My Year of Grief and Cancellation
February 25, 2021 3:24 PM   Subscribe

"If you were on Tumblr in the early 2010s, you may remember a blog called Your Fave Is Problematic. If not, its content should still sound familiar to you. The posts contained long lists of celebrities’ regrettable (racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ethnophobic, ableist and so on) statements and actions — the stuff that gets people canceled these days. That blog was my blog."
posted by Ouverture (46 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
Was looking for a pullquote, couldn't choose between
The blog started, as so many anonymous online projects do, as vengeful public shaming masquerading as social criticism.
and
The information I posted was out in the open, but I was cataloging it to make a case against the veneration of the rich and famous.
posted by box at 3:37 PM on February 25, 2021 [1 favorite]


I was angered by hypocrisy and cruelty; what I did about it was apply a level of scrutiny that left no room for error. [...] I just know what we all should know by now: that no one who has lived publicly, online or off, has a spotless record.

I don't doubt that there are plenty of folks who, like this author did, look for every little imperfection in an effort to tear people down. It's true that nobody's perfect, but admitting people are imperfect is not the same as automatically excusing everyone's behavior. People that get "cancelled" are overwhelmingly folks who have power or influence over others, and more often than not their so-called errors are choices made with full knowledge of the implications.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 3:39 PM on February 25, 2021 [23 favorites]


I think there is a lot of this kind of lashing out disguised as activism in online spaces and I think she touches on why but doesn't quite go into it.

When you're depressed and numb, sometimes feeling anything is nice, and there are endless ways and things online to make yourself mad about. By wrapping it in the cloak of social justice, you're not just raging against the unfeeling machine, you're Doing Important Work, you are Raising Awareness, you are Bearing Witness. Anyone telling you that maybe you need to spend less time being real mad on Twitter or whatever is probably oppressing you and they don't understand how important the struggle is. Or it's a Tone Argument, the bastards.

And it's not that there aren't things to be upset about, that's the real hell of it. But I used to tell one of my friends, who has since burned herself out on Getting Really Mad Online, you can't keep jumping into The Endless River of Shit then bewailing the fact you're covered in shit all the time.

I think that dopamine and serotonin charge feels really good, especially when you're not feeling at all or you're feeling depressed. And maybe more importantly, it feels like you're Doing Something when you probably don't have a lot of control in your life, and, of course, the various social media sites and algorithms reward you with algorithmically dictated likes and favorites and retweets and shares and whatnot, so you get that drip-drip-drip of good feeling reinforcement every time you work yourself into a good righteous rage.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 3:54 PM on February 25, 2021 [116 favorites]


By wrapping it in the cloak of social justice, you're not just raging against the unfeeling machine, you're Doing Important Work, you are Raising Awareness, you are Bearing Witness.

I’m not sure how you’d have an easy time distinguishing this from a just act, looking in from the outside looking in. Is awareness not raised by outing abusers, or exposing racism or homophobia? Is doing so not important work? Tiring, sure, and endless maybe, but if the alternative is an unjust silence are we not better of for for the efforts of those who’ve borne this witness?
posted by mhoye at 4:04 PM on February 25, 2021 [7 favorites]


Someone said this elsewhere, and now I can't read the piece any other way, it's totally fishing for a contract for a memoir.
posted by tavella at 4:15 PM on February 25, 2021 [15 favorites]


I remember in the early '10s how Tumblr was often a direct-to-book pipeline.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:19 PM on February 25, 2021 [4 favorites]


For those of us who run straight into that 'ol NYT paywall, here's a paywall-free link.
posted by signsofrain at 4:26 PM on February 25, 2021 [7 favorites]


I’m not sure how you’d have an easy time distinguishing this from a just act, looking in from the outside looking in. Is awareness not raised by outing abusers, or exposing racism or homophobia? Is doing so not important work? Tiring, sure, and endless maybe, but if the alternative is an unjust silence are we not better of for for the efforts of those who’ve borne this witness?

