Any advice on how to discuss things online without "shouting?" I have been "arguing on the internet" in some form or another for decades, first on LiveJournal, then in the comments of articles (mostly Matt Yglesias's Slate columns before Slate ruined its commenting system) and now on Twitter.
I do not think I am part of the perpetually discontent. I like to think that I mostly do it as a sounding board for my own thoughts (but I can't rule out the possibility that I'm a "'mansplainer[]' who just want to show off how clever [I am] or listen to [myself] talk.")
What are the the "best practices" for engaging online without becoming part of the problem you describe, short of just shutting twitter and going for a walk.
In my view, the most important thing is to avoid personal attacks. The word "you" should almost never appear in a post. Posts should be rigorous about discussing only whether the idea espoused in another post makes sense, not whether the person espousing that idea is a good or bad person. One should never, EVER, talk about the other poster's motives for expressing their views, or what kind of person the other poster is; only the views themselves should be discussed. And, if possible, find some part of the post that you agree with, and explain that while you agree with that part, you disagree with another part. Also, don't be didactic; express your views in a way that leaves open the possibility that the other person may in fact be correct.
I worked for many years as a judicial staff attorney at a state supreme court. In such a place, one spends a lot of ones time explaining, in published documents, why ones colleagues don't understand what they're talking about. One wants to do it in a way that will keep everyone on speaking terms, and the court is more likely to reach a legally sound result if the person you're disagreeing with doesn't get offended. The key is to avoid personal attacks.
I've been arguing on the internet since the early nineties, first on AOL and then Usenet.
I think one of the issues particularly with Twitter is that it's all public all the time. On Reddit you can be an angry-as-hell warrior in one subreddit and a thoughtful commenter in another, and most people will never notice.
A couple things I'd like to see Twitter:
* An "anger rank" system, kind of like Googles page rank, that weights and amplifies/de-amplifies accounts according to good faith or simple niceness.
* Offering paid verification -. blue checkmarks to all who are willing to pay an annual fee
* Once that has uptake, default to only showing verified accounts but giving people the option to turn the filter on and off
* Enforce the community standard rules by removing checkmarks for those who violate them, and outright banning those who continue bad behavior
Those wouldn't fix everything, but I think the incentives would lead to better outcomes.
Twitter isn't "all public all the time", it has DMs and the option to "protect" your account so that Twitter shows your tweets only to approved followers.
Anyway, the best thing about Twitter is being able to rebut verified accounts that talk crap. Maybe Twitter could experiment with banning verified accounts. They silenced them for an afternoon a year ago (https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-unverified-takeover/) and that seems to have gone pretty well!
The day the verifieds got locked out was glorious. I couldn't stop laughing when a few tried to communicate by RTing the Every Word account like they were banging their cup on the prison bars in Morse Code.
That being said, I suspect a "Lord of the Flies" scenario would have set in within a couple days. IMO, the best thing about Twitter is unlimited blocks. Noah is the one who convinced me (by explanation, not example) that most online speech had become so cheap that mass blocking is both justified and essential to a peaceful Twitter experience.
Including some olive branch language, acknowledging common ground or steelmanning their opinion helps. (And there's some selection required, aggressively ignoring trolls is really helpful.)
I feel like someone like Haidt did some research on this in his work on political persuasion, but not sure exactly which paper.
lots of good points here, the point about immunizing to pain and shouting is really important I think,. I also think it would help to round this out to look at what is good about twitter too. It is popular for a reason. For me, it is really the only place left where people who disagree with each other are actually talking to each other, however dysfunctionally as you point out. That matters.
Facebook used to be but my experience now is that people have withdrawn there almost completely into their silo's. It is hard to get insulted by people you know. When someone posts a political opinion, only people who agree respond, is my experience.
Unfortunately we are so over-communicated that shouting is a fitness trait in many respects.
The Shouting Class is not just malcontents. Self-agrandizers, bloggers, ladder-climbers use the bullhorn as an important (essential) tool of their business model. Being a member of the Shouting Class can pay with the tactical use of the amplification tools. See Substack and LinkedIn for example.
Also re: hardening. Teachers and sports coaches in affluent communities are overwhelmed by pushy parents to the point of building defenses thick enough so that reasonable parents can't get through with reasonable issues that would previously be handled in stride, thus dumbing down the whole system as a result.
Nguyen, C. Thi (2021). How Twitter gamifies communication. In Jennifer Lackey (ed.), Applied Epistemology. Oxford University Press. pp. 410-436. <https://philpapers.org/rec/NGUHTG> is very good.
