Shutting Up Less.
Originally posted on Twitter, April 21, 2021
This series of posts came after adisgusting homophobic attack on a friend from Jim Stewartson.
Since I’ve had to lock the account on and off, the contents follow here for anyone and everyone to access freely as they may wish.
So, folks have probably noticed I've been shutting up less.
Today, I officially ran out of fucks left to give. If you want to know what's up, read the rest of the rant in however many tweets it takes.
(Call this part one. This ain't even a third of it, y'all.)
This is my personal opinion, my personal perception, and nothing more. Give it the weight you would for any personal, completely-non-expert opinion from a random middle-aged starving artist.
You might think I'm completely wrong.
That's fine.
That is your personal opinion and perception.
I don't care, and I'm not going to debate it with you. (This is the first and last warning to that effect; I have an itchy block finger this week.)
You absolutely do not have to care about my opinion; that's actually an option you've always had and I wish you'd've considered it before I had to overtly bring it up.
I might be completely wrong!
I'll just have to live with being wrong, then, because if this novella doesn't inform you of the amount of thought and attention I've paid to this already? Maybe consider it again, because it's already far too much.
This is my official statement of 'I am so beyond done with this bullshit'. Do not be that motherfucker that comes up with new bullshit behavior to throw at me to write another one of these.
Instead, the next time someone tells you that your bullshit behavior is traumatizing and they just want to be left alone to focus on their well-being, you'll listen, and leave them the hell alone to mind their own business.
I've dropped a lot of folks, and blocked a handful. It isn't all of the folks I know who are involved in TTP, and the difference is clear and obvious to me: the folks who I haven't seen harry others are fine.
People who haven't aggressively evangelized the group to me privately, or attempted to manipulate me? Also fine.
I think that's a pretty common sense guideline.
I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure you don't like to hang around people who you feel are trying to guilt-trip you, brow-beat you, or sell you (a very nebulous) something that sounds like nothing more than the same loose allegations made about an endless series of people for months now.
And that's what I originally had a problem with: the constant barrage of allegations coming from Jim.
Yep, I said it.
Out loud, even.
The longer this went on, the more it looked indistinguishable from the Qanon promoters and disinformation merchants that love to take protest footage and pervert it into something else.
Yes, that's what it looks like from here, and it is only getting worse.
Glaring siren emoji everywhere? Check.
Maximum alarmism at all times? Check.
Wild, scattershot allegations? Check.
Endless streams of retweets of the same posts over and over and over and over again? Check.
Absurd and poorly-considered purity tests? Check.
Here's the thing about all of that: I don't need to read all of the nebulous chains of evidence to see every bit of this as an enormous problem.
Why?
Because every single bit of that is manipulative behavior, and it's typically meant to manipulate people into reacting without fully examining the information and thinking it through.
Yeah, that's right.
I may not have bothered reading every crumb of evidence, but I have read plenty about manipulative behaviors over the years due to traumatic nonsense in the course of my own life.
You can find extensive, credible resources on all of the things I am going to describe; you don't need to take my word for any of it.
Let me break this all down for you:
Alarmist visuals (sirens) + language: This is a common fear-mongering tactic.
Yes, it is.
Be on maximum alert at all times!
Be on edge!
Be afraid!
This tiny morsel of a nothingburger is BIG NEWS, be afraid and let your emotional reaction bypass your logical processing!
Alert!
Alert!
Alert!
THE SKY IS FALLING!
(And it's always just more drizzle, every fucking time.)
Keeping people in a state of hyper-alertness is a common manipulative tactic.
Importantly, once someone trusts the source of the information, the more effective this gets.
FOXnews, anyone? Yeah, exactly.
Wild, scattershot allegations: You all know this one already as 'the gish gallop'.
If you don't, look it up. I personally call it 'bullshit buckshot'.
It is a flood of information or allegations that would require too much time to examine or refute, often with poor explanations of how it is intended to interrelate in regard to the presented conclusion, and thus people are typically unable to defend, examine, or fact-check it properly.
This is a crass trick to get you to swallow the conclusion without bothering to properly chew all of the relevant data.
Endless retweet repetition.
This one comes from the world of advertising, and it boils down to this: the more often you repeat something, the more people remember it, and automatically absorb it.
The classic example is three repetitions.
You remember the old 'Head On' ads from ages back?
The entire script of the ad: "Head On, apply directly to the forehead. Head On, apply directly to the forehead. Head On, apply directly to the forehead."
And if you ever saw them, I bet you remember those horribly made ads, or have no trouble recalling them now, even if you never even tried the product.
Same thing: absorb this information automatically; bypass critical thinking entirely.
IN MY PERSONAL VIEW, this is an unholy trinity right here, and I won't pretend otherwise or politely look away in silence any longer.
