
How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral - energetic_bat
https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a-purity-spiral/
======
_bxg1
An important difference from the comparison to the Maoist movement and the
like (besides degree), is that historically these spirals had at their heart,
at least at the beginning, a premeditated ploy for power. The posturing was
conscious and malicious.

It's really important to point out that that's not usually the case with the
internet version. People aren't setting out to build an instagram moral
empire; in fact they may set out with genuine, legitimate concern for the real
moral issues. The problem comes from that "ratchet effect", where the only way
to stay safe is to keep escalating things. The internet abstracts away
people's humanity, dampening any compassion/charity, and the temperature rises
on its own. Seeing this lack of (original) malice makes it easier to forgive
and to step outside of the cycle.

~~~
sequoia
> a premeditated ploy for power. The posturing was conscious and malicious.

Do you really think that Mao was completely cynical and didn't believe that
what he was doing was "the right thing" that would improve the lives of his
countrymen? Most people think they are doing "what's right," and some are
willing to overlook unethical acts (or actions that let them accrue power to
themselves) if it _serves the greater good_.

I tend to believe both these folks, and Mao for that matter, intend to do what
they think is right & what will make the world better–and if you have to break
a few eggs to make an omelette, so be it.

It's a comforting thought that there are "bad people with bad intentions who
do bad things on purpose" and "good people with good intentions who do good
things (and occasionally do bad things by accident)" but in reality these two
groups are not that distinct.

(It goes without saying that these folks are not "as bad as Mao" I mention it
only because it was already brought up as an example.)

~~~
spangry
I agree that these folks are probably acting with good intentions. And that
can actually make the situation worse. This CS Lewis quote comes to mind: "Of
all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may
be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than
under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes
sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us
for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval
of their own conscience."

~~~
watwut
But CS Lewis was wrong as history of genocides and purges show. None of them
started for the good of victims and they were definitely in the category of
worst oppression.

~~~
gwd
I think Lewis had in more in mind something like what happens to Winston in
George Orwell's 1984, where it wasn't enough for the Party for him to obey
them but not agree with them; it wasn't enough for the Party to discover that
he didn't agree with them and kill him; they were only satisfied once they'd
tortured him into agreeing with them as well.

I'd _much_ rather be under killed for disagreeing than tortured until my
captors are satisfied that I really agree with them.

~~~
watwut
Afaik, all genocides involved a lot of torture - both of targets and of those
who refused to cooperate or talked against it. Sometimes it was to gain
information, force agreement, force compliance etc. It also involved quite a
lot of petty rule making to keep those who were being oppressed in line.

And quite a lot of it was basically for fun or hate.

\--------------

Besides original quote is about motivation. People who organized genocides
were fully ok with their own conscience. They were in fact proud over their
own good work.

And as fun it sounds and as easy it is to use against certain disliked people,
it is not true in the sense of how world really works when things go bad.

------
andrewflnr
I'm a bit more optimistic than the author. Whatever the name ends up being,
this is phenomenon is only getting better known and pretty soon lots of
communities will be immunized against it when a majority of the people in them
have already seen it happen before and start calling it out in the early
stages. Purity spirals will never completely stop, but their impact will
likely be contained, starting in, oh, a couple decades or so.

~~~
_bxg1
We can hope. The internet is an unprecedented acceleration mechanism for this
pattern; that's why it's becoming so common. It's possible that with that
commonality will come awareness; it's possible it won't. We'll see.

~~~
andrewflnr
Awareness is already on the way. It's been there from the beginning in
primitive form in the right wing's disdain for "political correctness", but
I've seen pretty hard-line progressives acknowledge that cancel culture (IMO a
different face of the same problem) is toxic. This is biting everyone, and
even though humans are dumb sometimes, it's not a stretch to believe that
we'll notice it. The internet accelerates identification and naming of
problems as well.

~~~
_bxg1
The problem with the "anti-political-correctness" camp is that it
traditionally goes much farther. It's all relative, I suppose, but "turns out
cancel culture might be bad" is a long way off from "I resent the very idea of
having to be considerate towards others". And then those two and everything
in-between get lumped all together, so that the former tends to be judged
based on the latter's history.

~~~
slowmovintarget
Political correctness begins with notion that you can set a policy that
adjudicates what is "right" i.e. "moral". What follows is a struggle for who
has the authority to set moral policy. That's where you get these purity
spirals from.

Being against political correctness is being against the idea that another
fallible individual has the authority to say what it is moral for you to speak
or write. This stance rails against the notion that anyone should have any
power over your speech save arguing against it with speech or writing.

Political correctness, better termed "moral policing" always ends with the
attempt to silence those judged to be "wrong". This is incompatible with the
principles of liberty.

Me personally? I'm against political correctness because of what it really is,
not because I wish to be rude with impunity.

