Identity culture, echo chambers, and call-out culture

[Safe-Keeper]

So a few days ago I came across a post on Instagram about a teenage girl who had made an inflammatory post on the same platform about how she didn't care about George Floyd's death, that if he didn't want to get killed he shouldn't have broken the law, and that nothing anyone told her would change her mind. Then she posted some kind of "MAGA" remark. Someone responded angrily and she let slip she had been admitted to a certain place of higher education. Someone contacted said institution and they ended up deciding not to admit her. She also of course probably received lots of angry direct messages.

I don't want to post a link to the story because I don't want the thread to revolve around that particular incident -- it's meant only as an example, or an illustration. Call-out culture, and campaigns to punish, or "cancel" dissenting voices (campaigning hard to get events and speeches involving them cancelled) has become endemic online, as have echo chambers where anyone who disagrees is scolded and kicked out, and this idea that only the members of a certain in-group is even entitled to mention or discuss a given topic, be it the plight of African-Americans, or transgender rights.

I've discussed all kinds of skepticism topics for years and years, from belief in UFOs and supernatural creatures to 9/11 edgelords and antivaxxers. One of the things I've come across when discussing antivax in Norway is a certain kind of... sub-culture of antivaxxer trolls who will harrass and try to sabotage the lives of particularly outspoken people who disagree with them. They will send them hateful messages, carry out smear campaigns, often trying to paint them as bullies or even more horrible things like pedophiles, and, call their employers to try to sabotage their careers. I always considered the latter a particularly vile tactic, and it's come to be something I associate with trolls with no scrouples.

Now, however, calling out, and punishing people for forbidden opinions, or even bad jokes, seems to be becoming more and more common. Not something done only by knuckle-dragging Internet trolls, but by more and more oh so cool and woke Internet activists on anything from LGBTQ+ to BLM supporters. The pattern seems to be that they stay in echo chambers for too long, and/or experience events in society that makes them angry (often very, very rightfully so, let's be honest), and they end up interpreting statements in a far worse way than they were intended, deciding that anyone not in their in-group can't understand or relate to what they're going through or have a qualified opinion, and venting their mounting anger on random people online who are discovered and highlighted by particularly influential individuals. Oh, and obsessing over insignificant, minor details like someone using the wrong word or something in an otherwise innocent post or conversation.

The pattern is pretty clear and worrying: if you meet someone with the wrong views, they're not to be reasoned with or simply ignored, they are to be shamed, shunned, harrassed, and punished. There is no live and let live, or reasoned debates with facts, just us-versus-them. Anyone opining in the thread about the Instagram post I mentioned earlier were told they "supported racism", or for that matter that they had no right to have an opinion in the first place, because of their skin colour. Starting posts with disclaimers like "I hate Trump with a passion, but..." seems more important than ever in this age of emotion and polarisation.

So... what do we do about this, and, if we take a step back from the anecdotes, how big and prevalent a problem is this really? I tried telling them that all of us have views that someone out there finds horrific, and that all of us have made off-colour jokes, or posts we didn't think through properly, or statements in real life or online in an "edgy", provocative manner, and that we can't just go around punishing whoever says something we don't like or agree with. Don't think that made any difference with any of them.

I tried a "how would you like it if it happened to you" approach, pointing out that this probably just creates more vindictiveness and polarisation, and quite possibly more trumpkins, and a stronger idea of "radical triggered libs", but I don't know if that had much of an effect either.

I considered sending a supportive message to the girl in question, telling her that I in no way condoned what she said, or had any love for Trump, but that what happened to her was reprehensible and I wished her all the best (I could do this as they'd of course helpfully posted a link to her profile so that people could pile on and send hate mail), but I have no idea if the person in question had deleted the account and it had since been hijacked, and the trolls appeared to be naming and shaming people reaching out to her for support, too.

So... what do we do about this development, where not only Internet trolls, but also an increasing number of people across the political spectrum are starting to do things like this? And is this actually as big a problem as it seems, or just another case of a minority appearing much bigger than it is by being, well, very vocal?

 

[Emily's Cat]

I was just about to post a thread on a very closely related topic, so thank you for saving me the hassle!

 

[pgwenthold]

She was hoping to attend a Christian college, and apparently this Christian college affirms a commitment to Love Thy Neighbor.

She doesn't uphold those values. They don't want her.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Apologism for a murder isn't an innocuous opinion.

When it comes to systems that have resulted in vast swaths of murder and misery, there are no low stakes.

I shed no tears for racists that out themselves and get pummeled into the dirt. The stink of racism has been over this country since before it even existed. It's about time we've removed it root and stem. Racists better wise up quick or learn the hard way.

