nostalgebraist:

veronicastraszh:

nostalgebraist:

[…snip, snip, snip…]

I mean.  On the one hand I agree Freddie deBoer has all of these problems.  On the other hand I get this special sort of frustration when people point out these problems, in this kind of blog post, in this writing style, using these sorts of rhetorical techniques, etc. etc. – because it seems to exemplify the thing that I think deBoer is rightfully criticizing?

i think a lot of what deBoer is saying is basically:

The average piece of cultural criticism on the internet is very bad, and otherwise smart people are strangely tolerant of this state of affairs, and the reason probably has something to do with a stock of cached responses that prevent them from realizing some article is bad.  (That “Books All White Men Own” article basically has no good qualities, but by framing it as “all white men” it set up this situation where a bunch of people wanted to circlejerk about how they were sufficiently sophisticated not to make the “not all men!” response.)

And that seems both eminently true and important to me.  When I read deBoer’s posts about this stuff I had this very relieving “my god, exactly” response – this was a problem I’d felt on some level, with all of this progressive clickbait and mediocre blogging I’d seen circled around endlessly on social media, and I’d just assumed no one else saw this problem and so it was probably a non-problem (i.e. a problem with me) but here is a person saying it, in a way that rings very true to me.

And I’d be perfectly open to attacks on deBoer’s position that engage with the actual position – attacks that explain why this kind of material is not as bad as he says, or why it’s bad but that doesn’t matter, or whatever.

But focusing on how deBoer as a person is obnoxious, or humorless, or pretentious, or self-parodically bombastic (I mean, my god, look at this) – all of which is true – is exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to shout “for once, do I get to not care?!”  deBoer is saying: everyone has been celebrating bad, uninsightful writing because it pats them on the back about how they don’t have certain character flaws.  (Ha ha, I own lots of these books and am laughing at myself for it!  I’m one of the self-aware white men!)  And it’d be nice for once to focus on the quality of the content, to say, yeah, this writer is kind of messed-up as a person, maybe, they’re a little bombastic and grating, sure, but do they have insights?

So, to get to the point: the Belle Waring post does not have insights.  it does not say that deBoer is wrong.  What is says is that he is annoying, possibly sexist, that he has character flaws, that he “lectures,” that his “pose” is grating.  And what deBoer is saying, which I think is an insight, is that the progressive blogosphere / clickbait-osphere has been churning out precisely these kinds of critiques well beyond the point of diminishing returns.  Versions of points like “Freddie deBoer has character flaws, owned, Q.E.D. motherfucker” are the sort of thing I feel like I’ve seen 10^9 times in my life and would like to go, I dunno, a week without seeing?  Can I please not care for once?

So, like, if you come in agreeing with deBoer, then Waring’s post is just going to make you say “look, see, this is the kind of shit he’s talking about!“  If you come in disagreeing with deBoer, then, well, I guess Waring’s post probably comes off as like a pretty good series of dunks aimed at an obnoxious prick.  But either way, no one’s mind changes, so … 

(I realize this is not maximally clear, temperate, or sensible.  Sorry.  I’m more worked up about this than I am in possession of clear thoughts about it)

Yeah, I can’t take his critiques so seriously, cuz a lot of this stuff is maybe meant to be a bit shallow. Not everything is high minded all the time, nor do I want someone who expects us to be.

Which, I didn’t really like that one terrible Toast article, but so what?

And on that, from that Kang-DeBoer debate I posted earlier:

DeBoer is arguing with himself. After reading through the list and through the hundreds of comments, I saw scant evidence of the “white male tears” response. What I saw instead, were hundreds of readers who were gleefully trying to add to the joke. It was what The Toast generally has been — a place where the readers can thumb their nose at the establishment, whatever that may be. And while I might agree with deBoer that the joke certainly could have been more subversive and accurate, I also know from years of online content creation that sometimes these sorts of posts are more so that your audience can chum around in the comment section.

And that is what DeBoer doesn’t get.

There are real criticisms to make about how the left has jumped into Twitter rage culture and Internet pile-ons and all of that. So fine. But the left is not alone in that space (she says while #gamergate still lingers on).

Which, this happened. It ain’t just we lefties who cannot handle The Power of Interwebz!

But if a bunch of women get together in a comments section and make jokes about dude-culture –

This is no cultural high point, but it serves a purpose, one that I sense DeBoar is both excluded from and oblivious to – and one wonders if those two facts are causally linked?