~~~
geden
I'm down with Stewart Lee's take on political correctness

[https://youtu.be/x_JCBmY9NGM](https://youtu.be/x_JCBmY9NGM)

(warning, contains British Humour)

I think the error in your argument here is to always reduce the application of
political correctness down to flawed individuals.

If there is consensus at a societal level that certain hateful speech should
be prevented for the general good of society, (and there is) then enforcing
that makes sense. We've evolved past bear baiting and public flogging (in most
parts of the world), we can evolve past racism, sexism and other limiting
behaviours.

~~~
slowmovintarget
There is not a consensus on prevention of speech, hateful or otherwise. There
is the attempt to claim a consensus, but only so as to move on to creation of
enforcing bodies.

I think we should enforce laws against behavior, not speech or thought.
Political Correctness attempts to police speech and thought. This is
dangerous, especially when armored with the force of government. You get
tribunals in Canada charging people with hate crimes for writing books.

Government is people with power. It always, always comes down to flawed
individuals. It is flawed individuals applying it to flawed individuals.

Should there be outcries against racism and sexism? Yes. Should there be laws
that say if you act based on bias (denying jobs, housing... etc.) that you
face consequences of punishment under the law? Yes.

Should there be someone allowed to decide that your facial expression requires
that you be subjected to 2 hours (or 2 weeks) of "education"? No.

We can come to an agreement on what we as a society consider to be "nice" and
"polite". That's part of how societies work. We must never enforce being
"nice" (to Stewart Lee's take) because it is an ever-changing, subjective
thing. How will we come to value the next societal advancement if we aren't
allowed to hold and discuss opinions that differ?

This freedom is too important to a civilization dedicated to freedom to allow
it to be sacrificed on the altar of propriety, anyone's propriety.

------
_bxg1
I've personally had several anxiety breakdowns trying to grapple with the
hatred I see on Twitter, and I've been fortunate enough to never really have
any aimed at me directly.

The key is mindfulness. Healthy detachment. Decouple your internal moral
system/self-judgement mechanisms from those of the people around you. The two
don't need to line up perfectly; they shouldn't be the same thing. Theirs may
be rooted in real and valid experiences, even if it comes out as something
destructive. Yours may too. You don't have to fight anything or anyone to gain
your own peace and clarity. Stepping back is the only way out of the spiral.

~~~
senderista
My solution was to delete my Twitter account. I've never regretted it, and
feel downright smug when I hear about the latest purity shitstorm in the
communities I used to follow.

~~~
wool_gather
Have you found new communities, though? Surely there is some lost value --
maybe not specifically on Twitter, but generally -- when one drops an old
group.

~~~
senderista
The only communities I miss were on old-school forums, not Facebook or
Twitter. There could be plenty of drama but not at the scale and virulence of
Twitter. I think the reason is that people were more interested in
communicating than in signaling.

------
lexpar
This is a great article.

I've been conscious of and annoyed by the symptoms of these spirals for years.
I was aware that this was the effect of one-upping and a desire to demonstrate
personal virtue, but I didn't have a name for this phenomenon or a very
complete model of why people were interested in these types of communities.

The purity spiral! A nice name, and a model that seems to describe the
situation very nicely.

~~~
Reedx
It's a lot like a religion. Purity tests, dogma, things you can't say, good vs
evil, self-flagellation, original sin, kicking people out who don't conform...

~~~
michaelbarton
Definitely a lot like religion. I really recommend the book "Christianity: the
first three thousand years". Post historical crucifixion of Jesus the first
few hundred years of Christianity sound like a purity spiral, monarchism,
gnosticism, origenism.

The original church in Antioch first applied the word catholic to Christianity
(καθολικός / katholikos) but was then later ejected from the western church in
1054 for not being catholic enough.

------
virtuous_signal
If you want to see the mentioned knitter's one-year-old blog post about her
excitement at visiting India, including her apology, it is here:
[https://fringeassociation.com/2019/01/07/2019-my-year-of-
col...](https://fringeassociation.com/2019/01/07/2019-my-year-of-
color/#comment-87070)

This will be fascinating for future internet archaeologists.

~~~
foobarian
I must be out of touch or too old or both, but what compels these individuals
to fall in line? Why can't they tell their critics to buzz off? Some
possibilities I can imagine:

\- The identities are real, so there is danger of external real-life impact
(harassment of friends/family, job loss, etc)

\- Craving for approval - might get ostracized by the community

\- Internal impact - might e.g. lose business from the community if it's some
kind of store

~~~
Mikeb85
Pretty much. An accusation of being -ist can get you fired IRL. Even if you're
completely in the right, a big enough mob will convince your boss you're
'toxic' and they'll let you go.

