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Ellen Pao - The perverse incentives that help incels thrive in tech
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- Title
- Ellen Pao Explains Why Incels Thrive at Tech Companies
- Authors
- Ellen Pao, Maryn Mckenna, Joi Ito, Antonio García Martínez, Renee DiResta, Susan Crawford
- Word count
- 1771 words
This quote really stuck out to me, as it seems like the userbase of Tildes may be doing a little soul-searching with itself over these same issues. A lot of people are attracted by the non-profit status and commitment to collect as little information as possible. However a stated goal of Tildes is to not allow these toxic communities to form and fester. There is a lot of empirical evidence to allow one to draw the conclusion that letting these bad actors and their enablers have a platform causes bigger issues down the road.
Am a mod, can confirm, there are people that I don't ban, but I fully know that they are redpillers/etc. It's funny that if I were to ban them from the subreddit, it would get people up on arms. Defending misogyny. Fuck. And they know how to skirt the rules.
I don't remember the thread but I think one of the Reddit admins once said "Nobody knows the rules as well as the people who intend to break them", specifically referring to the recurring issues they were having with r/jailbait and other "not illegal but within an inch" subreddits.
Would there even be an incel community without spaces for them to gather? I'm sure these guys existed before the internet, and I'm sure they had equally harmful reactions to their circumstances. What I don't think existed was this kind of community-building on their part.
For interesting counterthought, check out this youtube video.
For those not interested in watching the entire vid: The word "incel" means involuntary celibate. It's not a choice these people make, so I don't think it's right to just try and blame it all on them. Additionally, physical contact is needed for humans to have a good and healthy life. Incels don't get much if any of that at all, so it's not strange to see abnormal behaviour coming from them. Maybe you could try to solve the issue, instead of trying to silence it.
Yes, these people existed before the Internet, and probably will forever exist. Community building comes with technology that connects people to eachother. Without the tech to create incel communities, we also wouldn't have this community. Nor any other online community. But to attack core values of free societies just because you dislike some people's ideas sounds like an overly aggressive way to deal with it.
I don't think this argument particularly holds up (see "democratic" people's republic of north korea, or national 'socialism', etc).
It's not strange to see abnormal behaviour, no. I think everyone has stories of friends that fell in love and it was unrequited, and it hurts. But there's a line between a support group type of structure, or helping people survive that (recurring) hurt, and running a van into a group of people (or other milder, but still over the line, occurrences).
That all being said, what do you reckon is a good solution? Or, maybe before we talk about solutions, what do you think makes it that this group has reached the limelight now? What is causing this to apparently increase in size?
An incel generally doesn't have just a story of unrequited love, but a whole lifetime of unrequited love. There's a big difference.
That's a very small minority, and I don't think we should silence the entirity of the group, or destroy core values that some countries have in their constitution, because of them. Should we completely ban Islam because they have some terrorists in their midst? Should we completely abolish governments altogether because there's corruption in there?
First off I'd suggest not making broad generalisations and collectively punishing people for it. Like I said, "incel" means involuntary celibate. The fact that not everyone understands words (and many will deny the actual meaning on purpose) doesn't change this. It's not an active choice for them to not be liked by females. I think (current day) feminism and media is playing a big part in their (sometimes perceived) feeling of not being wanted.
I may try to discuss this particular point with some psychologist friends I have, they may have a better understanding of human behaviour than I do, so they can probably make better cases than I can.
I don't argue that this is something that's only happening "now", I think this has been a problem for a very long time already, but nobody wants to actually solve the issue. The feminists will just label them as mysoginists and try to silence them, as they always do with people they disagree with. The only reason I'm commenting here is to show a different perspective. The constant hating and name calling on the incel community (and for many other communities) is not helping anyone. In fact, it's only making matters worse.
I agree, and that's why I'm asking questions (because you seem to know something, and I only have some cursory knowledge on this topic). I didn't quite like the OP article because of some of the same reasons you've named here and in some other comments (e.g. "The fact that not everyone understands words (and many will deny the actual meaning on purpose) doesn't change this"; the OP article just kind of names "incels" and then starts talking without any backing up or explaining or anything, assuming you know what they mean and lumping things like "person who is frustrated at the way dating works" together with "guy who runs into people in a van or shoots at people"). Anywho, all that, so far, to say that I'm genuinly curious to the whole phenomenon. Some replies:
Very true, and I didn't mean to make light of it or erase the differences.
