posted on February 22, 2021 05:19 PM by
u/dmitri-domvrobskis
25
u/shinigami320 pointsat 1614041194.000000
Scott Alexander built up a large and immensely influential readership
completely on his own, writing a blog that, whatever its faults, stepped
far outside of the narrow and parochial currents that Very Serious Media
refuses to leave. This was a threat, a challenge to people like Cade
Metz who think that it is their divine right to be the ones to tell the
story.
So this article is insane in numerous ways, but one thing that sticks
out to me is this passage:
You ever see someone in the media announce that they’re changing jobs
on Twitter? It is the weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. I guess I
understand the need to announce your career changes, but why do people
always respond with absurd hyperbole on Twitter? “You are the greatest
and best person in the world!” ….. DM them with your sincere happiness
for them! I guarantee it’ll mean more. Do people who work at Geico do
this shit?
REBECCA: I’d like to announce that I’m transferring to the motorcycle
division.
JENNIFER: (standing up, loudly) REBECCA IS THE MOST AMAZING HUMAN I
HAVE EVER ENCOUNTERED. OUR LOSS IS THE MOTORCYCLE DIVISION’S GAIN.
I don’t know what kind of work environment this guy has spent time
in, but this kind of thing seems pretty normal for corporate workplaces.
Obviously not in this weird exaggerated way he’s framing it here, but if
one of your coworkers is transferring away to a different division…
yeah, it seems pretty normal to be like “we loved working with you! you
were great! we’ll miss you a lot! best of luck with your future
endeavors!” etc.
And… it’s slightly worrying to me that he doesn’t seem to understand
why people do this and thinks it’s something worth making fun of, and
that he assumes it’s motivated entirely by a cynical desire for personal
gain. I feel like this says more about him than it does about
journalists, tbh.
[e: not to say media twitter isn’t insanely annoying and self
congratulatory, which it obviously is. I’m just making fun of “imagine
if people did this in other workplaces???” as if it’s not a completely
normal thing there too]
My favorite thing about Freddie DeBoer is this: a couple years ago, some people complained to the Minecraft developers that Minecraft had players feeding chocolate chip cookies to parrots to get them to lay eggs or something. Chocolate can kill parrots in real life, so those people were worried that the game might encourage those with little knowledge about bird safety to feed dangerous treats to friends’ pets. Sounds like a reasonable concern to me. The developers agreed, and changed it.
Freddie DeBoer thought this was *crazy*. He likened the complainers to cops in [his essay “Planet of Cops”.](https://medium.com/@jesse.singal/planet-of-cops-50889004904d)
[There was something much worse than that that DeBoer also did](https://fredrikdeboer.com/2018/10/02/statement/), but for some reason, that Minecraft parrot thing is what really stuck in my mind.
> [his essay “Planet of Cops”.](https://medium.com/@jesse.singal/planet-of-cops-50889004904d)
absolutely Shocked, Shocked I Tell You that the person who reposted this after he took it down was Jesse Singal
I seem to recall reading a bit about this guy in the misty past of like, 2012/2013.
If I were in a particularly cruel mood, I might guess that he's never had any experience of this himself. He very obviously resents it, and I seem to recall that he's, uh, a rather unpleasant fellow himself
He's bipolar, and really really hates people attacking him or people like him on the Internet. I thought swore off social media because he basically went making and started making outrageous claims against people commenting about him.
It's like "Freddie, you're doing it again"
He has stated that he has bipolar disorder (searching his last name and "bipolar" can get you to his statement on the matter).
I'm not claiming that excuses his way of interacting with people-on-the-internet, of course, but it does seem to be "actually bipolar"
he also apparently went into the hospital for it, after making up some pretty nasty stuff about someone else toward whom he may feel competitive: [https://twitter.com/bigmeaninternet/status/899282205226274816](https://twitter.com/bigmeaninternet/status/899282205226274816)
EDIT: i just noticed that u/sockyjo pointed to FDB's account of both parts of this below, where he admits wrongdoing. I remember this event and idly thinking, "I wonder if he will change at all because of this," and I guess I have my answer: [https://fredrikdeboer.com/2018/10/02/statement/](https://fredrikdeboer.com/2018/10/02/statement/)
I had an internet aquintance (who admittedly also had other issues, mainly substance abuse ones) go full on manic in discord once. He was convinced he could "fix Donald Trump's soul", that he had a revelation that made him more important than Jesus and also tried to organize an orgy. It was... wild.
