Knitters got knotted in a purity spiral (2020)

https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a-purity-spiral/

by Tomte • 4 years ago

209 161 4 years ago

unherd.com

solarmist• 4 years ago

This is a fantastic article on why we’re facing so many social issues lately. Very insightful.

dang• 4 years ago

Discussed at the time:

How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22240041 - Feb 2020 (235 comments)

kleiba• 4 years ago

Ahhh... I just read the first paragraph. Then I took a deep breath. Exhaled. With a little smile on my face.... "Thank God, I don't live in North America."

burnished• 4 years ago

You might read more of it. It appears to be discussing a human phenomena, not a regional one.

glorygut123• 4 years ago

Unfortunately you'll find these issues across Oceania and Europe as well. Germany just appointed their first anti-racism commissioner in the last election.

0des5• 4 years ago

Germany of today is a byproduct of post-war Germany.

jasonlotito• 4 years ago

I can assure you this is 1) not limited to knitters and 2) not limited to North Americans.

0des5• 4 years ago

Montreal Quebec is looking très nerveux right now

indy• 4 years ago

Unfortunately, North American culture has a habit of spreading throughout the world.

0des5• 4 years ago

Why unfortunately? If it spread, that meant people liked and sought to emulate it.

hef19898• 4 years ago

Fourtunately, that seems to be less and less the case. Ehich just makes those issues, e.g. morality in Instagram knitting, all the more obvious.

duxup3• 4 years ago

Oh I'd be careful.

It's a humanity thing ... not a region.

History is full of "oh those people over there do that thing, how silly" and then it happens in their own backyard. We're all human.

xbar• 4 years ago

This. I can identify a variety of purity spirals in non-North American cultures.

It does seem, however, that US-based social media companies set up systems that foster and fuel them, like warm a Gulf of Mexico (am I a racist for using that name?) makes hurricanes (not an intentionally racist suggestion).

Here is a question I don't know the answer to: are purity spirals common/problematic on WeChat?

skrbjc• 4 years ago

From the article: "As the summer dragged on, the Nordic wool bible Laine magazine was forced to apologise for having too many white faces on their pricey knitting retreat. The auto-cannibalisation doomsday clock had gone so far that now even the instigators were having their privilege severely checked. Ysolda Teague, a Scot who had been one of the leading social justice knitters, published a lengthy apology on Instagram"

I don't know where you live, but clearly what the article was discussing went beyond North America.

blibble• 4 years ago

the floyd tragedy triggered a lot of anti-police protests in western Europe, where police brutality is thankfully rare

anm892• 4 years ago

These problems are certainly not limited to North America. Where do you live that isn't dealing with any of these problems?

Ambolia2• 4 years ago

I think it's probably more about job programs and power grabs than about culture. This type of cultural battles let some type of people with some types of university degrees to insert themselves as middle-managers in spaces that before were managed in more organic manners. And their ultimate goal is to maximize their power, not to keep any healthy environment in those spaces.

Taywee• 4 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22240041

fatbird5• 4 years ago

I frequently see articles like this discussing these community explosions as self-evidently harmful patterns of behaviour. I've never seen an article like this as a discussion of a certain amount of necessary pain, confusion, and difficulty while things get worked out. It seems obvious to me that untangling systemic problems and their legacies will always involve some clashing. Sooner started, sooner done.

Ambolia2• 4 years ago

If you run an anti-harassment office and you get rid of harassment, you are out of a job and out of power. If you keep finding more and more harassment, you are set for life. Plus if you try to tone it down there's 50 juniors behind you with dubious degrees that will gladly denounce you for being too old fashioned and take your juicy position for themselves.

I don't think getting more middle-managers will ever get this issues any better because it's in their interests to increase their power as much as possible, not solve anything.

robertlagrant3• 4 years ago

They look a lot as though they're profiting from re-entangling as much as possible. This isn't automatically equivalent to reconciliation or equality, and it often looks like the complete opposite.

fatbird5• 4 years ago

Agreed, but these are communities of interest, without governance of any kind. There's no one to police bad behaviour, to refocus on constructive efforts, to maintain an agenda or to call timeouts when it gets overheated.

Given that, what's the alternative to a messy communal brawl that hopefully doesn't destroy the community? The author of the essay speaks about the ratchet dynamics as if it's obviously to be avoided; an alternative read is that his take is descriptive of what's actually the way that these things get worked out, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

rendall2• 4 years ago

No. It's nothing of the kind.

