The Discourse Got Better, But The Chilling Effect Is Getting Worse

argumate:

the-grey-tribe:

We are living in a post-discourse world. Almost everybody on Tumblr knows The Discourse, everybody on Facebook knows a slacktivist friend who changed their profile picture for one cause or another and an older relative who posts weird political stuff nobody else cares about. Twitter users and Newspaper readers know who Justine Sacco was. Github and Hacker News have seen Opalgate, Django pull request #2692, Donglegate, …

Shirtgate and Tim Hunt have even reached TV news.

People make inconsequential jokes, or take part in something unpolitical that is subsequently scrutinised and deemed not politically correct enough (by whatever side). The person at the center of this whole thing gets dragged back into it every time somebody on side A attacks somebody on side B and it all ends with both sides unfollowing/unfriending each other.

Tumblr had seen peak discourse in 2013. Tumblr has not been trendy with teenagers in five years. Even Snapchat and Instagram are no longer the cool new thing. Twitter has not been the cool new thing for seven years now.

Social media is no longer full of early adopters, or wide-eyed, curious MOPs making their first steps on the net, or concerned Soccer Moms trying to figure out what heir young (too young for this!) child has signed up for. People can deal with social media. It’s no longer a novelty. Society has even adapted to deal with the ways people deal with social media, somewhat.

We have all lost friends (not real friends, of course, but what counts for a friend on social media, like mutuals) in the flame wars. We know what to expect. We no longer cheer when somebody gets caught in the fangs of the anonymous Internet mob – we reach out in private and ask if they are okay, carefully avoiding any public support for fear of backlash.

After years of Usenet, web 1.0, pre-discourse, forum culture, LiveJournal, the Blogosphere, the Internet went mainstream, and the mainstream acknowledged that. The Internet was no longer a place for nerds and weirdos like John Carmack or Cory Doctorow, respectively. We have seen the Internet, and it is us!

We went from anonymity and caution to pseudonymous communities, to real-name oversharing, and finally to carefully constructed social media personae.

At some point during the oversharing phase, discourse and mob rule reached their peak, toxic activists unleashed shitstorms, and we gladly joined in. We thought the victim deserved it, because he had a problem with the Internet, which meant he had a problem with us. It started out as outrage against corporations, but it quickly learned to pick on random people.

Now we, as stated above, have learned to keep our heads down. We have learned that the hate mob is us. Some of us only stopped joining in because of outrage fatigue.
At some point you just run out of the neurotransmitters you need to feel
angry about things. We have learned to only tweet our lunch, not our opinion. We have learned to use a pseudonym. Remember your PR training, stay on message, don’t make jokes outside of the member-approved internal chatgroup!

People had to lock down their posts and profile. The Internet is not a nice place any more. When you mess up, we will privately support you, but come on, what were you thinking saying that in public?

The Post-Discourse Situation:

• Most twitterati have stopped dogpiling.
• There is a mall, dedicated core of people coordinating the shaming campaigns.
• We know you are not a bad person just because you got into an Internet Shitstorm.
• We might privately commiserate or publicly vagueblog in your support.
• We will say we told you so when you get edgy and it blows up.
• The epistemic level of The Discourse is still bad.

Big Internet Shitstorms have gotten rarer. They are no longer perpetrated by viral, spontaneously forming crowds, but by strongly connected groups of bloggers. Outrage has been eaten up by the division of labour.

From the inside, however, once a shitstorm does happen, it looks just the same. It looks like there is a broad, popular opposition to your viral Facebook post. Your friends will privately scold you for getting into a preventable situation.

As the chilling effect increases and the censorship becomes internalised as self-censorship, the few remaining culture warriors can concentrate on the few remaining non-self-censoring netizens.

IN A WORLD WHERE BIG INTERNET SHITSTORMS RUN WILD

ONE MAN THINKS POLITICAL CORRECTNESS HAS GONE TOO FAR