[HN Gopher] Knitters got knotted in a purity spiral (2020)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Knitters got knotted in a purity spiral (2020)
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 155 points
       Date   : 2022-05-09 15:18 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (unherd.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (unherd.com)
        
       | solarmist wrote:
       | This is a fantastic article on why we're facing so many social
       | issues lately. Very insightful.
        
         | bally0241 wrote:
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | bally0241 wrote:
        
       | bambataa wrote:
       | I have a theory that many of these ludicrous spirals are caused
       | by self-proclaimed "allies" taking on the mantle of others'
       | oppression and calling out behaviour that is actually fine.
       | 
       | The original blog post behind this case (where the woman wrote
       | about how foreign India seemed but how excited she was to visit)
       | is a perfect example.
       | 
       | The people calling out her "colonialist" references to Mars claim
       | to be speaking on behalf of their friends. Then you have actual
       | Indian people coming along later, wondering what the fuss was
       | about and welcoming the author to India.
       | 
       | My theory probably doesn't stand up to any scrutiny but it useful
       | to ask "is anywhere here actually saying that they're personally
       | offended?".
        
         | jrm4 wrote:
         | Black person here, and yes, this is a pretty good way to look
         | at it. I think perhaps you can see two extremes, the
         | theoretical annoyed white person who just wants things to not
         | be complicated at all, and the going too far naive liberal who
         | wants to call out everything.
         | 
         | And the answer is always "It's never an easy answer. You have
         | to do your homework. And it might change, and it might get
         | uncomfortable. Too bad."
        
         | RangerScience wrote:
         | I notice a big difference between how social workers and social
         | "warriors" talk.
         | 
         | So far, universally, the people "on the ground", doing the
         | work, are very nice to talk to. Informative, understanding,
         | firm, kind.
        
           | dmurray wrote:
           | Social workers help people based on their need. Social
           | warriors help people based on their identity. It's not
           | surprising the two work in different ways.
        
         | swearwolf wrote:
         | There's a lot of discourse going around these days about white
         | people. Not much of it is positive. It's understandable; just
         | about every person of color has at least one story in which a
         | white person made them feel terrible because of their race,
         | whether intentionally or not. There's a lot of pent up anger,
         | and it's socially acceptable to vent that anger now, so people
         | do. As a result, there are a lot of well meaning white people
         | who are receiving the message that they, and people who look
         | like them, are making the lives of people of color hard. Some
         | people react to that by getting angry, others react by looking
         | for opportunities to prove they aren't that kind of white
         | person. When they see an interaction like this one, they feel
         | compelled to act, and they do. Sometimes way out of proportion
         | to the inciting incident. Other well meaning and anxious people
         | react positively to the callout, which reinforces the
         | perception that this is the right thing to do. The person who
         | committed the offense often tries to clarify their position,
         | which presents more opportunities to call them out. In
         | situations like this, even apologies are often criticized. Each
         | time this process unfolds, the line of acceptable behavior
         | creeps ever backwards, and increasingly benign actions and
         | statements end up on the other side of it.
        
         | quadrifoliate wrote:
         | > The people calling out her "colonialist" references to Mars
         | claim to be speaking on behalf of their friends. Then you have
         | actual Indian people coming along later, wondering what the
         | fuss was about and welcoming the author to India.
         | 
         | Eh. Actual Indian person here. I think it's pretty stupid to
         | comparing a flight to India to "going to Mars". You have Pizza
         | Hut, Subway, and KFC in India, for crying out loud.
         | 
         | In normal times, the person saying things like this would have
         | been chided by a few of their friends. Now they are viciously
         | attacked by the whole of the Internet - which is the real
         | problem.
        
       | motohagiography wrote:
       | After reading the comments in the previous thread, I thought
       | about what has changed in the two years since. My impression is
       | that kind of escalating purity ratchet peaked in the fall and
       | early part of this year, or at least it hit a ratchet point where
       | the next lift is going to be exponentially harder than the
       | previous ones because there is real popular reaction and revolt
       | against it.
       | 
       | Personally I have become much less agreeable, and as a result,
       | people in my own networks who might have participated in the
       | ratcheting don't do it when I am around, because the purity
       | ratcheting was essentially a way to abuse and exploit peoples
       | agreeableness. Given it was such a tiny minority to begin with,
       | if only a small fraction of the majority become disagreeable, it
       | can halt the spiral of hysteria it requires.
       | 
       | What I/many can articulate more simply now that we didn't have
       | the words for then is that this is a very old redemption hustle,
       | and they're offering a kind of redemption I don't need. Just
       | because someone is uncharitable doesn't mean I have to mollify
       | them, and demanding a denial or denunciation from me is just
       | their way of making a conversation about themselves. It's a
       | disease of politeness, and the reason we got here is because we
       | forgot sometimes in this world it is appropriate and necessary to
       | say, please, _fuck off_ , because we are being taken advantage of
       | by people betting very heavily that we won't.
        
