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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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I have a really big issue with people who say it's wrong, or "not helpful," to have an emotional response. Especially while under attack.

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I think Apple Cider already covered some of the complaints people have with Wu, and I also really recommend following Lana Polansky and Zolani Stewart (as always) who have been saying good things about this yesterday on Twitter. My take on it is essentially that, beyond the occasional ableism that creeps up and some questionable moves (which probably aren't worth getting into if you can't distinguish clearly that it's more than a personal dislike for her), the problem I and many others have with her feminism is that it's the kind of lean-in, trickle-down thing that doesn't address the issues we see as most pressing. Like, I get the impression that she sees it primarily as a way of reaching new markets that were previously ignored (for admittedly sexist reasons). Which is fine, in a sense, but then also when you want to be capitalism's human face like that, you become partly complicit in the havoc it continues to wreak.

 

A lot of people are fundamentally doubtful, for good reason (I think), of anything that argues for minimal change within the system instead of challenging its constraints and workings. Laurie Penny (who I also disagree with on a lot of things) has this line in Unspeakable Things where she criticizes a certain brand of recent feminism that has decided that the biggest issue women face today is the glass ceiling while the real problem is, in her words, not that there aren't enough women in boardrooms, but that there are altogether too many boardrooms, and none of them are on fire.

 

Obviously none of this is to say that Wu deserves harassment or needs to be ostracized, but it's entirely people's prerogative whether they want to continue to listen to somebody with those priorities, so I don't get the complaints about "public unfollowings" entirely. The complaints about people getting mad at her for refusing to be the symbol they wanted to make out of her? Somewhat.

 

 

It's a weird thing and it just emphasizes that Twitter can be an echo chamber that doesn't accomplish very much.

 

I hear this suggested casually all the time and I can't say I've ever found it particularly convincing, in part because I've personally learned so much listening to rad folk rant about things on Twitter. And the basis for calling it an echo chamber is what, exactly? That you can set it up in such a way as to surround yourself only with like-minded individuals and try to block negative feedback? Like, how is that different from us selectively choosing friends and interpreting input since basically forever?

 

Maybe I'm not the best of examples since I have some depression and anxiety issues (or maybe I'm just the right example because of that) but I don't dig the unchallenged assumption that if you surround yourself with people who share your views you're on the fast track to becoming some arrogant douche. Like, I can surround myself exclusively with that and still feel like a complete waste of space, honestly. Don't need help to second-guess myself.

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I hear this suggested casually all the time and I can't say I've ever found it particularly convincing, in part because I've personally learned so much listening to rad folk rant about things on Twitter. And the basis for calling it an echo chamber is what, exactly? That you can set it up in such a way as to surround yourself only with like-minded individuals and try to block negative feedback? Like, how is that different from us selectively choosing friends and interpreting input since basically forever?

 

I don't think Twitter in itself is necessarily that chamber, but the way we interact with it is.  What is trending at any given moment, or how many likes something got, or how much attention something garnered are now considered news stories.  Someone says something, someone else retweets it, someone else shares it, someone else posts about it on facebook, and very quickly the discussion goes from being about a topic to discussion about the discussion of said topic.  You can go on Twitter, or any social media platform, post anything from the mundane to the inflammatory, get some retweets, and feel vindicated in your actions.  I think the fact that twitter makes all of this so easy, and broken up into easily digestible chunks is what makes it seem like something more than it is.

By your own admission Twitter is a tool you like to use when people are ranting about things with which you agree, and it is no different for anyone else.  You're correct in pointing out it is effectively the same as choosing your friends in the real world, but it happens so much more often, faster, and generally to a greater degree online.  When your social circle includes 20 people it seems like just idle conversation, but when it includes 20,000 it seems like a movement.

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I really don't know what to do with Brianna. I've been tentatively on board with her up until this point but definitely had the problems with her that people have already brought up.

 

I'm so not interested in any "greater good" bullshit here. A "truce" where Wardell does not apologise for his actions, denounce GG, or amend his behaviour has zero meaning. A "greater good" literally does not exist. I really don't get Brianna's angle with this. She'll probably spend 30 minutes talking about this on her podcast next week (let's be honest Isomeric is really just the Brianna Wu Podcast) so I'll listen to her try to explain herself, but I think I'm just done with caring about anything she has to say at this point. If she can explain herself, apologise to the people who's issues she has hand-waved and show that she has improved then fine, but I don't see that happening.