We? Sure, there's a societal value. I didn't say it wasn't useful or good, just that there is always more and it is always worse and it never ends. But on the other hand, the writer doesn't seem to think it was worth it, or doesn't seem proud of it, so maybe the trade off on her end wasn't worth it. (Or maybe she just wants the memoir deal).

I don't know if I'm comfortable saying "Actually the thing you said was bad and regret tremendously was good and you should enjoy it."
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 4:26 PM on February 25, 2021 [2 favorites]


Someone said this elsewhere, and now I can't read the piece any other way, it's totally fishing for a contract for a memoir.

Yes, this. There's very little context or reflection here and she doesn't take a side on anything - is it okay to get a culturally appropriative tattoo, for instance? Was she right or wrong to shame people for stuff like that? If she took a side, she'd upset people, but vaguely condemning tumblr-teen politics won't upset anyone.

Admittedly, she must be around 23 now and that's still awfully, awfully young, so I don't really feel that she needs to have the take to end all takes about her own tumblr.

~~
I guess I feel like more good than harm came out of tumblr-teendom, though, even though there was real harm. Like, all that stuff really exacerbated my anxiety problems and being in that general online community was pretty harmful for me, but I had anxiety before it started, you know? And in general, I think most of the broad spectrum ideas about cultural appropriation, especially of AAVE and indigenous stuff, about the unacceptability of blackface and brownface, about hair and privilege, etc, are actually good ideas that have made society better in general.
posted by Frowner at 4:30 PM on February 25, 2021 [17 favorites]


Someone said this elsewhere, and now I can't read the piece any other way, it's totally fishing for a contract for a memoir.

As opposed to all the people who only publish articles in the New York Times from the purest of motives? Of course she wants a book deal!

Looking forward to some super awkward book festival panels with John Green.
posted by betweenthebars at 4:52 PM on February 25, 2021 [12 favorites]


I have been trying to find where I read it, but there's really something to the observation that this urge toward 'cancelling' and public shaming is our society's response to the absence of other collective activities or collective bodies to set norms—modernity is about, for better or worse, largely moving away from tightly-knit, hard-to-escape societies of locality-church-workplace-union-ethnicity-family. Without those hierarchical authorities, and all the solidarity that went with their existence, to provide top-down and group shame to transgressors and hypocrites, we're left to do the job ourselves.
I was more of a cop than a social justice warrior
The vocation the author's looking for, I think, is confessor.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:53 PM on February 25, 2021 [5 favorites]


You don't even have to assume the lost normativity of Dunbar-sized groups was top-down; it could have been emergent and collective, but it's still gone.

Also, even the bits that seemed most collective weren't easy, judging from the court cases and schisms and novels.
posted by clew at 4:58 PM on February 25, 2021 [2 favorites]


Aside from John Green, very few of those celebrities she criticized were on Tumblr, so it wouldn't have impacted them much. On the other hand, regular people on Tumblr who made mistakes were recipients of mob justice. I remember a woman who made the mistake of posting a vacation photo of her husband and herself in Mexico wearing souvenir sombreros. She received tens of thousands of reblogs and comments and so much vituperation. Who knows what sort of anon messages she got that were even worse than what we could see in the post notes.
posted by LindsayIrene at 5:00 PM on February 25, 2021 [6 favorites]


What the author describes reminds me a lot of being a vigilante. Vigilantes perform acts and fulfill roles that they believe are for the good of society, but do so without any kind of official mandate or oversight. They act because they feel an important societal function is not filled by any official organization. Just because one is a vigilante does not mean their acts are not righteous and necessary, but likewise just because their actions are righteous and necessary does not mean their motives are pure. In this case, it let the author be callous and hateful without feeling bad about it.

So what official organization no longer performs the role of ostracizing and shaming individuals for their immoral behavior? Organized religion, mainly, but also other formal and informal social class structures.

