Blog Wars
Once upon a time I worked in an office with cubes. Cubes, as you probably know, are made of five-foot-high upholstered partitions which do approximately zip to block sound transmission, so the lucky cube dweller gets to hear everything that’s going on in all the surrounding cubes.
In my case, it was my misfortune that the people on the other side of the cubewall were what I generally refer to as “twits.” Twits are people who don’t know what they’re talking about but insist on talking about it anyway, often with great heat. A memory that is burned into my mind is the evening in mid-June when the aforementioned twits were discussing day length. One person noted that it seemed to her the days were getting longer. Another person said that he thought the days were getting shorter. Someone else opined that in fact the day length was not changing, it was just an illusion caused by the fact that the sunsets were occurring later and later. A fourth person mentioned the word “solstice,” which she had heard on the radio, and wondered aloud if this had anything to with the sunset thing. One of the other people explained authoritatively that no, the solstice occurred in the fall and marked the point when daylight savings time ended. The conversation grew heated. Positions became entrenched. Sharp words were exchanged. In an alternative timeline, I committed suicide on my side of the cubewall because I couldn’t fucking take it anymore. In this timeline, alas, I endured and am here to tell the tale.
It often seems to me that about 99% of blogular discourse is like that trans-cubewall solstice discussion: people arguing vehemently over things they don’t understand. Which is fine, really, but I’d rather they didn’t do it within earshot of me. The suicide thing and all.
Unfortunately, that kind of twittery occasionally infects the blogs I read, which annoys the living shit out of me. (It also shows up here on my own blog at times, and I will gladly pay a princely sum — I’m talking 10, 20 bucks — to the first person who can build me a twit filter.) What’s even worse is when the twittery is compounded by the vicious cliquishness — part Heathers, part People’s Front of Judea* — that leads some people in the leftist-feminist blog world to believe that their energy is best spent on attacking other people in the leftist-feminist blog world.
(Heathers) + (People’s Front of Judea) x (solstice dispute) = Blog War
So imagine my angst when I emerged today from my extended Sickmas hiatus, all ready to catch up on the news and blog talk, to discover that lo and fucking behold, yet another one of these trainwrecks** was in progress.
Happy Fucking New Year.
*****
*From Life of Brian:
REG: The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People’s Front.
PEOPLE’S FRONT OF JUDEA: Yeah…
JUDITH: Splitters.
PEOPLE’S FRONT OF JUDEA: Splitters…
FRANCIS: And the Judean Popular People’s Front.
PEOPLE’S FRONT OF JUDEA: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters…
LORETTA: And the People’s Front of Judea.
PEOPLE’S FRONT OF JUDEA: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters…
REG: What?
LORETTA: The People’s Front of Judea. Splitters.
REG: We’re the People’s Front of Judea!
LORETTA: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
REG: People’s Front! C-huh.
FRANCIS: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?
REG: He’s over there.
PEOPLE’S FRONT OF JUDEA: Splitter!Later, during the commando raid:
BRIAN: Brothers! Brothers! We should be struggling together!
FRANCIS: We are! Ohh.
BRIAN: We mustn’t fight each other! Surely we should be united against the common enemy!
EVERYONE: The Judean People’s Front?!
BRIAN: No, no! The Romans!
**Which is not to say that everyone on the train is a twit, a Heather, or a member of the People’s Front of Judea. Many smart people of good faith get involved in these discussions because they want to inject a little sense into the sea of nonsense, and that is a fine thing. But the sea, it’s still made of nonsense.
19 Responses to “Blog Wars”
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Chris says:
That’s it! You’re off the blogroll.
December 31st, 2006 at 10:09 pm EST -
Violet says:
I’m afraid I can’t allow comments like that on my blog. You’re banned.
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Victoria says:
It often seems to me that about 99% of blogular discourse is like that trans-cubewall solstice discussion…
Girl, you just used trans in the course of this post. Obviously you meant something by it.
When, with all my authority on such matters, I identify precisely what secret message was embedded within the above text, I’ll make sure to let you know whether, today, I am hero-worshipping you, or damning you to bloody hell, from my side of the Cubicle Wall of Eternal Righteousness.
(Fucking cube farms, sheesh.)
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gordo says:
I don’t mind the ignorance so much as the condescension that so often comes with it. I can’t count the number of times someone has prefaced a completely wrongheaded economics argument with the phrase, “Economics 101.” For example:
Twit
Economics 101: As wages go up, more people are put out of work. Raising the minimum wage will raise unemployment.
Me
So, if your boss cut your salary, there would be more jobs for everyone?
Twit
Economics 101: Everyone gets paid exactly the value of his labor. My boss could not find someone equally qualified for less than I make.
Me
How does you boss calculate down to the penny how much your labor is worth? And how come unemployment is lower now than it was back before there was a minimum wage? In fact, it’s lower than it was before the last minimum wage increase.
Twit
…
Me
You never took Economics 101, did you? In fact, you’ve never even read an economics book, have you?
Twit’s Sock Puppet
Typical liberal, using an add homonym attack. Logic 101: (etc.)