I mean, given his Public Beefing With Internet Feminists that was his brand before he did the first of many GBCWs, it's... unsurprising that he'd see Siskind as particularly victimized, since they both shared a hatred of Internet Feminists.
(Freddie is quite honestly like a lot of people whose "attacking liberals from the left" seems to actually just be, well, attacking liberals.)
A non-trivial portion of the “attacking liberals from the left” end up being excellent examples of why the horseshoe theory of politics might be correct.
I know these nerds pride themselves on never paying attention to sports, but seriously, imagine if they ever caught word of how popular athletes are treated when they're traded or retire? Sure, comments on Twitter can be annoying, but it's nothing compared to producing 10-minute tribute videos in honor of people, or hanging someone's uniform from the ceiling to never be worn again.
Lots of the engineers I follow on Twitter have announced career changes and promotions. Super normal, this person is in a bubble and they don’t even know it.
You know, De Boer’s disgust with well-to-do-media-twitter is
perfectly reasonable. I honestly hate whenever it comes across my
feed.
Hell, he’s absolutely right to be scornful of smug Correct Opinion
Havers.
But… that’s no reason to go white knighting for a goddamn toilet of
white supremacy, and then follow it up with a mealy-mouthed paragraph
about how his several thousand words of white-knighting for Siskind
aren’t what they appear to be.
Honestly, much as I enjoy his contrarianism that results in occasional insight, if there's any one human who needs to logoff for good if for no other reason than to preserve his own mental health, it's Freddie De Boer.
> You know, De Boer's disgust with well-to-do-media-twitter is perfectly reasonable.
Seems to me that it's less "reasonable" and more "hopping mad that he lacks the people skills, if not the class background, to be one of them."
> You know, De Boer's disgust with well-to-do-media-twitter is perfectly reasonable.
Too many in this thread simping for media elites. Do better, sneerclubbers.
> But... that's no reason to go white knighting for a goddamn toilet of white supremacy,
I think Freddie is smart (or what I have read of his is sometimes smart), but it's baffling to me how some people can't seem to understand that it's possible for more than one thing to be bad.
And of all the things to hate media Twitter for, announcing job changes is literally at the bottom of the list.
Normal people announce job changes on Twitter. Why shouldn’t public people with a following of readers do it too?
not surprised he likes Siskind because that blog post reeks of
resentment the same way Scooter’s posts do
also
> Joe Rogan is reviled not because he and his guests say some
stupid shit – and they do – but because he is immensely popular outside
of the official channels, he is decidedly not part of the culture of
media or overachiever culture in general, and his show is massively more
successful than their terrible podcasts.
That's a lot of words for "You're just jealous."
It's also incorrect. People who dislike Rogan generally dislike him because he is an idiot who says stupid shit. For example, that he isn't getting a COVID vaccine because he doesn't think he needs it... because he's healthy.
As Alexander points out in his response, among other basic acts of
dishonesty Metz just directly and unambiguously lies about Alexander and
Charles Murray. He says that Alexander has praised Murray, and that
Alexander has acknowledged that Murray has promoted the race-and-IQ
stuff. (Unlike me, despite what you’re likely to hear on the internet.)
This is written in a way designed – designed, now, as this is not at all
accidental – to make it seem like what Alexander was agreeing with
Charles Murray about was race science. But this is completely
untrue.
I'd never heard of DeBoer until he tangled with Scott. I assumed he must have something going for him if Scott was against him. This turns out not to be the case.
Freddie has also been one of the people who writes for Jacobin while suggesting that IQ "science" really needs to be taken seriously.