Just for clarification, because I feel much of the talk around this is people not knowing what others are talking about, can you explicitly state what you think the problem is? (and if possible, taboo your words) I guess this ties into my earlier question, why now? You're probably very right in saying it's not a current issue but something that's been happening for a long time, but that still raises the question (in my mind at least) of 'why is it that this is now getting attention?'. is that a critical mass thing (i.e. there's simply enough people on the right fora right now to talk and make themselves heard), or is there a cultural shift that has lead to more incels, or at least more people identifying as such? Like I've heard that the term incel was coined in the 90's, but it looks like it stayed kind of an underground/lesser known thing until the past year or two. Or am I seeing it wrong?
[IF YOU ANSWER NOTHING ELSE, please answer the paragraph above :)]
fwiw I don't think saying "the feminists" help much either (might put some people off from what you're saying).
Thanks for that, it's outside of my circle of perspectives (if that makes sense) so it's good to see/help me understand.
I generally will have to assume that people give it attention because they have no other issues to focus on. People are generally interested in solving problems, but if one has little problems in life, they will start to find issues when there are none, or make certain issues far bigger than needed. The existence of incels on itself isn't hurting anyone, except the incels themselves. To go out of your way to make them the problem feels like someone is trying to make an issue so they can make themselves a victim.
Probably, as I said certain waves of feminism are certainly not a positive gain to society in my view. It might also just look like there's more of them, since there's public platforms where they can gather now. Same goes for many other groups that seemed to be nonexistent to many people before the rise of the public Internet. There's also more platforms that talk about it in a negative way, which can further increase the feeling that the incel crowd is growing compared to what it used to be.
That could be, and I've certainly encountered people on Tildes that flat out refuse to enter into a discussion because they disagree simply with how things have been worded. I personally believe these people weren't interested in a civil discussion to begin with.
Current-day feminism to me is however a net negative to society, and I do think that "modern feminists" are very good at putting men down and destroying their confidence. Hence I call that group out in particular.
It's been reasonably close to mine, though I've never actually joined such incel communities. I still know people who would fit the descriptor of incel, but who also would not join such communities (mostly due to the negative connotations given to them).
No, probably not. And isn't that exactly what the best outcome would be? Incels' potential danger comes precisely because they're radicalizing people who hear about them in places like reddit.
If we look at this stricktly through the scope of reddit, I'd argue that communities like /r/incels or /r/braincels and other communities that promote toxic ideologies aren't actually "open platforms". Reddit itself is an open platform that anyone can join and start a community. And until very recently, most of those communities were immune to admin interference as long as there was no illegal activity (nevertheless, many were able to skirt those rules under technicalities, like /r/opiaterollcall). But that doesn't mean that the communities themselves were open platforms. In most cases, moderators ban any dissenting voices. So nearly everyone who visits a sub like /r/incels with the intent on challenging the views of the community will be met with a ban. Effectively, moderators have created a safe space for hate and vitriol.
We have to ask ourselves what it means to be an open platform. Reddit is an open platform when it comes to the site's big picture of allowing subreddits to form. But very few of those subreddits are actually open platforms to express ideas.
Sometimes saying/doing nothing is taking a side. I'm not usually of the "if you're not with us, you're against us" mind, but in some cases allowing one group to create an unsafe environment for others is supporting them.
There's a Howard Zinn book called You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train; the title captures this sentiment well. That book is about his experiences fighting for social change, as it often feels like a struggle to convince your fellow passengers that we should stop this train before it goes off a cliff. Some want to go full steam ahead, others argue for a gradual slowing that will still result in the train in freefall, some are happy to go with the flow. The result is the same. If you don't want to stop the train, you want to go over the cliff.
I'm not a fan of black-and-white ideologies either, but we have to have some standards right? I'm firmly against kicking puppies and I don't think there is any acceptable middle ground there. If all we do is put our fingers in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, how firm a basis does our ideology have?