         | Uhhrrr wrote:
         | This is really nicely put: "purity ratchet", "redemption
         | hustle", "disease of politeness".
        
         | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
         | Very much agree. I can think of a number of very specific
         | examples in the past year where a lot of middle-of-the-road
         | folks just said "Enough is enough - this is bullshit." In
         | particular, I think that people are taking a stand against
         | being "cancelled" when they are engaging in _good-faith_
         | discussion or disagreement, and they are fed up with people
         | taking anything that doesn 't 100% comport to their world view
         | out of context and _themselves_ using it to make the worst kind
         | of bad faith arguments.
        
         | 0des wrote:
         | It reminds me a lot in school of a bully who had oppressed
         | almost the entire class. He started with the most proximal
         | targets, then moved on to others where toward the end of his
         | reign he encountered a kid who I can only assume was non-
         | perceptive to the situation at hand who in response to be
         | harassed at the lunch table for his fruit cup said "no, and
         | please go away, I'm eating" and just like that, this bully whom
         | had never encountered resistance was speechless. This kid's
         | oblivious nature to the social situation broke the bully's
         | brain in a form of pattern-interrupt.
         | 
         | The bully wasn't reformed after that, he remained a bully until
         | we parted ways years later, however the group was wiser for it,
         | and that type of behavior had a very short half life as a
         | result. As I get older, this phenomenon is emblematic or
         | representative of society. Sometimes culture dictates that
         | there are certain things we just won't accept anymore, like
         | spousal assault, smoking in the public indoors, and poor
         | legislation. Resistance is cumulative.
        
           | MichaelZuo wrote:
           | Plus non-linear, with activation energies, sometimes piece
           | wise continuous, etc...
        
         | duxup wrote:
         | I've wondered the same. I feel like I've seen a subtle but very
         | significant change in people's approach.
         | 
         | In the past on some corners of the internet I'd get "down
         | voted" (whatever system the locals use, not just reddit) for
         | anything that smelled of X, Y, or Z.
         | 
         | That's still the case at times BUT I've seen a lot more folks
         | express distaste for that kind of crusade and gotten a lot more
         | support from people when inevitably I end up sayng "No that's
         | not what i'm saying, I'm tired of having to say that ... we can
         | say X and not be Y".
         | 
         | Meanwhile the most egregious examples of the kind of calling
         | folks out for their perceived impurity such as "you know you
         | don't have to defend X" type comments seem to get a great deal
         | less support now, if not outright ridicule.
        
           | 0des wrote:
           | Like people who can oppose illegal immigration but not also
           | hate those who are seeking to immigrate.
        
           | samhw wrote:
           | Yeah, I think I'm the same. For years I kinda awkwardly put
           | up with it, semi-understanding the dynamic (revolutional
           | paedophagy?), but I've got bored of it over the last couple
           | of years. I've seen the same in people I know, and even just
           | people I've seen interacting online. Your characterisation of
           | "a subtle but very significant change" is apposite, imo.
           | 
           | People are starting - albeit unevenly and at different stages
           | and with considerable pushback - to realise that they don't
           | owe an account of their morality to any old person on the
           | internet, that they can be non-racist and not have to agree
           | with (and genuflect to) every other self-styled non-racist
           | trying to sell some wacky opinion to them, etc.
           | 
           | And - what makes me most happy of all - they are doing it, at
           | least many of them, without falling prey to the "I disagree
           | with someone from Not Racist FC so I guess all that's left to
           | me is to sign up to Racist FC" non sequitur.
        
       | hitekker wrote:
       | The point about the splintering of atheism is well covered in:
       | https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godles...
       | 
       | > Most movement atheists weren't in it for the religion. They
       | were in it for the hamartiology. Once they got the message that
       | the culture-at-large had settled on a different, better
       | hamartiology, there was no psychological impediment to switching
       | over. We woke up one morning and the atheist bloggers had all
       | quietly became social justice bloggers. Nothing else had changed
       | because nothing else had to; the underlying itch being scratched
       | was the same. They just had to CTRL+F and replace a couple of
       | keywords.
        