It's probably for the best that their influence is gone, but it is interesting that folks collectively recreate these power structures when they're absent.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:07 PM on February 25, 2021 [13 favorites]


How is this not just a gossip blog with a social justice theme? Doesn't seem like she actually canceled anyone.
posted by Wood at 5:28 PM on February 25, 2021 [4 favorites]


I am struck by the difference in comments here and in this recent MeFi thread about "cancel culture."

Is there a cancel culture or is there not; is there cancellation or is there not; are these efforts and incidents (however categorized or labelled) accurately understood as vigilantism or not?
posted by PhineasGage at 6:16 PM on February 25, 2021 [7 favorites]


Before “cancel culture” there was “stan culture” where people were intensely connected to the works of wealthy strangers and would attack anything that threatened to sully that connection. People had a through line of “if ____ is a rapist, that means that I’m a bad person for liking his songs, so I will be his defense attorney and/or alibi in the public square.” This made it difficult to have conversations about wrongdoing because fans would often take it personally. I feel like a cultural shift that “your fave is problematic” conversations helped occur now means that we can have more conversations about what wealthy stranger did as mutual bystanders who may or may not have consumed his/her work in the past.
posted by Selena777 at 7:23 PM on February 25, 2021 [7 favorites]


Is there a cancel culture or is there not

I think my argument from the other thread that it’s mostly about how social media encourages people to behave holds up across both!

Also I think this particular example could be considered as an expression of teen edgelordism, in a way.
posted by atoxyl at 7:57 PM on February 25, 2021 [1 favorite]


"The vocation the author's looking for, I think, is confessor."

I think this is actually a really apt point. I don't think "cancel culture" per se is a problem -- calling people out on the bad things they did is important. But what I do think we currently don't have, as a society, is a clear (and ritualized) way for people to apologize and make amends and be accepted by the community as having repented.

Historically, cultures always have a way to call out wrongs/sins/bad things. But they have also always had a way to atone/repent/be officially reintegrated into society.

And it's not JUST social media (in the US, for this comment) that does this; it's been forty or fifty years since someone could commit a crime, serve their jail sentence, and have people say, "He paid his debt to society, time to move on and treat him like a regular guy." We have SO MANY ways as a society (US society, again) that we force people to perpetually suffer for one-time wrongs. I used to teach community college, where I had a lot of students who were felons. I had one student who, high on meth and with two addict parents who had been repeatedly reported to DCFS, brandished a gun in a Walgreens in Missouri at the age of 15, was tried as an adult, and got 7 years. Got clean in prison, got his GED, came out and earned his associate's degree while on probation -- one of the best philosophy students I've ever had -- and COULD NOT get a job doing basically anything, because he'd been declared an adult felon at the age of 15. I had another student who was a sex offender -- the college helpfully warned me -- who was 17 and had sex with his 16 year old girlfriend, which is a felony in Illinois because there's no "Romeo and Juliet" law. When he was my student, they'd been married for thirteen years (after he got out of prison, after serving the mandatory minimum four years) and had three children that he was not allowed to drop off at school. The only way off the registry in Illinois is a pardon, and nobody wants to pardon a "child sex offender," which he technically was.

And there is a crucial point to recognize there, which is that some criminals (and especially some sex offenders) are not going to be rehabilitated, ever. And it's incumbent on society to protect the vulnerable from those people.

But we do an incredibly shit job of it! We spend enormous amounts of time and energy criminalizing and shunning people who made a single mistake when young and dumb, who have since found the straight-and-narrow, and lived morally blameless lives. But we no longer talk about "paying your debt to society" and there's no longer any sense in American society that once you've "paid your debt," it should be forgiven. The debt is endless -- you go into moral debtor's prison -- especially if you're a man of color in the United States. And white dudes in fraternities still get off scot-free because "they have so much potential."