------
tomlockwood
I think most people agree racism exists and is bad.

The central conceit of this article, and all the other ones about socially
deleterious movements, is the assumption that the author is objective enough
to identify those movements - which in this case concerns identification of
racism going, in their mind, across the line which they see so clearly. I'm
always curious about what qualifications or experience they have that makes
their vision so clear.

Even if I assume for a moment that they see where that line is so clearly
compared to others, I have to ask myself if they're identifying a genuine
social movement - or if they might be mistaking the ability of the internet to
now allow people to say what they think instantly to others, with some kind of
new social ill.

~~~
KODeKarnage
> I think most people agree racism exists and is bad.

Sure, by the definition of racism that you and I would use. But not by the one
that's been weaponised in these purity spirals. By their definition, as
explained by the academic interviewed in the podcast, it is literally
impossible for someone raised in modern society NOT to be racist. Taking
offense at being called a racist is more evidence of racism. Trying to explain
how you aren't racist is more evidence of racism.

It is like Original sin, but without any path to redemption.

~~~
jayd16
Its really not rocket science. If you say hurtful things when you don't mean
to, that's one thing. Denying the other party's feelings are valid and
continuing to say hurtful things for really no reason other than to be
stubborn makes you a jerk.

Redemption is to just try not to be a jerk.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> " _If you say hurtful things when you don 't mean to, that's one thing.
> Denying the other party's feelings are valid and continuing to say hurtful
> things for really no reason other than to be stubborn makes you a jerk._"

I note that this says nothing about the original speaker's feelings and
opinions. If the other party denies the validity of the speaker's feelings and
opinions, are they not also jerks?

~~~
jayd16
It applies universally, yes.

------
grabbalacious
Communities used to be small with the members mutually dependent upon one
another, e.g. a medieval village. Everyone knew everyone else and the
arrangement _had_ to work. If it didn't work then people suffered and could be
seen to suffer.

So it's perhaps not so surprising that large 'communities' which are full of
strangers and where membership is optional are subject to very different
problems.

------
gnicholas
> _[Professor Kuran 's] theory relates to things like the fall of the Soviet
> Union, where almost no one saw the end coming, because they hadn’t realised
> that an entire population was falsifying their experience to each other. He
> sees a clear parallel._

The article didn't seem to indicate how the end of this movement would come,
unless I missed something. Based on this analogy, how would this come about?

~~~
naravara
If we draw from the Society analogy, people realized that their neighbors
weren't happy with the government all along and production quotas weren't
actually being met.

So presumably, the author thinks people will look around and realize that. . .
they were all more racist and sexist then they were letting on? Yeah the
analogy doesn't actually hold when stretched that far. One of the key steps in
purity politics is to engage in self-flagellation about your own inadequacies
as a member of a privileged group (if you are) or to ham up the victimization
and harm inflicted on you (if you aren't). I suppose there would be some
"realization" that the "harm" being claimed is being blown out of proportion,
but again I think this is something most people understand already.

~~~
Nasrudith
More that they were being a bunch of godamned idiots who were neither helping
outreach against bigotry, harming actual bigots, nor helping those harmed by
it really. The collective lie/delusion is that they are involved in anything
remotely good in spite of intentions.

I would put it in the Soviet analogy as "Even if the boss and shareholders get
richer from your work under capitalism doesn't mean that the Soviet system did
anything to help the workers. They are doing perfectly fine and you are only
hurting yourselves."

Not a perfect metaphor of course but really the nominal target is
fundamentally irrelevant to the impact of their actions.

~~~
Nursie
I love and hate the evolution of the use of the word 'bigot'.

Such folks engaged in purity policing throw it around like it's just another
word for 'bad person', but almost every use of it I see is highly ironic.

The dictionary definition is 'a person who is intolerant towards those holding
different opinions.' Almost everyone I've ever seen calling someone else a
bigot online was using it to shame or beat down those who are not displaying
bigotry, but merely different opinions.

They may have been objectionable opinions. They may even have been racist or
sexist opinions. But never have I seen 'bigotry' applied correctly, and
usually it seems to be applied by people unaware that they are the bigot in
the situation.