At best, it's racists projecting their discomfort onto other people, making others responsible for their own guilt. But more likely, it's sadistic bullies. A sadistic bully cannot say "Destroying a life gets me excited!" but they can say "I fight for social justice!"

mkr-hn• 4 years ago

edit: nah

robertlagrant3• 4 years ago

He didn't tie them together to promote a radio show. That story is the show.

mdoms• 4 years ago

What? Did you read the article? He doesn't claim this is a new phenomenon. To the contrary he uses examples from Salem 1962, Robespierre in 1794 and Maoism in the 1960's. He then concludes this it's probably a hard-wired human instinct to behave this way.

motohagiography• 4 years ago

After reading the comments in the previous thread, I thought about what has changed in the two years since. My impression is that kind of escalating purity ratchet peaked in the fall and early part of this year, or at least it hit a ratchet point where the next lift is going to be exponentially harder than the previous ones because there is real popular reaction and revolt against it.

Personally I have become much less agreeable, and as a result, people in my own networks who might have participated in the ratcheting don't do it when I am around, because the purity ratcheting was essentially a way to abuse and exploit peoples agreeableness. Given it was such a tiny minority to begin with, if only a small fraction of the majority become disagreeable, it can halt the spiral of hysteria it requires.

What I/many can articulate more simply now that we didn't have the words for then is that this is a very old redemption hustle, and they're offering a kind of redemption I don't need. Just because someone is uncharitable doesn't mean I have to mollify them, and demanding a denial or denunciation from me is just their way of making a conversation about themselves. It's a disease of politeness, and the reason we got here is because we forgot sometimes in this world it is appropriate and necessary to say, please, fuck off, because we are being taken advantage of by people betting very heavily that we won't.

0des5• 4 years ago

It reminds me a lot in school of a bully who had oppressed almost the entire class. He started with the most proximal targets, then moved on to others where toward the end of his reign he encountered a kid who I can only assume was non-perceptive to the situation at hand who in response to be harassed at the lunch table for his fruit cup said "no, and please go away, I'm eating" and just like that, this bully whom had never encountered resistance was speechless. This kid's oblivious nature to the social situation broke the bully's brain in a form of pattern-interrupt.

The bully wasn't reformed after that, he remained a bully until we parted ways years later, however the group was wiser for it, and that type of behavior had a very short half life as a result. As I get older, this phenomenon is emblematic or representative of society. Sometimes culture dictates that there are certain things we just won't accept anymore, like spousal assault, smoking in the public indoors, and poor legislation. Resistance is cumulative.

MichaelZuo• 4 years ago

Plus non-linear, with activation energies, sometimes piece wise continuous, etc…

duxup3• 4 years ago

I've wondered the same. I feel like I've seen a subtle but very significant change in people's approach.

In the past on some corners of the internet I'd get "down voted" (whatever system the locals use, not just reddit) for anything that smelled of X, Y, or Z.

That's still the case at times BUT I've seen a lot more folks express distaste for that kind of crusade and gotten a lot more support from people when inevitably I end up sayng "No that's not what i'm saying, I'm tired of having to say that ... we can say X and not be Y".

Meanwhile the most egregious examples of the kind of calling folks out for their perceived impurity such as "you know you don't have to defend X" type comments seem to get a great deal less support now, if not outright ridicule.

0des5• 4 years ago

Like people who can oppose illegal immigration but not also hate those who are seeking to immigrate.

samhw• 4 years ago

Yeah, I think I'm the same. For years I kinda awkwardly put up with it, semi-understanding the dynamic (revolutional paedophagy?), but I've got bored of it over the last couple of years. I've seen the same in people I know, and even just people I've seen interacting online. Your characterisation of "a subtle but very significant change" is apposite, imo.

People are starting - albeit unevenly and at different stages and with considerable pushback – to realise that they don't owe an account of their morality to any old person on the internet, that they can be non-racist and not have to agree with (and genuflect to) every other self-styled non-racist trying to sell some wacky opinion to them, etc.

And - what makes me most happy of all - they are doing it, at least many of them, without falling prey to the "I disagree with someone from Not Racist FC so I guess all that's left to me is to sign up to Racist FC" non sequitur.

guelo2• 4 years ago

Oh no! The horrors of getting down voted. Imagine the blood bath if I said something pro social justice in this indignant thread.

Uhhrrr• 4 years ago

This is really nicely put: "purity ratchet", "redemption hustle", "disease of politeness".

hn_throwaway_99• 4 years ago

Very much agree. I can think of a number of very specific examples in the past year where a lot of middle-of-the-road folks just said "Enough is enough - this is bullshit." In particular, I think that people are taking a stand against being "cancelled" when they are engaging in good-faith discussion or disagreement, and they are fed up with people taking anything that doesn't 100% comport to their world view out of context and themselves using it to make the worst kind of bad faith arguments.

viraptor2• 4 years ago

Has cancelling ever worked outside of very small communities? The only time I hear about that impact is when the target person cares / reacts in any way. The closest case of real impact I can think of is jkr who keeps pushing her bs and that causes more and more people to not give her money, but that's still not even close to actual cancelling.

inglor_cz2• 4 years ago

So a comment from another side of the pond, where other problems matter ...

