Many readers will have noticed a chill wind sweeping through the publishing industry. Especially during COVID, they will have become accustomed to commenting on some obscure corner of the internet, far from the toxic cesspools of Twitter and the other social media giants. But unfortunately, there is a growing demand amongst recent generations for polite and congenial speech, rather than the free-for-all which the internet was, for those of us who were here when it all began.
Mate, you need to post your email to several of the regulars on QC. I would start with peterfromoz, brainfirebob, regression and oilman. Just message them privately on QC.
What happened to the Quillette comments section? I still see comments on the new articles? For real, as one of those rare QC lefties, I met some genuinely awesome people, yourself included, and learned quite a bit. I also took a lot of garbage from a number of people, and never understood why the community didn't try to police itself. No matter what you think of trans rights, and there are valid conservative concerns, a community that is fine with people using 'tranny' as an epithet makes itself look bad - just one of many, many examples where legit concerns about liberal hypocrisy were weakened by conservative hypocrisy on Quillette. Not that this is uniquely 'right' - I shudder at ill-informed / hypocritical lefty opinions for the exact same reason.
I agree with you that there are not enough intelligent, conservative forums available - that's what drew me to QC in the first place - I wanted to challenge my beliefs. But the nastiness - the sort of reveling in cruelty I saw and endured quite frequently on QC - that's why I left the site. to me, lefty rhetoric is most guilty of being patronizing. Conservative rhetoric is most guilty of cruelty.
And no, the most vocal posters on Quillette are not 'right leaning'. they are hard right. the most interesting, thoughtful posters were right-leaning, or libertarian, or the odd brave lefty (not calling myself a member of this group - that's up to the reader to decide, not the writer).
This rarely, or perhaps never til now, happens when I read your content, but I do strongly, strongly object to this phrase of yours 'Fascism, Communism, Nazism and Wokeism'.
Wokeism is a problem. It is, I think, beyond obvious that is is not as problematic as your other 'isms'. Guilt by association, false analogy, whatever you want to call it, it's a lazy conservative trope.
I guess I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree with your assessment of QC commenters. I rarely ever posted but I (mostly) enjoyed the comments. Generally, be they "left" or "right" they tended to present me with a perspective I hadn't considered--or at least hadn't quite considered in the same way. I did tend to just ignore, or at least not consider in any detail, any comment that struck me as too extreme/aggressive for my taste. I guess because I rarely posted, I avoided any negative personal attacks (at least as far as I know anyway) and thus it was easy to ignore anything that did not increase my understanding of a topic. I certainly enjoyed many of the long posts people like Mr. Johansen posted whether I fully agreed with him or not (of course I rarely fully agree with anyone--including myself). Wouldn't a possible solution to aggressive (or worse) commenters on these sites be some sort of button that would allow readers to just "hide" posts from specific commenters they find offensive? I mean I kind of did that in the sense that I learned to just skip over any post by specific people--who seem to go too far too often. Most of the time I found articles on QC highly interesting, but even more so, the back and forth comments in the comments section. Maybe it was just that I am so ignorant about so many things. I very much miss my Sunday morning reading time with QC. But am happy to find these posts by Mr. Johansen.
Hey Jeff, thanks for the comment! Did you post on QC under your name, or did you have a handle?
"Wouldn't a possible solution to aggressive (or worse) commenters on these sites be some sort of button that would allow readers to just "hide" posts from specific commenters they find offensive"?
Sure, that would help, and I would have been better off, in terms of mental health, had I followed your lead and simply ignored the most hostile posters. But what drew me to Quillette in the first place was the desire to dialogue with conservatives, to improve myself as a teacher who has some conservative kids.
There is so much anger and hostility, exacerbated by the anonymity of online discourse, that even some reasonable posters respond based on assumptions rather than the actual conversation. For sure, this is true of the left and the right, and I have fallen into this trap myself, but what lead me to leave the site wasn't the extremists - it was the people I respected who couldn't let go of their script about 'progressives'.
Geary was that rare bird who could disagree without the cloud of emotion, so I'm happy he's writing these blog posts.
There was an attempt at moderation which was timed to coincide with the site going paid subscription only- so many of the QCers went to form their own site on discourse, which is now up and running.
The upshot has been that the site traffic on QC is now down a lot, but you would probably find it a far more moderate place to hang out, even though you would probably find less viewpoint diversity from the Right and Libertarians. There is also far less traffic- so its very much up to you whether you would want to spend the $5 a month. You can likely log in to check whether its worth it, but you wouldn't be able to comment unless you paid for the subscription (although I believe you might still be able to DM).
“It may well be their Frankenstein’s monster which brings it all crashing down, and they are desperately worried that their utopian dream might turn into a dystopian nightmare.”
I know this is an older post, but one that stood out to me.
Geary, glad to have found you here. I dropped off of QC before the big flame-out because there was too much school yard name calling to sift through to find quality points and insights. I have always enjoyed your thoughtful comments and perspectives whether I agreed or not. It is sad to see these open forums descend into nonsense and have the fear of liability and public scorn shut down the party.
I wanted to add a thought to one of the statements in your post:
"I am just as certain that the vast majority of BLM activists aren’t violent as I am that there is no growing legion of white supremacists."
While I believe this is generally true, there is one caveat specific to the US that needs to be part of the discussion. That is the arming of Americans. Obama gets elected: record gun sales; BLM protests: record gun sales; Biden gets elected: record gun sales. This country is armed to the teeth and that makes our historical racial tensions more dangerous than ever. Only time will tell if this leads to violent, armed outbursts. When everyone has a gun in their car, the simplest altercation turns into a shoot out. This is our new reality.
Thanks for the effort you put into your writing and hosting this substack. I'll be dropping by regularly. And do let us know if you publish your SF novel, I would be interested to read it. I am a big Iain M Banks fan and could imagine some similarities in your writing styles.