Coincidentally, I read your post and then watched this video of Martin Gurri discussing his book The Revolt of the Public (https://youtu.be/aukv7_xC6ls) at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities. It seems to me that what you call the Shouting Class is closely related to what Gurri calls the nihilistic public. Are you familiar with Gurri? If so, whadda ya think?
I have a lot of respect for this post. The only lingering worry I have is whether the conclusions apply in the China context, or if those problems might need special solutions.
We see some odd moments like a Japanese actor asking on Twitter "is anyone watching the Olympics?" (coincidentally as China is losing in ping pong), and immediately forced to apologize for the "insensitivity" of that question.
Or if you don't apologize, well, sometimes even if you do, you end up losing the NBA or your movie franchise hundreds of millions of dollars.
It's exasperating. How do you lance the nationalist anger of a subset of a group you're not technically allowed to talk to online anyway? Or amplify the softer voices interested in constructive engagement, in China and around the world?
This is asymmetric dialogue at its finest, one has to recognize that the only way to win is to either not play, or to be a bigger "shouter". To be a bigger "shouter" does not necessarily mean you need more groupthink, but solidarity in a one-off issue, yet the latter can either wither or evolve into the former.
Shouting is a reference to sound volume and tone, two things which social media (facebook and twitter at least) lacks. So how can one even categorise these as shouts. Well one way could be to identify rude words ad hominems etc. Apart from that it is just a best guess. What you are percriving as a negative shout could actually be the opposite. On the internet there is little sense of irony or sarcasm.
One reason to calm the shouting class is to help them be free people. Its much easy to call them rabid or unhappy shouters than to actually help them solve their problems. Many are disillusioned by the political class and the elite class (who control the political class) on both sides of politics. And many are venting stress with living standards. You migh say technologivally we are better than ever before. But peoole dont account for massive indebtedness and lack of freedom to exist somewhere in space without coercion. If the political and elite classes dont listen to the voices of reason in those respects (people like Henry George) then they make their own bed of more indebted and more stressed and hopeless feelinh people and more anger. Just labelling them the shouting class without a plan of solving these problems wont subdue them. So i dont believe its just a technopogical shouting problem of bias nor can it be fixed by just calling them out as shouters or taking away their shouting capacity (cancel culture). The people with the power (political and elite classes) actually have to learn to care sbout the populice and ask how can we help them be free and less indebted into servitude or menial meaningless work and btw less threatened by the looming threat of automation (forget immigrants) taking their jobs and ability for them and their families to survive.
I agree that actually helping to solve people's problems is an underrated approach. I also want to try building on the interesting classification of taking away shouters' capacity as (a form of) "cancel culture".
We hear plenty of complaints about "cancel culture" from pundits, talking heads, and the mainstream media, but we also hear lots of calls to, basically, take away shouters' capacity, perhaps most obviously calls to strip social media of anonymity. I don't see how to reconcile the two in a non-cynical way.
The combination of boos for "cancel culture" (and "shouting"), and cheers for policies like anti-anonymity, comes off to me as insiders with platforms declaring Cancel Culture For Thee, But Not For Me, a reaction to social media granting outsiders a public forum to criticize those insiders. Especially since social-media anonymity doesn't make much sense as a medium-improving tactic (https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/why-ending-anonymity-would-not-make-social-media-better.php), but does make sense as a tactic to hold random nobodies accountable to the media-political complex.
ACX might have notes on Peterson's "suppression" and it symbiotic relationship with the "woke culture". Other than that:
1. Solutions that promotes parallel existence away from the elite is much appreciated
2. the "political class" are more likely to be the "shouting class" itself, or more accurately, the educated affluent non-elite class, and that they cannot realistically involve themselves with the working class.
3. they need better things to do in life that allows them to truly socialize AND have fulfilling work, yet the current system forbids that.
There are a few ways to see a solution, but all of which are hard:
1. Elimination of the Shouting Class, which the Tumblr Exodus and the Twitter cesspit demonstrates, it cannot be done
2. Forced Containment of the Shouting Class, which the /pol/ attitude and Reddit's unwillingness to fairly moderate, demonstrates that people are not willing to accept it as a solution
3. Retirement and Conversion of the Shouting Class into more productive activities
For #3, the solutions can either be through civilized creative expression (Yarvin's "Armigers"), or through comfort and sedation (M.O. Church's "Idle Rich"). This implies that the head of the Shouting Class is merely the affluent with nothing better (fulfilling) to do.