I think the reason why lots of such endeavors peaked and subsided is removal of a major irritant - the former president. Trump was fairly unusual in his ability to boil the blood of his opponents into outright madness, in a way that, say, GWB couldn't. If he spent 4 more years in the WH, I am not sure what would be the end result.

esyir• 4 years ago

Alternate hypothesis. Why do they need to campaign like that, they control the presidency.

raxxorraxor5• 4 years ago

My experience is that people enforcing this purity quickly give up on the slightest resistance, but I think it is necessary to be less agreeable too and I also see it as being taken advantage off. Large parts of journalism in my country tried to enforce new speech conventions around gender and racism and politics even implemented a law for speech codes in applications. The party responsible is not really popular right now and I don't think anyone has really changed their language.

There are some few exceptions but people tend not to care. Result is that there is an even larger trust problem between people, politics and press. In my opinion people trying to improve language expose themselves and what you see is mainly shallow and ugly, especially if they shine the focus on prejudice where they usually don't really form good role models compared to the average bloke.

I still remember some companies that jumped on this train though and I am looking for signs if I want to work for any of them. Because that will inevitably be a toxic relationship and with probably management with a weird focus.

TimTheTinker7• 4 years ago

a bidding war for morality turned into a proxy war for power.

What a packed and insightful statement. I'll be turning that over in my mind for some time.

random-human3• 4 years ago

Not only is it insightful, but one that can be actively watched play out in the US with the 50-ish years morality war turning to a war for state voting control and supreme court power to overturn Roe. Watch as states try to out do each other within their purity spiral. What was once thought to be too extreme (no exceptions clauses, even to save the life of the living breathing human in front of them or criminal charges if you save the persons life anyway) is now a required hard line to prove their "moral purity".

TimTheTinker7• 4 years ago

I think there's a subtle distinction between morality wars on the left and the right, at least one that I can see from my own perspective.

On the right, there's a coherent, objective moral value statement that voters want upheld, namely "babies are people too, beginning at conception, and must be treated as such by the law." It's pretty straightforward whether this value is being upheld, and there's no risk of a "purity spiral" where people propose increasingly crazy ideas to signal their loyalty to the cause. Just don't kill babies... that is all.

On the left, unless I'm mistaken, there aren't coherent, objective moral value statements at the heart of CRT, identity politics, or pro-choice arguments ("my body, my choice" isn't a well-defined philosophical statement) which does lead to a purity spiral. For example, there have been serious proposals to allow "after birth abortion" -- i.e. it's OK to kill babies after they're born - for a recent example see [0], but there are many other examples as well. TA mentions other purity spirals that occur on the left.

But regardless, yes, there are absolutely politicians on both sides of the aisle who use people's moral values as a means to power (I'm especially thinking of a recent US president, but there are many others). "You want to get rid of abortion? Vote for me!" -- but disingenuously. They don't appear to care personally about whatever it is, they posture to get power while not understanding the nuances of how to wisely implement laws that reflect the peoples' values, or even what those values are exactly in the first place.

---

[0] CA AB-2223, in its original text (now amended), read "Notwithstanding any other law, a person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty, or otherwise deprived of their rights, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death" (emphasis mine). Note "perinatal death" means death within the first 7 days after birth (thus legalizing infanticide). This has thankfully been edited to perinatal death due to a pregnancy-related cause -- but that could still encompass scenarios like "intentional injury to the child moments before or during birth".

hitekker• 4 years ago

The point about the splintering of atheism is well covered in: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godles...

Most movement atheists weren’t in it for the religion. They were in it for the hamartiology. Once they got the message that the culture-at-large had settled on a different, better hamartiology, there was no psychological impediment to switching over. We woke up one morning and the atheist bloggers had all quietly became social justice bloggers. Nothing else had changed because nothing else had to; the underlying itch being scratched was the same. They just had to CTRL+F and replace a couple of keywords.

gregorty• 4 years ago

That's interesting to know, I was browsing RationalWiki the other day, for the first time in many years, and was surprised by how irrational it is. This would appear to explain it.

agentwiggles• 4 years ago

Thanks for this link. I was hugely into atheist discourse during this time period (about 2008-2012) and it was fun to read through Scott's thoughts on the decline.

a_t48• 4 years ago

Isn't the real problem the whole dogpiling issue and not the actual viewpoints themselves? At the root of the spiral, the suggestion wasn't so bad ("Hey, that's a bit insensitive, you should consider your language"), but it didn't need to be repeated to her hundreds of times by the all of twitter, et al. Most people with any viewpoint are going to react negatively to hundreds or thousands of people telling them they are in the wrong. Unfortunately while it's reasonable for each individual feeling this way to comment, the effect is much larger than I would bet any of the commenters intended. It would be interesting to track down some of the first commenters and ask them how many people telling the woman she was in the wrong there should be - maybe I'm wrong and they believe it should be "as many as possible". Regardless, sometimes the internet is way too connected.

escapedmoose11• 4 years ago

Absolutely. In a more private setting, the reminder could be received with much more grace.

jrm46• 4 years ago

Yup. Especially when (as it happens in these spaces) the loud people aren't the actual subjects of discussion, so you get this weird lack of skin-in-the-game.