There are times in history where making the wrong judgement call results in dire consequences. Collaborating with an oppression regime is a serious error in character.

 

[angrysoba]

Can we boiled this down to a proposition, please?

Is it “I am free to speak my brains and you are not free to tell anyone about it?”

Or is it:

“Doxxing is never acceptable”

?

 

[TragicMonkey]

Common sense, proportionate response, and thinking carefully before publishing something to the entire globe. Sometimes people overreact, sure. Sometimes they underreact, and sometimes they react just the right amount. The lesson is the same one that applies in so many areas of life: use your damn brain. We all do stupid things sometimes, but we should try not to. Giving a free pass to any and all idiocy wouldn't do anybody favors in the long run.

 

[blutoski]

Can we boiled this down to a proposition, please?

Is it “I am free to speak my brains and you are not free to tell anyone about it?”

Or is it:

“Doxxing is never acceptable”

?

Was this an example of doxxing?

Probably a question for Safe-Keeper... Was the "teenage girl" posting under a pseudonym that was reverse engineered to identify her real world identification?

 

[angrysoba]

Was this an example of doxxing?

Probably a question for Safe-Keeper... Was the "teenage girl" posting under a pseudonym that was reverse engineered to identify her real world identification?

I don’t know if it was or not. I want some clarification about what was the issue here.

 

[blutoski]

Call-out culture, and campaigns to punish, or "cancel" dissenting voices (campaigning hard to get events and speeches involving them cancelled) has become endemic online

'become' ? Wasn't this sort of thing probably the second post ever in an online forum, after "hello"?

Pfft. I remember BBS melodrama as early as the 80s.

, as have echo chambers where anyone who disagrees is scolded and kicked out

Sounds like my dad's Gyro club. Actually, that sounds like pretty much any hangout in the real world since time began.



None of this is new. It sucks, but sometimes I do something in front of people and they decide to do something about it. It's part of adulting.

What's arguably new is that the victims who are getting fired aren't restricted to things like hiding their Jewish grandmother or closeted homosexuality. So, now SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!

 

[Emily's Cat]

This is a trend that I also find very disturbing. I see far too many parallels to witch hunts, inquisitions, and persecution of all sorts.

Over the past several years there have been many events that have filled me with trepidation. There was the case of Nick Sandmann, and the altercation in D.C. where he was initially presented as being a racist who was intimidating a native american man. He and his family received death threats, and his school received a lot of public pressure to expel him on the basis of the edited video. Then there was the case of Justine Sacco making an edgy joke on twitter before getting on a plane. By the time she landed, she had been drawn and quartered by the internet, and had been fired due to public outrage. More recently, there is the case of Amy Cooper who threatened to call the police on a black man in a N.Y.C. park. The backlash from social media was so immediate and profound that she was fired in less than a day of the posting, and there is pressure for the professional organizations to which she belongs to remove her credentials.

The degree of transgression in these cases varies, but in all cases there was coercion from a nameless, faceless mob attempting to punish them for their wrongdoings. The punishments, to me, seem far beyond what should be merited.

We live in an age where surveillance is unavoidable. Everyone has a phone capable of taking video, regardless of whether we give our consent or not. We are all under immense scrutiny, in a way I didn't envision when I was younger. I worried about state surveillance of citizens, and potential abuse of that power. I didn't worry that the largest threat would be, not from the government, but from my fellow citizens. I never imagined that the greatest hazard to all of our liberty and livelihood would be the extrajudicial administration of punishment from complete strangers, meted out anonymously.

What concerns me most about this trend is the acceptance of it as right and appropriate by a great many people who consider themselves to be supporters of civil liberties. Several people feel that this form of virtue enforcement via mob is admissible, because they agree with the opinion that underlies the sentiment. I fear the consequences when the principle moves beyond that immediate sentiment, and into the broader enforcement of conformity of thought.

 

[blutoski]

This is a trend that I also find very disturbing.

I hate to say it but I don't think it's a 'trend' that mobs have suddenly discovered mob justice - I think we're just seeing ancient human behavior that used to be occult, because online communities are more visible.

Or maybe, it's arguably a trend that it's becoming more visible, I'll agree to that.



ETA: and the reason I'm kinda confused is that Skeptics have quite the history of Johnny Letter Writing. "Hey, I'll bet the university doesn't know that professor does unethical things as a side business, we should tell them," goes back to the first call to action for CSICOP in the 1970s. If trying to get somebody fired by writing their boss, or getting them booted from a degree program is unethical, Skeptics are guilty as charged.