My wife and I are both heavy users of FB and (me) twitter and we solved the issue by mutting anyone who shared opinions we did agree with. You're a Trump antivaxer, no problem but I don't need to see your posts. Secondly I stopped sharing and commenting on anything political. Why share an anti Trudeau post and when I can share a Debbie Downer post and make people laugh!
I always loved this post. Goes well with your famous (and correct) prescription to block heavily and often. The shouters have an easy job on social media because speech is cheap and people still think they have a responsibility to listen. Mass blocking of anyone who disrupts the user experience really is effective. There's always someone who can share the same perspective in a less obnoxious manner.
Overall good post. The one the type of shouter not covered and I would like to add is self-edification. Some people shout for their own egos to be built up.
this is why i built a communication / community tool that allows more folks to "shout their shit" (shoot our shot...? lol) which reduces the overall impact of all this nonsense.
when everyone can shout, it's less interesting. social media fucked us. time to recapture and control it once again. not censorship... just democratization.
there is only one twitter... what if we all had our own? imagine. we wouldn't have to put up shouting matches.
The most epic essay ever. So much of this was swirling in my head, and now you gave me a clear picture. Thank you so much!
This reminds me of your first 'most epic essay ever', written cca 2014: "Drones will cause an upheaval of society like we haven’t seen in 700 years" - definitely worth a repost :-)
Qanon is what happens when *chan shitposts overflow into your aunt’s Facebook feed.
It’s like “for the lulz” copypasta from the mid-00’s leeching into the water supply.
Ditto for the hatebait, Adsense-farming blogspam from the 2016 election.
I remember arguing with other students in college, 2008-ish, about how their online trolling would have serious consequences as everyone else got online. They thought it was hilarious; the internet wasn’t real and what you did on it didn’t matter.
Here we are, 10+ years later, and that “online vs irl” divide is completely shattered. We crossed the streams.
Any advice on how to discuss things online without "shouting?" I have been "arguing on the internet" in some form or another for decades, first on LiveJournal, then in the comments of articles (mostly Matt Yglesias's Slate columns before Slate ruined its commenting system) and now on Twitter.
I do not think I am part of the perpetually discontent. I like to think that I mostly do it as a sounding board for my own thoughts (but I can't rule out the possibility that I'm a "'mansplainer[]' who just want to show off how clever [I am] or listen to [myself] talk.")
What are the the "best practices" for engaging online without becoming part of the problem you describe, short of just shutting twitter and going for a walk.
Good question...I'll have to think about that. Not sure I do a good job of it.
In my view, the most important thing is to avoid personal attacks. The word "you" should almost never appear in a post. Posts should be rigorous about discussing only whether the idea espoused in another post makes sense, not whether the person espousing that idea is a good or bad person. One should never, EVER, talk about the other poster's motives for expressing their views, or what kind of person the other poster is; only the views themselves should be discussed. And, if possible, find some part of the post that you agree with, and explain that while you agree with that part, you disagree with another part. Also, don't be didactic; express your views in a way that leaves open the possibility that the other person may in fact be correct.
I worked for many years as a judicial staff attorney at a state supreme court. In such a place, one spends a lot of ones time explaining, in published documents, why ones colleagues don't understand what they're talking about. One wants to do it in a way that will keep everyone on speaking terms, and the court is more likely to reach a legally sound result if the person you're disagreeing with doesn't get offended. The key is to avoid personal attacks.
I've been arguing on the internet since the early nineties, first on AOL and then Usenet.
I think one of the issues particularly with Twitter is that it's all public all the time. On Reddit you can be an angry-as-hell warrior in one subreddit and a thoughtful commenter in another, and most people will never notice.
A couple things I'd like to see Twitter:
* An "anger rank" system, kind of like Googles page rank, that weights and amplifies/de-amplifies accounts according to good faith or simple niceness.
* Offering paid verification -. blue checkmarks to all who are willing to pay an annual fee
* Once that has uptake, default to only showing verified accounts but giving people the option to turn the filter on and off
* Enforce the community standard rules by removing checkmarks for those who violate them, and outright banning those who continue bad behavior
Those wouldn't fix everything, but I think the incentives would lead to better outcomes.
Twitter isn't "all public all the time", it has DMs and the option to "protect" your account so that Twitter shows your tweets only to approved followers.
Anyway, the best thing about Twitter is being able to rebut verified accounts that talk crap. Maybe Twitter could experiment with banning verified accounts. They silenced them for an afternoon a year ago (https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-unverified-takeover/) and that seems to have gone pretty well!