I cannot emphasize enough the harm that can come from this and how easily it is exploited.

rossdavidh• 4 years ago

I have the vague sense that this is a "scaling problem", similar to how a software architecture that works just fine with 1,000 users will break down at 1,000,000. The mechanism for accepting input is not ready for so much, and it becomes a DDOS of sorts.

Karrot_Kream• 4 years ago

This is "context collapse", where what was once a private thought is posted as or responded to as a public one, because the platform doesn't make the distinction.

It's one of the big problems with social media. Outside of social media, we act differently in professional or public contexts from private ones. Context collapse merges them to great detriment.

gotaquestion• 4 years ago

The entire article is based on online group dynamics over people trying to figure out how to come to grips with historically ignored problems.

I fail to feel outraged by this process. Is "White Fragility" without criticism? Probably not, I think it is a fantastic book, but it scares the bejeebers out of some people and we get instagram drama and articles like this which I interpret as another attempt at purity (trying to outsmart "wokeness").

It is going to take a while for society* to come to grips with this new shift, because we're clearly not going back, but it definitely is rough around the edges, IMHO, because we haven't found the right vocabulary and framing. Unfortunately it is going to require people to sit with feeling uneasy, and that is something most people cannot tolerate.

splitstud• 4 years ago

Controlling thought by controlling speech is nothing new, and it IS a historically ignored problem

itronitron• 4 years ago

> people trying to figure out how to come to grips with historically ignored problems

I very much agree that many people have limited knowledge of the history of the last six hundred years, but I believe that sharing the cold hard facts from history (that aren't taught in schools) has a better chance at opening up a person's viewpoint rather than criticizing their behavior.

jimbokun3• 4 years ago

Unfortunately it is going to require people to sit with feeling uneasy

People throw around this phrase, but it always strikes me as nonsensical.

There's a lot of stupid opinions that can make people feel uneasy, so unease is not some magic barometer of truth.

People are going to feel really uneasy if they are listening to you defend your appreciation of child pornography, but that doesn't mean you have struck upon some deep uncomfortable truth.

teakettle423• 4 years ago

You fail to feel outraged by terrible behavior because it’s ostensibly in service of your ideological aims.

That says a lot about your ideology’s consistency when it comes to how we should behave individually, and treat others, now, in our present.

lliamander• 4 years ago

The entire article is based on online group dynamics over people trying to figure out how to come to grips with historically ignored problems.

You have to ignore quite a lot of history to come to the conclusion that these problems were historically ignored.

I fail to feel outraged by this process.

Maybe if you end up on the receiving end you'll feel differently?

Is "White Fragility" without criticism? Probably not, I think it is a fantastic book, but it scares the bejeebers out of some people and we get instagram drama and articles like this which I interpret as another attempt at purity (trying to outsmart "wokeness").

Robin D'Angelo has made some deranged, outlandish assertions, and instead of defending them she simply follows up with more outlandish assertions. I had the pleasure of having a non-white person explain things about "white people" that she'd learned from that book that were patently false.

overthemoon• 4 years ago

I hear what you're saying, and I think it's true that some people react with hostility when confronted with some of this stuff, but separate from the actual values, this article describes a destructive and unproductive social dynamic. I think the most interesting bit is that the author describes similar cannibalistic dynamics happening in neo-nazi subcultures. Whether the values here are worthy is beside the point.

Questioning the moral standing of those who would criticize the dynamic itself isn't useful or worthwhile. It conflates interpersonal confrontation (useful, good, corrective, it's how we build each other up) with a zillion passersby hurling invective at a guy who, in this case, found it so troubling to have a mass of people condemn him on a moral spectrum that is very dear to him that he ended up suicidal.

Adraghast• 4 years ago

White Fragility is an awful book. Even as baby's first guide to thinking about how you treat POC, it's a net negative and that role would be better filled by something like Ibram Kendi's books. Still fluffy and lightweight, but at least not as harmfully neurotic.

