
Quinn Norton: The New York Times Fired My Doppelgänger - imartin2k
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/the-new-york-times-fired-my-doppelganger/554402/?single_page=true
======
danso
tl;dr: "The public is too stupid to understand my complex stances on neo-Nazis
and bigotry"

I don't know Norton personally and have never completely agreed with her
essays, but I had always been impressed with her eloquence ever since I saw
her give Aaron Swartz's eulogy at his NYC service. When the NYT fired her, I
felt it was a huge shame that people who didn't know her work beforehand now
thought of her as basically no different than the neo-Nazis she was vocal
about befriending. I do think her stance is extremely problematic, but I never
doubted where she stood on the topic of social justice, and I thought she
would've been a good voice for the NYT editorial page.

However, this Atlantic piece removed any desire I had to see her regularly in
the NYT (I mean, in an alternate universe in which she wasn't fired), because
it demonstrates such a lack of intellectual coherence and honesty. This was an
essay that needed a few more weeks of contemplation and research, nevermind
tighter editing. Instead, we got the pinnacle of self-aggrandizement, one so
arrogant that it uses a metaphor that puts her in the worst light possible
("It wasn't me, it's my doppelganger!").

A lot of mockery has (justifiably) been thrown her way for such lines as " _In
my pacifism, I can 't reject a friendship, even when a friend has taken such a
horrifying path_", and, " _I was called a Nazi because of my friendship with
the infamous neo-Nazi known on the internet as weev_ ". But despite all of her
words, there isn't much beyond feel-good pablum. What's worse is that she
makes an appeal to science -- " _You must learn to investigate with a
scientific and loving mind not only what is true, but what is effective in the
world_ " \-- but she isn't bringing any scientific method toward her
friendship approach.

Her friendship with weev is unconditional, and she has set no conditions or
benchmarks on it, and she herself has admitted that in the time that she's
been friends with him -- which was before he made his big jump into Nazism --
that he's only gotten worse. It's not a problem that she's adopting a
framework of faith -- but it's intellectually dishonest the way she insists
that science propels her motives, as she does in this accompanying essay:

[https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/02/26/we-have-to-build-
the-f...](https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/02/26/we-have-to-build-the-future-
out-of-the-past/)

> _I have no need or desire to bring more hate and anger into this world.
> What’s more, I have science that can help me develop techniques to diminish
> the anger and hate that’s here now. Science, like all forms of truth, is a
> form of love._

That said, I was originally annoyed at how the main impetus for her firing was
the slurs she used in past tweets. It was clear (to me) that her uses of the
N-word weren't malicious (one of them was a retweet, the other was as an
example of how labels like "terrorist" were meaningless). And I gave her the
benefit of the doubt about using anti-gay slurs, which she chalked up to
"context collapse" \-- i.e. the general public not understanding how she and
her fellow "anon" talk to each other.

But after this Atlantic piece, it becomes clear how that explanation too is
pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Not just because she, as a self-professed
leading Internet researcher should know that it's on her not to expect 4chan
norms on _public Twitter_. But then I read the essay (written in 2013) she has
been linking to to explain and justify her use of bigoted slur [0].

Long story short, she uses "context collapse" to justify any kind of fuckup in
public. Not just her use of a bigoted slur to rip on one of her "anon"
friends, but to also justify how this anon friend -- who she tells us that she
_knows_ (in her heart, or whatever) to be a male feminist ally -- decided to
tweet angry rape jokes/threats to a feminist activist who at the time was
facing massive abuse (this incident was so egregious that it is what finally
compelled Twitter to create a Report Abuse function [1]).

In Norton's own words, both the feminist and her troll friend were to blame:

> _From my perspective, it was all facepalm. Both sides didn’t know they
> weren’t in the same conversation. They weren’t able to talk to or hear each
> other, and it descended into a disaster._

My problem is not that she chooses to remain friends with weev because she
believes in his redemption, it's that she seems to give zero thought to those
who actively suffer from his abuse. This anecdote (on top of her other
conflicting and empty arguments) about this other troll friend, and how she
thinks he was as wronged as his victim, convinced me that Norton, despite best
of intentions, has no ability to assess the second-order effects (such as the
appearance of normalization) of her behavior, and may not be very empathetic
at all towards her victims. I used to think that the "Twitter mob" that got
her fired for her ugly out-of-context-tweets had obviously had not read any of
her past work. But maybe they have.

(The other essay she refers to in her Atlantic piece [2], about how
she's-sorry-but-not-really-that-sorry about misinterpreting the
#blackgirlsaremagic hashtag, is even more cringeworthy, but this comment is
already too long so I'll just link to this succinct critique [2])

[0] [https://medium.com/message/context-collapse-architecture-
and...](https://medium.com/message/context-collapse-architecture-and-
plows-d23a0d2f7697)

[1]
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23477130](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23477130)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/BLMcKean/status/968606112479170560](https://twitter.com/BLMcKean/status/968606112479170560)

edit: fixed footnote

~~~
mcphage
> but she isn't bringing any scientific method toward her friendship approach.

What? Of course she doesn't, she's a human being, not a robot. Seriously, if
you think people should bring a "scientific method towards her friendship
approach"... _do you even know what friendship is_?!