Just a specific datapoint, Dr. Polevoy was absolutely trying to dox "Adam Dreamhealer" when he heard he was in a premed program. The idea being that somebody who hid his past as a fraudulent faith healer should probably not be enrolled in medical school.

 

[rockinkt]

So a few days ago I came across a post on Instagram about a teenage girl who had made an inflammatory post on the same platform about how she didn't care about George Floyd's death, that if he didn't want to get killed he shouldn't have broken the law, and that nothing anyone told her would change her mind. Then she posted some kind of "MAGA" remark. Someone responded angrily and she let slip she had been admitted to a certain place of higher education. Someone contacted said institution and they ended up deciding not to admit her. She also of course probably received lots of angry direct messages.

I don't want to post a link to the story because I don't want the thread to revolve around that particular incident -- it's meant only as an example, or an illustration. Call-out culture, and campaigns to punish, or "cancel" dissenting voices (campaigning hard to get events and speeches involving them cancelled) has become endemic online, as have echo chambers where anyone who disagrees is scolded and kicked out, and this idea that only the members of a certain in-group is even entitled to mention or discuss a given topic, be it the plight of African-Americans, or transgender rights.

I've discussed all kinds of skepticism topics for years and years, from belief in UFOs and supernatural creatures to 9/11 edgelords and antivaxxers. One of the things I've come across when discussing antivax in Norway is a certain kind of... sub-culture of antivaxxer trolls who will harrass and try to sabotage the lives of particularly outspoken people who disagree with them. They will send them hateful messages, carry out smear campaigns, often trying to paint them as bullies or even more horrible things like pedophiles, and, call their employers to try to sabotage their careers. I always considered the latter a particularly vile tactic, and it's come to be something I associate with trolls with no scrouples.

Now, however, calling out, and punishing people for forbidden opinions, or even bad jokes, seems to be becoming more and more common. Not something done only by knuckle-dragging Internet trolls, but by more and more oh so cool and woke Internet activists on anything from LGBTQ+ to BLM supporters. The pattern seems to be that they stay in echo chambers for too long, and/or experience events in society that makes them angry (often very, very rightfully so, let's be honest), and they end up interpreting statements in a far worse way than they were intended, deciding that anyone not in their in-group can't understand or relate to what they're going through or have a qualified opinion, and venting their mounting anger on random people online who are discovered and highlighted by particularly influential individuals. Oh, and obsessing over insignificant, minor details like someone using the wrong word or something in an otherwise innocent post or conversation.

The pattern is pretty clear and worrying: if you meet someone with the wrong views, they're not to be reasoned with or simply ignored, they are to be shamed, shunned, harrassed, and punished. There is no live and let live, or reasoned debates with facts, just us-versus-them. Anyone opining in the thread about the Instagram post I mentioned earlier were told they "supported racism", or for that matter that they had no right to have an opinion in the first place, because of their skin colour. Starting posts with disclaimers like "I hate Trump with a passion, but..." seems more important than ever in this age of emotion and polarisation.

So... what do we do about this, and, if we take a step back from the anecdotes, how big and prevalent a problem is this really? I tried telling them that all of us have views that someone out there finds horrific, and that all of us have made off-colour jokes, or posts we didn't think through properly, or statements in real life or online in an "edgy", provocative manner, and that we can't just go around punishing whoever says something we don't like or agree with. Don't think that made any difference with any of them.

I tried a "how would you like it if it happened to you" approach, pointing out that this probably just creates more vindictiveness and polarisation, and quite possibly more trumpkins, and a stronger idea of "radical triggered libs", but I don't know if that had much of an effect either.

I considered sending a supportive message to the girl in question, telling her that I in no way condoned what she said, or had any love for Trump, but that what happened to her was reprehensible and I wished her all the best (I could do this as they'd of course helpfully posted a link to her profile so that people could pile on and send hate mail), but I have no idea if the person in question had deleted the account and it had since been hijacked, and the trolls appeared to be naming and shaming people reaching out to her for support, too.

So... what do we do about this development, where not only Internet trolls, but also an increasing number of people across the political spectrum are starting to do things like this? And is this actually as big a problem as it seems, or just another case of a minority appearing much bigger than it is by being, well, very vocal?

Civilization is a very thin veneer. People love to be part of group. They want to fit in and be on the "right" side. They want to be supported by like minded people. They want to "fit in".
Some studies have shown that belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group. Studies also show that anonymity tends to increase the chances that social norms of polite or cooperative behaviour are more likely to be ignored due to the lack of consequences.
The easy access to mass media allows people to be part of a group even when isolated.