That being said, you've hit on the actual shortcoming of "woke culture" these handwringing articles miss. It's admirable, not outrageous, that white people becoming conscious of racism feel compelled to do whatever they can about it. But most people (in the US at least) are so depoliticized that their ability to effect systemic change is virtually nil. The project of rebuilding the necessary political capacity is hard, boring work and we probably won't live long enough to see its fruits. If you want gratification, making some rando on the internet bend the knee is much easier.

One definitely gets the impression from critics like the author that they're less interested in seeing that energy redirected than in it dissipating entirely.

jrm46• 4 years ago

As a black person, I'll say this new crop of books like White Fragility on one hand aren't great, and in the long run some will probably seen as outright bad, but I'm still glad they exist?

It's kind of an Overton Window thing for me. I'm just very used to the 90's, where you couldn't even come close to saying anything like this out loud in, e.g. an academic setting because you know what you would set off.

I'm glad it's out there to at least be reckoned with as a theory.

(Relatedly, this is why I have zero respect for the suggestion that a new form of "censorship" is taking place when people talk about e.g. "cancel culture" and whatnot. This has always been around, the only thing that's new is that it can now come from e.g. both the left and the right)

raxxorraxor5• 4 years ago

It has always been around, but it is fundamentally opposed to any intellectual exchange. And we slowly improved here. Yes, freedom of speech does require freedom from consequences. That is also true for the author of said book. I don't think ridicule is prohibiting speech, it can be, but this is not the case here.

raxxorraxor5• 4 years ago

Unfortunately it is going to require people to sit with feeling uneasy

You can only make an omelet by breaking a few million eggs. If you chair is uncomfortable I would suggest a cushion. There isn't much more to discuss here I guess. There are people without too much self-reflection but you are not making a good case. Get some distance if you need it.

unwind• 4 years ago

Uh that sounded quite interesting, but it seems to bury the lede from the title and go off on side-tracks right away. Didn't finish it because I got ultra-distracted by the inline recommendations of ... the same article.

It lists:

- BY THE SAME AUTHOR "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral" BY GAVIN HAYNES

- SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral" BY GARETH ROBERTS

- SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral" BY DOUGLAS MURRAY

- SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral" BY ANTONIA SENIOR

- SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral" BY TITANIA MCGRATH

- SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral" BY GILES FRASER

I can't even begin to guess how stuff like that happens, must be some epic bug in their CMS, or some weird A/B attempt to ... fool people into reading the same article many times? And where does it get the author names, one wonders. AI-backed publishing system gone crayzay?

bio_end_io_t• 4 years ago

For what it's worth, clicking on any of those links brings you back to the one by Gavin Haynes.

Traster• 4 years ago

This is probably just a for loop where they've called for(it in suggestions) print(title) rather than for(it in suggestions) print(it.title).

Aloha• 4 years ago

The other content on the site is somewhat specious as well.

at_a_remove• 4 years ago

I have been watching, with a mixture of sadness and schadenfreude, an online community disintegrate in just this manner, since right around the New Aetheism split. Boiling the frog is the name of the game.

It plays out so predictably, too. First, they -- we -- came for the fundamentalist conservatives, but I was not ... Then it was the fiscal conservatives, then the moderates, the liberal guys who didn't manage to seem vaguely embarrassed to be heterosexual, and so on. They all get together and "discuss" things until someone (or more than just one) leaves the site. Throw in a unhealthy dose of "dogwhistle" paranoia and "everyone who disagrees with me is a goosestepping fascist buying Nazi memorabilia on the darkweb" disdain and, well, it's amazing to watch.

bambataa• 4 years ago

I have a theory that many of these ludicrous spirals are caused by self-proclaimed “allies” taking on the mantle of others’ oppression and calling out behaviour that is actually fine.

The original blog post behind this case (where the woman wrote about how foreign India seemed but how excited she was to visit) is a perfect example.

The people calling out her “colonialist” references to Mars claim to be speaking on behalf of their friends. Then you have actual Indian people coming along later, wondering what the fuss was about and welcoming the author to India.

My theory probably doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny but it useful to ask “is anywhere here actually saying that they’re personally offended?”.

RangerScience• 4 years ago

I notice a big difference between how social workers and social "warriors" talk.