You can kind-of see on social media celebrities struggling to find the right formula in their apology that will expiate their sins when they're "cancelled." And I'm not crying for cancelled celebrities, at all. But we need a ritualized way to declare repentance and to (tentatively) allow the sinner back into society. Because absolutely everybody fucks up. The key insight of basically every world religion is, everyone eventually fucks up. And there HAS to be a way (a ritualized way!) that good-hearted people who fucked up can earn their way back into society.

In European Christian culture, historically, this very often did look like someone powerful saying publicly, "Wow, I did fuck this shit up, I will now donate a million gold coins to this good cause (*coughCrusadecough*), and I will wear a hair shirt for five years" and if they proceeded to not fuck up further in the same way in those five years, they were rehabilitated. (And cultures around the world were mostly not all that different, requiring payment of money and/or soldiers and/or blood, plus a statement that one was wrong and sorry, plus a period of time of doing better.) That's not super-different from a Hollywood celebrity saying "Wow, I fucked up, I am listening, I have donated $X to $charity, and I will not appear in films for a while." And that ritualized contrition feels a bit empty, it does, because it's ritualized. But if they legit meet better standards thereafter (insisting on hiring X% women and X% minorities on their sets?), maybe ritualized contrition is enough? I mean, ritualized contrition almost HAS to be enough, because the only other way we can judge our fellow man is after they're dead. Having a way to say "Okay, you did enough, you can be part of society again" HAS to be part of what we do.

But the part that is shitty in a social-media world is that regular, everyday people fuck up, and there is absolutely no way back for them. They don't have a PR team. They don't have the ability to donate a million gold pieces. They're treated like medieval kings who crossed the Pope, but they don't have the resources to buy their way out of it. I am way, way, way less concerned with celebrities being able to buy contrition (kings and celebrities have always been able to!) than with everyday people being able to engage in ritualized contrition that will put them back in a right relationship with their community after doing their community wrong. There doesn't seem to be any way to do that! They can apologize, profusely, and live better lives, and serve their debt to society, and learn a lesson -- but the original offense hangs out there, ready to be punished again, because we're a worldwide community now, not a community of 1000 people who say, "Jesus, Bob, Claire repented of her adultery six years ago and you were not involved in any of it, STOP BRINGING IT UP."

I do not actually have a solution for the social media world. I don't think this will stop happening, and I'm not entirely sure it CAN stop happening? But I do think "ritualized repentance" is the piece that social media is missing, and I'm not sure social media can allow for that, so I don't know if that can be fixed.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:51 PM on February 25, 2021 [134 favorites]


I also think there's a division between "orthodoxic" (right-thinking) and "orthopraxic" (right-acting) attitudes. US society is HUGELY orthodoxic, by virtue of the Evangelical Christian thinking that dominates our public life. Even people who completely reject Evangelical Christianity tend to be pretty "orthodoxic," in that they insist on others THINKING the right things.

The problem with orthodoxic religions -- and orthodoxic societies, like the United States -- is that everyone is always subject to a "purity test," where they can always be made to fail for not thinking exactly the right things.

"Orthopraxic" religions are more interested in whether you follow the proper rituals, rather than whether you believe the proper things. In an orthopraxic religion, following the rules is a defense against accusations of heresy/wrong-thinking. "I may believe God is a purple llama, but I attend religious services every week, SO FUCKING SUE ME!"

The US has let evangelical orthodoxic thinking poison almost all of its public institutions. You're convicted of a crime once, so you don't "think right" and can't be rehabilitated and can never have a job again. Whereas an "orthopraxic" society says, "Well, you followed the rules for imprisonment and probation, you are officially fixed. Whether your thinking is fixed is not really our business, but follow the rules and do the rituals and you're okay."

