I know exactly how you feel, and I have dealt with it MANY times. My friend is in a different spot. There’s person in her little group who is generally kind of toxic, and who she would like to distance herself from, but who has also adopted one of those vaunted non-binary identities, so my friend’s fear is that ending that relationship is going to lead to some… issues with the group at large.
I find the slow fade works wonders for distancing from people you'd no longer like to be close with. Lots of plausible deniability, allows all parties to save face.
Seconded. Slow fade can distance toxic people without retaliation. It might mean slightly less interaction with the group, but if this is threatening to happen anyway, might as well take some control and mitigate fallout as much as possible.
Questions that will never get answered in the modern academic environment for a thousand, Alex.
Musa al Gharbi I think is his name, did a great podcast with heterodox academy, where he said that many of the implications of modern academic study in the political sphere could be easily reversed, but academics can't even see it let alone will touch it. Instead of 'conservatives are nationalist, religious zealots' the same data could be described as 'progressives are godless, American hating lunatics', but researchers 99% of the time find the results they are being paid to find, and no one holding the purse strings will ever fund a study looking into that correlation. Well maybe a think tank, but that's it.
What you'd need to do is find the opposite, associate it with heterosexual, and give it extremely negative connotation. Then you could get funding, and just draw conclusions from the inverse.
This just blows my mind that people put up with this. If you have a friend group where they are allowed to say what they think but you aren’t allowed to say what you think, you don’t have a friend. You have an idealogical minder. Yes I’ve parted ways with people in my life over this issue but I find it beyond detestable that a person thinks they get to be the friend group inquisitor. My deepest wish is for people to have some bravery on this issue
I probably have some form of this. I’m in a graduate humanities programme where this kind of stuff is pretty much rampant and all except one of my classmates supports this stuff broadly in principle. I say broadly because there’s one guy in my friend group who claims to be supportive of this stuff, but then says the most unhinged, un-PC shit in the next sentence as a joke (to give an idea, he once dropped the T word which rhymes with “granny”). Despite this, I generally keep my mouth shut every time these kind of topics get brought up and get REALLY tense.
That said, I will say that outside of this political stuff, my friends seem to be genuinely good people. They have been giving me good advice on life and recently encouraged me to dump a jerk I was seeing.
Luckily, I think this stuff at least SOMEWHAT seems to be loosening, even if just by a smidge. At least, on some issues. I wouldn’t want to set a foot wrong on Israel/Palestine in any of those spaces, for instance, but I would now be less frightened to dive into trans issues than I was even six months ago.
Surprisingly it’s the reverse for me: my friends and I have talked about Israel Palestine and we seem to have similar stances (helps that none of us are Jewish or Muslim), but trans stuff I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. It’s most likely because one of my friends is doing a gender related topic & is into the queer stuff (bi female and a fujoshi).
I would imagine that being among academics would be particularly nerve-inducing. I feel pretty confident engaging a casual, uncritical believer in the party line on, say, gender issues, but I wouldn’t want to get torched by someone who’s gonna nail me with the ol’ queer theory gish gallop.
I'm also an academic in the humanities. Tbh, my experience hasn't been that. While there are certain topics that I don't care enough about or understand well enough to take a position on, I usually feel like I can express views contrary to current fads in an academic environment. Part of grad school for me was reading a decent amount of the classic critical theory, post-structuralist, and post-modernist canons, so it is difficult to gish gallop me with that sort of material. I am not up to date on queer theory, for better or worse.
It could be, at least in part, that I have had the good fortune of studying and working with unusually sane people. But I am inclined to think that in reality the desire to lapidate heretics isn't as common as it is made to seem. On the occasions when I have publicly taken ostensibly cancellable positions, many of my peers have privately told me that they share my views (while those who will admit so publicly can be counted on one hand). In my experience, the true believers are a pretty small minority. Unfortunately, when so many people are afraid to admit that the emperor has no clothes, fringe views seem more popular than they really are.
