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How to Handle the Outrage Mob
Yesterday actor Mark Duplass tweeted a nice across the aisle ovature to the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro:
He was, as the kids say, ratioed. To be “ratioed” on Twitter means the replies to your tweet outnumber the folks who click the heart or retweet button; people don’t agree with you, and they are replying to say so.
The replies were predictable: Ben (an Orthodox Jew!) is a white supremacist, a racist, etc etc. We’ve all seen this movie before; Shapiro is conservative, and thus, the Worst. Person. Ever.
Disappointingly, Duplass deleted his tweet and made a new one this morning:
— Mark Duplass (@MarkDuplass) July 19, 2018
Like many before him, Duplass has sent a very dangerous message to the social media mob: you have power, and your outrage will be rewarded with action.
The mob behaves a great deal like my children, and any parent can tell you, giving in is the worst decision a parent can make in the long term. Imagine your child crying for hours for a cookie, the worst possible thing you can do is, after they have begun the tantrum, to give in. That’s exactly what Duplass has done, and he has now signaled to the mob they decide not only what he tweets, but also who he can be friends with.
It’s not just about Ben Shapiro, either, as Shapiro himself points out:
So in 24 hours I apparently went from being a person with good intentions to a racist sexist bigot. Twitter toxifies any attempt to cross the aisle. There's no conservative Mark could have recommended who wouldn’t receive the same blowback. https://t.co/JEizw69eFH
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 19, 2018
Just as Duplass has now signaled to the mob that they have control over what he tweets and who he associates with, The Atlantic has showed the mob has control over its hiring decisions and Scarlett Johansson has shown the mob decides which movie roles she can play. What could possibly go wrong?
What is the endgame here? A total shutdown in communication across the political spectrum?
So how do you handle when an outrage mob strikes? I’ve had this experience several times over, most notably, ironically, for this column.
On Twitter, disingenious liberals will take a screenshot of the headline in order to paint me as an actual Nazi-sympathizer. It’s an interesting tactic to take against a woman who was on the ADL’s list of American journalists targeted by the alt-right during the 2016 election, but nobody has to be intellectually honest in their “gotcha” moments. It’s also a depressing sign of the times: I wrote a column with several successful examples of people using kindness to sway the hearts and minds of their opponents, and for that, I have been the subject of an outrage mob on just this column more times than I can count.
So how do I handle it? Very simple: I do not apologize. I send a link to the actual column for people to read for themselves. I make jokes “Thank you so much for being interested in my work, and for promoting this old but important column!” That usually makes them angrier, but it does show how irrational they are, especially for those who bother to read past the headline.
The mob is like a school of sharks, and showing any sign of weakness is like bloodletting into the water. You do not get into the water with as much as a papercut.
Published in General
That’s a shame. My friend was close friends with Mark Duplass and his brother at UT. He says Mark is very nice. Also, I had a grand time watching The League.
A similar event happened over the weekend with Elon Musk. It came known that he had contributed $38k to a GOP PAC.
Imagine, a billionaire contributed $38k. He probably found it in the couch cushions.
But oh, the howls from the left. Threatens to never buy a Tesla again, questioning his climate change bona fides (never mind that he flies around the world in the largest jet Gulfstream makes). It was funny to watch.
Demands for purity in politics in dangerous and toxic.
A moment of silence for the late Mark Duplass . . .
But seriously, no one should backpedal like Mark did. Instead, we should do what the left does when it’s criticized – double down on the rhetoric. I wished Mark had said, “The heck with you people. Ben Shapiro is a nice guy, and nothing you say or do is going to change that or my opinion about him. End of discussion.”
As for the picture in your post, I get angry whenever I see a bunch of Neo-Nazi low-lifes waving my Confederate battle flag. Did the Pan-African flag get a bad reputation when militant, black activist groups waved it? No . . .
What’s amusing was that Musk had also contributed to a Democratic PAC – almost twice as much. You’d think that would have mattered to the left, but no. All that mattered to them was that at some point he had contributed to the other side. What he did for their side is irrelevant.
Another successful struggle session.
< devil’s advocate mode = on >
How can anybody judge the goodness of another person’s intentions?
< devil’s advocate mode = off >
Easy. I divine their intentions via my omnipotent knowledge and judge it based on how that same knowledge indicates that events would turn out.
Another good argument against participating in Twitter, as if I needed one.
You are spot on, Bethany. Isn’t there a song, “I Won’t Back Down.” The few times I’ve been poked at on Ricochet, I come right back and challenge. Fortunately, it’s rare that I need to do that. Thanks.