I had thought he'd gone away until this, and I wish he had
FdB has spent more than a decade angry at Jude Doyle because Jude (under his deadname) a) said he wouldn't fuck him and b) changed a bunch of his comment text to \[BONERS\] on the blog he ran at the time, Tiger Beatdown. I continue to think this is *completely goddamn hilarious* because like, what a thin-skinned motherfucker.
> Is DeBoer always this credulous?
He's got this anti lib media bias that breaks his brain so he will assume that whomever the lib media is being mildly critical of must be 100% right.
I’m pretty sure Freddie has directly argued with Scott about HBD before so I don’t know why he’s doing this?? Just because he hates the media so much? I hope he responds to Scott’s review of his book.
Freddie argues with Scott about HBD because Freddie needs to make clear that he does not hold quite the same views Scott (in public) does, and Freddie knows that Freddie's readers might be confused about that, for what reasons I cannot guess /s
Apart from that, it's been a lovefest between the two of them for a few years now, with FdB happy to serve as Scott's "even the leftist Freddie de Boer agrees with me" guy.
I am generally sympathetic to DeBoer and I share his general
appraisal of the NYT.
Insisting that SA is not socially-motivated, doesn’t have “elite”
backing, and doesn’t participate in an equally self-congratulatory
perpetual social-circle-jerk as “media Twitter” is just silly. Even the
dismissive hand waving away of one’s own advantages that peppers all of
their self narratives mirror one another:
“The brownstone my parents purchased for me in Crown Heights has
nothing to do with my milquetoast critique of gentrification”
“The politically connected billionaires who fund ME have purer
motivations that those of the politically connected billionaires whose
backing produces biiiiiaaaaaass in everybody else”
Imagine thinking that NYT gives a shit
So this article is insane in numerous ways, but one thing that sticks out to me is this passage:
I don’t know what kind of work environment this guy has spent time in, but this kind of thing seems pretty normal for corporate workplaces. Obviously not in this weird exaggerated way he’s framing it here, but if one of your coworkers is transferring away to a different division… yeah, it seems pretty normal to be like “we loved working with you! you were great! we’ll miss you a lot! best of luck with your future endeavors!” etc.
And… it’s slightly worrying to me that he doesn’t seem to understand why people do this and thinks it’s something worth making fun of, and that he assumes it’s motivated entirely by a cynical desire for personal gain. I feel like this says more about him than it does about journalists, tbh.
[e: not to say media twitter isn’t insanely annoying and self congratulatory, which it obviously is. I’m just making fun of “imagine if people did this in other workplaces???” as if it’s not a completely normal thing there too]
You know, De Boer’s disgust with well-to-do-media-twitter is perfectly reasonable. I honestly hate whenever it comes across my feed.
Hell, he’s absolutely right to be scornful of smug Correct Opinion Havers.
But… that’s no reason to go white knighting for a goddamn toilet of white supremacy, and then follow it up with a mealy-mouthed paragraph about how his several thousand words of white-knighting for Siskind aren’t what they appear to be.
not surprised he likes Siskind because that blog post reeks of resentment the same way Scooter’s posts do
also
> Joe Rogan is reviled not because he and his guests say some stupid shit – and they do – but because he is immensely popular outside of the official channels, he is decidedly not part of the culture of media or overachiever culture in general, and his show is massively more successful than their terrible podcasts.
lmaooooooo
Is DeBoer always this credulous?
I am generally sympathetic to DeBoer and I share his general appraisal of the NYT.
Insisting that SA is not socially-motivated, doesn’t have “elite” backing, and doesn’t participate in an equally self-congratulatory perpetual social-circle-jerk as “media Twitter” is just silly. Even the dismissive hand waving away of one’s own advantages that peppers all of their self narratives mirror one another:
“The brownstone my parents purchased for me in Crown Heights has nothing to do with my milquetoast critique of gentrification”
“The politically connected billionaires who fund ME have purer motivations that those of the politically connected billionaires whose backing produces biiiiiaaaaaass in everybody else”