this is the level of pettiness I aspire to 11/10 would read again.
April 10, 2019 7:24 AM   Subscribe

Buckle Up Twitter threads tend to proceed from two assumptions. The first is that no one but the author of the thread has ever read a book, and the second is that no one actually ever needs to read a book in order to understand anything, because what do you need a motherfucking BOOK for when you have ALL THE INFORMATION YOU COULD POSSIBLY NEED RIGHT HERE IN THIS GODDAMN BITCH OF A THREAD.
Writing for The Outline, Rosa Lyster goes off on a particular kind of Twitter affect: "Listen Up Bitches, It's Time To Learn Incorrect Things About Someone You've Never Heard Of"
posted by Going To Maine (100 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
I find myself conflicted about this essay because I 100% love its catty tone but my standard example of "Buckle Up Twitter" is historian Kevin Kruse dunking on Dinesh D'Souza, an actin that has been very effective at checking D'Souza's anti-history efforts. However, Kruse is likely the top 1% of these things: he tends to tweet about broader trends, not one secret Great Man who caused everything; his style is direct and unadorned; and he often pushes people to read full books instead of just threads.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:38 AM on April 10, 2019 [12 favorites]


"Boys. My boys. What would be fun to wear? What would make you feel cute?"

I would like to wear bright red longjohns as pants, like 9 days out of 10. Actually, open to any colors, so long as I get to wear them in public at all. I mean, I already do, at least in winter, but it's definitely something unusual and not necessarily accepted but what? are they going to kick me out of the gas station about it? Long underwear are like tights, without the uncomfortable part of tightness. I think also it would be nice to wear tunics and skirts, like Link from Zelda or Romans from Old Times.
posted by GoblinHoney at 7:39 AM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


This was the least most validating thing I've read this year.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:42 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


I mean, I understand the issue with poorly researched tweet threads with incendiary language, but a) not everyone has time to read a book about everything; b) a lot of the time I'm seeing this it's covering groups and ideas that aren't often taught (Spike Trottman has a couple of these); and c) the last time one of those tweet threads really blew my mind, I did end up doing about seven hours of online research on prehistoric sheep breeds and reading the best book I could find on the subject, so I don't think paying attention to twitter means that you don't necessarily read a book.

The Beau Brummel tweet thread was garbage, yes, and it's always a good idea to verify information you randomly see online. But then again I've used people bringing up the Beau Brummel convo in real life to segue into Real Actual Facts about clothing history which are happen to be true and (IMO) fascinating.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:43 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


Oh.

Yeah.

This is totally what's wrong with Twitter. This. Not all the other things. It's this.
posted by davros42 at 7:43 AM on April 10, 2019 [29 favorites]


This is also a very popular type of post on Tumblr, and it bugs me even more there, because of that platform's fragmentary reblogging structure that means any attempt to correct the most egregiously wrong information will never reach 99% of the people reading the dumb thing.
posted by theatro at 7:47 AM on April 10, 2019 [16 favorites]


I thought the Beau Brummell thread was interesting—though I guess I got off of it before Rowland blamed him for toxic masculinity, I don’t remember that part—and now I’m angry at myself that my 24/7 internet skepticism filter fell down on the job. But then, I had no idea who Beau Brummell was other than “that fashion guy namechecked in a Billy Joel song.”
posted by ejs at 7:50 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


This is totally what's wrong with Twitter. This. Not all the other things. It's this.

Many things can be wrong about Twitter at once
posted by Going To Maine at 7:51 AM on April 10, 2019 [48 favorites]


King Leopold deserves a nasty Twitter thread at the very least.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:52 AM on April 10, 2019 [14 favorites]


This is also a very popular type of post on Tumblr, and it bugs me even more there, because of that platform's fragmentary reblogging structure that means any attempt to correct the most egregiously wrong information will never reach 99% of the people reading the dumb thing.

Even worse than that are screenshots of such Tumblr posts reposted to Facebook.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:53 AM on April 10, 2019 [14 favorites]


I too have mixed feelings about this - and, like, extreme mixed feelings, on the one hand "yes, this is so very on" and on the other "but weird facts about history are GOOD".

I really do find the flattening of the past to be very frustrating, whether that's the "one thing/person caused it all" school or the "we can neatly map contemporary ideas onto the past" one, or the "the best way to understand history is to figure out who was right and pick a side, something that is not only possible when you're talking about Nazis and slavery but also guild conflicts in Germany in 1475" one. I'd say there are a small handful of [non-obvious, not " Naziism or slavery,where I feel 100% confident that my ethical take is correct] historical events/periods where I've read enough serious material to be relatively confident that I'm broadly correct in my understanding of events, but for the most part, the more you know the more difficult it becomes.

At the same time, I believe that it's desirable for most people to have an interest in history and to feel sorta confident in talking about it, even if at a hobbyist level. I don't think the appropriate layperson's reaction to anything before about 1990 is "I cannot have an opinion because I am not a professional and until I have read extensively in the literature I should not even try". And one of the ways that you get people to start reading and thinking and having opinions is through talking about individuals, weird facts, estranging details, etc.