Mate, you need to post your email to several of the regulars on QC. I would start with peterfromoz, brainfirebob, regression and oilman. Just message them privately on QC.
I'm enjoying your blog Geary!
What happened to the Quillette comments section? I still see comments on the new articles? For real, as one of those rare QC lefties, I met some genuinely awesome people, yourself included, and learned quite a bit. I also took a lot of garbage from a number of people, and never understood why the community didn't try to police itself. No matter what you think of trans rights, and there are valid conservative concerns, a community that is fine with people using 'tranny' as an epithet makes itself look bad - just one of many, many examples where legit concerns about liberal hypocrisy were weakened by conservative hypocrisy on Quillette. Not that this is uniquely 'right' - I shudder at ill-informed / hypocritical lefty opinions for the exact same reason.
I agree with you that there are not enough intelligent, conservative forums available - that's what drew me to QC in the first place - I wanted to challenge my beliefs. But the nastiness - the sort of reveling in cruelty I saw and endured quite frequently on QC - that's why I left the site. to me, lefty rhetoric is most guilty of being patronizing. Conservative rhetoric is most guilty of cruelty.
And no, the most vocal posters on Quillette are not 'right leaning'. they are hard right. the most interesting, thoughtful posters were right-leaning, or libertarian, or the odd brave lefty (not calling myself a member of this group - that's up to the reader to decide, not the writer).
This rarely, or perhaps never til now, happens when I read your content, but I do strongly, strongly object to this phrase of yours 'Fascism, Communism, Nazism and Wokeism'.
Wokeism is a problem. It is, I think, beyond obvious that is is not as problematic as your other 'isms'. Guilt by association, false analogy, whatever you want to call it, it's a lazy conservative trope.
I guess I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree with your assessment of QC commenters. I rarely ever posted but I (mostly) enjoyed the comments. Generally, be they "left" or "right" they tended to present me with a perspective I hadn't considered--or at least hadn't quite considered in the same way. I did tend to just ignore, or at least not consider in any detail, any comment that struck me as too extreme/aggressive for my taste. I guess because I rarely posted, I avoided any negative personal attacks (at least as far as I know anyway) and thus it was easy to ignore anything that did not increase my understanding of a topic. I certainly enjoyed many of the long posts people like Mr. Johansen posted whether I fully agreed with him or not (of course I rarely fully agree with anyone--including myself). Wouldn't a possible solution to aggressive (or worse) commenters on these sites be some sort of button that would allow readers to just "hide" posts from specific commenters they find offensive? I mean I kind of did that in the sense that I learned to just skip over any post by specific people--who seem to go too far too often. Most of the time I found articles on QC highly interesting, but even more so, the back and forth comments in the comments section. Maybe it was just that I am so ignorant about so many things. I very much miss my Sunday morning reading time with QC. But am happy to find these posts by Mr. Johansen.
Hey Jeff, thanks for the comment! Did you post on QC under your name, or did you have a handle?
"Wouldn't a possible solution to aggressive (or worse) commenters on these sites be some sort of button that would allow readers to just "hide" posts from specific commenters they find offensive"?
Sure, that would help, and I would have been better off, in terms of mental health, had I followed your lead and simply ignored the most hostile posters. But what drew me to Quillette in the first place was the desire to dialogue with conservatives, to improve myself as a teacher who has some conservative kids.
There is so much anger and hostility, exacerbated by the anonymity of online discourse, that even some reasonable posters respond based on assumptions rather than the actual conversation. For sure, this is true of the left and the right, and I have fallen into this trap myself, but what lead me to leave the site wasn't the extremists - it was the people I respected who couldn't let go of their script about 'progressives'.
Geary was that rare bird who could disagree without the cloud of emotion, so I'm happy he's writing these blog posts.
What was the issue with the comments section?
There was an attempt at moderation which was timed to coincide with the site going paid subscription only- so many of the QCers went to form their own site on discourse, which is now up and running.
The upshot has been that the site traffic on QC is now down a lot, but you would probably find it a far more moderate place to hang out, even though you would probably find less viewpoint diversity from the Right and Libertarians. There is also far less traffic- so its very much up to you whether you would want to spend the $5 a month. You can likely log in to check whether its worth it, but you wouldn't be able to comment unless you paid for the subscription (although I believe you might still be able to DM).
Thanks, that's most kind!
From the article:
“It may well be their Frankenstein’s monster which brings it all crashing down, and they are desperately worried that their utopian dream might turn into a dystopian nightmare.”
Seems that’s how utopian dreams usually end up.
I know this is an older post, but one that stood out to me.
Geary, glad to have found you here. I dropped off of QC before the big flame-out because there was too much school yard name calling to sift through to find quality points and insights. I have always enjoyed your thoughtful comments and perspectives whether I agreed or not. It is sad to see these open forums descend into nonsense and have the fear of liability and public scorn shut down the party.
I wanted to add a thought to one of the statements in your post:
"I am just as certain that the vast majority of BLM activists aren’t violent as I am that there is no growing legion of white supremacists."
While I believe this is generally true, there is one caveat specific to the US that needs to be part of the discussion. That is the arming of Americans. Obama gets elected: record gun sales; BLM protests: record gun sales; Biden gets elected: record gun sales. This country is armed to the teeth and that makes our historical racial tensions more dangerous than ever. Only time will tell if this leads to violent, armed outbursts. When everyone has a gun in their car, the simplest altercation turns into a shoot out. This is our new reality.
Thanks for the effort you put into your writing and hosting this substack. I'll be dropping by regularly. And do let us know if you publish your SF novel, I would be interested to read it. I am a big Iain M Banks fan and could imagine some similarities in your writing styles.
Gris