(no subject)
Aug. 17th, 2025 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
numinousdread Checking in with people I followed on Tumblr a few years back feels weird, because I've basically replaced my old Tumblr circles and so there are certain parts of left Tumblr culture I am not exposed to. So people will be making critiques that I agree with of ideas and topics that preoccupied me years ago, and I get this sense of exhaustion and relief that I've left. If I had stayed there I would have to contend with these repetitive conversations, either people aren't engaging with these criticisms in a way that helps them develop their ideas, or new waves of people are entering the convo and making the same mistakes.
Part of me does feel like-- I've grown a lot intellectually in the past seven or so years, though maybe that's a bit vain and ego-defensive. I could have done a lot more work to read the type of intellectually challenging texts I feel help me grow, and I'm ashamed about that. But there's only so much growth you have available to you within a context where you're engaging with such a small slice of take-havers (who are in turn mostly engaged with each other), only so many conceptual tools for analyzing the world you can get and facts you can be exposed to. Plus that slice of Tumblr people don't really have a developed theory of ethics or justice or epistemology. That feels so corny and self-serious to express, but I genuinely think it's part of the problem, and that engaging with more formal philosophy would help people think better. Or maybe it wouldn't, and people would just get confused by a bunch of fiddly technical shit and become more insane.
Anyways, I feel like I'm genuinely still developing my ideas on certain topics and not purely beefing with the ghosts of discourse past. And I've entered more intellectually diverse spaces that give me new models for thinking, in terms of ranges of topics and ideological leanings of participants. I don't feel like "the master of the discourse" who can easily out-argue the people around me and is just continually surprised at how sloppy and complacent people around me are. I feel sloppy and complacent, and like I'm operating on a lower level than a lot of participants in certain convos, and that motivates me to do a better job at thinking, or to just let them hash it out and not assume that I'm so smart that I'm gonna win this one.
And re: the ideological diversity-- there's an imaginary Tumblr user in my head who is like wait a minute, dark hinting/dog-whistle alert, that means you are on the chud Internet, why are you on the chud Internet, and that's not so. But also like, if someone hears me say I can be in a Discord server with someone who thinks capitalism is awesome or that government regulation does more harm than good or whatever, and goes "Omg, that means you're letting them get away with it", then idk that's their problem. I am not going to shame a right-libertarian out of libertarianing (nor should they shame me about supporting the welfare state), and engaging with right-libertarians can help me grow intellectually and also learn the skills to live in an ideologically diverse society (which I already had to do).
Like, I remember going to an anarchist conference in 2017 or 2018, and some ancap guy came by mistake, and my response to him was disquiet and fear. Not "Oh this is a silly set of beliefs to have", not "Ugh one of these dudes, can't wait to hear about seasteading", not pity for him getting trapped in a belief system that I regarded as wrong and harmful. I was scared of him, even though he was perfectly polite and even willing to talk to me. And I just think that was an irrational fear, and the level of discomfort I felt around "ideological enemies" made it harder for me to engage in society, learn more about why they believe that stuff, or have a conversation where I explained my views and hopefully gave the impression that not all leftists are insane or stupid. And I think I feel comfortable with feeling that level of disquiet around a fascist, but not an ancap. And that's compatible with thinking that their proposed society would have major glaring issues or thinking at least some people are ancaps because of character defects, ignorance, and/or motivated reasoning. You can think someone is wrong about a lot of things without having your heart rate increase when they enter the room.
If you find right-libertarians step on your triggers a lot or just think they are dumb and/or evil and you don't want to be around them in your personal life, then you do you. (Like, maybe they advocate for ending programs you find important and you predictably get upset by trying to argue for their importance, maybe you can't stand people who vocally dislike leftists, maybe they just remind you of your racist gun nut uncle, whatever.) But I've drunk the liberal "freedom of association" Koolaid on this one. You should make this decision for yourself and not because of social pressure.