       | a_t48 wrote:
       | Isn't the real problem the whole dogpiling issue and not the
       | actual viewpoints themselves? At the root of the spiral, the
       | suggestion wasn't so bad ("Hey, that's a bit insensitive, you
       | should consider your language"), but it didn't need to be
       | repeated to her hundreds of times by the all of twitter, et al.
       | Most people with any viewpoint are going to react negatively to
       | hundreds or thousands of people telling them they are in the
       | wrong. Unfortunately while it's reasonable for each individual
       | feeling this way to comment, the effect is much larger than I
       | would bet any of the commenters intended. It would be interesting
       | to track down some of the first commenters and ask them how many
       | people telling the woman she was in the wrong there should be -
       | maybe I'm wrong and they believe it should be "as many as
       | possible". Regardless, sometimes the internet is way too
       | connected.
        
         | jrm4 wrote:
         | Yup. _Especially_ when (as it happens in these spaces) the loud
         | people aren 't the actual subjects of discussion, so you get
         | this weird lack of skin-in-the-game.
         | 
         | I cannot emphasize enough the harm that can come from this and
         | how easily it is exploited.
        
         | escapedmoose wrote:
         | Absolutely. In a more private setting, the reminder could be
         | received with much more grace.
        
       | fatbird wrote:
       | I frequently see articles like this discussing these community
       | explosions as self-evidently harmful patterns of behaviour. I've
       | never seen an article like this as a discussion of a certain
       | amount of necessary pain, confusion, and difficulty while things
       | get worked out. It seems obvious to me that untangling systemic
       | problems and their legacies will always involve some clashing.
       | Sooner started, sooner done.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | Ambolia wrote:
         | If you run an anti-harassment office and you get rid of
         | harassment, you are out of a job and out of power. If you keep
         | finding more and more harassment, you are set for life. Plus if
         | you try to tone it down there's 50 juniors behind you with
         | dubious degrees that will gladly denounce you for being too old
         | fashioned and take your juicy position for themselves.
         | 
         | I don't think getting more middle-managers will ever get this
         | issues any better because it's in their interests to increase
         | their power as much as possible, not solve anything.
        
         | robertlagrant wrote:
         | They look a lot as though they're profiting from re-entangling
         | as much as possible. This isn't automatically equivalent to
         | reconciliation or equality, and it often looks like the
         | complete opposite.
        
           | fatbird wrote:
           | Agreed, but these are communities of interest, without
           | governance of any kind. There's no one to police bad
           | behaviour, to refocus on constructive efforts, to maintain an
           | agenda or to call timeouts when it gets overheated.
           | 
           | Given that, what's the alternative to a messy communal brawl
           | that hopefully doesn't destroy the community? The author of
           | the essay speaks about the ratchet dynamics as if it's
           | obviously to be avoided; an alternative read is that his take
           | is descriptive of what's actually the way that these things
           | get worked out, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
        
             | jimbokun wrote:
             | What are examples of things like this working out for the
             | better?
        
               | fatbird wrote:
               | The various "racefail" episodes over the last decade in
               | science fiction, for one. They were definitely as
               | acrimonious and sprawling as the knitting blowup, but
               | after several of them, they've settled down, no one's
               | been cancelled, and the community seems healthier for it.
               | 
               | As the article's author notes, the knitting community has
               | mostly healed as well. My wife is a knitter so I've
               | followed it more closely than others. Some prominent
               | voices aren't so much anymore; others are more prominent.
               | As the author notes, Nathan Taylor came back and made
               | more money than before, covering his losses and then
               | some.
               | 
               | Contrast that to the "new athiest" collapse that led to
               | two distinct communities. Whether that's for better or
               | worse probably depends on perspective. It only seems bad
               | if you feel a need for there to be a monolithic
               | community. I think the split (which I also witnessed at
               | the time) really did reveal a deep schism in the
               | community, so I'm not sure it isn't better to be two
               | factions divided.
        
         | rendall wrote:
         | No. It's nothing of the kind.
         | 
         | At best, it's racists projecting their discomfort onto other
         | people, making others responsible for their own guilt. But more
         | likely, it's sadistic bullies. A sadistic bully cannot say
         | "Destroying a life gets me excited!" but they _can_ say  "I
         | fight for social justice!"
        
       | TimTheTinker wrote:
       | > a bidding war for morality turned into a proxy war for power.
       | 
       | What a packed and insightful statement. I'll be turning that over
       | in my mind for some time.
        