Anyway, if you want some better critiques of “outrage culture” and how it hurts the left, I suggest Katherine Cross:

http://quinnae.com/2014/01/03/words-words-words-on-toxicity-and-abuse-in-online-activism/

http://quinnae.com/2014/02/06/the-chapel-perilous-on-the-quiet-narratives-in-the-shadows/

http://feministing.com/2015/04/23/words-for-cutting-why-we-need-to-stop-abusing-the-tone-argument/

In my view, she nails it.

Thanks for the links.

The part of deBoer’s critique that resonates with me isn’t so much the stuff about internet pile-ons per se, it’s about a lack of analysis, particularly analysis of big features of society that go beyond inter-left disputes, particularly analysis drawing on facts the reader might not already know (or “know”).

It seems like the kinds of articles that are getting celebrated (or, at least, talked about) are less and less made up of arguments about that sort of thing, and more and more this sort of hall-of-mirrors stuff where there is no argument, just assertion of stuff the reader probably already agrees with (or is willing to immediately agree with), or sort of … posing in psychological space rather than arguing.

What do I mean by “posing in psychological space”?  Well, consider something like this article.  It’s an all-right article as far as it goes, I guess.  It originally included a link to a tweet which started a long internet argument called “Jacobinghazi.”  Jacobinghazi itself was an argument about the conduct of certain leftist twitter users, started by an offhand remark in an article criticizing a tweet by Aaron Bady in which he referred to Thomas Piketty, among others, as “broconomists.”  In the article itself Amber A'Lee Frost criticizes this sort of use of the “bro” trope.  And, okay, let’s take a step back … 

None of the this has to do with anything concrete.  I mean, you can feel however you wish about how leftists use the word “bro,” but that dispute doesn’t connect in any way to the sorts of things that started all this.  The “bro issue” has nothing to do with the economic issues that Piketty’s book were about.

So what I’m saying is: increasingly, it seems like the things that get passed around, talked about, celebrated, written, flame warred over, etc. are these things that are sufficiently removed from the original political issue that they have no implications whatsoever for that issue.  It may or may not matter for Piketty’s analysis of inequality that is he is or is not a “broconomist” (whatever that is), but it certainly doesn’t matter for Piketty’s analysis of inequality whether it is correct leftist practice or not to criticize people in bro-themed terms; by that point we’ve gone meta enough that the original topic (inequality) is completely unconnected to what we’re talking about.

I want more Piketty, or more “why Piketty is wrong,” and less “should we approve of referring to Piketty as a ‘bro’?”  (Note: this point is about distance, not gender.  If someone were to make an actual feminist critique of Piketty that would fall safely under my “why Piketty is wrong” category.  Instead, what we saw was a single, unexplained tweet about “broconomists” followed by wankery at higher meta-levels.)

It’s not always about this kind of distance; sometimes it’s just a lack of argument, full stop.  Progressive clickbait is full of this.  Everyday Feminism has a worldview, but it won’t explain to you why you should buy that worldview.  It’s hawking a specific, increasingly (!) odd version of feminism (cf.), but it won’t make a case for this, or even admit that it is taking a specific position that not all feminists would agree with.  It just lectures you.

To get around to the point: I think aiming at The Toast was about the worst possible choice deBoer could have made, because yeah, it’s a comedy website, and saying it’s just an excuse for wanky banter invites the response “what did you expect”?  But Jacobin is serious; Everyday Feminism is serious (I think?); and these kinds of things get shared and flame warred over endlessly.  There’s a relevance vacuum and an argument vacuum here.

The problem for me here isn’t tone or anger, it’s the lack of a full connection between the reader, the writer, and the real world.  One gets lectured at with no arguments, or argued at about inside baseball meta-issues that only ~100 people have ever heard of, or whatever.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the guy since before clickbait was even a thing, back when Salon was only as far gone as Slate is now and Slate was still actually trying.

First encountered him through… Dreher? Poulos? Then completely unrelated saw him crossing swords with Sady Doyle back when she was still ENDING SENTENCES IN ALL CAPS.

So if he thought the same writers were worth paying attention to that I did, I thought maybe he was worth keeping an eye on. And his point has been the same, and correct, all this time, that from the irony era to the snark era, no one is actually being earnest about things and it’s a problem.

But, and this is why his style is relevant, the guy’s writing *is the worst goddamn argument* for earnestness I can imagine, implicitly setting up an opposition between taking things seriously and having any sense of playfulness whatsoever. For a guy who studies rhetoric… I’m not saying he has to start imitating *me*, but a little fucking deadpan here and there wouldn’t kill you.

Honestly I think his recent, more hitpiecy stuff is a little better in this regard, maybe venom becomes him. But then you see that post slagging Grantland, all “look at these would-be writers, narcissistically trying to *coin a memorable phrase*” and it’s like dude, COME ON.