Something I've noticed

[browngirl]

On sociopolitics as seen through fandom.

There's an idea that when someone says something offensive online, however unwittingly, a horde of angry unappeasable commenters immediately appear. The process I've seen is a little more complex, and I was reminded of it by the SFWA bulletin controversy, so I thought I'd make a note of my thoughts to organize them and poke at them.

A posts something [needlessly*] offensive, usually un-thought-out (such as evaluating editors and writers in terms of their physical attractiveness rather than their professional output simply because those editors and writers are women)

B and maybe C say to A "that was offensive"

A responds with a counterattack (such as saying, "Our Warrior Woman protesters and enemies of the adjective (who unlike Ms. Dworkin will not identify themselves) fall into the category of what Right Wing radio talkers call 'liberal fascists,' and a great more invective besides. ")

C, D, E, and much of the rest of the alphabet disagree at greater length and with increased vehemence

Sometimes X, Y, and/or Z show up to defend A because from their POV A is the underdog and/or they agree with A's offensive statement and/or they confuse being disagreed with with being censored and/or as "Devil's Advocates" and/or whatever other reason. [I honestly suspect it's usually for the lulz, but whatever.] The whole mess snowballs from there.

I used to spend a lot of time being A, as those who were my fellow Nosers can attest (and/or being B in such a way that I drew C etc's opprobrium down on myself), which started me off on thinking about this sequence. One of the things I've been trying to do in recent years is, when I've stumbled into being A, to respond to B with "I didn't know that/I misspoke; thank you for pointing that out to me/telling me this" and then contemplating what I've been told in private and/or under friendslock, which is a far calmer and less flame-producing manner of handling the issue than a public vitriolic counterattack (and lets me save those for when they're truly necessary.) As for the general progression, I started assembling this form of the concept during the infamous "J2 Haiti Fic" controversy in fanfic fandom, and the current SFWA debacle reminded me of that one and subsequent kerfuffles (not least the big RaceFail argument of 2009) so I thought I'd write this down. When I have a moment I need to rummage my journals and see if I tried to write it down before.

Comments

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

As far as I've seen, you've done a good analysis of the positive-feedback aspects of these flame wars.

A feature of open, and some closed, mailing lists is cascading
stupidity. Someone makes a dumb statement, and a bunch of people try
to prove they are dumber than the original poster.
-- Scott Bradner

One additional effect is the generous use of loaded words in a way that allows each person in the cycle to become even more outraged.

E.g., when B says that A's comment was "offensive", that could mean simply that B found it annoying, which is a social offense, and should be smoothed over by the usual mechanisms of polite society. But an alternative reading of "offensive" is that it is morally objectionable in an absolute sense, and can be read as an implicit threat that there is a significant number of people who would cause such statements to be suppressed by some authority (or at least, mass harassment) if they could.

This ambiguity allows A to get all his/her hot buttons pushed, since he/she takes B's complaint not as a statement of annoyance, but advocacy of jihad contrary to some principle he/she holds sacred (freedom of speech, etc.). So A lashes back using a bunch of loaded terms.

C, D, and E interpret A's second remarks in as inflammatory a way as possible ...

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you brought up the different meanings/connotations of the term "offensive", as I had meant to add a note about that and forgot.

--BG from my other account