hey, people
when you’re reblogging something to disagree with it and there are, like, twenty notes
check that fifteen of them aren’t someone shouting about how OP is terrible
I like arguing too, but being dogpiled is really unpleasant and it silences dissent and new ideas within our communities; if there are already a lot of people disagreeing, the point has probably been made and you’re just giving someone a hard time
I’ve been bad about this in the past and I will be trying to get better
Agree with the conclusion but not the reasoning. If 15 people have already said why something is wrong, you’re probably wasting your breath responding, and may be contributing to giving a bad idea more exposure than it deserves.
But the meme that criticism can be silencing needs to die–even if a bunch of people are criticizing you. It provides a lazy justification for internet self-righteousness: notice a bunch of people are criticizing you, then conclude they’re trying to silence you and therefore you must be the good guy.
(Or at least, that’s how things used to go in the online atheism community. Things may play out differently in your community.
A bunch of people disagreeing with you doesn’t make you right. I’m using “silence” in its most literal sense: like, there are times I’ve thought “man, if I say this sixteen people will yell at me, and I don’t want to deal with that” when I probably would have said it if two or three people would yell at me. And I would prefer, on balance, that people with unpopular opinions say them.
Except I don’t think that is the most literal sense of “silence.” Being quiet because you don’t want a bunch of people criticizing you is not the same thing as being forced to be quiet. That’s something that the rhetoric of “if you criticize people under certain conditions you’re silencing them” tends to ignore.
It’s unfortunate if people with worthwhile things to say stay quiet for fear of criticism, but there’s a limit to how much we can do about that. Talking about controversial subjects on the internet requires a certain amount of thick skin, or at least the ability to have a minor freakout but then say, “wait, no, I’m being irrational about this, and I can’t insist everybody else alter their behavior to keep me from having irrational freakouts.” We should insist people not be jerks unnecessarily, but I don’t think we’re going to change the fundamental dynamic.
And yes, while I won’t name names, I can think of specific people who I don’t think are really cut out for the “well-known controversial blogger” gig, because they don’t handle criticism well, and it isn’t reasonable to expect other people to cater to their inability to handle criticism well. In an ideal world you’d never have to make that kind of judgement, but obvs. we don’t live in an ideal world.
“Being quiet because you don’t want a bunch of people criticizing you is not the same thing as being forced to be quiet.” no it’s definitely not, but at least when I say “silencing” I mean it as the opposite of “mind-changing,” which is what we should be aiming for. If the worst that happens when you post something is that a few people disagree with you nicely, you’ll go ahead and post it and if the people disagreeing with you are persuasive you might change your mind, or at least be a little less confident in your position. But if you’re afraid of hundreds of people reblogging your post with “wow this is so wrong I can’t even” you won’t say anything at all and then you’ll keep believing whatever it is you believe and quietly resenting the ~evil lynch mob who has decided your opinion is too politically incorrect to speak out loud~.
“I don’t think we’re going to change the fundamental dynamic.” yeah okay probably not. I’ll keep hoping though.