81–90 of 233 posts
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That's a little ad hominem to diagnose them from one paragraph. There's actually a well known term for what they're describing. It's called pop science and is a very real thing.
I'm pretty sure they're joking.
What if the people acting out are actually the healthy ones?
Maybe it's just that they're normal (is 'healthy' an ableist term?). You can make the argument that 'normal' people have been held down by jus' reg'lar dudes for millennia. This is their chance to shine. Have an upvote ya 'rebel.
Mild trolling and shitposting is mostly harmless and perhaps an appropriate response to being very online and maybe a measure of the health of an online community.
One of the big problems though is that trolling and shitposting can easily be weaponized into coordinated harassment on ideological grounds (gamergate, cancelling, etc) which can be construed as a symptom of the current culture war and perhaps social media companies should pay more attention to the problem.
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Yet at the same time, there is this [0] posted by a higher-ranking staff member. That you have found an article written by a contributor who has also written for a Catholic publication does not served as proof of your claim in the GP that UnHerd was founded to push “extremist Christian propaganda” – the whole point of UnHerd is that it draws on writers from a range of ideological outlooks. And FWIW, the idea mentione…
> the whole point of UnHerd is that it is includes people from a range of ideological outlooks. You keep saying that. Let's like at some random headlines from their "contributors" page: > Ideology should not trump children’s health (anti-trans) > France’s mega-mosque problem > The emptiness of ‘British values’ > The death of American patriotism > The problem with male feminists > Universities have destroyed feminism…
None of the headlines that you cite are specific to “extremist Christian-right propaganda”, indeed these are themes are commonly discussed by those who identify as leftist and unreligious, but feel that certain things that are presently insisted on in leftism as de rigeur, are not part of the leftist tradition they recognize from a few decades back. For example, with regard to being “anti-trans”, there are a lot of soixante-huitards who find the current focus on trans activism on the left excessive and even problematic, because it was utterly foreign to their struggle against rightist forces.
You have still not brought forth any proof of your claim above that UnHerd was founded and funded expressly for “extremist Christian-right propaganda” purposes. The gentlemanly thing to do would be to back up that claim, or retract it.
This sort of wishy washy argument (seemingly accepted by generally educated/reasonable people on HN) is the reason that society is so scientifically illiterate. It has nice sounding arguments that embed themselves into your thought patterns but zero real substance. Articles like this are how you get hordes of people to believe something without cause. The next time you see someone act "bad" online, you'll be able to…
Unfortunately, your critique has even less substantiation than the article, and therefore it would be even sillier to draw conclusions from it...
I"m glad to see this point made: > I’m not saying that all online bad behaviour is because of mental health issues or personality disorders: lots of people are just dickheads, and there’s no need to pathologise them. One of the important lessons I took away from a milestone book on abuse, "Why Does He Do That?" is that people really want to excuse harmful behaviors as illness. When often, repeated bad behavior happen…
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So I search google for "undherd Richard Dawkins", first link: https://unherd.com/2021/04/why-the-atheists-turned-on-richar... "Why the atheists turned on Dawkins - They care more about social justice than whether or not God exists" Written by: Ben Sixsmith is an English writer living in Poland. He has written for Quillette, Areo, The Catholic Herald....
Ben Sixsmith is neither a leader or founder of UnHerd, so even if he’s a Christian Right voice whose writing they’ve carried, that hardly cobtradicts the claim that they are diverse and that they don’t focus on Christian Right content, carrying much from sides opposing thst viewpoint. Also, as Christian but pro-secular-politics left-leaning person, I think the statement you quote as an example of far right Christian…
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Agreed, I think this sentiment is along the lines of "political correctness run amok" which is a completely subjective interpretation of changing social norms. Whereas I think the article is discussing how some use the impersonal void of social media as an outlet for their anxiety, etc. Personally, I try to limit the amount of time I spend on such websites, and HN is really the only place I read the comments (in mode…
I actively avoid Twitter, but still get force fed Twitter opinions via most news websites. I wish they would stop producing headlines about the latest "backlash" or "outrage" on there.
Trolls create anger and conflict and conflict drives engagement. But that is as nothing compared to the engagement you get from public spectacles of righteous indignation. Social media breeds a special sort narcissistic positive feedback loop and it turns out a very small amount of validation is all that is required to set people off. But trolls usually know they're trolls. On the other hand take for example Twitter…
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I like your point, but I think you take it too far here: > if there are never any negative indicators that you are the problem, rather than everyone else… there is a mathematically insignificant chance you will ever realize something might be wrong A lot of my self-improvement has come not because of explicit negative feedback, but through paying attention to people and reflecting on who I want to be in the world. Th…
What you may not realize is, some people literally don't know how to do that, or that it's even something anyone would ever do. If you dropped into an alien culture, you'd need to learn a new raft of different signals all over again.
Canadians are very nice, but their famous agreeableness (and passive-agressiveness) often prevents me from realizing when I've committed a transgression, and makes it so much harder to integrate into the culture.
Negative feedback is very useful and I would be grateful to get it instead of receiving a veiled response.
Relevant classic post: Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People, https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most... ^ previously on HN twice, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18881827 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25600274
“Insane” is mostly meant in jest here, not to imply that heavy contributors are mentally ill. The examples they picked out are pretty ridiculous but are also the biggest outliers. The real point here is that <1% of the users account for ~99% or so of the consumed content. Which is interesting in its own right.