My frustration is in a different direction: why are you all still visiting these spaces???
I get it when this stuff was new. Social media must have seemed shiny and exciting with endless possibilities. Haven’t we hit the point, though, where it’s obviously never going to be that? It’s always going to be crass and nasty with incentives that don’t encourage the thoughtful politics you’re asking for?
Eventually this starts to resemble hippies frequenting a cowboy bar and protesting their hostile reception and the country music. Once, ok, you wandered into the wrong place. But eventually sympathy is going to run out. Just don’t go.
It's addicting. It's a difficult cycle to break. Much has been written about how the smartphone/social media combo has wrecked people's mental health and how hard it is to turn things around.
Therefore, I think we should be patient and not act so incredulous about it. Would you tell an alcoholic "Just stop drinking! Gawd, I don't understand!!!" or an overweight person "Just eat less! Gawd, I don't understand!!!!!"
It's his living to write about these things. It's low-hanging fruit and we all read it. Maybe we shouldn't, because I unreservedly agree with your main thrust.
So true. And at this point, it’s fairly easy to pick and choose and cultivate a social media hobby that’s fairly non-toxic (like sure, the knitting community has insane drama, but it’s low stakes).
It's a problem of online spaces in general: people are rewarded for acting in an extreme, vulgar, unkind manner in a way they would never be rewarded for offline.
It's less a problem of online spaces in general than it is online spaces which reward this type of behavior (which happens to include basically all social media). Many of the old school online forums had much, much smaller and more manageable versions of these problems: the "I'm not accountable for anything I say because it's online so I'll be an asshole" issue, primarily. But social media engagement algorithms juice up many of the most performative shitty behaviors into monsters that engulf the discourse because of how those algorithms favor outrage, especially on the most emotionally-charged topics.
It has always been startling to me how those who claim to stand for kindness are often the first to dance on the graves of their ideological opponents.
I don't think it is just an interesting insight -- there is something in left wing thought that uses the lexicon of compassion and equity but attracts people who are cruel and sadistic -- I don't think Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot are aberrant figures on the leftist scene.
When I read or hear these radicals espouse their critiques, I ask myself what is their vision of the future they want --it is is generally vague at best -- people who start with cruelty and brutality do not become more kind as they gain power.
I always find it equally amusing and disturbing when I scroll through the social media of people—some quite famous— who posts things like "love is the answer" and "puppy yoga is better than goat yoga" while also posting things like "that fucker should be shotgunned in the face."
Taylor Lorenz glorifies political violence but still wears a KN95 COVID mask. Like, I think it’s ok to admit she’s a mentally unstable person (also a shameless liar which got her fired from WaPo).
People are not innately "nice." We didn't evolve to be (just take a brief tour of history).
We have established institutions to try to overcome our natural tendencies to be cruel and inhuman.......schools, religion, face-to face communities, etc.
And the internet has tossed all of those guardrails into the trash. We can let our natural meanness out without the consequences that curtail them.
Does anyone truly like today's culture more than they did 30 years ago?
I honestly don't even understand the second comment ("Would you press a button that guarantees that you’d die in 2030, but it also promises Joe Biden another 10 years of life? If you say no, you can go FUCK YOURSELF. It’s negative people like you that caused all the epic fail in his prostate"). Is it satirically anti-Biden? Legitimately pro-Biden? Am I just too old to decipher this register?
The pathological online vitriol I’ve received for politely asserting that Biden’s decision to seek a second term and then belatedly drop out of the race was a calamitous act — while also while expressing my genuine desire that he recover — is pure MAGA, albeit from the other end of the the spectrum. Criticism of Biden and the humane, genuine desire for his swift recovery are not mutually exclusive conceits. Tribalism and critical thinking, however, are simply incompatible.
This is just Twitter. Right Twitter is just as bad, if not worse. When we look at the disaster that is 21st-century American politics, Twitter--specifically Twitter, over and above all other social media platforms--with its structural imperatives toward superficiality and performative outrage gets far less of the blame than it deserves for our predicament.
One day, I hope we have the technology to determine what percentage of leftists actually believe in the ideology vs simply want a permission structure to be awful while still holding the moral high ground.
The timing of the cancer diagnosis is just so bizarre to me. I am certainly not a doctor in any manner, but intuition says that if he has advanced colon cancer that metastasized to other organs, that can't have just popped up, right? He was the president until four months ago; he was getting regular medical screenings! So was that just somehow missed? Did nothing feel off to him? (Could he even tell if it did?) Did his physician lie or just not do his job thoroughly or perhaps wildly incompetently?
Read an NYT article this morning with some quotes from an oncologist who said he's had multiple men test positive this way even with a PSA showing normal. Clearly this isn't Biden's case but just having the PSA isn't any guarantee to spotting the cancer early.