For most people there has to be a certain amount of scaffolding before you can read or think seriously - you need to have a general sense of what happened when, major events and their relationships to each other, major cultural stuff, etc. It doesn't do you much good to talk about the 19th century US if you don't know the general outline of the Civil War and Reconstruction, for instance, or if you don't realize that death in childbirth was broadly more common than today. If you're not in academia, building that scaffolding by chewing through textbooks in your spare time is unlikely, but building it through general interest reading is possible.

Also, I'm a big fan of estrangement as intro/teaching device. It's way too easy to project the present onto the past, even the far past. Estranging facts (the popularity of a wine called "Baby Duck" in the early seventies has a powerful estranging effect on me for some reason) are a really good way, IME, to pull people into interest in a period, and even a way to have a sort of Zen-enlightenment effect.

I don't like the Twitter/internet tone of "everyone is dumb and bad except thee and me, and I'm not too sure about thee", though.

I did not think the Beau Brummell thread was actually especially bad, and I have read a reasonable amount about both Brummell and his period in a sort of informed-layperson-hobbyist way.

In short, while I dislike the wowee-zowee tone and oversimplification of these threads, I think that the "professional scholars are frustrated when people talk about history without being professional scholars" line that's getting trotted out a lot lately is kind of morally bankrupt and technocratic.
posted by Frowner at 7:55 AM on April 10, 2019 [23 favorites]


Even worse than that are screenshots of such Tumblr posts reposted to Facebook.

That include exactly one "note" after the post itself and that note is always something inane like "omg i had no idea this is great".
posted by tobascodagama at 7:57 AM on April 10, 2019 [13 favorites]


I think that the "professional scholars are frustrated when people talk about history without being professional scholars" line that's getting trotted out a lot lately is kind of morally bankrupt and technocratic.

I think this kind of misstates the actual issue (and TFA does this too) - it's less "people talk about x without being professional scholars" and more "people present themselves as authorities on x without engaging with the actual scholarship or expertise on x that exists".

There's a middle ground somewhere between gatekeeper technocrats and "people are sick of 'experts'" anti-intellectualism. I feel like this is trying to make an argument against the latter, not for the former, though I don't think it states it very well.
posted by Dysk at 8:03 AM on April 10, 2019 [19 favorites]


Metafilter: this method of communicating makes me feel bad; like I am watching someone give a TED Talk with their fly open
posted by cirgue at 8:08 AM on April 10, 2019 [11 favorites]


I thought this was entertaining, although I was simultaneously being introduced to the concept of Buckle Up threads along with some reasons I should be annoyed with them.

This leaves me in the position of enjoying someone’s strong critique of a topic I know nothing about, which I’m fairly sure the author would disapprove of.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:08 AM on April 10, 2019 [10 favorites]


This was the least most validating thing I've read this year.

The MOST validating thing. What the hell, brain?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:09 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


I think this kind of misstates the actual issue (and TFA does this too) - it's less "people talk about x without being professional scholars" and more "people present themselves as authorities on x without engaging with the actual scholarship or expertise on x that exists".

I mean, I agree - it's perfectly possible to write something that's like "wow, I am reading about Beau Brummell lately and here are some interesting things!" rather than "let me lay the harsh truth of dandyism on you".

In multiple places recently I've seen the very specific idea that it is frustrating to professional scholars when amateurs talk about stuff, though, and while this idea is probably wielded by amateurs at amateurs, it's still wrong and bad. I've sat through enough meetings or conversations among novices/young people/etc about things where I've actually got some expertise* to understand both that these conversations can be frustrating/boring for me and that they can be learning experiences for others, and that if I can't participate in a nice/supportive/fun way I should just step back.

*Nothing fancy - feminist science fiction of the seventies and eighties, vegan cakes, anarchist spaces, men's shoes; everything else is the rankest amateurism.
posted by Frowner at 8:14 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


I think that the "professional scholars are frustrated when people talk about history without being professional scholars" line that's getting trotted out a lot lately is kind of morally bankrupt and technocratic.

I think this kind of misstates the actual issue (and TFA does this too) - it's less "people talk about x without being professional scholars" and more "people present themselves as authorities on x without engaging with the actual scholarship or expertise on x that exists".


As an interesting rider, Kruse has promoted his and other historians' versions of these threads as a kind of necessary service - that historian Twitter should come for you if you get the facts wrong, or answer some questions if they have time. The form is also being used and promoted by the accredited as a way to do outreach to the unaccredited. Of course, this can also make it harder for the unaccredited to compete.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:31 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


King Leopold deserves a nasty Twitter thread at the very least.

I think her point on that one was that that the tone of this sort of thing is wholly inadequate to address the horrors someone like this was responsible for.
posted by atoxyl at 8:35 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


King Leopold deserves a nasty Twitter thread at the very least.

