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An avalanche of dogs

Being critical of someone in person or in a small group is a difficult time for everyone involved but it’s part of normal life.

But when I’m being critical of someone publically, especially in a many-to-many medium like online, what happens is that I get a figurative “megaphone” probably better known as “ten thousand faceless clowns who claim to be on my ‘side’ but who are much meaner and harrassier and have way worse arguments will ’join in’ or will have already joined in even before I say anything”. A tidal wave of hot takes drowning out attempts at nuanced criticisms and small course-corrections.

It’s easy to get fooled into thinking that “my particular personal take is reasonable, nuanced, restrained, logical, correct, emotional, insightful, informative, personal”, and all of that might be true. I know and I can honestly tell myself that I don’t want an avalanche of stones to be thrown, just one li’l reasonable and commensurate pebble. But that’s what everyone else in the stone-throwing mob is also kidding themselves. Each of their own li’l rocks on their own is “well, we’ve got to be able to criticize wrong things and stand up for what’s good and right” but the internet has made that not possible anymore. We’re not raindrops anymore, we’re a tsunami. We’re not snowflakes, we’re an avalanche.

I’m not saying criticism isn’t a necessary and a good thing. It is. Normally. But the way the global convo is set up makes it impossible. We’ve taken something that’s normally necessary and vital and important, and made it impossible. That’s a problem.

Humanity needs to figure out a new way to deal with this, with each other. The global village is getting to feel both cramped and lonely at the same time.

Yeah, yeah, I know. We’re gonna be the most socially and psychologically well-adjusted species on the cinder. But mass media dehumanization is part of that problem, too. The world has a problem it has to solve together.

Throne Culture

When the world needed doomers

Most blank on the cinder

Follow-ups

I’m just naturally such a negative person but I need to learn to really hold back online instead of dishing out the well-deserved spoonfuls I’ve got so plenty of in my bitter li’l heart.

Nat seems to agree with me that criticism is dangerous in our modern world.

But criticism is also important. The fact that it’s no longer possible is a huge problem. Sometimes people do need to come correct. So this is a tricky conundrum that people need to solve together. Me and my own personal li’l policy won’t change things.

Going too far in favor of callouts we get angry, life-wrecking mobs, but I don’t wanna silence victims either. Are there other ways we can organize how our entire conversation is set up? This is also why I’m not into Twitter, or into how Reddit was set up before they invented separate subreddits: “one chatroom per planet” is a model that wrecks humanity’s brains a li’l bit.

Winter has a follow-up to Nat’s post.