It's about the need to make a choice, not that there are only x number of options or that an issue is not more nuanced than depicted.
A more complicated example would the non-interference policies of countries like China, India and Russia. There are good reasons why their positions are usually set in a negative light, but that doesn't mean either there is no grey and white to it.
Well, since I posted this, I guess I should comment as well. I happened to translate the Ellen Pao article on wiki-en to wiki-pt (link), so I learned a lot about the abuse Ellen suffered not only during the chaos of 2015, but her fight in the courts and her fight against misogyny in the workplace. It is awesome that she works so hard for her activism.
(cue 40 minutes of me being distracted and noticing people have already posted here lol)
I'm sure most of us are redditors, and some us, moderators in big communities, so we do know that there are always that small list of subreddits that troublesome users often come to (and I'm excluding t_d from this list!). Basically, jerks have a platform now. What used to be trolling and just an obvious reason for a ban now is "freedom of speech [without consequences]". It makes the space of debate toxic, boring. I honestly don't get the mind of the people that keep on hating people on-line day and night.
Just yesterday, a brazilian incel shot a woman in the streets. He simply asked if she could date him, she said no. He shot her, and then killed himself. Hopeful she stays alive. She was innocent.
This "incel culture" needs to get cut from all mainstream media quickly. So many young people are exposed to it, and they kind of believe in it. It's terrifying. Got rejected? There's a lot of other people! I was nervous as fuck when I first asked a girl on a date. I got rejected and I moved the fuck on. There's more to this world than just fucking. People should figure that by themselves, but apparently, they can't. And I don't fully get why.
Quick aside: Please consider avoiding the use of all caps in the future. It's not very readable and is frequently interpreted as "yelling" which goes against the sort of approach Tildes wants to take with civility.
Instead, when you want to add emphasis, please consider doing what you did in other parts of your comment and use bold text for emphasis. If you want to add variety to your emphasis, consider using italics to emphasize the interpreted inflection of the word(s) while using bold text to emphasize the content itself without necessarily changing inflection.
In other words, italics can be used to change how your text is read, and bold can be used to highlight sections without changing how it's read.
This isn't really a concrete rule, of course, it's just one of a number of possible ways you can approach the issue of textual emphasis :)
Thanks. I edited my text.
Not if you ever watch or read anything. Most content in the world is about fucking in one way or another. And feeling like everyone in the world is getting laid but you is probably not something that'll bring many people in to a positive vibe.
On your example, I'm sure the entire story is a bit more complicated than that, but I can't read Portuguese(?). I also don't think many media outlets care about the full story anyway, since that'll bring less shock value, and thus less interested readers.
Why not solve the underlying issue instead of silencing people who clearly have issues?
I'm not sure I'm getting your point. I mean, I'm still fairly young, tried to flirt sometimes and failed. Most of my friends are in a relationship these days. And I couldn't really care about it.
I believe that by silencing these communities, "normal people" will have a harder time finding these things, and won't be manipulated. I'm talking about the young people that are still in the school, mind you - I don't think there's a cure to "adult incels".
Also, there are people that think they're ugly, but they don't lash out on women/men. This is the important part. If you're feeling down, just go check a psychologist.
Now imagine when you keep on trying to flirt, and get rejected all the time for the next 20 years, while all your friends are getting it on all the time. Don't you think this will eventually start wearing you down too?
"Normal people" aren't going to be interested in these communities regardless. The biggest reason they get any attention is because some other hateful groups are trying to make a victim narrative.
That's easier said than done, especially if you don't fully understand the feelings that some people have about it. Going to a psychologist is already a very big step that's not easy to start with, especially if there's nobody else helping you, and the world telling you that you are the problem, and you should just "go shower and workout" to fix it.
Because it's a biological imperative to reproduce? I understand what you're trying to say here, people shouldn't feel entitled to sex and intimacy. That being said, incels are always going to exist in some form, I personally think we should focus on making them as harmless as possible.
off topic: I'm not sure if I should have posted here or in ~misc.
IMO ~tech is perfectly appropriate, especially given the subject matter is largely dealing with incels in the tech industry and online communities.