The day the verifieds got locked out was glorious. I couldn't stop laughing when a few tried to communicate by RTing the Every Word account like they were banging their cup on the prison bars in Morse Code.
That being said, I suspect a "Lord of the Flies" scenario would have set in within a couple days. IMO, the best thing about Twitter is unlimited blocks. Noah is the one who convinced me (by explanation, not example) that most online speech had become so cheap that mass blocking is both justified and essential to a peaceful Twitter experience.
Including some olive branch language, acknowledging common ground or steelmanning their opinion helps. (And there's some selection required, aggressively ignoring trolls is really helpful.)
I feel like someone like Haidt did some research on this in his work on political persuasion, but not sure exactly which paper.
I don't think it's possible. Like Gresham's Law, bad communication drives good communication out of circulation.
lots of good points here, the point about immunizing to pain and shouting is really important I think,. I also think it would help to round this out to look at what is good about twitter too. It is popular for a reason. For me, it is really the only place left where people who disagree with each other are actually talking to each other, however dysfunctionally as you point out. That matters.
Facebook used to be but my experience now is that people have withdrawn there almost completely into their silo's. It is hard to get insulted by people you know. When someone posts a political opinion, only people who agree respond, is my experience.
Great write up. Thanks.
Unfortunately we are so over-communicated that shouting is a fitness trait in many respects.
The Shouting Class is not just malcontents. Self-agrandizers, bloggers, ladder-climbers use the bullhorn as an important (essential) tool of their business model. Being a member of the Shouting Class can pay with the tactical use of the amplification tools. See Substack and LinkedIn for example.
Also re: hardening. Teachers and sports coaches in affluent communities are overwhelmed by pushy parents to the point of building defenses thick enough so that reasonable parents can't get through with reasonable issues that would previously be handled in stride, thus dumbing down the whole system as a result.
The ladder, as in Michael O Church's three class ladder (reiterated through Alex Danco)?
Nguyen, C. Thi (2021). How Twitter gamifies communication. In Jennifer Lackey (ed.), Applied Epistemology. Oxford University Press. pp. 410-436. <https://philpapers.org/rec/NGUHTG> is very good.
Excellent reference. Thank you.
Coincidentally, I read your post and then watched this video of Martin Gurri discussing his book The Revolt of the Public (https://youtu.be/aukv7_xC6ls) at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities. It seems to me that what you call the Shouting Class is closely related to what Gurri calls the nihilistic public. Are you familiar with Gurri? If so, whadda ya think?
I have a lot of respect for this post. The only lingering worry I have is whether the conclusions apply in the China context, or if those problems might need special solutions.
We see some odd moments like a Japanese actor asking on Twitter "is anyone watching the Olympics?" (coincidentally as China is losing in ping pong), and immediately forced to apologize for the "insensitivity" of that question.
Or if you don't apologize, well, sometimes even if you do, you end up losing the NBA or your movie franchise hundreds of millions of dollars.
It's exasperating. How do you lance the nationalist anger of a subset of a group you're not technically allowed to talk to online anyway? Or amplify the softer voices interested in constructive engagement, in China and around the world?
https://supchina.com/2021/07/26/chinese-social-media-reacts-to-shocking-losses-and-historic-wins-at-tokyo-olympics/
This is asymmetric dialogue at its finest, one has to recognize that the only way to win is to either not play, or to be a bigger "shouter". To be a bigger "shouter" does not necessarily mean you need more groupthink, but solidarity in a one-off issue, yet the latter can either wither or evolve into the former.
Shouting is a reference to sound volume and tone, two things which social media (facebook and twitter at least) lacks. So how can one even categorise these as shouts. Well one way could be to identify rude words ad hominems etc. Apart from that it is just a best guess. What you are percriving as a negative shout could actually be the opposite. On the internet there is little sense of irony or sarcasm.
One reason to calm the shouting class is to help them be free people. Its much easy to call them rabid or unhappy shouters than to actually help them solve their problems. Many are disillusioned by the political class and the elite class (who control the political class) on both sides of politics. And many are venting stress with living standards. You migh say technologivally we are better than ever before. But peoole dont account for massive indebtedness and lack of freedom to exist somewhere in space without coercion. If the political and elite classes dont listen to the voices of reason in those respects (people like Henry George) then they make their own bed of more indebted and more stressed and hopeless feelinh people and more anger. Just labelling them the shouting class without a plan of solving these problems wont subdue them. So i dont believe its just a technopogical shouting problem of bias nor can it be fixed by just calling them out as shouters or taking away their shouting capacity (cancel culture). The people with the power (political and elite classes) actually have to learn to care sbout the populice and ask how can we help them be free and less indebted into servitude or menial meaningless work and btw less threatened by the looming threat of automation (forget immigrants) taking their jobs and ability for them and their families to survive.