And tbc... I don't think the experiences that have helped me grow are like, necessary for avoiding stagnation. There's a better version of me out there who just read a bunch of philosophy or wrote a bunch of essays, but I'm not them. There's a lot of self-improvement that I abandoned in favor of short-term pleasures or just had trouble getting motivated for because it felt too big and threatening to my self-image.
But I'm proud that I grew at all, in my undisciplined way.
Part of me does feel like-- I've grown a lot intellectually in the past seven or so years, though maybe that's a bit vain and ego-defensive. I could have done a lot more work to read the type of intellectually challenging texts I feel help me grow, and I'm ashamed about that. But there's only so much growth you have available to you within a context where you're engaging with such a small slice of take-havers (who are in turn mostly engaged with each other), only so many conceptual tools for analyzing the world you can get and facts you can be exposed to. Plus that slice of Tumblr people don't really have a developed theory of ethics or justice or epistemology. That feels so corny and self-serious to express, but I genuinely think it's part of the problem, and that engaging with more formal philosophy would help people think better. Or maybe it wouldn't, and people would just get confused by a bunch of fiddly technical shit and become more insane.
Anyways, I feel like I'm genuinely still developing my ideas on certain topics and not purely beefing with the ghosts of discourse past. And I've entered more intellectually diverse spaces that give me new models for thinking, in terms of ranges of topics and ideological leanings of participants. I don't feel like "the master of the discourse" who can easily out-argue the people around me and is just continually surprised at how sloppy and complacent people around me are. I feel sloppy and complacent, and like I'm operating on a lower level than a lot of participants in certain convos, and that motivates me to do a better job at thinking, or to just let them hash it out and not assume that I'm so smart that I'm gonna win this one.
And re: the ideological diversity-- there's an imaginary Tumblr user in my head who is like wait a minute, dark hinting/dog-whistle alert, that means you are on the chud Internet, why are you on the chud Internet, and that's not so. But also like, if someone hears me say I can be in a Discord server with someone who thinks capitalism is awesome or that government regulation does more harm than good or whatever, and goes "Omg, that means you're letting them get away with it", then idk that's their problem. I am not going to shame a right-libertarian out of libertarianing (nor should they shame me about supporting the welfare state), and engaging with right-libertarians can help me grow intellectually and also learn the skills to live in an ideologically diverse society (which I already had to do).
Like, I remember going to an anarchist conference in 2017 or 2018, and some ancap guy came by mistake, and my response to him was disquiet and fear. Not "Oh this is a silly set of beliefs to have", not "Ugh one of these dudes, can't wait to hear about seasteading", not pity for him getting trapped in a belief system that I regarded as wrong and harmful. I was scared of him, even though he was perfectly polite and even willing to talk to me. And I just think that was an irrational fear, and the level of discomfort I felt around "ideological enemies" made it harder for me to engage in society, learn more about why they believe that stuff, or have a conversation where I explained my views and hopefully gave the impression that not all leftists are insane or stupid. And I think I feel comfortable with feeling that level of disquiet around a fascist, but not an ancap. And that's compatible with thinking that their proposed society would have major glaring issues or thinking at least some people are ancaps because of character defects, ignorance, and/or motivated reasoning. You can think someone is wrong about a lot of things without having your heart rate increase when they enter the room.
If you find right-libertarians step on your triggers a lot or just think they are dumb and/or evil and you don't want to be around them in your personal life, then you do you. (Like, maybe they advocate for ending programs you find important and you predictably get upset by trying to argue for their importance, maybe you can't stand people who vocally dislike leftists, maybe they just remind you of your racist gun nut uncle, whatever.) But I've drunk the liberal "freedom of association" Koolaid on this one. You should make this decision for yourself and not because of social pressure.
And tbc... I don't think the experiences that have helped me grow are like, necessary for avoiding stagnation. There's a better version of me out there who just read a bunch of philosophy or wrote a bunch of essays, but I'm not them. There's a lot of self-improvement that I abandoned in favor of short-term pleasures or just had trouble getting motivated for because it felt too big and threatening to my self-image.