I am s big Ben Shapiro fan. The young man is literally brilliant. And probably a real nice guy. I listen to his Podcast everyday. He told this story on today’s show. I hardly ever read Twitter. There are just too many malcontents and people who have not got the brains nor the good will that we presume God gave them.
I am rapidly because a big Bethany Mandel fan. Nobody could read anything you write and not come away feeling better, and sensing what a fine young woman you are.
My advice to you, Ben, and anybody of good will who has to endure this hateful immaturity is just to try to ignore it, make light of it (you really had me smile when you related how you thanked the person), and try to live your life as best you can. God knows you heart; people like me are just grateful that you’ve come into our lives (if only through the written word) and put a smile on our faces. The rest don’t matter.
Easily. Yours are banal for example.
Bingo. Twitter sucks . . .
His intentions are to be banal? He’s banal for sure but I think that’s just his nature.
Sorry. I forgot this aint the PIT.
So this tells me that when a liberal listens to a conservative, he needs to keep in mind that:
a. Conservatives are liars (they bend the truth)
b. Their motives are evil (they don’t have good intentions)
That’s the reason its impossible to communicate with them.
Basically this shows why it is best to get off social media and if you are on it to use a pseudonym. In public space, such as work it is best to keep your head down and your mouth shut. There will be a time that conservatives and / or religious people will be ostracized and not allowed to make a living or be seen in public.
Yup.
Do. Not. Back. Down.
Duplass knows which side his bread is buttered on. He probably believed it when they told him “You’ll never work in this town again.”
As someone who worked in Hollywood once said:
Like.
Just don’t like that we ‘get’ to have the neo-NAZIs in our ‘clubhouse.’ What’s up with that anyway?
Maybe Mark will #WalkAway.
I wish I had emoji ability here, because I’d throw in a big hugging emoji right now. Thank you <3
Even when the emoji is there, I am not good at it. I am still trying to figure out how to put a smile on my phone when I text – which is rare! Thank you, Bethany.
OP:
What is the endgame here? A total shutdown in communication across the political spectrum?
If by “endgame” you are referring to the Left’s objective, I’m not sure they think far enough ahead to have one. If you mean the likely outcome with or without conscious planning, yes, it is isolating everybody into our own little self-reinforcing bubbles, eliminating the concept of broad civic society. It’s already well on its way.
Dealing with Libs is easy.
Speak truth.
Never apologize.
Never explain.
Never back down.
But why waste time on Twitter? I gave up Facebook in 2015 after the Bataclan atrocity and have not regretted doing so for one minute, no, not for one second. Twitter sounds like the fifth level of hell.
Their end game is to win. They want to have their way and everybody else needs to go away. Unless they need something from them.
The right-wing Outrage Mob Tactical Response Team has claimed a scalp in retaliation:
Gunn’s offenses are all attempts at shock humor. He used to work for Troma, and trafficked in crudeness. I don’t support this move by Disney, and hope that this turnabout makes some SJWs think twice.
Bring it buster @concretevol is my twitter handle as well! (seriously, i’m almost to 500 followers)
Pretty sick shock humor. A man in his 40s joking about raping little boys? Once would be sketchy enough, but repeat jokes?
(It’s hard to believe that Disney didn’t check his social media when they hired him, but maybe it could happen.)
Couple that with hosting a salacious video that Gunn got – unknowingly, of course – from a convicted pedophile?
It looks as though Sarah Silverman’s defense of Gunn may be self serving:
https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1021100895352733696
Professional comedians, who trade in shock humor — because comedy relies, to some extent on surprise, and nothing is more surprising than taboos — try to outdo each other in outrageousness. Watch the movie The Aristocrats sometime. This is the world in which they operate. It doesn’t mean they condone actual child molestation: in fact, it’s the common understanding of the awfulness of child molestation that makes joking about it funny to them. It’s the clash between the casual tone and the severity of the subject.
This is like when a bunch of conservative Christians fell for an Onion article that said Harry Potter was recruiting kids into witchcraft. Sometimes a joke is just a joke.
There is a problem with grooming of children of Hollywood. The documentary An Open Secret is powerful. These tweets are something different, and it does us no credit to confuse the two.
This new trend of hysterical claims of pedophilia is a pox on both sides, who are too willing to jump of the most salacious accusations because it confirms in their minds the utter depravity of their opponents. When adultery and then homosexuality lost their taboo value, however, it was inevitable that character attacks would grope for an even nastier slander with a more durable shelf-life.