\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[\u2026snip, snip, snip\u2026]\n\n
I mean. \u00a0On the one hand I agree Freddie deBoer has all of these problems. \u00a0On 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. \u2013 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. \u00a0(That \u201cBooks All White Men Own\u201d article basically has no good qualities, but by framing it as \u201call\u00a0white men\u201d it set up this situation where a bunch of people wanted to circlejerk about how they were sufficiently sophisticated not to make the \u201cnot all men!\u201d response.)
And that seems both eminently true and important to me. \u00a0When I read deBoer\u2019s posts about this stuff I had this very relieving\u00a0\u201cmy god, exactly\u201d response \u2013 this was a problem I\u2019d felt on some level, with all of this progressive clickbait and mediocre blogging I\u2019d seen circled around endlessly on social media, and I\u2019d 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\u2019d be perfectly open to attacks on deBoer\u2019s position that engage with the actual position \u2013 attacks that explain why this kind of material is not as bad as he says, or why it\u2019s bad but that doesn\u2019t 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) \u2013 all of which is true\u00a0\u2013 is exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to shout\u00a0\u201cfor once, do I get to not care?!\u201d \u00a0deBoer is saying: everyone has been celebrating bad, uninsightful writing because it pats them on the back about how they don\u2019t have certain character flaws. \u00a0(Ha ha, I own lots of these books and am laughing at myself for it! \u00a0I\u2019m one of the self-aware\u00a0white men!) \u00a0And it\u2019d 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\u2019re 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. \u00a0it does not say that deBoer is wrong. \u00a0What is says is that he is annoying, possibly sexist, that he has character flaws, that he \u201clectures,\u201d that his \u201cpose\u201d is grating. \u00a0And what deBoer is saying, which I think is\u00a0an insight, is that the progressive blogosphere / clickbait-osphere has been churning out precisely these kinds of critiques well beyond the point of diminishing returns. \u00a0Versions of points like\u00a0\u201cFreddie deBoer has character flaws, owned, Q.E.D. motherfucker\u201d are the sort of thing I feel like I\u2019ve seen 10^9 times in my life and would like to go, I dunno, a week without seeing? \u00a0Can I please not care for once?
So, like, if you come in agreeing with deBoer, then Waring\u2019s post is just going to make you say\u00a0\u201clook, see, this\u00a0is the kind of shit he\u2019s talking about!\u201c \u00a0If you come in disagreeing with deBoer, then, well, I guess Waring\u2019s post probably comes off as like a pretty good series of dunks aimed at an obnoxious prick. \u00a0But either way, no one\u2019s mind changes, so \u2026\u00a0
(I realize this is not maximally clear, temperate, or sensible. \u00a0Sorry. \u00a0I\u2019m more worked up about this than I am in possession of clear thoughts about it)
Yeah, I can\u2019t 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\u2019t 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 \nthrough the hundreds of comments, I saw scant evidence of the \u201cwhite \nmale tears\u201d response. What I saw instead, were hundreds of readers who \nwere gleefully trying to add to the joke. It was what The Toast generally\n has been\u200a\u2014\u200aa place where the readers can thumb their nose at the \nestablishment, whatever that may be. And while I might agree with deBoer\n that the joke certainly could have been more subversive and accurate, I\n also know from years of online content creation that sometimes these \nsorts of posts are more so that your audience can chum around in the \ncomment section.
And that is what DeBoer doesn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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 \u2013
This is no cultural high point, but it serves a purpose, one that I sense DeBoar is both excluded from and oblivious to \u2013 and one wonders if those two facts are causally linked?
Anyway, if you want some better critiques of \u201coutrage culture\u201d 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\u2019s critique that resonates with me isn\u2019t so much the stuff about internet pile-ons per se, it\u2019s 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 \u201cknow\u201d).
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 \u2026 posing in psychological space rather than arguing.
What do I mean by\u00a0\u201cposing in psychological space\u201d? \u00a0Well, consider something like this article. \u00a0It\u2019s an all-right article as far as it goes, I guess. \u00a0It originally included a link to a tweet which started a long internet argument called\u00a0\u201cJacobinghazi.\u201d \u00a0Jacobinghazi 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\u00a0\u201cbroconomists.\u201d \u00a0In the article itself\u00a0Amber A'Lee Frost criticizes this sort of use of the\u00a0\u201cbro\u201d trope. \u00a0And, okay, let\u2019s take a step back \u2026\u00a0
None of the this has to do with anything concrete. \u00a0I mean, you can feel however you wish about how leftists use the word\u00a0\u201cbro,\u201d but that dispute doesn\u2019t connect in any way to the sorts of things that started all this. \u00a0The\u00a0\u201cbro issue\u201d has nothing to do with the economic issues that Piketty\u2019s book were about.
So what I\u2019m 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. \u00a0It may or may not matter for Piketty\u2019s analysis of inequality that is he is or is not a\u00a0\u201cbroconomist\u201d (whatever that is), but it certainly\u00a0doesn\u2019t matter for Piketty\u2019s analysis of inequality\u00a0whether it is correct leftist practice\u00a0or not to criticize people in bro-themed terms; by that point we\u2019ve gone meta enough that the original topic (inequality) is completely unconnected to what we\u2019re talking about.
I want more Piketty, or more\u00a0\u201cwhy Piketty is wrong,\u201d and less\u00a0\u201cshould we approve of referring to Piketty as a \u2018bro\u2019?\u201d \u00a0(Note: this point is about distance, not gender. \u00a0If someone were to make an actual feminist critique of Piketty that would fall safely under my \u201cwhy Piketty is wrong\u201d category. \u00a0Instead, what we saw was a single, unexplained tweet about\u00a0\u201cbroconomists\u201d followed by wankery at higher meta-levels.)
It\u2019s not always about this kind of distance; sometimes it\u2019s just a lack of argument, full stop. \u00a0Progressive clickbait is full of this. \u00a0Everyday Feminism has a worldview, but it won\u2019t explain to you why you should buy that worldview. \u00a0It\u2019s hawking a specific, increasingly (!) odd version of feminism (cf.), but it won\u2019t make a case for this, or even admit that it is taking a specific position that not all feminists would agree with. \u00a0It 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\u2019s a comedy website, and saying it\u2019s just an excuse for wanky banter invites the response\u00a0\u201cwhat did you expect\u201d? \u00a0But Jacobin is serious; Everyday Feminism is serious (I think?); and these kinds of things get shared and flame warred over endlessly. \u00a0There\u2019s a relevance vacuum and an argument vacuum here.
The problem for me here isn\u2019t tone or anger, it\u2019s the lack of a full connection between the reader, the writer, and the real world. \u00a0One 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\u2019ve 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\u2026 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\u2019s a problem.
But, and this is why his style is relevant, the guy\u2019s 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\u2026 I\u2019m not saying he has to start imitating *me*, but a little fucking deadpan here and there wouldn\u2019t 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 \u201clook at these would-be writers, narcissistically trying to *coin a memorable phrase*\u201d and it\u2019s like dude, COME ON.
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