Orthodoxy is sooooooooooo tempting, because if people just think the right things, they'll DO the right things, and make a good society, and policing other people's thoughts lets you pick out the bad ones and expel them. But it's a shitty, shitty way to organize a SOCIETY, because you always end up thought-policing people. Orthopraxic societies, judging on behavior, tend to be a little healthier. They may let some fucked-up people continue in positions of authority (as long as they can follow the rules), but they don't TEND to let fucked-up people MAKE the rules, which orthodoxy always, in the end, does.

(I felt like I saw this a lot in action in the politics megathreads, where some posters wanted to judge a politician based on whether he or she professed the proper beliefs, and others wanted to judge that person based on whether he or she performed the proper actions, and that is SO interesting to consider, because CLEARLY there is a need for some people to be yeeting the Overton Window as far left as it will go, but there's also a need for the same people, or other people, to be taking the stepwise laws they can get passed into reality. And it can be really interesting to think about whether a politician is orthodoxic or orthopraxic -- they both have their very important roles! And the problem, I think, is when an orthodoxic left-leaning politician THINKS s/he's orthopraxic, and manages to get in the way of actual progress thereby. I think AOC is remarkably aware of this, for a politician, and does an amazing job of speaking orthodoxically but acting orthopraxically, in a way that pulls the Overton window very far left, BUT ALSO makes actual progress with actual laws. I am constantly in awe.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:10 PM on February 25, 2021 [118 favorites]


I had high hopes for this article, but it just seemed like a whole lotta nothing - barely even a rumination. :(
posted by Going To Maine at 9:16 PM on February 25, 2021 [2 favorites]


Eyebrows McGee—perhaps there's another distinction in that small communities better reintegrate people after these kinds of ritualised acts of contrition ('Bob's a mean drunk, but he's trying, and he's a good bloke in the end') because it's easy to identify specific injured parties, and because forgiveness is restorative to them too; whereas with celebrities and 'problematic faves', we are all a universally injured party, to the extent it's our illusions of them that are hurt, and that celebrities exist only to be identified with—and not interacted with, as individual humans, with whom we can have a relationship of forgiveness.

It's not possible to imagine forgiving non-human 'problematic faves': how would we go about ritually reintegrating Kanye West's Gold Digger?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:19 PM on February 25, 2021 [4 favorites]


I am way, way, way less concerned with celebrities being able to buy contrition (kings and celebrities have always been able to!) than with everyday people being able to engage in ritualized contrition that will put them back in a right relationship with their community after doing their community wrong

You've hit on quite a few strong points here, but to borrow this as one-among-many, I think this is a lot of it. We're in a period where it feels like few people see any sort of consequences. Police aren't doing right. Society isn't enforcing right. Community isn't providing right. So if nobody's going/able to enforce any sort of consequence, why *not* shout into the void and hope anybody's listening? And maybe some people listen too closely & they take it too seriously for what it would otherwise merit in a world where any sort of consequence existed. And that's not great (to say the least).

But if even that is more than any individual person could hope to see happen... why *not* contribute? There's no justice in this world, no contrition to be earned, nobody's going to feel any consequences, and they're sure as hell not going to hear *you*.
posted by CrystalDave at 11:22 PM on February 25, 2021 [1 favorite]


Historically, cultures always have a way to call out wrongs/sins/bad things. But they have also always had a way to atone/repent/be officially reintegrated into society.

Eyebrows McGee, your two comments in this thread are incredibly thoughtful and insightful. I don't have anything to add, but I wanted to publicly call them out as the kind of discussion that keeps me coming back to Metafilter.
posted by yankeefog at 1:46 AM on February 26, 2021 [31 favorites]


My policy was that I would take down a post only if its author publicly apologized.
Removing accusatory material once a sincere public apology has been made strikes me as sound policy. Replacing it with a link to the apology would be even better.