Absolutely. The 10 million people the Belgian government killed in its bloodthirsty plunder of the middle of Africa deserve better than for that thread to be like "France and England, you dumb bitches, hold my waffles and weird ethnic disputes while I kill 10 million people." Yes, it's kind of funny that a small, apparently unimportant country like Belgium should have had an astonishingly blood-soaked empire, but to write about it in the same annoying, breezy tone in which others have written about men who wore fancy hats is insane.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:36 AM on April 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


"France and England, you dumb bitches, hold my waffles and weird ethnic disputes while I kill 10 million people."

Although, if John Oliver said that line on Last Week Tonight I would laugh like a mad man. The choice of venue for sass produces interesting effects.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:43 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


Like, do we remember when the man who had the Irish Twitter account for the day dragged Winston Churchill into a ditch? Many people were here for it.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:46 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


For anyone unfamiliar with the aforementioned historian Kevin Kruse, he has helpfully made a super thread containing most of his previous history primer threads: The Thread of Threads. (Come for the interesting history, stay for the merciless filleting of right wing fraud salesman Dinesh D'Souza.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:49 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


I blame The Oatmeal's version of Nicola Tesla. BUCKLE UP 1/n
posted by BungaDunga at 8:52 AM on April 10, 2019 [11 favorites]


I tend to see these on Tumblr frequently, where a very passionate "this is how things truly were/are so sit down, shut up, and take it in!" post will frequently get thousands of reblogs. Unfortunately, sometimes those posts are mostly or entirely incorrect (occasionally to the point of being harmful) but the corrected versions never seem to gain as much traction.

I will admit they are fun to read, but I know I'm occasionally too credulous and need to stop and think "just because this person is saying this thing forcefully and in an entertaining way, I shouldn't just take it as truth." That's my own problem to solve.
posted by PussKillian at 8:56 AM on April 10, 2019 [10 favorites]


Btw, King Leopold's Ghost is quite good.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:00 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]


Yes, it's kind of funny that a small, apparently unimportant country like Belgium should have had an astonishingly blood-soaked empire, but to write about it in the same annoying, breezy tone in which others have written about men who wore fancy hats is insane.

It is however marginally better than writing about it in a tone that people won't read.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:02 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


"just because this person is saying this thing forcefully and in an entertaining way, I shouldn't just take it as truth."

A good rule for metafilter and everywhere.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:02 AM on April 10, 2019 [21 favorites]


Also, I'm a big fan of estrangement as intro/teaching device.

I on the other hand am a fan of enstrangement that makes everyone disappointed and then disinterested.

For example: ninjas didn't actually exist.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 9:03 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


When you're a young person studying history, an important step in your development is to realize that the Great Historical Figures of the Past were people like you and me, who had to deal with the usual crap of daily life on top of whatever got them into the history books and are subject to the same moral criticisms as anyone else. Otherwise, you can't think critically about history at all. When you're a teenager and hit that step, though, a lot of callow snarking tends to follow. It's natural.

What, as usual, is so exhausting about this kind of thing to people with professional training in history is grown people acting like eighteen-year-olds in their first freshman history section. So many people who seem to have gone to college without its leaving any discernible trace on their way of thinking.

(Kruse is not doing random posts like that, he is rebutting with specific evidence false claims put forward in bad faith by political figures.)
posted by praemunire at 9:05 AM on April 10, 2019 [10 favorites]


> It is however marginally better than writing about it in a tone that people won't read.

You can write in a tone people will read and still not be trivializing and/or factually wrong. This isn't an either/or debate. Just because it's marginally better doesn't make it ok in some absolute sense.
posted by cirgue at 9:06 AM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


Like, do we remember when the man who had the Irish Twitter account for the day dragged Winston Churchill into a ditch? Many people were here for it.

Dragging Churchill felt somewhat different to the Beau Brummel example in that it wasn't digging up a semi-obscure person and reducing a complex historical narratives to this one scapegoat but instead exposing a (British, in particular) audience to how a secular saint/gruff and likeable figure is already viewed outside of his home country. It broadened the conversation out into Churchill being an agent/instigator of wider system of imperialism rather than him being the sole angel/devil under discussion.

It certainly wasn't the most detailed or academic treatment in the world but 'actually imperialism is bad' seems like it's treating Churchill and his victims with something more like seriousness than the overwhelming majority of pop history portrayals. God knows the otherwise all-pervasive british chauvinism could do with the shock therapy.

I thought it came off as closer to what Kruse has done.
posted by ocular shenanigans at 9:13 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


Anyway this basically seems like a form of clickbait, with the expected accompanying issues. It feels like a lot of the backlash comes from feeling above the "listen up shitswizzles" affected Internet voice, as much as concerns about accuracy. But I am kinda here for that, because I also find it very tedious.
posted by atoxyl at 9:15 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


It is however marginally better than writing about it in a tone that people won't read.