And what's the difference anyway? Joe Biden is a private citizen.
But let's imagine that Biden had been the 2024 nominee, and had defeated Donald Trump, and was into his second term when this diagnosis happened. He would either have been treated and served out his term or he would have died in office. In the latter case, the Constitution spells out exactly what must happen, and Kamala Harris would have become president with a minimum of fuss. Sure, it would have been a bit of a disruption, but no more than, I don't know, a president imposing tariffs, then un-imposing them, then reimposing them, then re-unimposing them, all while the stock market swings like a kitchen door.
I think people are concerned more with the cover-up of his mental issues. But now also wondering about this because one doesn't just get this stage of prostate cancer overnight. He's likely had cancer for quite awhile.
In the counterfactual where Biden had won in 2024 despite this health issue being hid, it's not "it would have been a bit of a disruption." We're already finding out all sorts of shit from his own staff who didn't think he was mentally suitable *in the year 2020*.
"YEAH BUT TRUMPF!!!!1." Maybe the reason we're stuck with Trump is all Biden's bad decisions.
Or maybe the reason we are stuck with Trump is because Americans made a really, really bad call. Remember, voters, and not Joe Biden, are in charge of choosing the president.
Many of whom lost trust in the Democrat establishment which seemed to be obviously gaslighting the public about his fitness for office. I think it's unwise to suggest this didn't affect voter behavior.
My frustration is in a different direction: why are you all still visiting these spaces???
I get it when this stuff was new. Social media must have seemed shiny and exciting with endless possibilities. Haven’t we hit the point, though, where it’s obviously never going to be that? It’s always going to be crass and nasty with incentives that don’t encourage the thoughtful politics you’re asking for?
Eventually this starts to resemble hippies frequenting a cowboy bar and protesting their hostile reception and the country music. Once, ok, you wandered into the wrong place. But eventually sympathy is going to run out. Just don’t go.
It's addicting. It's a difficult cycle to break. Much has been written about how the smartphone/social media combo has wrecked people's mental health and how hard it is to turn things around.
Therefore, I think we should be patient and not act so incredulous about it. Would you tell an alcoholic "Just stop drinking! Gawd, I don't understand!!!" or an overweight person "Just eat less! Gawd, I don't understand!!!!!"
The only way to win is not to play, etc
It's his living to write about these things. It's low-hanging fruit and we all read it. Maybe we shouldn't, because I unreservedly agree with your main thrust.
So true. And at this point, it’s fairly easy to pick and choose and cultivate a social media hobby that’s fairly non-toxic (like sure, the knitting community has insane drama, but it’s low stakes).
It's a problem of online spaces in general: people are rewarded for acting in an extreme, vulgar, unkind manner in a way they would never be rewarded for offline.
The fact that these are people in their 40s rather than adolescents is the most shocking thing to me. Good lord, grow up.
It's less a problem of online spaces in general than it is online spaces which reward this type of behavior (which happens to include basically all social media). Many of the old school online forums had much, much smaller and more manageable versions of these problems: the "I'm not accountable for anything I say because it's online so I'll be an asshole" issue, primarily. But social media engagement algorithms juice up many of the most performative shitty behaviors into monsters that engulf the discourse because of how those algorithms favor outrage, especially on the most emotionally-charged topics.
It has always been startling to me how those who claim to stand for kindness are often the first to dance on the graves of their ideological opponents.
Yeah my phrase for a certain strain of hypocrisy that has dominated left wing spaces over the last 10 years or so is
"SHOW SOME FUCKING EMPATHY YOU HORRIBLE PIECE OF WORTHLESS SHIT"
Followed by: “why aren’t these racist knuckle dragging shit eaters not voting for us?”
LMAO. I have to admit that train of thought has crossed my mind too many times...yikes!
I don't think it is just an interesting insight -- there is something in left wing thought that uses the lexicon of compassion and equity but attracts people who are cruel and sadistic -- I don't think Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot are aberrant figures on the leftist scene.
When I read or hear these radicals espouse their critiques, I ask myself what is their vision of the future they want --it is is generally vague at best -- people who start with cruelty and brutality do not become more kind as they gain power.
"Hahahaha go drink pig semen you bootlicking shitbag....
Also, don't forget to be kind!"
-- The Online Left
I always find it equally amusing and disturbing when I scroll through the social media of people—some quite famous— who posts things like "love is the answer" and "puppy yoga is better than goat yoga" while also posting things like "that fucker should be shotgunned in the face."
I once saw Ana Valens (of the breeding facility tweets) retweet “abolish the police” and a tweet praising an FBI investigation right after each other.
Yeah, the leftist praise of the FBI cracked me up.
I hope this isn't "mean," but I would venture a guess that Taylor Lorenz is no longer a friend of yours.