So far, universally, the people "on the ground", doing the work, are very nice to talk to. Informative, understanding, firm, kind.

dmurray• 4 years ago

Social workers help people based on their need. Social warriors help people based on their identity. It's not surprising the two work in different ways.

swearwolf• 4 years ago

There’s a lot of discourse going around these days about white people. Not much of it is positive. It’s understandable; just about every person of color has at least one story in which a white person made them feel terrible because of their race, whether intentionally or not. There’s a lot of pent up anger, and it’s socially acceptable to vent that anger now, so people do. As a result, there are a lot of well meaning white people who are receiving the message that they, and people who look like them, are making the lives of people of color hard. Some people react to that by getting angry, others react by looking for opportunities to prove they aren’t that kind of white person. When they see an interaction like this one, they feel compelled to act, and they do. Sometimes way out of proportion to the inciting incident. Other well meaning and anxious people react positively to the callout, which reinforces the perception that this is the right thing to do. The person who committed the offense often tries to clarify their position, which presents more opportunities to call them out. In situations like this, even apologies are often criticized. Each time this process unfolds, the line of acceptable behavior creeps ever backwards, and increasingly benign actions and statements end up on the other side of it.

quadrifoliate2• 4 years ago

The people calling out her “colonialist” references to Mars claim to be speaking on behalf of their friends. Then you have actual Indian people coming along later, wondering what the fuss was about and welcoming the author to India.

Eh. Actual Indian person here. I think it's pretty stupid to comparing a flight to India to "going to Mars". You have Pizza Hut, Subway, and KFC in India, for crying out loud.

In normal times, the person saying things like this would have been chided by a few of their friends. Now they are viciously attacked by the whole of the Internet – which is the real problem.

cultofmetatron• 4 years ago

to be fair, (if india is anything like srilanka in that regard) she might be shocked when she finds the quality of the food is better. American ingredients are relatively poor. I remember having pizza hut in srilanka and it was delicious and used fresh pineapple. the American version was greasy and disgusting with meager portions of the canned stuff

areyousure• 4 years ago

In normal times, the person saying things like this would have been chided by a few of their friends.

The first 50+ comments on the blog are supportive, as they would be "in normal times" as well.

https://fringeassociation.com/2019/01/07/2019-my-year-of-col...

In case anyone is curious, here is the paragraph including the "pretty stupid" comparison:

I’ve wanted to go to India for as long as I can remember. I’ve a lifelong obsession with the literature and history of the continent. Photos of India fill me with longing like no other place. One of my closest friends from that pink-striped tube skirt era (we originally met at JC Penney) is Indian, and her family had offered back then that if I ever wanted to go with them on one of their trips, I could. To a suburban midwestern teenager with a severe anxiety disorder, that was like being offered a seat on a flight to Mars. It was fun to think about, but are you kidding me? I was so young and dumb then that I didn’t even partake of her mother’s Indian cooking. (Talk about regrets!)

rootusrootus4• 4 years ago

Going to Mars might be overkill, but I did feel like it was a little bit of a mindfuck the first time I went. Especially when we left Hitec City and visited Charminar. I can totally see how that would seem really exotic to someone who's spent their entire life in a western European nation.

jrm46• 4 years ago

Black person here, and yes, this is a pretty good way to look at it. I think perhaps you can see two extremes, the theoretical annoyed white person who just wants things to not be complicated at all, and the going too far naive liberal who wants to call out everything.

And the answer is always "It's never an easy answer. You have to do your homework. And it might change, and it might get uncomfortable. Too bad."

User238• 4 years ago

And the answer is always "It's never an easy answer. You have to do your homework. And it might change, and it might get uncomfortable. Too bad."

The easy answer is “I really don’t care.”

rootusrootus4• 4 years ago

I have a working assumption that most minorities I interact with would prefer just to be treated like any other human, not badly, not special, just normal. So that's how I approach it. So far so good, the only time I've ever met anyone that seemed oversensitive, it was a white woman. Because of course it was.

themaninthedark• 4 years ago

I can't recall when but I read an article(or post) about how the focus of the knitting community was shifting to social justice, much to the dismay of some of the participants as all they cared about was knitting.

Some of the comments at the time seemed to think the only way to save the community would be to reject the values being force onto the community, it looks like that did not happen.

I don't think that rejection is necessity for a community to survive but there needs to be a way that they can recenter. If the community is supposed to be about knitting, than discussions about race, sex, etc should not occur.

Perhaps is is enough to identify as a knitter, as opposed to a bisexual knitter from SE Asia. All the other stuff is noise in the SNR.

Blackthorn• 4 years ago

That's...a pretty strange way of putting what happened to the new atheism movement. To the extent that I'm not sure how much I can trust their version of events in the knitting world.

digisign• 4 years ago

When I read about these folks I can't help think about the Star Trek TNG episode, The Drumhead. Admiral goes mental trying to root out traitors. Recommended.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Drumhead_(episode)

Pulcinella• 4 years ago

In my new BBC Radio 4 documentary …

There it is. It’s an advertisement for a documentary masquerading as a news article.

llllp• 4 years ago

Just noticed how ridiculously wrong this comment on the previous thread is:

I have to wonder how many of these morality spirals aren't instigated by actual trolls.
An example of this was the explosion of transgender issues into the mainstream soon after gay marriage was legalized. I recall reading a fringe right-wing blogger about the "lesbian vs transgender conflict", a few years before the "T" in LGBT became more prominent. This prominence may well have been engineered by trolls in an attempt to alienate a group of people who were rapidly being accepted into mainstream society.