I'm thinking there would be a good deal of social utility in, for example, a curated list of all the times Eddie Everywhere has issued apologies for essentially the same thing.
posted by flabdablet at 1:52 AM on February 26, 2021


So the author looked back at her 50,000 follower/outsized influence blog about celeb shaming and now has please don't cancel me regrets because she's learned to better understand the personal side, the "nuance", of celebrity foibles at a time when celeb culture has (supposedly) "began to crumble"? Might want to work on that thesis, reads a little too much like trying to get in the club before it closes.
posted by gusottertrout at 3:17 AM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


What's the difference between orthodoxy and orthopraxy in an online space? It's one thing to judge celebrities or politicians, but what about how we treat each other here on MeFi? Speech/thought/action are kind of blended together. When people hurt each other here, absolution is an opaque process to everyone but the mods. Very Catholic, and it only works if everyone has religious-level faith in leadership.
posted by rikschell at 5:53 AM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


The author was 18 at the blog's height, and the last post (not necessarily by the author) was 5 years ago, when the author was 20. Repeating the cycle with her seams pretty counter-productive, especially in light of the discussions up thread about ordinary people not being able to repent and do better.

That said, I had hoped this article would be more thoughtful or develop it's ideas a bit further.
posted by Braeburn at 6:04 AM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


The closest thing to an analysis comes when the author points out that her blog mostly featured women, because there are more critical things written about women in the mainstream press.

And she also talks about a flattening, ala The Good Place, of all crimes to the same level. I just quoted this before but here's John Stuart Mill talking about the practice of writing anonymous pamphlets about your enemies in Victorian England:

“Everyone lives in the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship… Society has now fairly got the better of individuality… it does not occur [to the individual or the family] to have any inclination except what is customary… They exercise choice only among things commonly done; peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct are shunned equally with crimes; until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow.”

The themes of merely amplifying society's already-existing double-standard for women's conduct vs men's conduct, and flattening all level of crimes by just presenting them with no commentary beyond "burn your idols" (which does have some value, as a message, in itself), is something the author could talk about in more length in her book deal maybe.

I also sense a therapist somewhere in the story line. Anyway considering how popular her blog was/how much attention (positive and negative) she was receiving by writing something she admits was fueled by personal rage, grief, and alienation; and how many teens are not exiting from this stage of personal development; I'm glad this author in particular managed to get out and reach a place of greater personal happiness and empathy for other people, even if those people are celebrities.

"Entering the club before it closes" though LOL, that's the problem with becoming a published author, or even the author of a mildly popular blog. You become a celebrity yourself.
posted by subdee at 6:55 AM on February 26, 2021 [2 favorites]


The only way off the IL sex registry is a pardon? No. This is not to say it's easy or possible for everyone.

What Factors Does the Court Consider to Determine Whether or Not to Grant Name Removal?

According to 730 ILCS 150/2, the court considers specific factors to determine whether or not to allow removal of a name for the Illinois Sex Offender Registry. These factors include:

(1) a risk assessment performed by an evaluator licensed under the Sex Offender Evaluation and Treatment Provider Act;
(2) the sex offender history of the adjudicated juvenile delinquent;
(3) evidence of the adjudicated juvenile delinquent's rehabilitation;
(4) the age of the adjudicated juvenile delinquent at the time of the offense;
(5) information related to the adjudicated juvenile delinquent's mental, physical, educational, and social history;
(6) victim impact statements; and
(7) any other factors deemed relevant by the court.

The court will make a decision based on the above information. That decision is also appealable to an appellate court.
Does a Qualifying Person Have to Wait Before Filing a Petition to Remove Name from the Sex Offender Registry?

Qualifying persons must wait a certain period before filing a petition to remove sex offender registration. The time period is dependent on the classification of the offense.

When a minor is found delinquent of an offense that an adult would have been charged with a felony, the waiting period is five years. During those five years, the juvenile must register as a sex offender.
When a minor is found delinquent of an offense that an adult would have been charged with a misdemeanor, the waiting period is two years. During those two years, the juvenile must register as a sex offender.

