The unfortunate result of that dynamic is that a new media order that should be teeming with more vibrant viewpoints than ever is at risk of calcifying into a staid landscape, where original thought is muffled by the wet blanket of political correctness. “There’s a funny, recurring instinct on the Internet now that if you don’t agree with something someone’s written, that it’s not fair or relevant and that it shouldn’t exist,” Jezebel editor Emma Carmichael said recently on the Longform Podcast. “Online feminism has more and more rules lately.” After editing out all of the statements that could be perceived, no matter how crudely, as biased or insensitive, “There are only so many things you can say.“ Even Suey Park, the creator of #CancelColbert who has drummed up Twitter outrage and caught her own backlash many times over, appears to be questioning the social media status quo. “I myself have mistaken pile-ons for justice when oftentimes there was a small miscommunication. I would assume the worse of everyone,” she tweeted this month. “But twitter can give you tunnel vision. It’s fickle, fast-moving, and full of miscommunication and fabrications. It can be self-destructive.”

Amanda Hess, “The Rigid Conventions of Identity Outrage”

I’ve been on the internet long enough now to have seen this cycle happen many times: someone (usually someone young) gains a reputation and attention for searching out and identifying terrible things, and writing cogently about why they are terrible. They do this for several years; it becomes a profession, or at least a dedicated amateur pursuit. Then, at some point, they talk about how this practice of publicly identifying and analyzing terrible things maybe goes too far sometimes. 

The conclusion we should take from any individual instance of “Twitter goes too far sometimes” probably shouldn’t be “internet outrage is about to chill out more.” People have been saying this for years, but the chill-out hasn’t happened. Instead, we should conclude that 1) people who feel comfortable and right generating internet outrage tend to lose this feeling over time, and 2) there will always be new people to replace them.

Or, to put it another way: the internet pays the young to generate outrage.

It’s not always the young, of course. But the young can more convincingly perform the sort of pure anger that online audiences most respond to, plus they have more time to find things and tweet about them and respond to tweets, etc. And the practitioners don’t always end up having doubts about it. But I think generally they do.

Which means we have a free rider problem. Online activism can have demonstrably positive effects that benefit everyone. But I gain those benefits regardless of what I do. I don’t have to do the hard work of sifting through the oceans of public statements out there to find the things that can really make a difference, if properly publicized. 

If that hard work is fairly distributed (you do the work on Sterling, then I’ll take Cosby while you rest up), it’s efficient. But we know it’s not. We know the work is done disproportionately by the young, or at least those new to the game. And we know that doing this work has negative effects on the people doing it. But we rely on that labor to bring us the positive effects, whether that effect is “real social change” or “seeing someone I dislike looking foolish.”

This work seems to take more of your self than traditional reporting does. For one, the writer’s identity is often part of the vector driving the outrage, and so the writer’s identity then becomes part of the argument, something that can be debated above and beyond the case they’re making. For another, much of the work is done outside any official organ; maybe a writer gets things started with a piece on The Root, but the argument develops through the writer’s personal Twitter account, which is often understood as a proxy for your identity. This professional requirement that your private self be part of the work means that the writer’s identity is there on the table alongside their actions as a member of the media. This seems like something that, prior to social media, journalism did not systematically ask of its workers. And it asks this disproportionately of people on the outrage beat, who have less power to protest that particular condition.

I’m not sure what to do about that; I’m not even sure if it’s bad or not. (Certainly many of the people on the outrage beat would have seen interpretations of their work tied to their identity before social media, too.) But I think when you hear people who have been laboring on the internet for years talk about how maybe it’s not perfect, the conclusion shouldn’t be that the internet isn’t structured the right way. It’s that the labor isn’t structured the right way.

(via barthel)

- Mike Barthel, 12/19/2014