 

I take issue with the idea that Feminism should be this united front against the primary problem of male chauvinists. Passing over other marginal folk just so major white Feminists can get a win against some big male douchegargler seems like a hollow victory to me. At the same time personally calling out people on Twitter is extremely unproductive, especially when the person is as targeted as Brianna. 

 

The echo-chamber complaint of Twitter is really weird to me as well. People will say that and/or that Twitter is a dumpster fire of drama and hostility. Both are kinda true, but I don't know what people expect other than just nobody using Twitter. It's not an RSS feed, it's a social media platform. I mean don't we all surround our personal life and spend time with people we mostly agree with? People you follow on Twitter are not your friends, but I'm not going to follow people I strongly disagree with just for some "both sides" wank. I just don't usually get along with people that I'm just going to argue with about politics all the time, and I don't know why I am supposed to feel bad about that.

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My earlier comment, and concern to some extent, is the dogpiling that goes on.  Yes, people should be able to criticize feminists, including Wu.  But my impression over the coffee thing is that the dam broke and people's pent up frustrations or issues with her all got dumped that day, which is not productive.  It's like when you're having an argument with someone, and the single issue you were arguing about suddenly becomes a litany of all the wrongs you've caused each other over the last year. 

 

That seems to be a thing that happens too often, when the last straw is placed and it becomes open season an airing all the complaints, criticisms or issues people have had with a specific person. 

 

So it's not so much criticizing her decisions in this case, but my perception that people used it as a diving board for a bunch of other stuff. 

 

Are there any other metaphors I can cram into this post?

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It's a personal thing, but the echo chamber claim always makes me a bit uneasy. I just think it's an unhelpful generalization that doesn't account for nuance in either how people use the platform or how they interpret social stuff, which makes me think that I'm about to be hit with some "both sides" guff, even though that doesn't necessarily happen.

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My earlier comment, and concern to some extent, is the dogpiling that goes on.  Yes, people should be able to criticize feminists, including Wu.  But my impression over the coffee thing is that the dam broke and people's pent up frustrations or issues with her all got dumped that day, which is not productive.  It's like when you're having an argument with someone, and the single issue you were arguing about suddenly becomes a litany of all the wrongs you've caused each other over the last year. 

 

That seems to be a thing that happens too often, when the last straw is placed and it becomes open season an airing all the complaints, criticisms or issues people have had with a specific person. 

 

So it's not so much criticizing her decisions in this case, but my perception that people used it as a diving board for a bunch of other stuff. 

 

Are there any other metaphors I can cram into this post?

 

Yeah I agree with this which is why I feel conflicted about it. I'm not going to follow her, as if she would give a shit anyway, but as to what happens now with her position in the community is a really tricky issue.

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I have a really big issue with people who say it's wrong, or "not helpful," to have an emotional response. Especially while under attack.

 

Yeah crucifying someone for having an emotional response is stupid, sorry. Even with this, looking back Brianna was on the whole relatively civil and positive attitude, especially compared to the reactions she got.

 

But I don't see how justifying an action because of its emotional context makes it any more constructive. Idk. I really don't want to focus on this kind of infraction, since on the whole the other side is far worse.

 

Somehow I came across as a GG apologist in the last page. I wasn't trying to say "both sides are at fault" because clearly, objectively, GG started and perpetuated this, I was just trying to say that the sarcasm and nerd jokes on twitter come across as shitty. 

 

I don't think Twitter in itself is necessarily that chamber, but the way we interact with it is.  What is trending at any given moment, or how many likes something got, or how much attention something garnered are now considered news stories.  Someone says something, someone else retweets it, someone else shares it, someone else posts about it on facebook, and very quickly the discussion goes from being about a topic to discussion about the discussion of said topic.  You can go on Twitter, or any social media platform, post anything from the mundane to the inflammatory, get some retweets, and feel vindicated in your actions.  I think the fact that twitter makes all of this so easy, and broken up into easily digestible chunks is what makes it seem like something more than it is.

 

It's a personal thing, but the echo chamber claim always makes me a bit uneasy. I just think it's an unhelpful generalization that doesn't account for nuance in either how people use the platform or how they interpret social stuff, which makes me think that I'm about to be hit with some "both sides" guff, even though that doesn't necessarily happen.