~~~
danso
I might not have been clear enough -- _Norton_ is the one claiming to have
science and absolute truth on her side. It's brought up in The Atlantic
article, and particularly in this blog/Patreon post:

[https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/02/26/we-have-to-build-
the-f...](https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/02/26/we-have-to-build-the-future-
out-of-the-past/)

> _I want people to reach out to the abusive toxic men and senior executive
> vice presidents in their lives, because it’s the most scientifically sound
> way that we fight bad ideas..._

> _...I have no need or desire to bring more hate and anger into this world.
> What’s more, I have science that can help me develop techniques to diminish
> the anger and hate that’s here now. Science, like all forms of truth, is a
> form of love._

And to reiterate, I, and most of her critics, don't have a problem, in theory,
with the idea of faithful redemption. But in her writing (and her tweets about
this), Norton argues, essentially from a priori, that she knows her approach
is right because it is true to her values/heart/whatever. She doesn't have a
response to the concern about how she knows she's not being an enabler of (or
otherwise suckered by) weev, or that she's not creating any unwanted second-
order effects, such as inaderdently creating the appearance of normalizing
weev, which helps weev in his mission to recruit toward his cause.

Great Twitter thread here, in which Norton's friend says

[https://twitter.com/tomcoates/status/968631133591109632](https://twitter.com/tomcoates/status/968631133591109632)

> We are arguing about tactics and approach, and I am suggesting that the
> approach you are advocating is not as morally clear cut or correct as you
> argue...and that in fact while laudable in the individual case may quite
> plausibly cause other significant problems. To me your argument is only
> morally clean if you ignore the externalities and other effects, and I think
> this disjunction is causing some of the friction.

Norton's reply at the end of that thread is:

> _...fwiw, i 've spent time in recent years looking at the science behind
> persuasion, & personal connection comes up again and again. but i first
> learned that seeing how National Coming Out & queer visibility helped move
> the culture along; thru personal connection_

She may honestly believe that science is hand-in-hand with her altruistic
optimism, and that's what's disturbing, because she has no desire to actually
consider the parameters for when her approach could be considered a failure.

------
e_b
Why is this flagged?

------
wccrawford
A perfect example of someone trying to do what they think is right, making a
simple mistake, and the internet crucifying them without any chance for rehab
or apology. Just a mob that demands punishment, not justice.

This has been a growing trend. If anyone does something wrong, banish them
from the Earth. Make them unhireable, boycott their product.

In reality, as her post notes, compassion is a lot more effective. Why would
anyone change if there's no future benefit to that change? If you're marked
for life and can never shake off that mistake, why try?

I've yet to meet the person that didn't believe _something_ wrongly. Racist,
sexist, age-ist and many more, there are tons of ways to think about other
people as a group and get it _wrong_.

Most people can change. They can realize that racism isn't correct and work to
be better people, and to treat others better.

But if every attempt to be better is met with as much vitriol as not-changing,
there's not only no reason to change, but there's plenty of reason to believe
your original thinking was correct.

Sadly, I don't really see a solution for this. The people who throw stones
aren't reasonable people. You can't talk to them and show them that they are
handling things wrong. If you're in the out-group, they'll simply say you
can't possibly understand them and ignore you. If you're in the in-group,
they'll say you are a traitor to their kind, and ignore you.

The only thing you can do to them is what they do to others: Throw stones
until they stop their behavior. But if you were that kind of person in the
first place, you'd have just joined them.

It's impossible.

~~~
danso
What in your opinion is the "simple mistake" that she made?

~~~
wccrawford
From the article:

>There was a hashtag, I don’t remember if it was trending or just in my
timeline, called #whitegirlsaremagic. I clicked on it, and found it was racist
and sexist dross. It was being promulgated in opposition to another hashtag,
#blackgirlsaremagic. I clicked on that, and found a few model shots and
borderline soft-core porn of black women. Armed with this impression, I set
off to tweet in righteous anger about how much I disliked women being reduced
to sex objects regardless of race. I was not just wrong in this moment, I was
incoherently wrong. I had made my little mental model of what
#blackgirlsaremagic was, and I had no clue that I had no clue what I was
talking about. My 60-second impression of #whitegirlsaremagic was dead-on, but
#blackgirlsaremagic didn’t fit in the last few tweets my browser had loaded.

Her mistake was that she didn't understand a hashtag before she railed against
it. It turns out that she railed against someone misusing the hashtag, but
turned her anger to everyone using the hashtag.

Thanks to this mistake, and the internet's idiotic idea that you can't be
friends with someone without subscribing to all their beliefs, she was fired.
No amount of apologizing for _a mistake made in good faith_ was enough.

Or, if you're a pessimist, her mistake was bothering to try to help people.