I would argue that no, writing about what the higher estimates judge to be a Holocaust and a half in a snarky, careless way is, in fact, not better than writing about it in an unreadably dry style. It trivializes all that senseless death to write about it in the same voice you'd use to pastiche The Oatmeal, Maddox, or Dr. Who fans who don't like actual curse words, and makes it seem not worth caring about.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:18 AM on April 10, 2019 [13 favorites]


"Listen you fuckers, you screwheads. Here's a man who would not take it anymore. Who would not let...
Listen you fuckers, you screwheads. Here's a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the c***s, the dogs, the filth, the shit, here is someone who stood up..."

Show this thread
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:21 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


There’s not a whole lot of daylight between that and the insistence that, I don’t know, no one in the history of the world has ever had any reason or desire to read Ulysses.
Didn't we determine the other day that no one has ever read Ulysses?
There might be a much more obvious reason that this mode of communication continues to thrive: because people find it funny.
Yeah, actually funny or not, structurally, I tend to assume that "Listen up!" tweetstorms are to a large degree rhetorical games, landing somewhere between flyting and slam poetry. It's true that as approaches to history go, they don't lend themselves to a very nuanced appreciation or even, at times, basic accuracy, but, then, neither did Ripley's Believe It Or Not.

("Weird but true," "Strange news," or the French feuilleton seem to be the genre that this kind of writing most resembles.)
posted by octobersurprise at 9:34 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]


IDK, at some point people complaining about the format and tone sounds like dudes complaining about vocal fry or uptalk. You can like it or not, but it's also possible that those threads just weren't meant for you.

Twitter and Tumblr's format doesn't lend itself to nuance or allow for correction of misinformation - yes, that's a real problem. 'Kids these days use words in ways I do not approve' is not.
posted by dinty_moore at 9:42 AM on April 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


ninjas didn't actually exist.

The fact that you believe this just goes to show how good they are at what they do.

Anyway, parenting a pre-teen and being around preteen group conversations is a great exercise in restraining yourself from "WELL ACTUALLY"-ing them about things they don't have quite right, and it's hard, because you want them to know what's correct! But the car on the way to the field trip is not your lecture hall and knowledge that kids find for themselves sticks better.

I do a lot of "Huh, really?" and "I think I might have heard something different but tell me what you read," and so on. Some of that will be stuff like these kind of Twitter or Instagram things and that's ok.

Exception: any racist/sexist/hateful shit. I shut that right down.
posted by emjaybee at 10:09 AM on April 10, 2019 [23 favorites]


the tumblr post I saw on Facebook yesterday was claiming that the only reason why Disney shoveled out a new Dumbo movie was something something "extending the copyright" followed by "whoa" and "wow that makes sense" replies

yes it makes a shallow sort of sense, however it is also not how copyright works, thank you and good bye
posted by BungaDunga at 10:17 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


at least with Drunk History it involves someone getting absolutely, visibly shitfaced so it is both entertaining and hopefully not taken to be absolutely accurate
posted by BungaDunga at 10:22 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


Yyyyyyeah, I'm not that down with this article, for reasons that a lot of folks have laid out. It's a weird co-mingling of complaints about form, about content, and about today's 10,000. I'm amused by the author's incisive description of a trend of form, but get lost at the blanket condemnation of the content and weird concern about the slippery slope that it supposedly forms.

Like, "performatively OTT angry at a minor thing for comic effect" is an aesthetic that's been around for ages. It's okay if it's not to the author's taste, but wrapping that in more complaints about "as if it's new!" & "the content's wrong!" muddies the rhetorical waters.

It doesn't help that complaints about form as a stalking horse for complaints about content have been with us for lo these many years, and that the complainants often elide the distinction. Anything that fits the form is taken to also have a lack of correct content. For me as a scientist who's part of pop sci talks and events, this shows up as people being annoyed that I dare make jokes about science. I even get the same gasps of, "how embarrassing, do you think people won't find the bare unadorned facts interesting enough without your gloss on them, are you telling them they're stupid?"

One of the secrets to a comedic performance, from mine to Buckle Up Twitter, is that the audience is in on it. It's not a big secret approach being pulling on an unaware crowd. People understand the kayfabe of it!

At any rate, thanks for coming to my TED talk, and sorry about my fly being open.
posted by sgranade at 10:24 AM on April 10, 2019 [17 favorites]


MetaFilter: likely the top 1% of these things
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:39 AM on April 10, 2019


THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE MOTHERFUCKING ROMAN EMPIRE
IT'S ALL THE FAULT OF COMMODUS, WHICH MEANS IT'S REALLY THE FAULT OF STOIC "HERO" MARCUS MOTHERFUCKING AURELIUS, BECAUSE HE PUT HIS OWN SON ON THE THRONE INSTEAD OF ADOPTING SOMEONE CAPABLE LIKE ALL THE OTHER EMPERORS DID, PLUS RAISING YOUR KID AS A STOIC AND THEN GIVING THEM SUPREME MOTHERFUCKING POWER ALWAYS LEADS TO MEGALOMANIA, JUST LOOK AT NERO.

