On Pile-ons as a way of enforcing community norms

[alias_sqbr]

Disclaimer: I am sick today. This may be utter crap. But my muse was awoken by this discussion and it Will Not Be Silenced! Anyway, I may suck at replying to comments, since I plan to spend the next day and a half napping.

Also: as per the terms of service, I would like it if you read the whole post and all the comments before making your own. I have no way to enforce this community norm except asking nicely :)

---

So.

There's been a of of discussion on metafandom recently about the use of "dog-piling" (or, less pejoratively, "piling-on"), when someone posts something other people don't like (either for shallow reasons like personal taste or due to serious issues like racism etc) and they get inundated with negative replies, and you get a huge swathe of people posting about it on their personal ljs, etc. See for example Why Is There Not More Shunning? and nice is different than good.

Now overall there are pros and cons to this behaviour, like a lot of people I think it's sometimes justifiable (or even necessary) but other times is over-the-top and a bit mob-mentality-ish. It depends on the context, and the manner in which people "pile on".

Personal posts inspired by a big blow up like this can have several purposes, two common ones being simple venting or using this single incident to illustrate a more general problem. But something which has been brought up a bunch of times is "policing of community norms", and I was struck today by how the way "piling on" often works isn't always conducive to this, as the original transgression becomes so magnified in the purple-monkey-dishwasher of people writing posts based on other peoples outraged posts (not reading the original source) that the "community norm" that gets enforced ends up being something really bland and obvious rather than the more complex issue that started it all. Yet it feels like the only people who complain about this are trying to defend the pile-on-ees feelings/honour etc, rather than caring about the social value of truth per se.

I'm going to use the "Open Source Boob Project" as an example since I got kind of involved and it illustrates my point well. A lot of the posts about the OSBP didn't bother to go into the details of what happened, but were mostly just venting the frustration caused by years of crap from the icky badness of fandom (or society in general). Which is absolutely understandable and a valid thing to do. When other people complained that they were misrepresenting what happened the response was mostly "Sure, you may have had nice rules on paper, but this is what it really meant underneath/what you did at the beginning/what would have happened eventually", and I can certainly see that argument. The fact that theferrett's original post gave entirely the wrong impression didn't help matters.

But... then a second group of people read those posts and made other posts along the lines of "If they had not have made it part of the con signup process/let women wearing green badges say no/had it be run by women/groped men's asses too/etc then it would have been fine, but as it is it's disgusting". One can imagine such people theoretically starting a similar idea at a con where it wasn't part of the con signup process, women wearing green badges could say no etc and considering themselves much more enlightened ..except that's exactly what the OSBP did. So what did that second group of people learn, exactly? That it's not ok for men to explicitly expect random women to let them touch their boobs? I'm pretty sure most people knew that already, including theferrett etc. The community norm being policed is more subtle and complex than that.

EDIT: If you don't have a problem with the OSBP then the argument above won't mean much to you, so imagine I'm talking about some other situation where someone did something you think is really bad, and then they got misrepresented as being even worse than that.

I've seen similar issues with the way history is taught: for example, I always got the impression that 19th Century british colonialists were 100% after money and power etc, and had absolutely no concern for the africans. "Well", I can think to myself "Hasn't society progressed". But learning more about history I discover that the english public was actually quite concerned about african welfare (in a paternalistic, racist sort of way) and that even the most violent, cruel colonialist regime sold themselves to shareholders etc as philanthropic gestures of education and improvement. Kind of like they do now. Which is a lot scarier, and actually makes me think.

So how to combat this? Well, I say: if you are genuinely interested in policing community norms, don't demonise the people you're criticising. Not just because it's kind of mean (although imo that should play some part in it too) but because if you tell people "Don't act like this totally evil, moustache twirling villain" they won't feel any need to critically self-examine their behavior, because they know they're *not* totally evil, moustache twirling villains.

And if you're venting, or going off on a tangent etc, then maybe consider adding a disclaimer, like "This is just a rough description, *insert link here* has a more in depth description of what actually happened" etc. Though I agree that one can't be held entirely responsible for people mistaking a rant for a reliable source of unbiased information.

