Comment by jlaternman
21 hours ago
The author is describing the socially (and physically) destructive percentage of the population who just want to grab power through manipulation and control and the way they express this through social media, I believe (dark triad personality disorders, loosely). The only danger I see is an embrace of passivism in the form of “anyone who objects to things that are happening in passionate terms is the real problem.” Which would be even worse, when that percentage has real power, and real ability to pull levers. Not to say everyone should go around screaming or protesting with every tweet, etc. It's the balance of these things I think is off-kilter, not a simple solution “just act aloof and block the right people, and all will be well in the world, just like it is in Starbucks when I leave my apartment each morning.” In any case, that's my two cents. There's a balance to be struck, that this article doesn't really get at.
There is a lot of behavior online which I'd characterize as "hearing the dog whistles and barking" that when confront folks they will characterize it as "objecting to things in passionate terms"
Like the Otaku described by Azuma [1] there is a definite regression in terms of the of use of language and ideology, essentially a reversion from a language-using animal which can create unlimited meanings by putting together a finite vocabulary in a grammatical system as opposed to words that have a meaning in and of itself.
For instance, anti-resilience activists will run you out of some communities because you use the word "snowflake" because this is a dog whistle that makes them bark. With their lexicon of triggering words in hand you can talk about the dangers of anti-resilience all day and you're talking right past them.
This style of communication is especially dangerous for marginalized communities because they create a bubble of false consensus that makes them think somebody agrees with them but doesn't do the hard work of explaining themselves and doing the even harder work of bringing about a change of heart across the society would be necessary to do something widespread and durable problems such as the mutual lack of respect between black Americans and the police.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Otaku-Database-Animals-Hiroki-Azuma/d...