I'm going to make a different critique than most people, here :
It means that if people like you, and you’re doing well, then you can commit lots of mild misdeeds and journalists will never bother you. But if you become unpopular, or seem weird, or take a stand against something widely believed, then investigative journalists will dig up all your decades-old mistakes and ruin your reputation.
This is hilariously naive. It's not just or even mostly journalists, in the same way that a pressure wave isn't just or even mostly any one particle.
There's a poster on tumblr named brazenautomaton, who's a bit of a mad artist in all of the best ways. One of those are his rants -- and I use the term as a compliment -- on popularity. I can't find the best one of the top of my head, but as a good example:
It’s not self-hatred at all. It’s popularity. These “woke” white men who can’t shut up about how evil white people are tend to be attractive, well-off, upper-middle-class, and most important of all, popular. Inherently popular. Other people instinctively align themselves with their goals and desires, because they are popular. Because they are popular, their goals and desires are “Punish unpopular people”.
If you are well-off, attractive, upper-middle-class, and popular, you have very very little to fear from social punishment, because people will not WANT to punish you. They want to punish unpopular people. One of the best ways you can find unpopular people so you can punish them, is to just start trying to punish everyone in your zone of perception – the other popular people will remain unpunished, the middling people will suffer a bit but you don’t care, and the unpopular people will be revealed by how much punishment rains upon them because they do not have popularity and thus are unable to stop it from happening. Then, once you have located the unpopular people by seeing who actually gets punished from your omnidirectional punishment attempts, you can continue to punish them. Forever and ever and ever, because it will never end, and they will not stop, and they will not be stopped.
Yes, this is clinical depression, though see Scott re: Malcolm Muggeridge. It's also non-falsifiable: anyone who can be punished can't be popular, and anyone who is popular can't be punished. But it's also a pattern that exists.
Scott knows this, more intimately than most. It's not like that's even a one-off! But I can play examples of the confessed rapist you could not even discuss the 'allegations' of over at RPGnet, until they annoyed someone enough to get booted, and then the deluge. I can give examples as severe as alleged grooming and as minor as 'appropriated her own culture' in the furry fandom. Nor is it specific to online or the left: the pastor everyone loves until, posthumously, it turns out everyone had a horror story about is trope with a lot of recently-live examples. Nor it is about big stuff: the Friday Fun thread conversation about Palworld has some steelmen, but it's almost certainly downstream of some popular people wanting to start wars over AIgen.
You and I will do it too. It's hard to care for what's real, rather than what's talked about and what the people around you find important.
Maybe Scott doesn't think it necessary to say, maybe he knows that one of the big rules for being on the Inside is that you don't mention that there's an Inside.
But it's not just the journalists doing this, and I'm increasingly convinced that they're neither driving the stampede nor surfing the crowd.
I don’t agree with the second quote. I think the performance of wokeness is a fashionable belief that they tend to use either to get attention and praise or to distance themselves from the ordinary person who must hold more pragmatic ideals about themselves and the world. He’s in a sense showing off his position by arguing that life should be made harder for people like himself. He does this because as a successful entertainer, he doesn’t have to worry about DEI or similar programs because he isn’t applying for the kinds of jobs that are subject to those programs. Even in the acting community, they’re not going to skip a major star because he’s the wrong color. Casting a star means several million from the jump. It might affect more junior actors because they don’t yet have his draw, but he’s already got his.
This seems to be how these sorts of luxury beliefs work. They’re impractical, often doing real damage to lower class people who naively believe them and follow the advice. And rarely do those espousing those beliefs practice them in their own lives. I’ve yet to see any actor turn down a role to give it to a minority or a woman. It’s more often that they insist that others give up theirs to others. They don’t want to give up their roles, they want you to give up your promotion.
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Notes -
I'm going to make a different critique than most people, here :
This is hilariously naive. It's not just or even mostly journalists, in the same way that a pressure wave isn't just or even mostly any one particle.
There's a poster on tumblr named brazenautomaton, who's a bit of a mad artist in all of the best ways. One of those are his rants -- and I use the term as a compliment -- on popularity. I can't find the best one of the top of my head, but as a good example:
Yes, this is clinical depression, though see Scott re: Malcolm Muggeridge. It's also non-falsifiable: anyone who can be punished can't be popular, and anyone who is popular can't be punished. But it's also a pattern that exists.
Scott knows this, more intimately than most. It's not like that's even a one-off! But I can play examples of the confessed rapist you could not even discuss the 'allegations' of over at RPGnet, until they annoyed someone enough to get booted, and then the deluge. I can give examples as severe as alleged grooming and as minor as 'appropriated her own culture' in the furry fandom. Nor is it specific to online or the left: the pastor everyone loves until, posthumously, it turns out everyone had a horror story about is trope with a lot of recently-live examples. Nor it is about big stuff: the Friday Fun thread conversation about Palworld has some steelmen, but it's almost certainly downstream of some popular people wanting to start wars over AIgen.
You and I will do it too. It's hard to care for what's real, rather than what's talked about and what the people around you find important.
Maybe Scott doesn't think it necessary to say, maybe he knows that one of the big rules for being on the Inside is that you don't mention that there's an Inside.
But it's not just the journalists doing this, and I'm increasingly convinced that they're neither driving the stampede nor surfing the crowd.
I don’t agree with the second quote. I think the performance of wokeness is a fashionable belief that they tend to use either to get attention and praise or to distance themselves from the ordinary person who must hold more pragmatic ideals about themselves and the world. He’s in a sense showing off his position by arguing that life should be made harder for people like himself. He does this because as a successful entertainer, he doesn’t have to worry about DEI or similar programs because he isn’t applying for the kinds of jobs that are subject to those programs. Even in the acting community, they’re not going to skip a major star because he’s the wrong color. Casting a star means several million from the jump. It might affect more junior actors because they don’t yet have his draw, but he’s already got his.
This seems to be how these sorts of luxury beliefs work. They’re impractical, often doing real damage to lower class people who naively believe them and follow the advice. And rarely do those espousing those beliefs practice them in their own lives. I’ve yet to see any actor turn down a role to give it to a minority or a woman. It’s more often that they insist that others give up theirs to others. They don’t want to give up their roles, they want you to give up your promotion.
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