And, most importantly, as much as possible don't base you opinions on second hand reports, especially if you're passing judgement on someone. I also think people should read all the comments on an offending post (or at least the whole post itself!) before ranting at the OP, in case they've recanted or clarified somewhere, but I realise this does involve a LOT of effort once the pile-on gets going(*). And don't be too quick to pigeonhole people who get dog-piled as stock, totally evil, moustache twirling villains, instead look at what really happened, and why they did what they did, and why it's bad, and really ask yourself whether or not it's something you might have done in similar circumstances, and if you'd have known it was bad without having everyone point it out to you. Sorry if this sounds a bit condescending, I get very tactless when I'm sick! And it's easy for me to judge, since my main flaw is not being critical enough.

None of this is to argue against pile-ons per se, or that they can't help people understand what is and isn't acceptable behaviour (individually or as a community) I'm just pointing out an unfortunate flaw that I hadn't seen addressed.

I'd probably have something to say about how this relates to fandom_wank if I read it :)

EDIT: Two things that struck me later.
1)Beyond defining what is and is not acceptable, it is sometimes good to create a general environment of not fear exactly, but one in which people are aware that they can't get away with doing stupid crap, and to this end the exact limits of what counts as "stupid crap" is less important. For example, most people in fanfic fandom would agree, in principle, that racism is bad, but I think it took a whole bunch of people piling-on against individual racist actions to (start to) create a general sense that racism is bad and you shouldn't expect to get away with it, and that criticising things for being racist is a normal and acceptable thing to do.
2)I've ignored the possibility that, eg, the people who misunderstood the OSBP had, in fact, read the original post, and maybe even some of the more detailed and accurate discussion, and managed to still misunderstand the situation all on their own :)

(*)I realise this is veering more into "Don't demonise people because it's mean" rather than my main point of "Don't demonise people because it muddies the message", but I still think it deserves saying.

Comments

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

This sounds all very sensible. Especially this:

I also think people should read all the comments on an offending post (or at least the whole post itself!) before ranting at the OP, in case they've recanted or clarified somewhere

Thanks.

[alias_sqbr]

I think that if everyone was forced to read all the comments on a blog post before they replied to it, the internet would be a much nicer place :)

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

Not only that, but if people were to read an entire post or response to their post, not just the first lines, or the last.

However, when emotions are high I've been guilty of that, and sometimes the moment passes where you want to respond and say 'You know what, I didn't read you post thoroughly, I suck, apologies, this is what I mean'.

[i-palimpsest.livejournal.com]

It'd also be a lot quieter - cause a lot of the time people would see the 280 comments and just go. . . . . yeah maybe I don't care that much :)

[quillori.livejournal.com]

Thank you for such a balanced and sensible post.

I think you are the first person I've seen bring up: And, most importantly, as much as possible don't base you opinions on second hand reports, especially if you're passing judgement on someone. That sums up something I've felt during this debate but hadn't managed to articulate: all this 'you mustn't silence people who are upset' seemed to be missing something, and I think it is just this concern with justice - expressing your own feelings is one thing, but if you want to condemn someone else, you owe it to them to be fair, how ever strong your own feelings. If you feel too strongly to be fair, you should at least say so.

[alias_sqbr]

expressing your own feelings is one thing, but if you want to condemn someone else, you owe it to them to be fair

Hmm. That depends on what you mean by "fair". I think, all things being equal, it's important to try to be accurate (or at least not actively inaccurate), but beyond that I don't see anything wrong with expressing your (possibly unfair) opinions, if you haven't misrepresented what you're getting upset about then the people reading can make their own mind up about whether or not they feel the same way.

Or am I missing your point?

[quillori.livejournal.com]

Yes, 'fair' is one of those tricky words that every one agrees with but can mean almost anything. I think what I meant by it was that you should make it clear what you are doing and follow appropriate rules for that goal. In other words, if you are responding with your own opinions, that's fine whether they're biased or not, but it should be clear that you are presenting your opinions, not a dispassionate summary of the OP's views and their original context. OTOH, if you are rebutting actual points someone else has made, you do have a duty to present those points accurately (to the best of your abilities), rather than creating a staw man.

Thinking about it further, I suspect what makes me particularly uncomfortable is the unmarked intermingling of the two, so that what you feel about someone, and how you feel about the issues their conduct raised for you, gets hopelessly muddled with a discussion of what they actually did or said. 'This is x - thinking the issues it raises made me think about how a, b and c can be bad in these ways I deplore' is fine, even if b and c are only tangentially related to x. 'x is bad for reasons I will now demonstrate' is also fine. 'x is bad because I deplore a, b and c' (not mentioning that b and c are still only tangentially related to x) is not.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

f_w is there to laugh, not to srs bzn! =o

[alias_sqbr]

Exactly! Which is why a compare and contrast is interesting, since a lot of the same dynamics come into play.