I agree that actually helping to solve people's problems is an underrated approach. I also want to try building on the interesting classification of taking away shouters' capacity as (a form of) "cancel culture".
We hear plenty of complaints about "cancel culture" from pundits, talking heads, and the mainstream media, but we also hear lots of calls to, basically, take away shouters' capacity, perhaps most obviously calls to strip social media of anonymity. I don't see how to reconcile the two in a non-cynical way.
The combination of boos for "cancel culture" (and "shouting"), and cheers for policies like anti-anonymity, comes off to me as insiders with platforms declaring Cancel Culture For Thee, But Not For Me, a reaction to social media granting outsiders a public forum to criticize those insiders. Especially since social-media anonymity doesn't make much sense as a medium-improving tactic (https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/why-ending-anonymity-would-not-make-social-media-better.php), but does make sense as a tactic to hold random nobodies accountable to the media-political complex.
ACX might have notes on Peterson's "suppression" and it symbiotic relationship with the "woke culture". Other than that:
1. Solutions that promotes parallel existence away from the elite is much appreciated
2. the "political class" are more likely to be the "shouting class" itself, or more accurately, the educated affluent non-elite class, and that they cannot realistically involve themselves with the working class.
3. they need better things to do in life that allows them to truly socialize AND have fulfilling work, yet the current system forbids that.
There are a few ways to see a solution, but all of which are hard:
1. Elimination of the Shouting Class, which the Tumblr Exodus and the Twitter cesspit demonstrates, it cannot be done
2. Forced Containment of the Shouting Class, which the /pol/ attitude and Reddit's unwillingness to fairly moderate, demonstrates that people are not willing to accept it as a solution
3. Retirement and Conversion of the Shouting Class into more productive activities
For #3, the solutions can either be through civilized creative expression (Yarvin's "Armigers"), or through comfort and sedation (M.O. Church's "Idle Rich"). This implies that the head of the Shouting Class is merely the affluent with nothing better (fulfilling) to do.
My wife and I are both heavy users of FB and (me) twitter and we solved the issue by mutting anyone who shared opinions we did agree with. You're a Trump antivaxer, no problem but I don't need to see your posts. Secondly I stopped sharing and commenting on anything political. Why share an anti Trudeau post and when I can share a Debbie Downer post and make people laugh!
This made me think of Eric Hoffer's _The True Believer_ (written in 1951!) and this great post on samzdat which both discuss mass movements: https://samzdat.com/2017/06/28/without-belief-in-a-god-but-never-without-belief-in-a-devil/
I always loved this post. Goes well with your famous (and correct) prescription to block heavily and often. The shouters have an easy job on social media because speech is cheap and people still think they have a responsibility to listen. Mass blocking of anyone who disrupts the user experience really is effective. There's always someone who can share the same perspective in a less obnoxious manner.
Overall good post. The one the type of shouter not covered and I would like to add is self-edification. Some people shout for their own egos to be built up.
pretty close to true... ugh.
this is why i built a communication / community tool that allows more folks to "shout their shit" (shoot our shot...? lol) which reduces the overall impact of all this nonsense.
when everyone can shout, it's less interesting. social media fucked us. time to recapture and control it once again. not censorship... just democratization.
there is only one twitter... what if we all had our own? imagine. we wouldn't have to put up shouting matches.
You've let a sentence hanging there: "With social media giving the Shouting Class a bullhorn, that baseline level is far higher than"
The most epic essay ever. So much of this was swirling in my head, and now you gave me a clear picture. Thank you so much!
This reminds me of your first 'most epic essay ever', written cca 2014: "Drones will cause an upheaval of society like we haven’t seen in 700 years" - definitely worth a repost :-)
Qanon is what happens when *chan shitposts overflow into your aunt’s Facebook feed.
It’s like “for the lulz” copypasta from the mid-00’s leeching into the water supply.
Ditto for the hatebait, Adsense-farming blogspam from the 2016 election.
I remember arguing with other students in college, 2008-ish, about how their online trolling would have serious consequences as everyone else got online. They thought it was hilarious; the internet wasn’t real and what you did on it didn’t matter.
Here we are, 10+ years later, and that “online vs irl” divide is completely shattered. We crossed the streams.