Funny how this "troll" managed to somehow also coincide with the opinions of countless lesbians and radical feminists, who have been speaking and writing about this topic for many years.

That is, in the above instance, in terms of homosexuality being defined as a same-sex sexual orientation, and the inherent conflict in attempting to replace it with the concept of "same gender identity" attraction. With so-called "genital preferences" being an act of bigotry. It's incredibly homophobic ideology, in that particular purity spiral.

beloch• 4 years ago

Canadians are used to looking South of the border with disdain, but also fear. Whatever political trends start in the U.S. have a funny way of making their to Canada after few years.

The degree of political polarization now evident in the U.S. is despicable and horrifying in equal measure. Purity spirals are evident on both sides of the divide, and the worst thing you can call someone is a member of the opposing party. The extremes on both sides are anti-science, although the left has embraced some behaviours that are less contradictory to the common good purely by coincidence. e.g. Wearing masks became a political statement. While it was good that roughly half the population were wearing them willingly, turning it into political virtue signalling made it less likely for the other half of the population to wear them. The right behaviour for the wrong reasons had unintended consequences.

In Canada, our political parties have long detested each other beyond reason. e.g. Read "Right Here, Right Now" by Stephen Harper (former conservative PM) and, even if you don't agree with him, you'll find he makes intelligent arguments except when it comes to the Liberals. When he speaks of his opponents it's a bit like like reading Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" when he transitions from stoic philosophy to ranting about catamites. Logical one moment, insane the next.

In a real sense, politicians are at the very centre of purity spirals even if they aren't always responsible for creating them. Consider Republicans who have caught flack from the far-right for being vaccinated or wearing masks. If you're a highly visible member of a demographic entirely consumed by a massive purity spiral, what option do you have but to conform?

While it's to be expected that politicians will bend in whichever way the wind of these spirals blow, it's especially distressing to see how many people have a rigid political identity that is completely unhinged from personal values, needs, or philosophy.

For example, in my province "Conservatism" used to include a healthy dose of "conservation". Four decades ago, a conservative government decided to ban strip mining in the Eastern slopes of the rocky mountains to "conserve" natural beauty. Scientific studies conducted since then have only confirmed the wisdom of this decision. Strip mining in these areas, even with today's best practices, would have had massive risks for watersheds covering huge swaths of populated areas. Today, "Conservatism" means overturning that ban without telling anyone, quietly inviting shady penny stock companies in to start strip mining explorations, getting caught, "pausing" and opposing the efforts of the non-Conservative opposition to reinstate the ban.

My father is a staunch political conservative who voted for the conservatives four decades ago and now supports them just as unequivocally, despite the fact that conservatism's meaning is, in many cases, the polar opposite of what it used to be.

Politics as personal identity is the root of purity spirals at the same time as it is a cause for people to support policies that are contrary to their ideals and needs. We need to encourage people to stop being loyal to "their side", and start supporting things they value. How do we do this?

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

I basically eliminated almost all interaction with social media some months ago ... and all this woke conflict stuff, it just goes away. You start noticing other things - people in general are not concerned about any of it, they're more concerned about the high prices and potential inflation spikes. They're concerned about jobs and quality of life and environmental uncertainties like drought. Many people's fears and hopes revolve around whether their kids will get a good education and have a secure future.

I can't help thinking the whole woke thing has been some kind of manufactured media project, maybe with overtones of state propaganda, which had the overall goal of drawing attention away from the fundamental failings of many once-respected American institutions - media, government, academics, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if it was all purposely designed as some kind of divide-and-conquer tactic, something to distract the American public and draw attention away from ever-more-obvious gross failures of our incompetent leaders, which are across-the-board in nature and not exclusively linked to any political party.

If this is a correct assessment, then you'd expect the typical 'accepted topics' of mass American political conflict - i.e. guns & abortion - to start taking center stage now, because they don't want people howling for 'better wages and less inflation' or screaming 'fix the damn infrastructure, you incompetent clowns' outside their windows.

majormajor2• 4 years ago

Isn't the "whole woke thing" the group that's been most critical of American institutions? The police, the courts (re: rolling back voting rights regulation and laws), acceptance and hiring criterias at respected schools/universities/employers?

If one wanted to come up with a propaganda project to hide decline they picked a really bad one!

escapedmoose11• 4 years ago

I second this. Having been off of social media for two years and off of online news for one year, I’m nonetheless still amazed by people’s ability to forget that none of this “woke panic” stuff exists in the real world (certainly not where I live anyway). If you don’t seek it out, you won’t find it.