[myfyr.livejournal.com]

You know, that is actually a very insightful post. Thanks Sophie. :)

And to make a minor contribution, I think one of the main reasons this happens is that is that many people aren't really interested in making the world a better place,or helping people understand their mistakes, but rather just want to make a self-righteous rant for vanity's sake. Hyperbole is conducive to the latter goal to a much greater extent than the former.

He says self-righteously. ;P

[alias_sqbr]

You know, that is actually a very insightful post

Don't sound so surprised :)

... just want to make a self-righteous rant for vanity's sake

Yes, I get this impression too, sometimes. I think a lot of people have very mixed and not entirely pure motives for joining these things (the people who start them are I think more often genuinely pursuing a principle)

Again, I really like your posts. :)

[elaran.livejournal.com]

I kinda second myfr's comment [lol because I tend to do that] though. I tend to go back and read the post that started it all and then get started on as many of the 200+ comments it usually has telling the poster they're wrongwrongwrong etc and I usually just end up nodding along and thinking, well, people have already said/ranted what I would so I don't usually comment. I do link to it on my lj but more because when I want to scroll back and find these wanks for later reference [or you know, to just cheer myself up that I'm not as stupid as some of the people out there] I can.

Sometimes I get irritated a bit because some of the well, I wouldn't say BNFs, but well-known fen on my flist post their reactions to stuff and I usually agree with what they're saying [there is often a lot of nodding going on because they tend to be far more articulate that I am] but sometimes the comments on their posts by others make me feel like they're all just saying I SECOND THIS to gain approval or dogpiling for the sake of it or something. Which, er, is judgmental and I'm probably wrong but I just get that impression sometimes. /tangent.

Re: Again, I really like your posts. :)

[alias_sqbr]

It's all very subjective isn't it? Something that's come up a bunch of times in these discussions is that what can look like obvious, unneccesary bandwagon jumping/dog-piling to one person can be a really important gesture of support to another.

Something I find annoying is the way these things get so polarised, so that comments to a lot of stuff on metafandom are like:
1/2 page of "OMG can I lick your tasty brain, wordy Mcword, U WIN TEH INARNETS" from OP's friends
One or two "Um, yes and no, I'm not sure I agree" comments from passers by
1/2 page of "That is crazy and bad and wrong, let me tell you why" from people on metafandom
Flamewar between friends and metafandomers

and I can't help but think : Really? Almost everyone who read this post either 100% agreed or 100% disagreed? So..yeah.

(I had a point, but I eated it :))

[out-fox.livejournal.com]

Your points link to what I found interesting about this part of the "Shunning" post:

shunning, dogpiling, social ostracization in whatever terminology, is the feminine weapon of choice. we all know that, right? it's used like any power is - responsibly, by those who have ethics,

My resevervation with pile ons is about who decides when it's ethical. It can be whoever has the greatest numbers and volume to determine norms by mob behaviour. Which =/= the people with the most insight necessarily.

Especially, I have doubts about taking it to the level of passive aggression by not letting the person in question actually know whats being shunned: it can just be a wasted opportunity, to assume that the problems and solutions are obvious to everyone from getting the cold shoulder.

This particularly frustrates me with very righteous white liberals who use shock value sloganeering: like calling anyone they consider racist a "Nazi" and demanding that anyone who doesn't agree with not only their message - but their tactics - be also shunned as The Racist or The Not Radical Enough Person etc.

The person being racist doesn't get it, because they do think they're behaviour's OK, and they know they weren't in the Third Reich. Reducing racism to a caricature just encourages that person to absolve themselves of it because no-one sees themselves as a total caricature rather than a person.

Then the observers who don't have a liberal anti-racist education get all derailed about whether it's also offensive to trivialise the Holocaust, and how contemporary racism operates if it's more complex than swastikas and white hoods, but they're afraid to voice naunces and doubts around the more strident activists.

Like, I love strident activists, but their are smart or really stagnant & divisive ways of calling out bad behaviour.

[alias_sqbr]

Especially, I have doubts about taking it to the level of passive aggression by not letting the person in question actually know whats being shunned

Agreed. And, as has been pointed out, it's not like they'll neccesarily even notice.