I suppose in time the original meaning is lost, and we are left with just
another insult. Which is a shame. But in the mean time I get to enjoy the
irony.

~~~
forgottenpass
>But in the mean time I get to enjoy the irony.

There are so many fun words like this.

I've only recently gotten any good at seeing the metagame strategies evolve. I
used to get worked up when new words came into favor overnight to be abused in
various ways.

------
tilt_error
Knitters or Open Sourcers, the history repeats. Instead of knitting patterns
and diversity discussions we have Codes of conduct and... diversity
discussions.

Humans are fascinating, as a group we are stupid while the constituent
individuals may be wise. Quite the opposite of ant colonies...

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
> _In 1967, Mao’s Red Guards took to the streets determined to root out the
> ‘four olds’ of traditional Chinese culture, killing hundreds of thousands in
> the process._

There’s a lot of parallels to Mao and what we’re witnessing in culture today.
Another example is Mao’s use of “thought examinations” to consolidate power
and influence.

~~~
kerkeslager
I certainly see the parallels: both Mao and groups in modern Western culture
are trying to control thought at the expense of free speech. But let's not
overstate this: nobody is going door to door and carting people off in hoods
for their ideas.

~~~
redisman
> But let's not overstate this: nobody is going door to door and carting
> people off in hoods for their ideas.

Let me re-introduce you to China and Russia

~~~
thrownmeawaypls
or the UK policing tweets with real police and real jail.

~~~
kerkeslager
I wasn't aware of this. Links?

~~~
thrownmeawaypls
A total of 625 arrests were made for alleged section 127 offences in 2010 – a
number which had ballooned to 857 by 2015.

During the years 2010-2015 2,130 people were arrested between 2010 and 2015
for “sending by public communication network an offensive / indecent / obscene
/ menacing message / matter” – which is a criminal offence under section 127.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/02/social_media_arrest...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/02/social_media_arrests_up_37pc_london_section_127_communications_act/)

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uk-man-jailed-over-facebook-
sta...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uk-man-jailed-over-facebook-status-
raises-questions-over-free-speech/) (2012)

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7415233/Mother-
arre...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7415233/Mother-arrested-
calling-trans-woman-man-Twitter-charged-trolling.html) (2019)

~~~
DanBC
> A total of 625 arrests were made for alleged section 127 offences in 2010 –
> a number which had ballooned to 857 by 2015.

There's a very low bar to being arrested in England. The arrest rate isn't
important, it's the conviction rate that you need to be presenting. Also, the
law is developing (because that's how a system with case law works) so you
need to be showing what's happening now, not ten years ago.

That last link isn't a great example. She engaged in a long running campaign
of harassment, using two twitter accounts to harass and defame someone,
including leaking financial and medical information. There's a reason the
Daily Mail isn't a reliable source for wikipedia. These conversations always
seem to place the right of some cunt to behave like an utter cunt above the
rights of all the people who have to interact with that person to be protected
from protracted campaigns of harassment. The UK and EU sees protecting the
rights of others, protecting them from harassment and defamation, to be a
legitimate aim.

Here's the Crown Prosecution Service page for communications offences
committed on social media: [https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/social-
media-guideline...](https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/social-media-
guidelines-prosecuting-cases-involving-communications-sent-social-media)

~~~
tomatocracy
What used to be called Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction nowadays
increasingly attach at the point of arrest (and even more so at the point of
charging, even if an acquittal is the outcome of the trial) because of
publicity (names end up in the press often when people are arrested and then
are available on Google forever) and the fact that they'll be listed on
enhanced criminal records checks (needed for entry to certain occupations like
teaching or in many cases financial services).

------
modo_mario
I feel like this dude should have and easily could have linked more often to
various titbits relevant to his story rather than references loosely attached.

I don't disagree with the ideas in either but his other article [1] calls some
dude talking about media control on his website selling anti-aging pills a
tech philosopher and with such hyperbole employed and an unrefined search for
backing for a premise one can inflate 2 or 3 people throwing shit in a small
community into a vast mob.

