave of racist harassment, but ever since the fallout between Vice and Naomi Wu that she needlessly waded into, my circle have taken to dubbing wrongheaded defences based on bad cultural authority 'a sarah jeong'.
posted by cendawanita at 11:55 AM on August 28, 2018 [9 favorites]

Just as an aside, if you want to read it in your browser, you can download the epub, and then find browser extensions that will allow you to accomplish this.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 12:26 PM on August 28, 2018

> cendawanita:
"she doesn't deserve this ongoing wave of racist harassment, but ever since the fallout between Vice and Naomi Wu that she needlessly waded into, my circle have taken to dubbing wrongheaded defences based on bad cultural authority 'a sarah jeong'."

Cheers. I was feeling rather disappointed to come here and see no one bring this up. Then I scrolled down.
posted by Samizdata at 2:04 PM on August 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm glad Sarah kept her job. I enjoy her work and her Twitter feed is excellent. Also, this new wave of Cernovich-led trolling campaigns is the worst of humanity and Cernovich and his cohorts are terrible, terrible people.

That being said... Let's not pretend that woke Twitter doesn't engage in similar tactics of taking tweets out of context, bad faith interpretations, and public shaming of wrong think. These tactics are not unique to the right or the left and both sides think they're doing the correct thing.

It's good that Jeong landed on her feet. This is a problem with Twitter and the internet and humanity right now. I hope society adapts and this era is just a transitional period.

The support from Vox/Verge has been excellent and they should be saluted for their efforts across the organizations.
posted by Telf at 2:28 PM on August 28, 2018 [11 favorites]

I'd agree that an attempt by a now-obviously nazi-adjacent troll to tie himself to Jeong based on past interactions is a deliberate muddying of waters that's well within his toolbox of trolling techniques. Nobody is going to think him less of whatever the fuck he is from his comments -- it's a blatant attempt to mess with someone's reputation based on tangential information. The guy has demonstrated an ongoing interest in fucking with people who have previously known or communicated with him. He knows any perceived association with him is toxic and revels in it.

The Naomi Wu situation was an incredibly nuanced clusterfuck and I still have no idea why Jeong decided to wade into it. To me, it never read as any more than a need to weigh in on a topic because she felt like her ex-coworker was on the us side of things, or maybe on the US side of things, and the compulsion to side with a friend overruled the more professional instinct of keeping distance from something more qualified people -- read: those who have been journalists in both China and the US -- should be evaluating. I get the impulse to weigh in on such things, but her take felt more personal than professional and was presented as the latter.

The people concentrating on the sarcastic "racism against whites!!" tweets don't give a fuck about Wu or weev or any of that. They're just assholes who look for targets of opportunity.
posted by mikeh at 2:31 PM on August 28, 2018 [13 favorites]

The people concentrating on the sarcastic "racism against whites!!" tweets don't give a fuck about Wu or weev or any of that.

They probably do give a fuck about weev, since he, too, is a racist alt-right fuck.
posted by kenko at 2:38 PM on August 28, 2018

I doubt it. Although certain people have stood out as demagogues among that group, they're usually thrown away or put on a shelf as cultural touchstones within a relatively brief period. Some of them even make pathetic posts on the platforms they're not banned on to whine about their increasing irrelevance. Auernheimer's not relevant in this moment and he's way past his shelf life.
posted by mikeh at 2:51 PM on August 28, 2018

Sarah's great. I own the first edition but haven't read it yet because I generally prefer to grapple with long-form stuff in print rather than eBooks. I really hope the second edition, when it's finished, will be available in print form.

I’m printing the pdf right now. Two sides to save paper. I have to have a paper copy to stay focused. It’s gonna be around 40 pages- worth it to be able to actually dive in.

Seriously, buying a wireless laser printer last year was probablg one of the better things I have done for myself recently.

posted by [insert clever name here] at 5:13 PM on August 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

I get the impulse to weigh in on such things, but her take felt more personal than professional and was presented as the latter.

And it's just so disappointing considering how well she herself identified how internet mobbing can happen, and she just happily threw in more gasoline for no logical reason except playing the Azn Authority but she's an American who's never been to China. (Related moment of facepalm was when someone from EFF asked Naomi Wu to call them on their office number at office hours. like, ultimate dot dot dot there.) Of course also then all the previously insightful sociocultural commentators who supported Jeong over the harassment absolutely either playing dumb or being dumb in trying to respond to Wu and keep their American moral authority.
posted by cendawanita at 6:08 PM on August 28, 2018 [5 favorites]