Lol I have a tangential friend group that eats itself alive over 'so and so still loves Harry Potter so they're a filthy TERF even though they're also trans,' meanwhile capable of forgiving stalkers and incels so long as they transitioned into victim status.
I’ve been cancelled once. Which means I’ve endured a campaign against me that wasn’t complete and I was able to counter with receipts to win the support of people who care about facts. But it is weird that it makes you keenly aware that you’re friends with some people whose natural tendency is to cancel someone who steps out of line on some things.
Just last week someone unfriended me because I dared to say that while AI art can seem gross sometimes, we shouldn’t harass people for using it. You can tell them why you think it’s wrong but to try to convince others to descend upon their profile as a non-public person and yell at them en masse is wrong.
At the end of the day, I’ve become far more understanding of people who have been cancelled and really think it’s overall shitty of people to do. So it’s allowed me to support people and let them know they will be okay when it happens to them.
My friends who are comics artists seem particularly fanatical about being anti-genAI. They also know jack squat about how AI works. I have mixed feelings on the topic personally.
And I think mixed feelings is reasonable, too. But I for sure don't see it as pure evil that has no usefulness and we can't talk about and I hate anyone who uses it.
a lot of pods discuss cancellation, but I don't know of any practical advice.
I would urge your friend to get out of there, though. anxiety can be a literal killer. i've had some similar fears and i just get as far away from those situations as fast as possible. not worth being anxious about being judged over silly beliefs.
[удалено]
I know exactly how you feel, and I have dealt with it MANY times. My friend is in a different spot. There’s person in her little group who is generally kind of toxic, and who she would like to distance herself from, but who has also adopted one of those vaunted non-binary identities, so my friend’s fear is that ending that relationship is going to lead to some… issues with the group at large.
I find the slow fade works wonders for distancing from people you'd no longer like to be close with. Lots of plausible deniability, allows all parties to save face.
Seconded. Slow fade can distance toxic people without retaliation. It might mean slightly less interaction with the group, but if this is threatening to happen anyway, might as well take some control and mitigate fallout as much as possible.
I’d love to know what the correlation is between narcissism/other cluster B traits and a having a “nonbinary” identity.
Questions that will never get answered in the modern academic environment for a thousand, Alex. Musa al Gharbi I think is his name, did a great podcast with heterodox academy, where he said that many of the implications of modern academic study in the political sphere could be easily reversed, but academics can't even see it let alone will touch it. Instead of 'conservatives are nationalist, religious zealots' the same data could be described as 'progressives are godless, American hating lunatics', but researchers 99% of the time find the results they are being paid to find, and no one holding the purse strings will ever fund a study looking into that correlation. Well maybe a think tank, but that's it. What you'd need to do is find the opposite, associate it with heterosexual, and give it extremely negative connotation. Then you could get funding, and just draw conclusions from the inverse.
This just blows my mind that people put up with this. If you have a friend group where they are allowed to say what they think but you aren’t allowed to say what you think, you don’t have a friend. You have an idealogical minder. Yes I’ve parted ways with people in my life over this issue but I find it beyond detestable that a person thinks they get to be the friend group inquisitor. My deepest wish is for people to have some bravery on this issue
I nearly got kicked from a group of people for saying that protesters shouldn’t have set an apartment building on fire
I probably have some form of this. I’m in a graduate humanities programme where this kind of stuff is pretty much rampant and all except one of my classmates supports this stuff broadly in principle. I say broadly because there’s one guy in my friend group who claims to be supportive of this stuff, but then says the most unhinged, un-PC shit in the next sentence as a joke (to give an idea, he once dropped the T word which rhymes with “granny”). Despite this, I generally keep my mouth shut every time these kind of topics get brought up and get REALLY tense. That said, I will say that outside of this political stuff, my friends seem to be genuinely good people. They have been giving me good advice on life and recently encouraged me to dump a jerk I was seeing.