 

Yeah a lot of situations you see of people having constructive conversation over twitter doesn't seem to be in the spirit of twitter, which is about passing things around, parroting things in limited context, and silently signalling approval. It's not that it makes people into arrogant narrow minded jerks because you're only surrounded by people who agree with you, it's that a big part of the interactions in twitter (retweet, favorite) constitute your input more than actual conversation does. Also it's not that this thing is local to twitter, it's that this kind of interaction is amplified. The echo chamber thing doesn't come from only associating with people you agree with, it's how you signal approval in the unnuanced, slightly blind way (there's no "down thumb" or "i don't really agree with all of this but it's all for a greater good" on twitter)

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I think the major airing sessions would happen less frequently if spaces were more conducive to being able to talk about little stuff without people getting feathers ruffled about it. I've really, really not liked Brianna's personality or politics over the past year but it's really hard to say negative things about someone publicly without getting backlash about it, especially if someone is popular. Hence backchanneling, private discussions, generally just being polite and keeping your head down. Because not liking and significant disagreement tends to require accumulation of the former to justify the latter. I dislike a lot of people or dislike specific things they do, everything coming out about Wu is probably because it was really hard to feel like you could say something prior to this (which some people did). 

 

As for the echo chamber thing, my experiences on Twitter have not really been that, there's so many people with different viewpoints that have made my life more enriched/open, but none of them are bigots or assholes however. I'm decently sure some people DO use it as an echo chamber but that's not the sum total of what it can be used for. But then again, I really do strive for nuance and discussion and generally being critical of anything that I put forward. 

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I think the major airing sessions would happen less frequently if spaces were more conducive to being able to talk about little stuff without people getting feathers ruffled about it. I've really, really not liked Brianna's personality or politics over the past year but it's really hard to say negative things about someone publicly without getting backlash about it, especially if someone is popular. Hence backchanneling, private discussions, generally just being polite and keeping your head down. Because not liking and significant disagreement tends to require accumulation of the former to justify the latter. I dislike a lot of people or dislike specific things they do, everything coming out about Wu is probably because it was really hard to feel like you could say something prior to this (which some people did).

 

I definitely agree on this, the buildup is neither healthy nor useful, and I recognize that there there aren't necessarily good ways to persistently vent or criticize with having undesirable or unintended consequences.  But it's still why I have personal discomfort with how things like this play out. 

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Sorry, I just want to clarify some of the stuff I was saying earlier. I'm not trying to equate transphobic harassment with jokes about GamerGate. That was not my intention. I was trying to explain that sometimes I (and others) take this idea of not criticizing women because of latent sexism too far and it ends up creating a culture where you can't say anything negative about a woman. A lot of women have behaved poorly during this fiasco, no where near what the GamerGate people have done, but still worthy of criticism.

Re: Twitter as an echo chamber. The difference between friends and Twitter is that you're way more likely to have a nuanced conversation with a friend than with a relatively unknown acquaintance on Twitter. Twitter is really great for shooting off sound bytes that get faved and retweeted from all the right people, but would be just empty words if said in an actual conversation. Performative point scoring is the most annoying part of Twitter, mostly because it's so predictable. That's what I meant when I was brining up similar rhetorical devices. Everyone plays to their own crowd and gets the positive feedback they need to just continue playing to the crowd.

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I have great sympathy for Brianna Wu for the harassment that she endured, and I in no way believe that she engineered or orchestrated any of it.  I'd like to consider myself an ally to those harassed by GGers. Perhaps it is my privilege as a white dude to do so, but I've been trying to purge my day-to-day experiences of things to do with GG.  Part of this included unfollowing Wu on Twitter.  Her experiences are valid and she has constructive things to say, but I found that it was getting outnumbered by the amount of stuff she'd post that was just straight-up toxic.  

 

I found that she was attempting to inject herself into every space, every conversation, and it seemed like she was just picking fights every chance she got.  I don't want to get into tone policing at all, and obviously she didn't invite any of her own harassment, but she was pretty obnoxious sometimes.  I also wasn't crazy about how she purported to speak for all women in tech everywhere.  Now, obviously not being a woman, I can't tell if her approach was actually appreciated and she was a good representative, but I struggled to accept that she was at face value.