Yeah, Jesse can be friends with whoever he wants. I'm certainly not in a position to judge.
All I'll say is that if a friend of mine behaved like Lorenz and refused to stop, that would become an ex-friend.
I’m so curious what dirt Taylor Lorenz has on Jesse
Taylor Lorenz glorifies political violence but still wears a KN95 COVID mask. Like, I think it’s ok to admit she’s a mentally unstable person (also a shameless liar which got her fired from WaPo).
At the very least she certainly plays one on the internet
People are not innately "nice." We didn't evolve to be (just take a brief tour of history).
We have established institutions to try to overcome our natural tendencies to be cruel and inhuman.......schools, religion, face-to face communities, etc.
And the internet has tossed all of those guardrails into the trash. We can let our natural meanness out without the consequences that curtail them.
Does anyone truly like today's culture more than they did 30 years ago?
I honestly don't even understand the second comment ("Would you press a button that guarantees that you’d die in 2030, but it also promises Joe Biden another 10 years of life? If you say no, you can go FUCK YOURSELF. It’s negative people like you that caused all the epic fail in his prostate"). Is it satirically anti-Biden? Legitimately pro-Biden? Am I just too old to decipher this register?
I’m also confused
Yeah same. Seems like it must be a reference to something but my Googling is failing me.
LOVE THIS! Pious sadism is the bane of the social justice Left and has been for a long time.
It’s pretty telling that Lorenz didn’t actually link to the article she screencapped.
The pathological online vitriol I’ve received for politely asserting that Biden’s decision to seek a second term and then belatedly drop out of the race was a calamitous act — while also while expressing my genuine desire that he recover — is pure MAGA, albeit from the other end of the the spectrum. Criticism of Biden and the humane, genuine desire for his swift recovery are not mutually exclusive conceits. Tribalism and critical thinking, however, are simply incompatible.
To be fair, there are many that would argue Taylor should rot in hell and rest in piss because of what she’s done.
I agree more civility should occur online, but it’s going to take not giving oxygen to people like her.
This is just Twitter. Right Twitter is just as bad, if not worse. When we look at the disaster that is 21st-century American politics, Twitter--specifically Twitter, over and above all other social media platforms--with its structural imperatives toward superficiality and performative outrage gets far less of the blame than it deserves for our predicament.
One day, I hope we have the technology to determine what percentage of leftists actually believe in the ideology vs simply want a permission structure to be awful while still holding the moral high ground.
The timing of the cancer diagnosis is just so bizarre to me. I am certainly not a doctor in any manner, but intuition says that if he has advanced colon cancer that metastasized to other organs, that can't have just popped up, right? He was the president until four months ago; he was getting regular medical screenings! So was that just somehow missed? Did nothing feel off to him? (Could he even tell if it did?) Did his physician lie or just not do his job thoroughly or perhaps wildly incompetently?
Prostate cancer. His last PSA check was in 2014 (they don’t recommend them after 70). He got symptoms recently, went to doctor and was diagnosed.
Read an NYT article this morning with some quotes from an oncologist who said he's had multiple men test positive this way even with a PSA showing normal. Clearly this isn't Biden's case but just having the PSA isn't any guarantee to spotting the cancer early.
And what's the difference anyway? Joe Biden is a private citizen.
But let's imagine that Biden had been the 2024 nominee, and had defeated Donald Trump, and was into his second term when this diagnosis happened. He would either have been treated and served out his term or he would have died in office. In the latter case, the Constitution spells out exactly what must happen, and Kamala Harris would have become president with a minimum of fuss. Sure, it would have been a bit of a disruption, but no more than, I don't know, a president imposing tariffs, then un-imposing them, then reimposing them, then re-unimposing them, all while the stock market swings like a kitchen door.
No, people genuinely care about the health of their presidents.
If Biden were the president, sure, I could see the public interest. He's not.
I think people are concerned more with the cover-up of his mental issues. But now also wondering about this because one doesn't just get this stage of prostate cancer overnight. He's likely had cancer for quite awhile.
In the counterfactual where Biden had won in 2024 despite this health issue being hid, it's not "it would have been a bit of a disruption." We're already finding out all sorts of shit from his own staff who didn't think he was mentally suitable *in the year 2020*.
"YEAH BUT TRUMPF!!!!1." Maybe the reason we're stuck with Trump is all Biden's bad decisions.
Or maybe the reason we are stuck with Trump is because Americans made a really, really bad call. Remember, voters, and not Joe Biden, are in charge of choosing the president.
Many of whom lost trust in the Democrat establishment which seemed to be obviously gaslighting the public about his fitness for office. I think it's unwise to suggest this didn't affect voter behavior.
If a presidential candidate is terminally ill, and that is known, it should be disclosed.