fears of a wankish world

[kaigou]

Recently, sevilemar left a comment on the posts I did on the dynamics of fandom. One part of the comment leapt out at me:

I think preserving earlier posts (or texts) and naming your sources like you did with obsession_inc's post are tremendously helpful when a reader wants to know more about the thing discussed. It creates a sense of tradition, and tradition is a tool of organization ... Also, earlier posts, texts and discussions can be used to demonstrate patterns or recurring themes, structures etc. if one is so inclined.

All very true, and the internet-casual "I was reading __ and it made me think of __" or the more direct, "this is in response to __'s post on __" definitely act as shorthand citations. I await the day when we develop a pattern, or an assumption of, inline notations (journalname, 2010). Unlike the footnotes and endnotes in printed text -- highly annoying, if you ask me, because of the requirement of skipping to the end of the book and searching minuscule text for that one line, only to have it say ibid (and who the hell is ibid anyway and can I shoot him now?) -- but I digress.

What that comment-bit actually made me think of was this: there have been times, many more times than I think I'd even like to admit, where I have not linked to, nor identified, who or what prompted the post. And that's because of one reason: because the text can be searched, found, and wanked.

As I've discussed before, discussions are digressive in their organic form, going this way, and back again. When I was in college, it would be a handful or so of us, at the local bar, covering all the permutations of a topic. Between us, we'd move from here, to there, and back again, sometimes arguing against ourselves as a way to make sure we'd left no conversational stone unturned. (Yes, it's called Being A Philosophy Major.) In the internet discussions, past and current, it's the same thing, except multiple voices are doing that digression, all at the same time. Hyper, I'll give you hyper -- compared to the rather languid pace of pre-internet.

However, that overlapping means the digression may no longer be organic, but cacophonous. The various link-roundups and link-spams on any given hot topic definitely give the impression of chaos, and someone out there is gonna want to force it into Proper Order. The link-roundups and link-spams (especially when accompanied by editorial commentary such as "privilege in comments" or "triggers for __") act as forces of order against a chaotic, near-post-modern discussion frenzy. And where you have the drive for organization, for order, you're going to have to determine what's in, and what's out, and as I've mentioned before, that's where you get the Proper Order's private wish that everyone would speak in turn, because all this talking out of turn is giving some folks the chance to derail -- or just digress, which is sometimes bad enough anyway -- and that, we just can't have.

Hence, wank -- and wank, when you think about it, is pretty damn meta in a bizarre way. A lot of the worst wank in the various fails isn't always only and entirely because someone was privileged; that's usually just the starting-point. The rest of the wank is wank over whether or not that critical-post was wank: in this chaotic crazy everyone-talks-at-once discussion, it's pretty much inevitable in that any decent-sized fail, there'll be an argument over the unspoken community rules of how one goes about having an argument.

Citing any of that, linking to any of that -- no matter how thought-provoking -- means getting dragged into it. Internet discussions as the ultimate tarbaby: you link, you are connected, you can be found, and your citation can be used against you. While this would be true regardless of whether link-roundups existed -- no matter how useful, overall, as historical records of a discussion's progress -- a link-roundup still creates an easy path for others to follow to your door, and thence to holler at you.

While I'm certainly not going to advocate Civility Lessons for everyone -- there are still people writing in all-caps, for crying out loud, and such advocacy would just be another opportunity for wank, anyway -- I do think that any metatastic discussions of internet conversations must take into account the pressures created by those link round-ups and their very public dispersal. From an academic or historical point, couldn't this potentially warp one's perception of a discussion, in one direction or another, if many are speaking but only in an undertone, unlinked? Or many are speaking but with self-censored neutrality when linking?

If fear of wank -- public shaming, really -- overrides the OP's investment in the actual topic, how do you know you've actually collected the discussion? What if your introduction is an unlinked post, giving the impression it starts and stops here, what does that do to how we see the post? Is a post more valuable -- or more credible -- if it risks the wank by linking? Or is it more valuable (to those within its discussion-borders) if its unlinked state means it's a safe space for the conversation-participants? Wouldn't that, in turn, make it as valuable and valid as any public, wank-risking posts, if for different reasons?


Sometimes I hate my brain.

Comments

[kaigou]

Ayup. This is one benefit of that philosophy education, in that I tend to try and define my terms as clearly and narrowly as possible, to make it clear they're being "jargonized" and that the common/broad definition may not apply.

Although every time I do so, the SO snarks about the philosophy majors he'd overhear at University, all arguing amongst themselves: "define your terms!" being the most-repeated phrase. I tell him that phrase is beloved for a reason, damn it.

exactly!

[nagasvoice]

And then there's the maddening bit about, "at the center of the onion is a mystery." Those last two or three inner layers are just doozies, and the amateur theologians really don't help.
Of course there's plenty of room for discussion while going through all those other layers first. You can narrow things down considerably-- such as that old chestnut, "Oh, so as a Libertarian you didn't *really* mean 'totally no government', say as in Somalia right now, you actually meant 'some place that still has a base level of law enforcement'! Now, what does 'base level' mean? For that matter, what do you mean by law 'enforcement'?"

Man, the things that hook me onto the axle can be so apparently and maddeningly trivial, makes me feel like a complete amateur.

Re: exactly!

[kaigou]

Debating [endlessly, I should qualify] over the definition of a term is one thing I find infuriating, frustrating -- and the hallmark of someone who for some reason is reluctant to debate the topic itself, so bogs down the debate via nitpicking.

Ultimately, the OP defines the limits of the discussion; if the OP has defined a term as X and I think it's better defined as Y, and that seeing it as Y brings in a completely different reading... I present my case and if the OP says, "for the sake of this discussion, I'm limiting the meaning to X," I can either agree or disagree, but that's the extent of it. Me, I don't see any value in wasting my time going further, and have little patience with those who do, because any counter-argument is arguing both terms and conclusions: in effect, it's arguing that the OP should be arguing some other point. Wrong-headed or not, them there's the OP argument, and you argue on its merits or you don't.

Or shorter version: refining the meanings of one's term is useful, but when people start arguing over the definition of 'is', I get bored. Heh.

Re: exactly!

[nagasvoice]

Of course (in most cases) people are also free to take the discussion of Y somewhere else if OP is not interested in discussing it further. There can be exceptions to that--where it's about something f/locked for privacy reasons, and discussing even a hypothetical is too precise and identifiable.