But I'm proud that I grew at all, in my undisciplined way.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-20 01:43 am (UTC)Yeah, while a lot of my own personal animus towards Tumblr is about the sheer breathtaking wrongness of a lot of the popular takes, it's definitely in common memory that other people were bothered by the same waves of discourse being repeated again and again and again. Especially people here who remember Usenet and mailing lists. (Well, technically I am part of that slice of people, but I didn't get to engage with those things a whole lot before being forced into an in-system coma.) Those were places where discourse would, like... actually evolve over time, and while new people would continually join the group, there were usually mods, and there were guaranteed to be enough people dedicated long-term to the fandom (or whatever the topic of the group was) that they would invest time and effort into maintaining a FAQ. And if they did end up with less time or inclination to maintain the group, they'd hand the duties off to other people. We wrote a half-serious FAQ once for a mailing list we contributed a lot of years and effort to, summarizing the various standards, rules, and consensuses that had developed so far and why. It was even fun, I'm told.
The lack of mods is, I think, one of the big problems with Tumblr. We did a terrible job of modding on Livejournal, which we want to say was mostly our ex's fault, though I know it doesn't erase the harm people suffered. But when LJ communities worked, it was often due to the mods being competent and devoted like the mods on some of the better mailing lists and newsgroups we remember. A community can live or die by its moderation or lack thereof. And Tumblr is... yeah, absent of any way to moderate meaningfully (except when the admins decided to purge all the porn because they couldn't be bothered to investigate individual reports of CP being posted to the site, they just took the nuclear option). Which means that you don't get community elders, or the only thing close to a community elder is people with the patience to post the same things again and again and again in response to the continual waves of newcomers joining the community and starting the same discussions repeatedly. People in that situation are more likely than not to burn out eventually. They just can't take it any more. I don't blame them for a minute.
Plus that slice of Tumblr people don't really have a developed theory of ethics or justice or epistemology. That feels so corny and self-serious to express, but I genuinely think it's part of the problem, and that engaging with more formal philosophy would help people think better.
I mean... it's not corny to me. It makes total sense. We also remember being concerned about the way people on Tumblr didn't seem to be able to formulate their own ethics and worldviews, they just took them from whatever everybody else was linking to approvingly. Ethics (in that worldview) isn't what you think is a rightful path to follow, it's what an Authority says is True. Which is a dynamic that a lot of people from authoritarian backgrounds, I think, like fundamentalist Christianity, end up easily sliding into, because it feels familiar to them.
And re: the ideological diversity-- there's an imaginary Tumblr user in my head who is like wait a minute, dark hinting/dog-whistle alert, that means you are on the chud Internet, why are you on the chud Internet, and that's not so.
Oh lord, that's a familiar experience to me. The "imaginary Tumblr user in my head," that is, not the specific example, and having them get freaked out or angry that you're even listening to someone who doesn't have All The Right Opinions.
-Istevia
no subject
Date: 2025-09-10 05:38 pm (UTC)I think there are strengths and weaknesses to that kind of moderated community approach. One the one hand, it's easy for communities to be overrun by people with the same inflammatory takes that are supported by bad arguments, and having some way to weed that out is good. People who have spent a long time engaging in discussions around an issue may have a better sense of what topics to treat as radioactive waste dumps that should be deemed Not A Place of Honor or the common "baby's first hot take" type opinions people will espouse, and be able to present good counterarguments to those as well. Plus, mods can clear up confusing terminology and explain how words are used in that space. Good modding is awesome.
On the other hand, some people have the patience and zest for moderation but lack discernment for what is/isn't a valuable contribution to the discussion, and what feels like a simple and settled matter to them that only clueless or malicious people dissent from may not be. Bad modding sucks.
But I guess if you think a mod has bad taste you can just make your own community (though network effects are going to be a pain in the ass).