IT'S ALL IN GIBBON, TRUST ME.
posted by clawsoon at 10:46 AM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


The hi-larious thing about this article is that Rosa does exactly the same as she accuses those twitter threads of doing, only at massive length and mass less interestingly while coming across like a massive knob.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:07 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


I am told that people understand the kayfabe of it.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:12 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


It's true that as approaches to history go, they don't lend themselves to a very nuanced appreciation or even, at times, basic accuracy

Unfortunately, it is very obvious that there is a significant population of credulous morons on twitter and tumblr who accept these posts as gospel truth. This isn't as big a problem as other kinds of lies being endlessly perpetuated through social media, but it is at root the same kind of problem, and it is a problem.
posted by praemunire at 11:16 AM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


For example: ninjas didn't actually exist.

I know a small child of a friend who is convinced that "the ninja tests" are a thing that become available to take when you're about Naruto-age and that they are going to test into ninja training. Like, this is their serious belief. They're little enough and having a rough enough year with some life changes that I have not wanted to work hard on disabusing them of this notion - I'm sure they'll figure it out.

I am told that people understand the kayfabe of it.

The internet is so large and various - I feel like I'm definitely in a portion where people don't see it as performance. I mean, they see it as "performance" in that they read the tone as aggro-jocular rather than academic and they understand that some hyperbole is involved, but people still see it as "this person/thing is uncomplicatedly bad/good and the cause of this event is completely unnuanced".

A lot depends on just how you curate your social media. Like, I never get any Jordan Peterson-ish stuff or a lot of the awful things that folks on here talk about encountering regularly. But I do get the more credulous and judgey end of the social justice internet because that seems to be inevitable if I want to get other things I like.

So I have no trouble believing that plenty of people experience this type of thread as "listen up bitches I am going to tell you a few things about Beau Brummell and we'll all playfully claim that he alone is totally responsible for contemporary masculine dress AND toxic masculinity, which is funny because it's such an obvious overstatement" while in other parts of the internet the thread is received differently.
posted by Frowner at 11:22 AM on April 10, 2019 [21 favorites]


Frowner, you are on fire this week.
posted by praemunire at 11:38 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


The is-it-kayfabe-or-not lacuna, at the most extreme end, is where The Daily Stormer lives. And, more generally, I'm old enough to have seen a few weird cultural affectations that were considered kayfabe become normal.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:38 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


MetaFilter: Nothing fancy - feminist science fiction of the seventies and eighties, vegan cakes, anarchist spaces, men's shoes
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:02 PM on April 10, 2019 [13 favorites]


For anyone who was into this (I was), Rosa Lyster had another piece of brutal polemic last week, which I enjoyed even more.

I was thinking of posting it to MeFi as an FPP but worried that it might cause a fight, so decided against it in the end.

Who Are Nerds?
People who use you as a prop to get people to see them while pretending to be so afraid of everything. The woman wearing big sassy red spectacles who I introduced myself to at a dinner party and she said, “Um AWKWARD. We’ve met before.” When I said sorry, and that I was bad at faces, she said “NO NEED TO MAKE THIS EVEN MORE PAINFULLY AWKWARD. I’M JUST GOING TO STAND ON THE BALCONY AND BLUSH FOR A WHILE NOW.” Everyone turned around to look at us and she said “WOW THIS IS EMBARRASSING” and sort of fanned herself like she was hot, although in fact it was not hot and it was only embarrassing for me, because she was making it seem like I had transgressed some obvious social boundary and the two of us were now reeling around in a no-mans-land ungoverned by the rules of ordinary behaviour. What was she going to do next? Sing? Cry? Say a word like “douchecanoe” or one of the other shameful portmanteaus that nerds seem to love so much? “Fucknozzle” or “bitchnozzle” or something. Make me dance with her? Write me a scary email?
posted by chappell, ambrose at 12:09 PM on April 10, 2019 [21 favorites]


I mean, they see it as "performance" in that they read the tone as aggro-jocular rather than academic and they understand that some hyperbole is involved, but people still see it as "this person/thing is uncomplicatedly bad/good and the cause of this event is completely unnuanced".

That's a good point, and is where I need to speak more carefully about how form shapes content, and that a performance isn't viewed by everyone the same way.
posted by sgranade at 12:11 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


I did learn something from the article -- that there a twitter users who refer to themselves as scolds in their bios. Another reason why I have zero regrets for generally not playing in the Twitterverse. I mean, who the f*** is proud of being a scold?
posted by philip-random at 12:34 PM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]


who the f*** is proud of being a scold

It's like the other end of the spectrum from the 'Deplorable' people, only they're really, really annoying rather than devoid of any scrap of humanity.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:06 PM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


The funny thing is I didn't like that "why I hate nerds" - even though I think it's really about a lot of the same people. That one felt felt like it went nowhere and accomplished nothing other than to be sort of generally mean. But this is more on target about a specific irritating thing people do.
posted by atoxyl at 1:08 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


I mean, who the f*** is proud of being a scold?