[1][https://unherd.com/2018/11/the-growing-power-of-the-
youtube-...](https://unherd.com/2018/11/the-growing-power-of-the-youtube-
right/)

------
mumblemumble
> _Lindsay pointed to the atheist movement of the mid-2000s, from which he’d
> come: a community that once had the wind in its sails, but had imploded into
> infighting by 2011, as half of its members jagged off in an social justice
> direction. Soon enough, the likes of the evolutionary biologist Richard
> Dawkins were being problematised as stale, male and pale._

I'm not saying virtue signaling was never a force in the atheist community.
But it seemed at the time that the thing that people were most upset about was
the rampant sexual misconduct. The thing that people were second most upset
about was disagreement over whether Wheaton's Law is a good idea or not.
Trying to paint that whole sad, sorry mess with the same brush as this
knitting Instagram situation is. . . wait for it . . . problematic.

~~~
birdyrooster
Don't forget about how many Atheist YouTubers went full anti-feminism after
Gamergate. It created some of the strongest repugnant feelings for the
community (even today).

~~~
Rapzid
There was a lot going on around Gamergate that wasn't directly related to
gamergate though. I used to follow games journalism quite fervently and
stopped around 2013 due to the purity spiral it was going down.

------
zweep
I believe that the allure of being in an Internet mob is that it inverts the
traditional monarch-subject power structure. Normally the crowd must cower
before the individual King... in an Internet mob you can take even the highest
status individual and make him cower before your crowd.

------
jdkee
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of
innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full
of passionate intensity."

W.B. Yeats

------
zweep
Jeez... it almost seems like social justice warriors could be a false flag
operation by virulent racists, with how effectively they can turn sensible
moderates against everything that they stand for.

~~~
ajross
The very term "social justice warrior" is an invention of the reactionary
right, though. Flinging it around as an invective like this is _exactly_ the
same psychology at work as calling moderate-but-mildly-clueless knitters
racists. You're defining an out group and shunning them.

This only gets better when people start to talk about specifics and be (to use
your word) sensible about things. Drawing up battle lines trying to make the
people you don't like take a stand with the SJWs is making things worse.

~~~
jariel
'SJW' was invented by the left and used in a positive context, the cynical
populist interpretation happened sometime after 2010.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2015/10...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2015/10/07/why-social-justice-warrior-a-gamergate-insult-is-now-
a-dictionary-entry/)

~~~
ajross
How is that inconsistent with what I wrote? Words change. The definition used
upthread was clearly perjorative and used within the (new! that's literally
what the article was about!) Oxford definition described by the coverage you
linked to. And it's an insult, and an invention of the reactionary right.

~~~
jariel
It's inconsistent with you said because you said 'SJW' was an invention of the
right, it's wasn't, it was an invention of the left.

~~~
ajross
Good grief. The current pervasive use of "SJW" as a derogation, as used by
zweep above in the comment to which I directly replied, is an invention of the
right. Better?

~~~
jariel
What you said was: "The very term "social justice warrior" is an invention of
the reactionary right, though."

This is not correct, and not what you are saying now.

------
throwawaycxfv
I have to wonder how many of these morality spirals aren’t instigated by
actual trolls.

An example of this was the explosion of transgender issues into the mainstream
soon after gay marriage was legalized. I recall reading a fringe right-wing
blogger about the “lesbian vs transgender conflict”, a few years before the
“T” in LGBT became more prominent. This prominence may well have been
engineered by trolls in an attempt to alienate a group of people who were
rapidly being accepted into mainstream society.

Infiltrate a community, set off a purity spiral. Collapse the community, and
then, as a bonus, complain about “virtue signaling”, “wokeness” and “cancel
culture”. Repeat.

~~~
Teever
You're close.

Now imagine that both sides are doing it. Now imagine that there have been
several iterations of this process. Now imagine that the people involved have
gone through so many iterations that they've lost sight of which side they
started on.

That's culture.

~~~
anigbrowl
S/he was right to start with. Sure, people do it unconsciously but you're
foolish if you don't think there are also people who do it systematically and
even document the process.

~~~
mcguire
Got a list of such?

~~~
anigbrowl
That's basically what Encyclopaedia Dramatica is about, though it's offline at
present.

------
yummypaint
Some might claim the BSD community's focus on security to be a purity spiral,
but it's arguably produced things of value. Having small communities around
who occasionally drive themselves to the extremes of a particular idea can
useful for broader society.

~~~
nate_meurer
That's not the sort of purity that the article is talking about. The article
is talking about purity for purity's sake -- a relative and subjective set of
rules that exist to provide levers of power.

A singlular and uncompromising focus on OS security serves an absolute and
objective purpose, that being... OS security. To the extent that it is
objective, it is less subject to being coopted for political purposes.

~~~
wmf
A better example might be the people who fork free software to make it "more
free".

~~~
KODeKarnage
Perhaps, but wouldn't a better example be the actual purity spiral occurring
in open source?