Ultimately, in order to have your name removed as a sex offender, you must be able to show the court by a preponderance of the evidence that you no longer pose a threat to the public.

posted by tiny frying pan at 7:32 AM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


flattening all level of crimes by just presenting them with no commentary beyond "burn your idols"

It's the no commentary part that cuts both ways. Suggesting, as the piece appears to do, that because something apparently minor can be mentioned from the same point of reference as something decidedly major, then they become roughly equivalent, which can as easily then mean ignoring the major problems because the minor ones might get dragged in as the reverse, which does benefit those who abuse their positions.

As you suggest, in the"burn your idols" aside, celebrity can be seen as inherently problematic, placing some people above others by dint of their entertaining you or otherwise providing you satisfaction of some sort. The article goes rather too far towards adopting the more conservative take on the subject (which is, as mentioned in an earlier FPP, a rehash of the politically correct debate from the 80s & 90s) by adopting the stance cancel culture exists, it is of importance, and that at least some of those who engage in it are "social justice warriors" in something close to the pejorative sense of the term.

The article hints a bit at a broader perspective, but doesn't really supply it beyond the elements you quoted and the vague wielding of the idea of "nuance". That the author once helmed that site doesn't bother me at all, simply collecting and reposting info on what celebs did is hardly problematic in itself, though it appears she is concerned it does or might bother some who don't like "cancel culture" and may want to cast blame for it. I also don't find it troubling that the author might now want to distance themselves from their former blog or the debate, but posting an Op-Ed in the New York Times is no way to do that. Publishing an opinion in that form is engaging the public and will get a response and attention.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:37 AM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


I would add one more complicating factor to Eyebrows McGee's wonderfully insightful comments above. In the social media realm there is, by definition, no single arbiter of bad behavior nor of how best to make amends. As was pointed out in a comment in the MeFi thread about the Reply All podcast, even if there's 'universal' agreement about someone's sins, some can call for banishment while others may say it's better for the sinner to stay and make amends and make things better. Social media doesn't offer much of a way for those two mindsets to battle it out and decide what's best for the world, or for the sinner.
posted by PhineasGage at 10:20 AM on February 26, 2021 [2 favorites]


Someone said this elsewhere, and now I can't read the piece any other way, it's totally fishing for a contract for a memoir.

Why else would the NYT waste space on some minor online 'activist' with remorse? It fits perfectly in their anti-cancel culture (sic) policy.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:57 AM on February 26, 2021


Why else would the NYT waste space on some minor online 'activist' with remorse? It fits perfectly in their anti-cancel culture (sic) policy.

I think it’s more, somebody is taking a shot in their ongoing internal (but heavily publicized) conflict over That Sort of Thing.
posted by atoxyl at 12:09 PM on February 26, 2021 [5 favorites]


MartinWisse: Why else would the NYT waste space on some minor online 'activist' with remorse? It fits perfectly in their anti-cancel culture (sic) policy.

Yeah, I've got to say--there are a lot of great comments in this thread, and I also think it's worth thinking not just about why this author wrote this piece (i.e., she is embarrassed because her teenage blog was a little silly and lacked nuance) but also why NYT published this piece.
posted by capricorn at 2:45 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


(She's not a "minor online 'activist'" though, this blog was really, really well known in fandom circles and her take on it now (it lacked nuance) was also the prevailing one then iirc.)
posted by capricorn at 2:46 PM on February 26, 2021 [3 favorites]


The most useful part of this article for me is the author's admission that she was very unhappy when she was running this blog. And "I was more like a cop than an activist" is the kind of thing you'd read in those same tumblr spaces. The "fan police" are there to make sure you don't write or read the wrong kind of fiction, or draw or look at the wrong kind of art... not because of what it might say about your character / what you do in the shadows, but because the wrong kind of consumption is a crime in itself. (And the discussion about "nuance" comes from the same place too.)