Someone recently pointed out to me that "scolding" is a gendered term.
posted by capricorn at 1:25 PM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]


> Unfortunately, it is very obvious that there is a significant population of credulous morons on twitter and tumblr who accept these posts as gospel truth.

It's not just credulous morons, I know plenty of highly educated and otherwise intelligent people who vigorously head nod to nonsense twitter polemic if it speaks to their particular mood at the time.
posted by cirgue at 1:28 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


Unfortunately, it is very obvious that there is a significant population of credulous morons on twitter and tumblr who accept these posts as gospel truth. This isn't as big a problem as other kinds of lies being endlessly perpetuated through social media, but it is at root the same kind of problem, and it is a problem.

Yeah, obviously, ideally, people should have a grasp of history which is both generally accurate and more sophisticated than a simple chronicle of good and bad notable figures, events, and things. No disagreement there! Tendentiousness, axe-grinding, the simplification and flattening of historical figures and events are all characteristics of bad historical arguments. But that kind of bad history is so habitual across a variety of mediums, from publications, to movies and television, to public monuments and commemorations, that the complaint seems less a twitter-specific one and more a subset of complaints about bad history and credulity and ignorance in general; one that's been yoked here to a specific pet peeve in the service of an entertaining harangue.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:31 PM on April 10, 2019


Google says: "he scolded": 356,000 results, "she scolded": 426,000 results.

Is there something wrong with me if I immediately pictured the self-described scold as a guy named Ben with a beard, on the skinny side, likes to think about going to a Ren Faire but doesn't actually do it?

No? Just me?
posted by clawsoon at 1:32 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


octobersurprise: Yeah, obviously, ideally, people should have a grasp of history which is both generally accurate and more sophisticated than a simple chronicle of good and bad notable figures, events, and things.

I think what you're trying to say is THEY MAY TAKE AWAY OUR LIVES BUT THEY'LL NEVER TAKE OUR FREEDOM!! THIS! IS! SPARTAAAAAAA!!
posted by clawsoon at 1:34 PM on April 10, 2019


I mean, who the f*** is proud of being a scold?

People who start comments with;
Language/grammer pedant here...
posted by ActingTheGoat at 1:44 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


About bad history:

It's hard to find good history if you're not reading specifically scholarly work, IMO. And it's hard to choose readable scholarly work if you're not a historian. There's just so much of both that you can easily look at ten or fifteen books in a row and come up with nothing you find worth reading.

There's good popular history, yes, but far more bad, because bad history can be sold with sound bites and scandal and is more likely to be profitable. Bad history forecloses things far past the usual "I want to give you a plausible general idea of this issue and just advancing a thesis about it necessarily forecloses other things", but because it forecloses things it has a satisfying narrative flow.

The "better orgasms under socialism y/n" thread elsewhere on the blue seems to illustrate this - the "better orgasms" book is a popularization by a researcher with a pretty interesting academic publication record focusing on Bulgaria , ostalgie and Muslims in Eastern Europe, and reviews suggest that it suffers basically because "better orgasms under socialism" is a pretty bad lens through which to study the lived experiences that she has researched in such depth. (And it also opens up a can of entirely unsolvable worms about what desire is, whence it comes from, what about queer people, is sexual satisfaction a meaningful/quantifiable metric, etc.) And yet, you know and I know that headlines alleging that women have more orgasms under socialism will, first, even be written, and second attract far more attention than "by carefully examining the ways that power was contested in Bulgaria, we can understand something about how women made gains under socialism, and this in turn may tell us something about the types of social openings intrinsic to socialism even under otherwise repressive conditions".

It's really the book industry and the marketing of history, when you come right down to it.
posted by Frowner at 1:50 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


I mean, who the f*** is proud of being a scold?

People who start comments with;
Language/grammer pedant here...


Language pedant here, it's grammar not grammer
posted by ActingTheGoat at 2:03 PM on April 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


Oh, yes, "scold" was specifically a term of social opprobrium for women going at least as far back as Tudor England. In fact, to be a scold was an offense under the common law technically all the way into the twentieth century.
posted by praemunire at 2:04 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


It's not just credulous morons, I know plenty of highly educated and otherwise intelligent people who vigorously head nod to nonsense twitter polemic if it speaks to their particular mood at the time.

Truly, we are all vulnerable to narratives that fit our preconceptions or flatter our prejudices, but it takes a particularly wilful form of doofery to uncritically believe the ones delivered at high volume by strangers of no apparent qualifications on twitter or tumblr.
posted by praemunire at 2:06 PM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


Re: the "scold" thing, i saw one of these in person at a museum in Prague - Scold's Bridle
posted by capnsue at 2:08 PM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


I read through that whole article, but I am still unclear on one thing:

Is it time for some game theory?
posted by ckape at 2:16 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


Yeah, the 21st C’s scolds’ bridle is going to be a pair of lockable mittens.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:18 PM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


Maybe this marks me out as pretentious, but I don't like Buckle Up Twitter threads because the writers come across as if they thought I knew nothing about whatever their topic is, and I don't really like to be insulted by people trying to teach me something. Like, I get that it's funny but, like, I DID actually know about this and would have been excited to learn more if you didn't act like I was a dummy who had never heard of Beau Brummell.

