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Monkeying Around Gets Messy
During the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, a 24-year-old pitcher almost lost his career as he pitched. Self-appointed social justice warriors dug up Josh Hader’s tweets from when he was 17. The tweets were ugly and indefensible. Josh Hader has saved his career with complete contrition, submission to sensitivity training, and enrollment in “diversity and inclusion initiatives.” That is, he will survive so long as he plays for the SJW team. This episode is the latest instance of an online, adolescent, subcultural phenomenon coming back to bite adults, a phenomenon that is worth relabeling.
For many years, (mostly) boys have engaged in acts of oneupmanship and attention-seeking by typing the most outrageous things they could imagine. This is called [expletive]posting and the object is to be considered an edgelord. Thinking through the taxonomy of group behavior @bossmongo provided in “The Establishment Group Monkey Dance,” a more apt, and alliterative phrase, comes to mind.
Miller defines four types of social violence: The Monkey Dance, the Group Monkey Dance, the Educational Beat-Down, and the Status-Seeking Show. I see a parallel between the reactions of the establishment and the Group Monkey Dance.
The Status-Seeking Show is performed to gain status from your group. Miller writes in “More about Violent Dynamics:”
Understand this—the Status-Seeking Show can violate almost all of the rules of normal social violence and that is the point. The SSSer is trying to show his craziness, his willingness to break social rules. So they won’t necessarily attack someone of their own social level (the norm in the Monkey Dance). Beating a child or woman shows craziness; beating a superior—like shooting a cop or ambushing the boss, is taken as both crazy and brave, no matter how safely the ambush was set up.
So, a person seeking status by attacking someone through social media, with intent to harm, or destroy, their reputation or career, may be understood as performing a Status-Seeking Show. Short of such virtual violence, we see primates engage in flinging things at others. We especially notice one kind of flinging, because it hits our emotions.
You know the kind of story: “Monkey Flings Feces That Hits Woman At Zoo.” It is gross, but many will respond with a little sympathetic laugh on hearing “It got grandma.” Naturally, academics have studied this behavior.
After making their discovery regarding the parts of the brain that appear to be involved in better throwing in chimps, the team tested the chimps and found that those that could throw better also appeared to be better communicators within their group, giving credence to their idea that speech and throwing are related. Interestingly, they also found that the better throwing chimps didn’t appear to posses any more physical prowess than other chimps, which the researchers suggest means that throwing didn’t develop as a means of hunting, but as a form of communication within groups, i.e. throwing stuff at someone else became a form of self expression, which is clearly evident to anyone who has ever been targeted by a chimp locked up in a zoo.
So, we may rightly re-characterize edgelords as “poo-posters.” Their behavior apes primates flinging feces. So, we may rightly warn young people not to monkey around online. Why?
Published in GeneralIf you post poo, some will stick to you!
Hader was helped because after he spoke privately to his teammates, they, led by Lorenzo Cain, came out and stood behind him in a show of support at his press conference. At least for them this is over. I don’t think he needs to play for the SJW team, he just needs to act decently.
Good post.
Very interesting. As @rightangles has said, I’m glad I grew up before the Internet.
Thanks, but the team is not the whole story. MLB demands far more as a condition of continued employment:
Ugh.
For something he did when he was 17 long before he was ever employed by them. I thought the Left was against corporate slavery. This is a joke . Not to mention he was a minor. They have no right to invade a childhood.
@cliffordbrown, outstanding! I, well…I feel like a launch pad. That’s a good thing. Great post, brother.
PS, One can learn a lot about navigating these crazy days by reading Rory Miller.
Hader will never have any better sensitivity training than when he had to walk into the locker room and explain himself to his teammates. That will stay with him forever. The rest of this is just for MLB to show off, not for the benefit of Hader.
Social media is proving to be a hazardous place to be.
here is the truth of it. Information is power. The more somebody knows about you. What you said, did, wrote or thought, the more they will use it against you. The smartest thing is to go through life, head down and quiet to have a chance of success. It has always been that way. Just now it is more so.
On my reading list.
I’m so old I can remember when we were appalled at the Soviet Reeducation Camps ruining lives and careers of those who dared oppose the appartchiks who were only trying to create the New Soviet Man. It seems the Conformity Police have somehow invaded this bastion of Individuality when we weren’t looking. Step outside the lines, even when you are young and foolish, sometimes even before those lines had been drawn, and suffer the consequences. You will Conform and you will LIKE it. Self denunciation is the only way to expunge oneself from the crushing guilt of having misspoken against the ever-changing SWJ rules of acceptable speech.
Nice little career you have here. What a shame if something should happen to derail it.
It seldom takes a bullet to intimidate sheeple. As a matter of fact, bullets are counter productive when the object is conformity. It’s hard for a dead sheeple to conform. It’s better to use smooth words and promises of green pastures. And just enough sheep dogs to keep the sheep in line.
As I commented elsewhere, another successful struggle session.
Who’s the loser that researches tweets from 7 years ago from a semi anonymous relief pitcher?
All these different terms make me dizzy. To use an overused saying, can’t we all just get along. Or better yet, don’t be a jerk!
Thank God when I was growing up the saying we lived by was “ if there’s no pictures, it didn’t happen“.
While today, everyone and their cat and dog are taking selfies. The phrase I grew up with was “Don’t write it if you would be embarrassed reading it on the front page of the Washington Post.”
And if there were pictures they were probably out of focus.
And for a lot of stuff unless you had your own dark room, you couldn’t get them printed….
A line from The Messiah’s Handbook in Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (from memory, sorry):
Live your life so that if anything you ever do is published on the front page of the newspaper, you will not be embarrassed. Even if what is published is not true.
Thanks to @eherring for pointing to the special lower receiver. Gives a whole new meaning to weaponized poo-posting.