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ireneista
@ireneista

please don't do the mob "justice" thing

The official post-Cohost permanent URL for this piece is https://irenes.space/leaves/2024-09-29-no-mob-justice

if you read only one line of this post, let it be this one: before participating in a public discussion, ask yourself whether you are acting, or reacting.

even when reactive social media mobs arrive at the "right" answer to some social issue that feels very pressing and important, it's the wrong answer, because the process is wrong. the process is not one that embodies justice.

just to be more specific about how this process of, essentially, shouting people down fails to embody justice... while it is sometimes (very rarely) necessary, there is no particular reason to expect that the "winner" of it will be the party who's in the right, if anyone is even in the right at all. instead it's whoever is best at rallying popular support, which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with right and wrong or with the issue at hand, it's more about who's charismatic and good at crafting popular appeals and convincing everyone involved that participating in the mess was their own idea.

don't participate in this stuff. it's bullshit. when we discussed this on the birdsite we stopped short of using that word, because it would have risked getting our account suspended for the appearance of incivility, but here on Cohost we hope we can call things what they are. social media reactivity storms are fucking bullshit.

if appeals to justice are not persuasive to you, we have another argument: you aren't being the teller of your own story when you do this. depending on whether any particular reactivity storm is spontaneous or not - which is usually unknowable - you're either being manipulated, or you're worshiping the whims of a random number generator. in either case, you have ceased to be the teller of your own story, you are allowing the mob to decide what questions you're answering and how you frame your thoughts on them. this is true even if you think you're reframing things thoughtfully with your words, because you're still reinforcing the storm and you can't control how your audience will connect it to whatever scraps of context they've managed to pick up.

please do not ask us what prompted this today. you know or you don't; we don't want to spread that particular topic further. it's not really about any specific incident, anyway, it's about a general social pattern that happens all the time, all over the place.

we think Cohost has created the preconditions for building a culture that is better than the web at large in this regard. we think very highly of everyone here, we really truly do. you all are thoughtful and creative and very punk, and we are super glad to be among you.

please do your best, all of you individually, to practice awareness in your public interactions, and reflect on things before you say them. if every raindrop takes responsibility, there won't be a flood. thank you.

invis
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in reply to @ireneista's post:

ireneista
@ireneista

yes, it's a social pattern which takes on a life of its own, independent of the platforms it takes place on or the people performing the actions which perpetuate it. to dismantle it we must understand the pattern and strike at its heart, which is the tendency to react to things simply because they are the focus of attention and intense emotion.

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noracodes
@noracodes

I think this is entirely true when such floods are directed against individuals - transparently so.

But how do we more appropriately react against companies, or other organizations, especially organizations that are significantly larger than the individual scale? There are some clear guidelines, some illustrated well today:

  • Directing a flood at individuals, even for a "good" reason, is unacceptable.
  • Directing a flood at a large company whose unionized workers have officially called for assistance, such as the New York Times, is a socially positive thing to do (I assume we agree on this).

So, where's the line? Is a union required to direct such an action? This seems to have some significant and obvious problems. Is there a threshold of company size?

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ireneista
@ireneista

we don't claim to know the full answer to that question but we note that the way you asked that is already accepting the core premise we are seeking to reject: that reacting to things is a meaningful form of public accountability.

when we respond to something a corporate PR team did, we are still having the conversation they want us to have (if they are good at their job), or at the very least we are being careless and having a conversation that exists within the lens of whatever happened within the last 48 hours, rather than backing off and thinking strategically.

we don't need to performatively condemn each new horrible thing a corporation does. doing so causes more harm than good, because reactive, performative condemnation is fucking useless as a tool for bringing about social change.

we need to find patterns in corporate misbehavior, decide on what change we want to make in the world, pick or invent a theory of change that we have rational basis to expect will get us there, and get to work.

we respect you as a friend who we've known for years and we really appreciate you responding; we know well that not everyone is at the same place with this stuff, and there needs to be conversation in order to draw it out. we hope then that you won't take it personally when we say that we refuse, at least in this particular conversation, to even try to answer the question "where's the line", because to do so would simply be bringing the reactivity up one layer, having a meta-conversation which is still reacting to the immediate situation rather than thinking strategically.

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noracodes
@noracodes

Thanks for this really thoughtful response! I always appreciate the way you re-frame conversations like this.

I misunderstood the focus of your original post, and I think it's likely that others will too. (Or maybe not, who knows.) In particular, I think it could be clearer that it's the reactivity you're referring to, rather than the collective performative condemnation, which I think is a powerful tool for social change.

After all, what is a short-term boycott but a mob-scale performative condemnation? It doesn't meaningfully impact most organizations' revenue in even the medium term, and serves only to express the feelings and opinions of consumers. Even a longer-term boycott isn't designed, in general, to actually financially destroy an organization. Instead, most boycotts serve to illustrate one thing: that consumers care more about whatever the particular social issue at hand is, than about consuming the company's products or partaking in their services. That's performative condemnation, and it works.

So, I think I do agree with you pretty much entirely here, but I worry that others will misinterpret your point in the same way I did.

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ireneista
@ireneista

yeah, we think public condemnation can be a valid tool for change, it's just that it is important to be intentional about it. if you're doing it because it's your strategy, carry on. if you're doing it without thinking about why, that's what we take issue with.

it's really hard to talk about this stuff because it creates such intense feelings; therefore, we're still learning the most effective ways to say it. back and forth such as this helps us understand how to do that better, so thank you very much. <3

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unlyrical
@unlyrical

i appreciate this frank discussion of the meanings of actions like this and i'm glad you are talking about this. in particular the first line of your post stuck with me so i went to read the comments and it's really good reading insights like these. thank you both.

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modulusshift
@modulusshift

okay, I want to agree, but genuinely I'm a little unconvinced still. I don't participate in 95% of these storms, and it feels very icky on the rare occasions that I do, and I can think of at least two storms that targeted people I really valued the contributions of... but these reasons in particular aren't doing it for me.

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ireneista
@ireneista

that is completely fair. we would adore any thoughts you're able to explain about your reservations, now or in the future. we acknowledge though that it may be hard for us to resist trying to convince you, which will probably make it harder.

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woebetide
@woebetide
  • Does this harm me?
  • Does this harm someone who needs advocacy from someone with more privilege?
  • Am I that person?
  • do I know enough about the situation even if I initially think the above is true to advocate calmly and effectively for that person?
  • if all are true, how likely is it participating in a dogpile will achieve the desired results?

I have at times been known to fail checking these kinds of questions before opening my keyboard, even on here. I do try to restrain myself to subposting instead of replying, or putting people on blast, but if the person I’m subposting sees my vitriol and knows it’s about them does that really make what I did any better?

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hierarchon
@hierarchon

relatedly, you can generally afford to wait a day or two to decide how you think about something, especially if there's something that makes you go "wait, that doesn't sound plausible".

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mitsukichi
@mitsukichi

with every storm i witness, sometimes i find reliable new people on both sides of it that i'm interested in, but i have never witnessed one that formed in a vacuum. i will go to extraordinary lengths to find the beginnings of each one.

i sincerely wish cohost remains free of these, but i'm hearing chatter, and i fear it may not last forever.

the only advice i can think to give here is, if something or someone makes you very upset on behalf of others, do your due dilligence. i will believe every personal story someone tells, but i won't stop digging until i know what precisely took place. the last thing i want to see is another believe us when we say believe us when we say believe us when we say believe us when we say believe us when we say believe us when we say believe us when we say believe us when we say believe us when we say noodles.

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