Not my style of writing, I suppose.
posted by chainsofreedom at 3:09 PM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


Someone recently pointed out to me that "scolding" is a gendered term.

Stupid misogyny, why must you take everything from me?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 3:13 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


I thought the funny part about the article was that it was a parody of the thing it was criticizing. Once I got past that part, it was like a long-form piece in the Onion. And listen up, jerks, any Onion piece longer than a title is everything that's wrong with the Internet!
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 3:35 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


Language pedant here, it's grammar not grammer

Internet pedant here, and surely the point was that the self-proclaimed "scolds" usually make at least one error in their attempted gotchas? It's Skitt's law.
posted by Lexica at 3:40 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


I on the other hand am a fan of enstrangement that makes everyone disappointed and then disinterested.

For example: ninjas didn't actually exist.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 9:03 AM on April 10 [4 favorites +] [!]

The greatest trick the ninja ever played was making people think he didn't exist.
posted by some loser at 3:48 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]



Google says: "he scolded": 356,000 results, "she scolded": 426,000 results.

Is there something wrong with me if I immediately pictured the self-described scold as a guy named


the worst scold in my life of late is a guy, and one of those folks who really doesn't take criticism that well making for a double-whammy of infuriating. But he's otherwise mostly okay ...
posted by philip-random at 3:53 PM on April 10, 2019


Truly, we are all vulnerable to narratives that fit our preconceptions or flatter our prejudices

All of *you* people, sure, but not *me*.
posted by Chrysostom at 4:15 PM on April 10, 2019 [10 favorites]


Boy, this ninja thing... Are we just talking about "Storm Shadow isn't real?" or "Every time we talk about ninjas, we're falling for a fallacious category made up to lump together various disconnected, potentially rare, instances of down-and-out former soldiers or industrious psychopaths who murdered for money, using makeshift weapons, to varying degrees of success and failure?"
posted by Slothrop at 4:22 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


...Storm Shadow isn't real?

WHAT ABOUT SNAKE-EYES?
posted by praemunire at 4:28 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


The beauty of this thread is that it's now impossible for anyone to clarify the ninja issue without coming off like a complete asshole... perhaps the greatest ninja trick of all.
posted by Morvran Avagddu at 5:06 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


Oh, Snake Eyes is totes real!

Team Storm Shadow forevs!
posted by Slothrop at 5:06 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


> That one felt felt like it went nowhere and accomplished nothing other than to be sort of generally mean. But this is more on target about a specific irritating thing people do.

Ooh, I like that nerds piece just because of how specific it is.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:07 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


LISTEN GOOD CHUCKLEFUCKS imma school you on how Ryu Hayabusa doesn't EVEN REALLY EXIST but also INVENTED CHAN CULTURE so lock your trays in the upright position pughumpers it's gonna be a HELLUVA RIDE that will TOTES SET OFF YOUR SCIATICA and PAPA BEAR DRANK TWO FIG AND HONEY STARBUCKS COLD BREWS THIS MORNING [0/-1]
posted by prize bull octorok at 5:27 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


dammit are you telling me it's actually Fake Ultimate Power
posted by cortex at 6:01 PM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


METAFILTER: it's actually Fake Ultimate Power
posted by philip-random at 6:11 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


This thread deserves itself.
posted by Ryvar at 6:14 PM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


Listen you fuckers, you screwheads. Here's a man who would not take it anymore

no, no, that's Bickle Up Twitter

sorry, i've been sick the last few days and apparently this is exactly the thread where i start to feel better
posted by cortex at 6:16 PM on April 10, 2019 [11 favorites]


I have never seen a real ninja, which would anecdotally suggest that everything I've ever heard about them is true.
posted by ckape at 6:30 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


I know a small child of a friend who is convinced that "the ninja tests" are a thing that become available to take when you're about Naruto-age and that they are going to test into ninja training.

Consider that the child is correct and that the reason we weren't tapped for the test is that we're just not good enough. I know, not the easiest thing to bear, but.
posted by asperity at 6:56 PM on April 10, 2019 [12 favorites]


Not to distract from the ninja sidebar, but can I just take a moment here to say how much I hate that “JURASSIC PARK REDEFINED OUR UNDERSTANDING OF DINOSAURS!!!” viral tumblr post? Because I HATE IT SO MUCH the modern version of the birds evolved from dinosaurs theory was ALREADY preeminent years before the movie was even in production even without taking into account that it had been going in and out of vogue since the 1860s just say the damn movie is good and has cutting edge dinosaurs for its era without erasing decades of scientific work!!!

...Ahem. Thank you.
posted by bettafish at 7:34 PM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]


I haven't read too many Buckle Up Twitter threads, I'm gonna do my best/worst and I will cite exactly one source at the end:

Ninjas were real, in a sense.

