In The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars[1], rationalist blog author Scott Alexander writes about trends in controversial internet discourse. He uses some graphs from Google Trends and other data to support the idea that at any given time there is one major cultural issue dominating internet arguments, while most other issues take the back burner while also experiencing fundamental shifts in the background. Then he gives numerous examples from blogs and wikis and online communities on each topic. He lays out a few distinct periods, starting with what he calls “New Atheism”, which was trending approximately 2004-2012, then died out over the next few years. “Geek Feminism” took over, and lasted from about 2010-2015. From 2014 forward, Racism took over as the leading topic of discourse and outrage. While none of the topics ever disappeared, they all decreased in frequency by a large margin over a few years after their heyday.
He goes on to describe how the fading of these topics represents a large number of people losing fervor and completely abandoning more extreme positions (while possibly adopting new ones), rather than just a proportional widespread decrease in interest. Whole communities shift their focus. Blogs and forums get rebranded. Conversations die out completely and new ones spring up in their place. A particular example given is the phrase “white feminism” which was virtually nonexistent prior to 2009, saw negligible use until 2014, then skyrocketed in 2015 as intersectionality, or lack thereof, suddenly took over a large fraction of feminist discourse while racism became the leading topic elsewhere.
Over the last 6-8 years, I have occasionally mentioned that I've been watching from afar as some of the people I still follow/subscribe/etc from my past communities seem to have matured and escaped from the influences in question. I've lamented that they are unlikely to ever retroactively apply their newfound wisdom. Now I'm wondering if, instead, almost everyone around them changed course, and what I thought were exceptional improvements were really just small slices of a wholesale community/subculture-wide abandonment of those problematic positions. Whether the risk of upsetting those people through actions they previously opposed has disappeared without my knowing it.
It never occurred to me prior to this article that this topic which is a defining part of my adult life experience might have simply disappeared from the radar of almost everyone else. After I was kicked out of all the environments in my social circles where such things were regularly brought up by the unreasonable people in question, I was left with no way to see that they weren't being brought up [much] any more.
The description in the article of the height of the phenomenon in question sounds like an only slightly caricaturized version of arguments and vilifications that I spent at least a few years experiencing and now a decade being exiled for, and that are still among the largest influences on my fears of interacting with people. Over and over, my “it should be ok for me to ask a woman out” would get turned into “you think every woman owes you sex” or worse. The climactic example from the article involves a physics blogger (Scott Aaronson), who made a comment deep below an unrelated essay saying he was affected by this discourse when he was younger, became suicidal, sought professional help, and it took years to get over the hangups to ask anyone out and eventually find a happy marriage. A leading feminist blogger (Amanda Marcotte) turned this into an article where she accused him of all manner of terrible misogynist positions about women owing him sex. From the article: “And that's just the beginning! It was whole pages full of this stuff! And most of the other top feminists wrote similar essays that were equally off-the-wall. Somehow there was an entire movement full of people who thought this was a completely accurate and proportional way to respond to things.” I think I met more than a few people from that movement.
Is it a coincidence that the year of Marcotte's response to Aaronson, the year the article gives as the “climax” and height of extreme and vocal positions on this topic, is the same year I was kicked out of the Boston Bureau of Erotic Discourse group, primarily due to my efforts to counteract the influence of people trying to define “creepy” and “nonconsensual” in ways that could not be safely predicted or avoided and could be weaponized at any time for any reason? Are these spaces really no longer full of the problematic positions and discourse I was opposing back then? Have all, or even most, of those people not only given up those positions, but forgotten they and their friends ever held them? Am I inaccurately predicting today that they would label “creepy” or “nonconsensual” the things they said they would label those ways 8 years ago? Were all the people I know now, who tell me I’m delusional or irrational or exhibiting trauma response, somehow insulated from this phenomenon in the apparently short window where it was a major problem?
Since moving back to Boston, I’ve once again become more aware of the social norms and discourse in the communities I left behind. I still don’t have access to those specific spaces, but I get glimpses in other ways. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that a lot of my past writing about Boston vs other cities (particularly the fringe communities I am part of: makers, burners, etc) was a huge coincidence, and the problem was more about timing than location. More often than not, I see people advocating and demonstrating consent and communication norms that match those I was arguing for a decade ago. Unfortunately, what most people seem to have ingrained is “I disagreed with this person a decade ago”, without any mental capacity and/or willingness to cross reference that with changes in their own beliefs or the community norms around them.
Do you, person who blocked or exiled me for arguing with you in the early 2010s, still hold the beliefs that I was arguing against? If so, have you noticed that almost everyone who supported your development of that belief has changed course, that almost everyone around you is supporting the positions I argued for a decade ago? Or, if not, have you considered apologizing?
(This is a rewrite and elaboration on a private post I made about two years ago.)
Analogy: If you switch your fandom from American Football to Soccer, are you willing and able to set aside at least some of your past conclusions about soccer fans who tried to convince you to switch?
[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-online-culture