As to when it is and isn't appropriatte to be strident or shocking: I have reall issues with this. I'm a very nonconfrontational, passive sort of a person, so aggressive language(*) and shock tactics etc tend to squick me automatically, but on the other hand I know that sometimes they're justified and the only effective way to get a point accross. So unless it's really obvious one way or another I find it hard to pass judgement. But I agree that it can sometimes be overdone, and should (imo) be used as a last resort.

(*)I originally had this as "anger", which is wrong: you can't blame people for being angry. Just for how they choose to express it.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

This is very much my feelings about the OSBP, I think - I reacted to the dog pile aspect, and reacted with some automatic sympathy to a point of view I felt had clearly been missed in the whole record.

And I was quite confronted by the very strong arguments from a couple of people that insufficiently aggressive condemnation was tantamount to (in their view) tacit acceptance, which mostly just made me shake my head in bafflement.

I think I am very much with you -- don't demonise people because it muddles the message is, indeed, the main point, and a reduction in meanness is a cheery side effect.

One of the big lessons I took from my time in student politics is that Johnny Lydons old lyric about 'anger is an energy' is, indeed, correct -- but it can also be a subtle poison, and it is unwise to overuse it or rely on it too much, as your ability to perceive the situation properly shrinks (sort of like emotional amphetamines).



As a sort of aside -- I am coming to an idea that much human social behaviour ultimately comes down to a sort of instinctive idea of game theory, the idea that those who attempt to evade their responsibilities must be punished to force people into the right social strategy. Haven't quite thought about it enough to say much yet, though.

[alias_sqbr]

I agree with you, but I think a BIG problem in this sorts of situation is that regardless of who (if anyone) is right, people being argued against tend to see holes/irrationality in their accusers arguments, while those arguing against them are likely to see themselves as justifiably angry and their opponents complaints as petty attempts to derail the discussion.

So we can all agree in principle that anger is sometimes justified (but not always), and that compromise is sometimes justified (but not always), but in my experience when it comes to any individual argument, where people draw the line depends largely (but not entirely) on which side they're on :/

I have no solution to this, but it's why I decided to leave the "Are dogpiles justified?" argument well alone, and just stick to a particular subissue I did feel certain about :)

As a sort of aside -- I am coming to an idea that much human social behaviour ultimately comes down to a sort of instinctive idea of game theory, the idea that those who attempt to evade their responsibilities must be punished to force people into the right social strategy. Haven't quite thought about it enough to say much yet, though.

Sounds interesting, I look forward to your thought-about thoughts :)

[nemesister.livejournal.com]

because if you tell people "Don't act like this totally evil, moustache twirling villain" they won't feel any need to critically self-examine their behavior, because they know they're *not* totally evil, moustache twirling villains.

So true. If you're going out of your way to misunderstand people, it will only lead to them feeling misunderstood and - hey - rightly so - and the entire conversation is pretty much worthless and frustrating for everyone.

In short: *everyone* sucks

[alias_sqbr]

Hmm. Yes and no. I think there are two issues here which exacerbate each other
1)People tend to demonise their opponents/oversimplify their arguments
2)When attacked, people clutch onto any holes/unfairness etc in their attackers argument as an excuse to completely ignore the criticism

And of course on top of that is the tendency for everyone to misunderstand and pigeonhole each other, so that even polite and reasonable criticism is percieved as irrational attack, and reasonable criticism of someone's unreasonable criticism is percieved as irrational attack etc.

Disorganised comments

[haircaspian.livejournal.com]

Reading huge numbers of comments in that type of conversation is boring. I don't like that idea (I do it sometimes, then feel like I've wasted too much time). There's too much redundancy and it's too hard to find interesting new bits. If you comment without reading all the comments, you may be adding to the redundancy. And I don't like the read-only-ness of not being able to comment. So I dislike dog-piles as a reader and potential replier.

Summaries and links to particular replies can be good, if they're easier to find than most individual replies.

Re: Disorganised comments

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, it is pretty lose-lose. My way would be better if everyone followed it!

I guess skimming the first comment in every thread on the first page or so (and checking out the threads for any that are similar to your planned comment) is a good bare minimum.