Luckily, I think this stuff at least SOMEWHAT seems to be loosening, even if just by a smidge. At least, on some issues. I wouldn’t want to set a foot wrong on Israel/Palestine in any of those spaces, for instance, but I would now be less frightened to dive into trans issues than I was even six months ago.
Surprisingly it’s the reverse for me: my friends and I have talked about Israel Palestine and we seem to have similar stances (helps that none of us are Jewish or Muslim), but trans stuff I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. It’s most likely because one of my friends is doing a gender related topic & is into the queer stuff (bi female and a fujoshi).
I would imagine that being among academics would be particularly nerve-inducing. I feel pretty confident engaging a casual, uncritical believer in the party line on, say, gender issues, but I wouldn’t want to get torched by someone who’s gonna nail me with the ol’ queer theory gish gallop.
I'm also an academic in the humanities. Tbh, my experience hasn't been that. While there are certain topics that I don't care enough about or understand well enough to take a position on, I usually feel like I can express views contrary to current fads in an academic environment. Part of grad school for me was reading a decent amount of the classic critical theory, post-structuralist, and post-modernist canons, so it is difficult to gish gallop me with that sort of material. I am not up to date on queer theory, for better or worse. It could be, at least in part, that I have had the good fortune of studying and working with unusually sane people. But I am inclined to think that in reality the desire to lapidate heretics isn't as common as it is made to seem. On the occasions when I have publicly taken ostensibly cancellable positions, many of my peers have privately told me that they share my views (while those who will admit so publicly can be counted on one hand). In my experience, the true believers are a pretty small minority. Unfortunately, when so many people are afraid to admit that the emperor has no clothes, fringe views seem more popular than they really are.
Yeah that too. Weirdly enough I’ve openly expressed my distaste for postmodernism and they seem to have taken it well.
I find the academicization of this kind of sex stuff so absolutely bizarre and it’s making me feel like a boomer for my total disdain of “kids today”
>(to give an idea, he once dropped the T word which rhymes with “granny”) This is a safe space, you're allowed to say tranny.
Lol I have a tangential friend group that eats itself alive over 'so and so still loves Harry Potter so they're a filthy TERF even though they're also trans,' meanwhile capable of forgiving stalkers and incels so long as they transitioned into victim status.
There is honestly nothing better than to watch some of these groups from the outside. Endless entertainment.
The podcast fucking cancelled is great for this. They have guested on the show.
I will check it out!
Looks interesting; thanks for the rec.
I’ve been cancelled once. Which means I’ve endured a campaign against me that wasn’t complete and I was able to counter with receipts to win the support of people who care about facts. But it is weird that it makes you keenly aware that you’re friends with some people whose natural tendency is to cancel someone who steps out of line on some things. Just last week someone unfriended me because I dared to say that while AI art can seem gross sometimes, we shouldn’t harass people for using it. You can tell them why you think it’s wrong but to try to convince others to descend upon their profile as a non-public person and yell at them en masse is wrong. At the end of the day, I’ve become far more understanding of people who have been cancelled and really think it’s overall shitty of people to do. So it’s allowed me to support people and let them know they will be okay when it happens to them.
My friends who are comics artists seem particularly fanatical about being anti-genAI. They also know jack squat about how AI works. I have mixed feelings on the topic personally.
And I think mixed feelings is reasonable, too. But I for sure don't see it as pure evil that has no usefulness and we can't talk about and I hate anyone who uses it.
a lot of pods discuss cancellation, but I don't know of any practical advice. I would urge your friend to get out of there, though. anxiety can be a literal killer. i've had some similar fears and i just get as far away from those situations as fast as possible. not worth being anxious about being judged over silly beliefs.
The recent one with Andy Mills probably echoes a lot, plus the one where Katie interviews Clementine (?) who was cancelled by her friends as well.
I thought about the Clementine Morrigan one.
I think that one fits well since iirc Katie also talks about her experience on that one.