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flawedplan says:
I appreciate this post, dammit I got sucked in again, left no comments of course, but dutifully (doh!) read all 14 blogs, taking it all seriously, trying to understand, trying to *learn*, *empathize*, *expand my mind*, be good liberal, arf arf, all the while certain the next ten links will lead to clarity. After 2 days of this I’m left with nothing but brand new names for my nice big cups of shut the fuck up. Never again.
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Jim Deeny says:
The other side of the cubicle there could be a greater intellect than yourself.
They can be quiet or out-spoken, passive or aggressive.
Their submergence depends on their will on what they believe in, it’s a matter of how deep they will to go dependinding on their will.
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winna says:
Were I ever to have children, I would have to tell them about the Great Bathroom Wars of the winter of 2006.
I wholeheartedly support the right for people to pee wherever they desire to pee, as long as they don’t leave a mess in the stall for the next occupant. I am taking a stand, by gum!
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Jim Deeny says:
Winni-
Be careful, the next guy may have holes in his shoes.
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Burrow says:
And some of us want to stay as far away from the side idiocy, but having actual experience and loved ones involved i(by proxy) in the latest one makes us become involved.
(We’re the people who know that the longest (or shortest depending on what time of year) day of the year is the solstice. *head desk*
I hope I don’t contribute to your alternate reality’s suicide.
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foilwoman says:
What was all that (Twisty-gate) about? She’s still my cult-leader, of course.
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Paul Tergeist says:
(Heathers) + (People’s Front of Judea) x (solstice dispute) = Blog War
-VIt’s the bloody PFJ again!
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Violet says:
What was all that (Twisty-gate) about?
Guess which one of these happened:
1. Twisty posted a long screed on her blog expressing her venomous hatred of transwomen and revealing that she was, in fact, the leader of an anti-transsexual commando squad that specializes in oppressing male-to-female transsexuals wherever they might be found, particularly in women’s restrooms.
2. A commenter on a long thread (200+ comments) at Twisty’s posted some hateful remarks expressing extreme antipathy towards transwomen (with, I might add, unusual attention to the issue of restroom usage). Twisty wasn’t participating in the thread by that point (as usual), but once she was alerted to the drift she shut down comments, then banned the hate-speech person, then put up a post expressly stating her own pro-trans sentiments.
Actually it was #2, but the way some people are acting, you’d swear it was #1. People de-blogrolling Twisty, posting indignant protestations of Twisty’s “oppression” of trans people. It’s bizarre. As a blogger who doesn’t always read all the comments posted here and certainly doesn’t moderate for agreement with my own views, the whole thing is just freaky as shit to me.
As for the actual debate on transwomen issues, I don’t know much. I haven’t followed all the blogular discourse on it, but there are disagreements about whether there should ever be women-born-women-only spaces, etc. But unlike the solstice people I’m not going to tread where I have no fucking clue.
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will says:
This is about me, isnt it?
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Violet says:
This is about me, isnt it?
Are you a transsexual?
After 2 days of this I’m left with nothing but brand new names for my nice big cups of shut the fuck up.
I would like to hear those names. I need some new ones.
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rootlesscosmo says:
I had a friend who, as a child, believed the days got longer in Summer because the sun’s heat made them expand.
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simply wondered says:
add homonym attack - beautiful, gordo…
and rootlesscosmo - don’t you just wish that friend had been right (bloody hell, maybe they were - global warming is going to do wonders for national productivity!)
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ginmar says:
And of course the fact that a lot of the bloggers displaying such antipathy to Twisty have much lower visibility than she does has nothing to do with it. That’s not a common tactic at all.
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simply wondered says:
do people actually care that much about ‘blog visibility’? i’d asumed it’s because they disagreed violently wth her opinion - and she puts it pretty forcefully so disagreement (twittish or oterwise) is likely to be similarly forceful.
must go and see what’s been going on over there… -
a louis wain cat says:
I think this astonishing little episode was brought on by a combination of things- ginmar’s theory and simply wondered’s theory are both right, I’d say. Add to that that Twisty is an amazingly good writer, and- well, when you have somebody who’s eloquent, smart, funny, uncompromising, and has a large following, I guess it’s not too surprising that people who disagree with her would find her extremely threatening.
I’m not an unbiased observer, to be sure(and after this, I’m even less unbiased than I was), but from what I saw of this particular blog war, there definitely seemed to be a couple of people who were, I think, quite deliberately trying to use the whole thing to try to destroy Twisty’s reputation because they hate her and have decided she’s some sort of evil crypto-right winger, and who were basically acting as agitators all across the feminist blogosphere. At least one of them pretty much came right out and said that they felt she was a bad influence on the feminist blogosphere and hoped that this would bring her down. I think these people were a large part of the reason why this whole thing became more about Twisty than the bigoted commenter- they were very good at pushing a major leftist emotional hot button(the laudable desire to condemn bigotry), and channeling it against Twisty, leading to people apparently believing that her blog was as bad as LGF and that even having someone on your blogroll who linked to her marked you as some sort of bigot. Violet’s Heathers/People’s Front of Judea/solstice argument equation really summed the whole depressing mess up perfectly.
