The Fungible Audience Fallacy

[maradydd]

Incidents of "Shanley Kane verbally attacks some friend of mine in some way that is obviously counter to her stated goals" keep rolling in at the rate of about one every two weeks. Last time, it was bashing a friend who started slinging C professionally around the time I was born because "her generation" didn't create the workers' utopia (by

Comments

[maradydd]

I agree, the characters aren't quite the same. I don't know whether it's that Shanley's character doesn't draw a distinction between "impure ally" and "enemy" (in societal iterated game theory, the "Absolutist" strategy) or that the actors behind the characters have decided on different strategies ("rally all the allies you can against enemies and leave the Overton window mostly to its own course" vs. "sacrifice the heretics as fuel for the Overton-window-pushing engine we believe exists"), but Limbaugh's strategy is certainly more successful from a financial perspective.

[cnoocy]

I don't read her as insane or playing a character. She seems to be very concerned about the toxic environment for women in technology, and not at all concerned about the feelings of anyone not working to improve that environment.

[maradydd]

I have a real problem with her thinking that older women don't belong in technology anymore because they didn't solve all the problems the first time around. Her definition of "working to improve that environment" is far too blinkered, and causes her to attack people who share her notional goals.

[maradydd]

To my C-slinging friend I mentioned in the first paragraph, yes.

[thequux]

A lot of people's behaviour makes a lot more sense when you realize that most people respond to cognitive dissonance by fleeing rather than confronting it. If you take all of the rhetoric that has come out of the women-in-tech echosystem at face value, assume it's all true, and don't examine it for contradictions, then Shanley Kane is one of the best things to happen to WiT.

The fundamental problem is that the WiT rhetoric consists of whatever would generate the most spectacular fireworks at any given time. Effectively, the enemies in WiT cannon are whoever Val doesn't like, just painted with a very large brush so as not to be bills of attainder.

[maradydd]

Insofar as Val's prejudices basically describe a convex hull around the far reaches of the bitches-using-computers bailey, I agree with you, although I think that's coincidental; thinking of her as actually directing any hordes is giving her too much credit.* Hordes gonna horde, and there are enough bored people on the internet to give lots of aspiring demagogues lots of practice. Thus, competition for conspicuousness. Don't forget, Val defected on Shanley back during the Geeklist dust-up (it's not clear what upset Shanley so much, but she evidently considered it a betrayal, ergo defection). What's the best revenge against the demagogue who fucks you over? Beating them at their own game

[thequux]

The "best thing" comment was the logical conclusion of taking the union of WiT positions (which somebody who wants to join onto the movement without thinking too much would presumably do).

My point is not so much that any of this actually makes sense, only that you can come up with all sorts of surprising results when 0 == 1. But you're a mathematician -- you already knew that. It will result in an exodus from something, eventually, but it's more likely to be an exodus from the current WiT platform; moral panics can only go so far

[whswhs]

My preferred strategy as a libertarian is to argue for my positions in such a way that people who aren't libertarians, and aren't going to become libertarians, will come away saying "Hey, there are some reasonable people who support libertarianism." I wouldn't say I always succeed, of course! But I think getting libertarianism into the spectrum of ideologies that can't just be dismissed out of hand is a win condition. And likewise for other ideologies, I suppose.

[maradydd]

In general this is my preferred approach as well, although certainly I don't always succeed either. I've had to adapt it somewhat, though, because it turns out (quelle surprise!) that there are a hell of a lot of people who treat online interaction (far more than in person, anyway) as a means to the end of "entertain myself, even at the expense of others," and I have better things to do with my time than play the mark in somebody else's social con game. So I strive primarily for intelligent dissent, and secondarily for being able to determine whether I am in an honest interaction or whether the person I'm talking to is just looking for a target for today's Two Minutes' Hate

[whswhs]

I have a lot of those conversations in the Steve Jackson Games newsgroups, which are ruthlessly moderated to keep out that sort of game-playing, or put a stop to it. They have lots and lots of failure to understand but not a lot of two minute hates. Of course a lot of the conversation is about tabletop rpgs, but there's some general discussion as well.

Having followed the link to the motte-and-bailey essay, I have a better sense what you're talking about, and I certainly agree it's the bane of dialectic. But then dialectic is a threat to in-group/out-group divisions, which I think are one of the underlying motors of all this.

[maradydd]

But then dialectic is a threat to in-group/out-group divisions, which I think are one of the underlying motors of all this.

Yes. There is very much a cart-and-horse problem here.

[songblaze]

While this is not really my area, I will say that with social justice activism, there are times when raising awareness is in fact useful

[songblaze]

That first sentence didn't quite read the way I meant. Bleh. While the precise 'debate' going on here isn't really my area, etc.