Also, I think your point about it being a distraction tactic is exactly right. I remember back around the 2012-ish era, when Tumblr started getting really weird with blogs promoting some pretty insane things in the name of “social justice.” Turns out, some Russian troll farm was posing as Black activist bloggers to sow chaos. I was very active on Tumblr at the time and remember thinking how weird all those blogs felt, and when the news of the Russian campaign broke, it all made sense instantly.

I get that same feeling from today’s woke/anti-woke discourse. It doesn’t feel honest. It feels like someone is playing us again.

rayiner2• 4 years ago

If you don’t seek it out, you won’t find it.

Until it does. I didn’t care about any of it myself until I got an email saying my mild mannered Midwestern law school professor declared himself a “a racist” in front of the whole school: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/northwestern-univers.... Then my high school declared standardized tests to be racist: https://www.newsweek.com/states-ask-high-court-halt-race-bas.... Then I got an email saying my third grader was learning how to “develop her identity” around her “skin tone.”

A lot of the people who are in charge of telling you what to do and pulling the levels of state power to coerce you into doing stuff, and people in charge of reporting the news and socializing your kids and in many cases making public health decisions, buy into this woke stuff. And if you think the things they believe won’t affect you, just wait.

eyelidlessness2• 4 years ago

I basically eliminated almost all interaction with social media some months ago ... and all this woke conflict stuff, it just goes away. You start noticing other things - people in general are not concerned about any of it, they're more concerned about the high prices and potential inflation spikes.

We clearly run in different circles. I basically eliminated my own social media usage, and pretty much what people around me are concerned about is who will get deported, how to protect people seeking abortions once they’re banned, and what new fresh hell will be visited on some person of color or marginalized faith, trans or queer person, or just someone holding a camera. Y’all worried about your finances are totally justified in that worry. But these concerns aren’t drama or trivia, they’re literally life or death for people whether you care or not.

inglor_cz2• 4 years ago

Looking at the development, it seems to be a mostly academical project that spills over into media.

Don't underestimate it. For example, hardcore German nationalism was once very popular in academic circles of Germany and Austria-Hungary (the German speaking part, of course). A normal Hans from the street, just like you, couldn't care less about what the students say and shout, and Vienna, Terst, Prague and Krakow were nice multicultural cities. At least on their surface.

Until 1914. It is possible that without this toxic undercurrent that attacked the Austrian state for decades and moved it closer to imperial Germany against its own interest, the Great War wouldn't have happened.

fortran77• 4 years ago

You can include more people by narrowing your focus instead of widening it. A knitting group should talk about knitting only and then more people can participate.

gowld• 4 years ago

This story isn't about knitting or any other of 1000 other similar hobbies. It's about Instagram promoting toxicity for engagement.

non-Influencer knitters aren't affected at all.

elihu• 4 years ago

To quote from Paul Graham's essay Beating the Averages:

"As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power continuum, he knows he's looking down. Languages less powerful than Blub are obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub."

http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

I have a theory that this applies to progressivism or moral frameworks or whatever you want to call it. Let's suppose we were to re-write the above quote to apply to morality.

"As long as our hypothetical practitioner of the Blub moral framework is looking down the moral continuum, he knows he's looking down. Moral frameworks less advanced than Blub are obviously less just, because they're missing some assumptions about people's rights and obligations that he's used to. (Don't they know that slavery is wrong? And obviously lying and stealing are right out under most circumstances.) But when our hypothetical Blub practitioner looks in the other direction, up the moral continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird rules. He probably considers them about morally equivalent to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. (Intersectionality? Critical race theory? And people keep adding extra letters at the end of LGBT? Is this all a bunch of made-up nonsense, posturing, and virtue signalling?) Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub and lives in a world where Blub applies to situations that correspond to his real-life personal experience."

This isn't to say that critics of complicated moral frameworks are always wrong. Sometimes people really do get caught up in virtue signalling and posturing. But I think these complicated moral frameworks are usually a reaction to real injustices, and sometimes it's worth standing up to oppose an injustice. Knowing when or how to do that can be complicated though. Moral crusades can themselves cause tribalistic behavior, exclusion, and intolerance of honestly held opinions, which can also be another kind of injustice.

anm892• 4 years ago

Interesting point.

ZeroGravitas• 4 years ago

This reads like gamergate for 20 year olds.

The evil woke people are coming to ruin your knitting and Young Adult novels communities.

By... asking you not to say ignorant things on a global medium about how going to India is like going to mars?

And people apologizing for stuff. The horror.

Like, even if what was claimed is true, who cares? There's nothing there and people seem to have adopted fighting against this non-thing as part of their identity.

Does this really deserve the multiple mentions of war, the red terror, and communist China purges? Aren't we overreacting just a tad?

Knitters got knotted in a purity spiral (2020)

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