(Y'all who thought I wasn't being nice before? Maybe you should have listened when I said that you'll know the difference when I stop.)
People who are putting forward concrete, factual information that clearly demonstrates the conclusion they are presenting do not need to take so many steps, so consistently, over a period of months to get you to NOT stop, examine all of the information in depth, and think it through logically and rationally.
To me, this is all incredibly damning.
The purity test isn't above, because it is symptomatic of a number of additional problems.
The test in question is so poorly-considered that it strained my patience the moment I read it.
I've tried to tactfully point out some of the issues I have with it over time, but I'm done dancing around in order to avoid potentially bruising any egos that might be sensitive.
We're asked to discount anyone who is a professional/expert who gets paid -- in money, clout, attention, or any other form -- to study the issues, or cover them in any form.
First: this is the most egregiously entitled and privileged argument I have heard in a very long time.
Is it reasonable to question a gain-related motive?
Absolutely!
Is it reasonable to automatically dismiss someone's input if you can figure out a way they may have some form of gain for providing their input?
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT, BECAUSE THIS IS ALMOST PATHOLOGICALLY INSIPID TO EVEN SUGGEST.
How nice is your life that you can do your job for free? Must be pretty nice!
Most people who have invested in gaining the relevant expertise in any of these areas are probably still paying off the student loans they took out to acquire that knowledge and experience, and beyond that, everyone needs to eat, have a place to live -- clearly, you get the picture here.
CHECK YOUR FUCKING PRIVILEGE.
(Ahem. I heard it's required to say that at least once when you get to Twitter.)
And the entitlement?
Yeah, you expect those folks to set aside paying work to do this all for free?
Mighty generous with other people's time and efforts there.
By the by, considering the varying economies of gain, didn't writing all of that up as a standard to hold others to generate a lot of clout and prestige for the author?
Sure did.
Oopsie?
So in addition to the issues described re: privilege and entitlement, I've had to add hypocrisy to the list.
Also, I already mentioned 'very poorly thought-out', and this trio of reasons is why I believe this to be the case.
It does not bode well at all for how well-considered any of the author's other arguments are going to be.
What all of the above have in common is less obvious, but I consider it much more insidious: it establishes a pattern of behavior in which any of the above might be called out as bad, 'but not when I do it'.
These behaviors have been called out as bad in others, and, welp, somehow it's not bad when the caller's doing it.
Fuck all of that. You either have principles, or you don't.
All of the above? Entirely aside from content that threw out a lot of red flags.
Harping on Satanism/calling things 'Luciferian'?
As a pagan, I have massive qualms with this.
While I'm not a Satanist, the view presented of Satanists in these examples is far from the reality, and much more akin to something you'd find in a Chick Tract.
Additionally, every time these attitudes are perpetuated, it makes my non-violent, empathize whenever possible, try-to-not-lose-my-fucking-temper-at-ignorance life much harder.
Maybe you are sincerely ignorant and don't realize you are engaging in and eagerly propagating bigotry, but that is absolutely what you're doing.
It makes it very hard for me to believe you give a single damn about others when you behave this way, because you're putting people at risk every time you do this.
At best, this is ignorant and thoughtless.
Ignorance and thoughtlessness make for spectacularly shitty leadership and are not traits I want to see in anyone who presents themselves loudly and publicly as an authority in regard to anything.
I would not trust someone who behaves this way to tell me how to go about washing my socks.
"How could someone say such things about our generous volunteers?!" is a bit of sleight-of-hand I can also no longer stomach.
I am not talking about the legion of well-intentioned people who want to help friends and family get away from dangerous ideologies or those who do not troll, harass, browbeat, guilt-trip, threaten, or make vast pronouncements to get people riled.
These people are not engaging in the problem behaviors that people -- now, including me -- are calling out.
THESE CRITICISMS DO NOT APPLY TO THEM.
I call this sleight-of-hand because that's what it is.
This is ripping a giant fart, and when someone walks into the room and asks what that smell is, gesturing wildly to the assembled crowd and melodramatically insisting it's cruel to say everyone in the room stinks.
This is an attempt to get others to feel defensive about criticism that (generic) you know applies specifically to (generic) you, and rally others to your defense under the false pretense that they are also under attack.
They aren't attacking me, no! They're attacking us all, even you! Get 'em!
I am beyond furious at the amount of good faith effort I've put into this train wreck, and angry as hell on behalf of the people -- who have done nothing but try to learn, empathize, and engage with others in kindness -- getting sucked into the mire with this utterly shameless tactic.
That's as far as I've managed to get -- thus far.
There is a whole lot more.
Maybe y'all should have left me the fuck alone when I asked you to, and not fucked around.
Looks like it's finding out time, huh?
I never got around to the other bits as I intended, but this one stands.
I stand by every single word of it now as I did then.
You either have principles or you don’t.