So there were like 2-3 centuries of civil war in Japan, called the Sengoku Jidai or Warring States period, and that's the heyday of the samurai, and "ninja" is a word that's used in this period to describe certain non-samurai fighters.

Both samurai and ninja were mythologized later on. The Sengoku period was followed by 2-3 centuries of peace, prosperity, and high literacy, called the Tokugawa period (after its shogunate) or the Edo period (after its cultural hub). Edo was the center of a real mass-media culture, and the stories of the Sengoku were written and rewritten over and over during this period. So it's much like Hollywood and cowboys. Cowboys were real, but the Hollywood version sort of wasn't.

So ninjas were real, but Naruto Ninjas are not. The actual Sengoku ninjas came from the mountain regions of Japan, and the were mercenaries, for the same basic economic reason that the central mountains of Europe gave birth to the Swiss mercenaries. However, the cultural context of samurai gave the Japanese mercenaries a slightly different role.

Samurai "honor" was mythologized into something else during the Edo period; during the Sengoku period, it might be better to call it valor, a combination of martial skill and courage, which had to be proven in battle in front of your peers and your lord. In order to win rank, esteem, and your literal paycheck, you had to perform well in battle, and if nobody saw it, it didn't count.

So no samurai was ever going to sneak anywhere, every, for both practical and social/psychological reasons. But they still, at times, wanted to ... have sneaky stuff get done. In particular, during this time, castle technology was outpacing cannon technology in Japan, and often the only way to take a castle was to starve it out. So you could say there was a market for any kind of dirty trick that could open up a castle or make a siege shorter.

So some of the mercenary clans of the mountains specialized in explosives, spying, and sabotage because they were specializing in things that samurai didn't want to do. And this made them an interesting narrative foil for the samurai two centuries later. And that's what ninjas were. mic drop. i think.

my source for this is one podcast, ninja episode here
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 8:03 PM on April 10, 2019 [13 favorites]


Consider that the child is correct and that the reason we weren't tapped for the test is that we're just not good enough. I know, not the easiest thing to bear, but.

Eagerly awaiting the day I can commiserate with some child that they just weren't magical enough for Hogwarts in the hope of creating a supervillain.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:36 PM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


i need to take a moment to seethe with rage, hang on

ok we good.

BEAU FUCKING BRUMMELL -- ok no actually we not yet good, maybe a nap and a cup of tea to calm me down

so BFB (i'm gonna have to keep stopping to grind my teeth if i type out his whole name) was one of the most famous dandies in Regency Engla-- wait you don't know what a dandy is, do you


And like 70 more pithy tweets follow.

This is the opposite of click bait. Who has time for this shit?
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 9:28 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


I think the internet has ruined both the rant and the open letter for me. I just don't want to read anything in these formats ever again.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 9:31 PM on April 10, 2019 [12 favorites]


Ninjas caused the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
posted by clawsoon at 5:16 AM on April 11, 2019 [2 favorites]


Beau Brummel was inspired by ninjas, therefore ninjas caused toxic masculinity.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:20 AM on April 11, 2019 [4 favorites]


the ninja sash was the original seat belt, the ouroboros of buckling up consumes itself
posted by cortex at 6:39 AM on April 11, 2019 [6 favorites]


Ninjas caused the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

FACT: Mercenary forces in feudal Japan were an element in the failure of the 13th century Mongol invasions of Japan.

FACT: Following this defeat, various Mongol leaders focused more heavily on military conquests to their west and south and consolidating their gains in areas they had already conquered in the Middle East.

FACT: Timur, a descendant of Genghis Khan's great-great grandfather, massively destabilized the entire Middle East in the 14th century with major military conquests followed immediately by chaos after his death.

FACT: While the early Ottoman had nearly suffered total defeat at the hands of Timur, they were eventually able to take advantage of the power vacuum he left to assemble a great deal of power and territory.

FACT: Having acquired this power and territory, the Ottomans caused the final and most certain fall of the Roman Empire.

Ipso facto, QED, there you have it, indisputably, all completely solid history no one could ever argue with.
posted by Copronymus at 12:03 PM on April 11, 2019 [7 favorites]


Look, you I Ching sniffers, the reality is that the Arashikage Clan founded Amway, and so Cobra Commander had no choice but to retaliate by establishing ARBCO. The raising of Cobra Island created climate change and thus Destro was forced to create an heir by having a child with the Baroness. Snake Eyes never had a sister! Everyone knows this!
posted by Slothrop at 1:15 PM on April 11, 2019 [3 favorites]


Destro had a very butch vibe for a henchman.
posted by praemunire at 10:29 PM on April 11, 2019


Most the comments I would have made are written out quite nicely up above, so I just want to remark on the irony that immediately following this article, the site yells at me to SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER in Word-converted Arial 42 pt font.
posted by lesser weasel at 12:59 AM on April 12, 2019 [2 favorites]


> Who Are Nerds?

The author seems to be confusing "nerds" with "people who call themselves nerds".
posted by lucidium at 7:15 AM on April 12, 2019


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