 

I wish her the best and hope that her game sales make her a millionaire, but I just can't have her polluting my feed like that, not when there are, in my opinion, better and more measured voices to be heard.

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I think this all gets around to this like unfortunate but very human trait of tribalism where criticism is only well received if the person giving the criticism comes from "within" the tribe as opposed to an outsider. Part of the whole explosion of gamergate is this perception that people like Anita, etc. that are raising issues about gender equality and representation in games are somehow outsiders attacking the medium, and they react with hostility. Yet if they looked at some reddit gaming thread where women talked about the difficulties with online harassment (at least a lot of them) would sympathize.

 

Similarly, my in-laws are deeply religious, and I definitely am not. Sometimes my mother-in-law will complain about the hypocrisies of people that she attends church with, and all the awful jostling for social power that goes on. But if I was to just complain about Christian hypocrisy (since I am a godless San Franciscan) that would, unsurprisingly, be less well received.

 

With feminism it sometimes feels like if you are going to criticize a woman publicly, you need to have the right feminist credentials. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, we all have internalized sexism so it is always worth pausing to consider where a type of disagreement, criticism, or perception is coming from. But it is another extension of that kind of tribalism.

 

Another big problem I have though with the rhetoric with social issues is that those of us with left-wing beliefs all broadly agree that things like racism, sexism, etc. are all rooted in deep structures of how society operates. That is, this kind of discrimination isn't the result of some personality defect, but the result of much broader social forces that influence us. Despite that, we seem to fall back on this sort of very American attitude of trying to attack the problem at some individual level. Like, here we are discussing this one woman, and what her actions mean, and whether they are right and wrong, and like it doesn't have anything to do with anything.

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Re: Twitter as an echo chamber. The difference between friends and Twitter is that you're way more likely to have a nuanced conversation with a friend than with a relatively unknown acquaintance on Twitter. Twitter is really great for shooting off sound bytes that get faved and retweeted from all the right people, but would be just empty words if said in an actual conversation. Performative point scoring is the most annoying part of Twitter, mostly because it's so predictable. That's what I meant when I was brining up similar rhetorical devices. Everyone plays to their own crowd and gets the positive feedback they need to just continue playing to the crowd.

 

I just want to pop back in to say that this is a great elaboration on my basic point. I wasn't trying to be dismissive, but I do feel that people massively overestimate Twitter's usefulness in presenting forums, platforms and avenues of interaction. Communication is complex enough in this medium right now, where we have room to expand our points. Twitter just doesn't scale well at all. It's incredibly easy to misread a tweet (as it is a forum post or an email, incidentally). Twitter is fantastic for many reasons, but its efficacy as a political tool or mode of communication is extremely limited. If we disagree, the chances you're going to convince me with 140 characters are slim, and multiple tweets (or worse, twitlongers) are just frustrating. So "activism" on twitter mostly becomes a case of letting the people you agree with know something happened that upset you, and encouraging them all to be really upset just as you are.

 

Again, I am really not trying to trivialize positive experiences people here have had with twitter. However, it's very easy (especially for people in the video game world, whether as enthusiasts, creators, writers, what have you, who use twitter A LOT) to forget that a lot of people DON'T use twitter and don't much care for it or know much about it beyond newspapers and television citing it far too often.

 

Anyway, to get back to (or a bit closer to) the point, we have a case where Brianna Wu has been horrifically abused by idiots on twitter and now recently she's being turned on by people upset with her political position on having coffee with a guy who is probably a bit of an idiot and then being defended by others and then... My use of the term "echo chamber" referred to the coexistence of lots of sectioned off discrete conversations that occasionally clash together, which is what I see happening. I mean, Christ... I really don't have an opinion about who Brianna Wu has coffee with, you know?

 

 

Despite that, we seem to fall back on this sort of very American attitude of trying to attack the problem at some individual level. Like, here we are discussing this one woman, and what her actions mean, and whether they are right and wrong, and like it doesn't have anything to do with anything.

 

So yeah. This. Though I will say that you shouldn't do the American thing and beat yourself up for being American. This attitude is common in many places. We should also get away from the left-right thing; apart from the fact that distinction is incredibly loaded in the US, it's more of an extremist jerk/people with strong opinions/open minded moderates/leave Irishjohn alone he wants his football and his cat videos spectrum.