But yes, dogpiles in the comments do make it difficult to have a nuanced discussion, and I often feel sorry for the OP having to repeat the same clarifications over and over if it's all due to a misunderstanding (I feel less sorry for them if they just get increasingly defensive and pigheaded, which they often do)

Which is why I think that once a large enough show of disapproval has been shown, and the OP has had a chance to (unsuccessfully) defend themselves, it's better to switch to the distributed approach where there's lots of separate posts all pointing back to the original one. Or to be efficient the dogpilers with nothing new to add could all comment inside existing threads, that would work too, at least from a reader/commenters POV :)

[amymccabe.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Whenever I come across this behavior in fandom, I often find myself arguing for the OP (unless it is really extreme or hate-filled). I think part of it is that there is something in me that always likes to play the devil's advocate and partly because most of the time the OP isn't evil. And writing them off as such demonizes someone who doesn't deserve it and shuts down intelligent communication and destroys a chance to learn from the event.

To take theferret's OSBP as an example, I saw it as an interesting attempt to marry feminism and, well, a guy's desire to touch boobs. It was an attempt to be respectful of women and an attempt to give them a choice over who may or may not touch their breasts. There was a lot wrong with it (discussed at length in many posts). But the attempt to be respectful to women and the fact that women chose to take part was barely acknowledged let alone discussed.

Furthermore, it boogled my mind that this caused so much outrage, when, for years I worked in a place where women (including myself) were sexually harassed, touched, pinched, kissed, stalked, with no help or support from anyone including management. People off the streets would see it happening and do nothing. Yet this causes such outrage?

[alias_sqbr]

Hmm...see, I am very prone to taking the devil's advocate position myself when I feel a POV is being ignored, but in this particular case I felt the discussion did cover all positions fairly well (especially on the original post, there was a LOT of support for the project), it's just that the extreme, overly simplified POVs were included a bit more than they should have been. Also people were pretty nasty to the Ferrett and the others, which was unnecessary and mean, but it doesn't make them any more in the right. But I digress, since I think we disagree on the merits of this particular case, if you're interested I went into a it a bit here.

Furthermore, it boogled my mind that this caused so much outrage, when, for years I worked in a place where women (including myself) were sexually harassed, touched, pinched, kissed, stalked, with no help or support from anyone including management.

I agree that that sort of thing is horrible (people suck :( ), and that comparatively speaking the OSBP was nowhere near as bad. If there was a huge social movement to fight things like the OSBP and noone was trying to combat more serious sexual harrassment then I would be pretty upset.

But I am loathe to tell people they shouldn't be outraged at something because it's too minor, especially if I don't know them. Since
a) We all feel the need to fight different injustices, and can't fix everything that's wrong in the world at once. That leads to the "Well, it's better here than in Saudi Arabia/there's starving children in africa/etc so stop whining" argument against all social justice/feminism etc.
b) People are going to be inclined to try to fix problems in their local community, in this case fandom.
c) For all I know these people also work to fight against other sorts of injustice. For example, lauredhel posted about the OSBP here but also helps run Hollaback Oz.

[daf9.livejournal.com]

Yes! I think you make two very good points. The first being that the intentions of an OP are often quite reasonable whether or not everyone sees them that way. The second being whether outrage at something likes OSBP really increases awareness of the more serious problem of sexual harassment or just trivializes the more serious problem.

[alias_sqbr]

Hmm. See, I think we disagree on the OSBP, and I think that changes the meaning of my post (my fault, should have written it less ambiguously) You're welcome to think it wasn't unacceptable, but my post was written on the assumption that the reader thought it was. That said, I'm sure there have been times when someone did something you thought was unacceptable, and then it got blown into something worse than it really was, and the conversation got muddied. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about.

The first being that the intentions of an OP are often quite reasonable whether or not everyone sees them that way

I would say that their intentions are often more reasonable than they are presented as being, but that doesn't make them good. (I mean, they are sometimes, but my post wasn't really about those times)

It's like: if I rob someone, and then get falsely accused of murder, that's unfair, but it doesn't make me any less of a thief.

The second being whether outrage at something likes OSBP really increases awareness of the more serious problem of sexual harassment or just trivializes the more serious problem.

Personally I think something like sexual harassment should be fought on all fronts, the major and the comparatively minor. If anything, my problem is the reverse of yours: I think by acting as if the OSBP was a more major and obvious case of sexual harassment than it really was, we define the limits of acceptable behavior too broadly, and a lot of people are not aware that even the OSBP as it actually was is still unacceptable (to the people making the angry posts). Yes, we should stand up against major sexual harassment at cons (and it does happen) But most of the sexual harassment that happens is minor, so if we can stop the minor stuff it will have a large cumulative effect.

See also my reply to amymccabe above.