Saxe and colleagues recently studied a third factor that cognitive scientists believe may be involved in this group dynamic: the hypothesis that when people are in groups, they "lose touch" with their own morals and beliefs, and become more likely to do things that they would normally believe are wrong.


https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140612104950.htm

To answer the questions in the OP:
Yes, this is a huge problem as reality is often being distorted because no-one is allowed to question the various narratives without being vilified by one side or the other. In this new quasi-Orwellian society personal attacks are considered "righteous" and instead of the state being the only perpetrator of brazenly misleading terminology and manipulation of recorded history - individuals and groups seeking an advantage are using those tactics with great success.
Of course the old paradigm of individual thoughts, ideas, and opinions being the hallmark of reasoned debate has been thoroughly upended and censure and silence are demanded by all sides.
Until the rights of all dissenters to lawfully dissent are recognized as being part of a properly functioning society and are protected from hate and unlawful harassment we will be in this state of tyranny of the shouting extremists long into the foreseeable future.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I hate to say it but I don't think it's a 'trend' that mobs have suddenly discovered mob justice - I think we're just seeing ancient human behavior that used to be occult, because online communities are more visible.

Or maybe, it's arguably a trend that it's becoming more visible, I'll agree to that.



ETA: and the reason I'm kinda confused is that Skeptics have quite the history of Johnny Letter Writing. "Hey, I'll bet the university doesn't know that professor does unethical things as a side business, we should tell them," goes back to the first call to action for CSICOP in the 1970s. If trying to get somebody fired by writing their boss is unethical, Skeptics are guilty as charged.

The tendency isn't new, thus my reference to religious persecution, witch burnings, etc.

What is new is the volume and power being exercised by anonymous strangers, and the avalanche of coercion being leveraged to ruin peoples lives.

 

[blutoski]

The tendency isn't new, thus my reference to religious persecution, witch burnings, etc.

What is new is the volume and power being exercised by anonymous strangers, and the avalanche of coercion being leveraged to ruin peoples lives.

In which case I don't get what you're saying. Just for example, religious persecution and witch burnings usually had the entire power of the state behind them. Armies, justice system, &c.

It feels like your exaggerating.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Funny how when racism and homophobia was culturally acceptable there was no concern about protecting the minority viewpoint, but now that the tides have turned we must suddenly worry about protecting people from the wicked mob. I'm sure it's just an amazing coincidence!

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Funny how when racism and homophobia was culturally acceptable there was no concern about protecting the minority viewpoint, but now that the tides have turned we must suddenly worry about protecting people from the wicked mob. I'm sure it's just an amazing coincidence!

The tables haven't even turned and these people cry.

Sodomy was a crime, punishable by prison time. Some racist getting thrown out of a college isn't comparable. The wokescolds aren't even taking vengeance and these racists cry.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Funny how when racism and homophobia was culturally acceptable there was no concern about protecting the minority viewpoint, but now that the tides have turned we must suddenly worry about protecting people from the wicked mob. I'm sure it's just an amazing coincidence!

Funny how when patriotism was culturally acceptable there was no concern about protecting the minority of communist sympathizers, and nobody cared about protecting them from the wicked mob, right?

All those witches and jews surely deserved what they got, is that what you're saying? Or are you merely special pleading, because you agree with the opinion behind the sentiment and haven't bothered to consider the effect of the principle itself?

 

[d4m10n]

Sodomy was a crime, punishable by prison time.

Punishable by death if you go back far enough. You've provided an excellent example of how the majority can go way too far in enforcing social monoculture.

 

[blutoski]

Funny how when patriotism was culturally acceptable there was no concern about protecting the minority of communist sympathizers, and nobody cared about protecting them from the wicked mob, right?

All those witches and jews surely deserved what they got, is that what you're saying? Or are you merely special pleading, because you agree with the opinion behind the sentiment and haven't bothered to consider the effect of the principle itself?

More that it's the currency and visibility and universality that seems to be motivating rather than the underlying injustice.

Just working around the specific example in the OP, narcing on a fellow student when they break the rules is probably documented and longstanding and *current* school policy, but none of us here were clutching our pearls about it two hours ago.

Angry voice: "Did you see this? There's a school that will kick you out if you break your pledge! Something must be done!" (crickets)

And the scale is so small. She wasn't burned at the stake. She was dismissed per school policy when it was revealed she did something appropriately qualifying.

When I was a kid, we didn't call that a 'witch hunt' - we called that 'busted'.

 

[Deadie]

Maybe racists worried about social justice should stop broadcasting their opinions in public avenues.

Why do these people feel they should be allowed to publicly state their opinions on something without critique or derision or literal action?