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Yeah a lot of situations you see of people having constructive conversation over twitter doesn't seem to be in the spirit of twitter, which is about passing things around, parroting things in limited context, and silently signalling approval. It's not that it makes people into arrogant narrow minded jerks because you're only surrounded by people who agree with you, it's that a big part of the interactions in twitter (retweet, favorite) constitute your input more than actual conversation does. Also it's not that this thing is local to twitter, it's that this kind of interaction is amplified. The echo chamber thing doesn't come from only associating with people you agree with, it's how you signal approval in the unnuanced, slightly blind way (there's no "down thumb" or "i don't really agree with all of this but it's all for a greater good" on twitter)

 

Nailed it, also unless your goal is explicitly widening your own view, you are most likely to end up in an echo chamber in some way anyways.  Like this community is very echo-chamber-like, and I don't mean that in a bad way (usually 'echo-chamber' is used to denote that something is bit mindless but no I don't think like-minded people automatically become mindless... they just become mindful in specific ways) either.  Just that when you have people voluntarily joining up social group with zero entry-exit cost, well, you are going to go with people you like more (AKA, ppl who you agree with).

 

I don't know if you guys have seen those particular tweets about how if the person gets X number of retweets (usually over 100k), they were promised to get something (free A in a class) and those get like... absurdly high number of retweets.  My point is, tweeter is for entertainment or fast notification that links to something more elaborately stated.  So please don't get too boiled up with twitter drama.

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Forums absolutely enforce more agreement than Twitter, I've found. Honestly, if you really want to scale it up, a lot of things we ascribe to Twitter, yes, performative, but also would count as echo chambering, as many people have stated. I think certain terms get used more reductively than they used to, including echo chamber. I think it also underlies a belief that Twitter HAS to be a free-for-all on your time versus curation. 

 

Though admittedly, I do also hate some of the performative aspects myself, but it is what the service sort of constructs when you have to say things in 140 character bursts, even with threading. If you are one person saying something, unless it's part of a conversation, it's very easy to just say things into the void. 

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I much prefer Twitter as a place to get little snippets of cool people's lives that they voluntarily share. Usually friends.

I kind of hate what Twitter has become (and was probably destined to become from the very beginning).

 

This is about ethics.

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I don't do twitter. I know I should, because it's a great way to advertise commissions and stuff, but I think it's more trouble than it's worth. On top of Twitter's existing issues with not being condusive to discussion and having a very obvious harassment problem, it's way too easy to make an idiot out of yourself. Corporate twitters in particular are the worst. Remember when DiGiorno tried to use a hashtag about domestic abuse as a way to sell pizza? Ugh.

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See, the social media people use that I cannot even go near is Facebook. I had a Facebook once, never again. Horrible.

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Oh I hate Facebook far more than I hate Twitter. Twitter is still usable, at least, even if it's kind of a hot mess.

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I also don't use Facebook. I don't even have a cell phone. Tumblr is like my one thing.

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I mess with twitter to try and make people chuckle, but I don't like the way it functions for what it seems to be used best for (giving voice to underrepresented groups (which i  think is more contingent on it being phone based). I hate the way names eat up the already tiny character allotment, and if I reply to somebody I see my reply not in the original greater thread. I like forums like these.

 

This post is like 3 tweets worth of chars! 

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I mess with twitter to try and make people chuckle, but I don't like the way it functions for what it seems to be used best for (giving voice to underrepresented groups (which i  think is more contingent on it being phone based). I hate the way names eat up the already tiny character allotment, and if I reply to somebody I see my reply not in the original greater thread. I like forums like these.

 

This post is like 3 tweets worth of chars! 

 

Those seem like valid reasons not to like Twitter. OTOH, it also feels worth noting that the underrepresented groups who use it tend to be more concerned about its failure to police abuse and harassment than its character limit. I think the former is a bug, whereas the latter is presented as a feature. GG's presence on Twitter is partly because it's taken a hard "just a platform" line on the conversation, but also because it's a place - in most cases, the only place - where people can be mobbed and harassed directly.

 

(Incidentally, Brianna Wu reportedly met Katherine Cross for coffee, Cross pointed out that if she was going to position herself as a leading feminist in games she really ought to be more careful about what she did with that brand, and Wu took that on board. So, yeah. People make mistakes, other people pick them up, people talk about stuff. The system, broadly, works.)

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