If there is a book, I think it will be a memoir and it will talk about that mindset. You can certainly be doing something that has utility, maybe even a lot of utility, and it can be coming from a dark place and trap you there. Like the Facebook content moderators who have to quit because of the psychic damage they take from only looking at horrible things, forever. This is a mindset of taking something you used to enjoy (celeb culture), and examining it too closely and with the expectation that you'll find something horrible underneath.

To assume good intentions from strangers, that the world is an orderly place, that most of the rich and powerful are not abusing their privileges, is itself a privilege. It's a privilege of the lucky ones. If something terrible has happened in your personal life, it rips away the veil. The truth of the world is ugly. But also, to live in a way that's only focused on the ugliness is a miserable way to live.
posted by subdee at 3:17 PM on February 26, 2021 [3 favorites]


And I think this mindset is difficult to escape... once you are looking for ugliness, you will surely find it! So I think there's the germ of a good book here. And I'm happy for the author that she's found a way out of the pit, even after being so heavily rewarded for her time there.
posted by subdee at 3:22 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


To "assume good intentions from strangers" is not a privilege, it is the core of every humanistic tradition on this planet, as is the goal to offer it in return.
posted by PhineasGage at 3:38 PM on February 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


As I said, on some level the premise of “I’m going to uncover why your fave is bad, why everybody’s fave is bad” just sounds a lot like... the sort of thing a teenager would do to feel iconoclastic. Examining how that impulse might be channeled within the framework provided by a larger political project is sort of interesting, but it would be very possible to overthink what it all says about her mindset.
posted by atoxyl at 3:50 PM on February 26, 2021


Maybe I should change that to "to assume good intentions from celebrities" or even "to assume good intentions from problematic celebrities" then.

The idea that someone who has done something problematic may be acting from ignorance, might be redeemable, it might not be that big of a deal, etc. Compared to the one-strike rule, or the idea that if someone's public actions are that bad, their private actions might be worse: they could be a #metoo celebrity who's been getting away with abuse for years. That's what I mean about the veil and the dark world. What kind of explanation you come to, when someone really has done something worthy of a call-out.

But then like atoxyl said, maybe I'm reading too much into this.
posted by subdee at 3:55 PM on February 26, 2021


To "assume good intentions from strangers" is not a privilege, it is the core of every humanistic tradition on this planet

A humanistic tradition that can't cope with the reality of bad actors being prevalent enough in some scenarios that this approach can be self-destructive is insufficiently robust. How much better my online life became when I released myself from the perceived need to presume that unknown interlocutors were acting in good faith.
posted by praemunire at 4:37 PM on February 26, 2021 [9 favorites]


@MarxInHell: We live in a weird regime: a gerontocracy in which culture is driven by extremely unhappy 17-year-olds.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:40 PM on February 26, 2021 [3 favorites]


The author was 18 at the blog's height, and the last post (not necessarily by the author) was 5 years ago, when the author was 20. Repeating the cycle with her seams pretty counter-productive, especially in light of the discussions up thread about ordinary people not being able to repent and do better.

Aside from the fact that it's entertaining to do so. I mean talk about delicious irony- that's the sort of narrative that her former target audience will lap up.

I mean let's not forget that entertainment is a large portion of online vigilantism; the joy of reading of crimes, the heady rush of self-righteousness, etc.. Any analysis that leaves out how the "it's fun" aspect is primary, and productive results is secondary at best, is incomplete.
posted by happyroach at 6:21 AM on February 27, 2021 [2 favorites]


it's totally fishing for a contract for a memoir.

What's wrong with that? Some of us enjoy that genre.
posted by Bella Donna at 6:42 AM on February 27, 2021


Your Fave Is Problematic - the tumblr in case you guys want to see what kinds of things are considered problematic. It really is mostly women and a grab bag of everything. Compare the post on Amy Lee with the post on Megan Fox, you can't win.
posted by subdee at 12:09 PM on February 27, 2021


« Older "the more elusive aspects of human experience"   |   The Musician Comes First Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments