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Update on My Situation

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Re: Update on My Situation

#61

Post by frank2 »

maxander wrote: post #11

Interesting to speculate on the “extremely generous” offer from Substack. They’re obviously willing to devote a decent amount of dev time to making Scott comfortable, and I’m sure they have a good idea of how having SSC on board would promote their platform on its take-over-the-blog-market mission, so it could be generous indeed.

All we know is that Substack is willing to make a lot of promises to Scott. Scott probably lacks (as I do) the expertise to negotiate a contract that would actually hold Substack to those promises.

But maybe I am being too cynical.

Re: Update on My Situation

#62

Post by tzs »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #49
thaumasiotes wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consider therapists who have you lie on a couch vs those who have you sit in the same style chair, as an equal. > Some therapists position themselves as an authority figure for their patients. It is not obvious that the person who gets to recline while the other person must sit is the one with lower status or authority.

Sure it is. You're in a more vulnerable position while reclining.

What about the common trope of a person with wealth and/or power reclining while a servant or slave feeds them grapes or fans them with palm fronds [1]? Is Djambi actually higher status than Hedonism bot [2]?

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrapesOfLuxury

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFYMzQ3Vfq0

Re: Update on My Situation

#63

Post by a1369209993 »

koheripbal wrote: post #41
stevenwliao wrote: post #12

So the lesson for those who maintain anonymous or pseudo-anonymous identities online- As your pseudonym's popularity grows, chances increase that someone will be interested in unmasking your identity. The only solutions are to reduce your pseudonym's visibility or staying fully anonymous in the first place.

I teach my kids to be a superhero on the internet. Never use your real name / change costumes (usernames) everywhere you go.

That's a excellent way of putting it, actually. (Obligatory "inb4 j jonah jameson pops up", though.)

Re: Update on My Situation

#64

Post by bargl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #57
bargl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no one definition of cancel culture. Many people don't know what they even mean when they talk about it. If we break cancel culture up into roughly before the internet and after. Being canceled (I'd call a non-violent black-sheep status) was a local phenomenon, it was in your town, your church, or your local group. You could move away to reclaim anonymity. Today, you can't hide from it, but it's as you said,…

> I'd probably say that cancel culture requires the internet to really be a thing Blacklisting with more than local scope (and, while nonviolent in themselves, again, vastly more drastic practical impact than modern “cancel culture”—and particularly, often, a much more direct and total impact on employability, and often impacting people with less socioeconomic privilege and associated security than are at issue with…

OK I said I wasn't going to lurk, but I have a problem.

Blacklisting isn't cancel culture, I don't understand how it equates at all. I think, we're talking past each-other a bit here just because cancel culture can be hard to define. It's defined by some as boycotting like "cancel Netflix". It'd defined by others as canceling an individual like "this person tweeted about XYZ when they were 17 fire them." It can also be, "Celebrity XYZ said something I disagree with cancel them (Kapernick comes to mind)." One is targeted against the less privileged and elevates those without a voice or a platform to celebrity. The other is just a re-branding of boycotting. The third targets celebrities who making a social stand.

I'd define the cancel culture I'm concerned about as the form that is against an individual who was not previously famous, doesn't want to be famous and is thrust into the spotlight without the ability to control the narrative or provide context. They got caught on a bad day and just want to be left alone. This is a form of "witch hunt" that thrives on the mob mentality of twitter and other social networks out there that feed on our baser human instincts.

I also think that canceling celebrities because you disagree with them is dumb, but that's privilege vs less privilege and I don't see it as big of an issue.

Cancel culture that's really just boycotting is not something I'm concerned about.

I'll re-iterate, the past had some awful and yet socially acceptable shit going on. I don't think there is a similar phenomenon where the mob went after other individuals in such a global manner. The level of cancel culture that I'm talking about wasn't a global phenomenon before. It wasn't more local, mobs stayed in towns and cities. But they also carried pitch forks and hurt people. So before we had, potential death in your city/town, and now we have humiliation and loss of job but globally. I dislike them both and if I had to pick I think the later is the obvious choice.

OK really trying to close this down now, but this conversation is more fun than what I'd be doing othewise!

Re: Update on My Situation

#65

Post by mpalmer »

frank2 wrote: post #61
maxander wrote: post #11

Interesting to speculate on the “extremely generous” offer from Substack. They’re obviously willing to devote a decent amount of dev time to making Scott comfortable, and I’m sure they have a good idea of how having SSC on board would promote their platform on its take-over-the-blog-market mission, so it could be generous indeed.

All we know is that Substack is willing to make a lot of promises to Scott. Scott probably lacks (as I do) the expertise to negotiate a contract that would actually hold Substack to those promises. But maybe I am being too cynical.

Hard to believe Scott Alexander doesn't have the wherewithal to find the right representation for something like this.

Re: Update on My Situation

#66

Post by s9w »

Interestingly this time around, Bing and Wikipedia seem to be on the side of censorship, and google now as back then still blasts the name open. Rare teams!

Re: Update on My Situation

#67

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

brundolf wrote: post #6

> And now that I’ve publicly admitted privacy is important to me – something I tried to avoid coming on too strong about before, for exactly this reason – some people have taken it upon themselves to post my real name all over Twitter in order to harass and threaten me. Has anybody applied the Dark Forest metaphor to internet publicity? It's fascinating (horrifying) how simply catching the attention of too big a piec…

What caustic attention? A popular blogger whose name is publicly available but not mentioned on the blog had his name posted on Twitter? Why does he perceive this as harassment and persecution?

Re: Update on My Situation

#68

Post by joshuamorton »

bargl wrote: post #64
dragonwriter wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd probably say that cancel culture requires the internet to really be a thing Blacklisting with more than local scope (and, while nonviolent in themselves, again, vastly more drastic practical impact than modern “cancel culture”—and particularly, often, a much more direct and total impact on employability, and often impacting people with less socioeconomic privilege and associated security than are at issue with…

OK I said I wasn't going to lurk, but I have a problem. Blacklisting isn't cancel culture, I don't understand how it equates at all. I think, we're talking past each-other a bit here just because cancel culture can be hard to define. It's defined by some as boycotting like "cancel Netflix". It'd defined by others as canceling an individual like "this person tweeted about XYZ when they were 17 fire them." It can also…

Can you give examples of what you consider cancellation and not? For examples is Scott Alexander, a well known blogger, having is full name (which is only sort of a secret) posted "cancellation" in your eyes?

I think the issue may be that you're defining cancel culture in a way that's very different than what most people in general, and in this thread, do. That's not wholly your fault, but it does mean that the conversation probably won't be fruitful.

I ask this mostly because I'm having a hard time coming up with a lot of examples of what you mean by "cancel culture" outside of the 3-4 well trodden examples of "cancellation gone wrong" (Justice Sacco, and the recent examples from the Atlantic Article "Stop Firing the Innocent").

Re: Update on My Situation

#69

Post by stevenwliao »

tedunangst wrote: post #37
brundolf wrote: post #6

> And now that I’ve publicly admitted privacy is important to me – something I tried to avoid coming on too strong about before, for exactly this reason – some people have taken it upon themselves to post my real name all over Twitter in order to harass and threaten me. Has anybody applied the Dark Forest metaphor to internet publicity? It's fascinating (horrifying) how simply catching the attention of too big a piec…

One strategy might be to not hit the self destruct button prematurely. Far more people have read and shared his blog post about being doxxed than have read the NYT article.

The optimal strategy would probably have been radio silence, and then the blog disappearing without an explanation after a few weeks.

Re: Update on My Situation

#70

Post by stevenwliao »

ggreer wrote: post #22
bearbin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. The recent issue with the NYT is certainly the immediate trigger of Scott Alexander's decision to change jobs; but it seems to me at least that this course of action was inevitable (once the blog became popular). If (you feel that) your job is incompatible with a personal association to a popular 'rationalist' blog, and you write a rationalist blog under your own partial name, and it then becomes popular…

> If (you feel that) your job is incompatible with a personal association to a popular 'rationalist' blog, and you write a rationalist blog under your own partial name, and it then becomes popular - well you will have to take that decision at some point - resign, or shut down the blog. Scott did shut down the blog and it still cost him his job.

It's too late once a news reporter is interested.
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