         | random-human wrote:
         | Not only is it insightful, but one that can be actively watched
         | play out in the US with the 50-ish years morality war turning
         | to a war for state voting control and supreme court power to
         | overturn Roe. Watch as states try to out do each other within
         | their purity spiral. What was once thought to be too extreme
         | (no exceptions clauses, even to save the life of the living
         | breathing human in front of them or criminal charges if you
         | save the persons life anyway) is now a required hard line to
         | prove their "moral purity".
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | Blackthorn wrote:
       | That's...a pretty strange way of putting what happened to the new
       | atheism movement. To the extent that I'm not sure how much I can
       | trust their version of events in the knitting world.
        
       | mkr-hn wrote:
       | edit: nah
        
         | robertlagrant wrote:
         | He didn't tie them together to promote a radio show. That story
         | is the show.
        
         | mdoms wrote:
         | What? Did you read the article? He doesn't claim this is a new
         | phenomenon. To the contrary he uses examples from Salem 1962,
         | Robespierre in 1794 and Maoism in the 1960's. He then concludes
         | this it's probably a hard-wired human instinct to behave this
         | way.
        
       | kleiba wrote:
       | Ahhh... I just read the first paragraph. Then I took a deep
       | breath. Exhaled. With a little smile on my face.... "Thank God, I
       | don't live in North America."
        
         | blibble wrote:
         | the floyd tragedy triggered a lot of anti-police protests in
         | western Europe, where police brutality is thankfully rare
        
         | duxup wrote:
         | Oh I'd be careful.
         | 
         | It's a humanity thing ... not a region.
         | 
         | History is full of "oh those people over there do that thing,
         | how silly" and then it happens in their own backyard. We're all
         | human.
        
         | skrbjc wrote:
         | From the article: "As the summer dragged on, the Nordic wool
         | bible Laine magazine was forced to apologise for having too
         | many white faces on their pricey knitting retreat. The auto-
         | cannibalisation doomsday clock had gone so far that now even
         | the instigators were having their privilege severely checked.
         | Ysolda Teague, a Scot who had been one of the leading social
         | justice knitters, published a lengthy apology on Instagram"
         | 
         | I don't know where you live, but clearly what the article was
         | discussing went beyond North America.
        
         | indy wrote:
         | Unfortunately, North American culture has a habit of spreading
         | throughout the world.
        
           | 0des wrote:
           | Why unfortunately? If it spread, that meant people liked and
           | sought to emulate it.
        
             | Tade0 wrote:
             | That's a very optimistic take.
             | 
             | American culture really caught on only during world war II,
             | when people around the world experienced first hand the
             | sheer wealth of American soliders.
             | 
             | It works in the context of being a wealthy superpower with
             | access to almost limitless energy sources(mainly oil), but
             | attempts at emulating it outside of this context look
             | silly.
             | 
             | Case in point: new housing in my corner of the world is in
             | large part sprawl. People flock to it, because they crave
             | the same amazing amount of living space Americans usually
             | enjoy.
             | 
             | Problem is, as a percentage of wages, fuel is easily at
             | least four times as expensive around here. Also cities
             | aren't nearly as car-oriented as in the US.
        
             | car_analogy wrote:
             | Or because it was heavily marketed by Hollywood and
             | American entertainment. Which I am sure you will claim are
             | only popular because they're _just that much better_ than
             | local entertainment, and that this has nothing to do with
             | how local entertainment has only locals to fund it, while
             | American media is effectively globally funded.
        
           | hef19898 wrote:
           | Fourtunately, that seems to be less and less the case. Ehich
           | just makes those issues, e.g. morality in Instagram knitting,
           | all the more obvious.
        
         | burnished wrote:
         | You might read more of it. It appears to be discussing a human
         | phenomena, not a regional one.
        
         | glorygut123 wrote:
         | Unfortunately you'll find these issues across Oceania and
         | Europe as well. Germany just appointed their first anti-racism
         | commissioner in the last election.
        
           | 0des wrote:
           | Germany of today is a byproduct of post-war Germany.
        
         | jasonlotito wrote:
         | I can assure you this is 1) not limited to knitters and 2) not
         | limited to North Americans.
        
           | 0des wrote:
           | Montreal Quebec is looking _tres nerveux_ right now
        
       | Ambolia wrote:
       | I think it's probably more about job programs and power grabs
       | than about culture. This type of cultural battles let some type
       | of people with some types of university degrees to insert
       | themselves as middle-managers in spaces that before were managed
       | in more organic manners. And their ultimate goal is to maximize
       | their power, not to keep any healthy environment in those spaces.
        
       | gotaquestion wrote:
       | The entire article is based on online group dynamics over people
       | trying to figure out how to come to grips with historically
       | ignored problems.
       | 
       | I fail to feel outraged by this process. Is "White Fragility"
       | without criticism? Probably not, I think it is a fantastic book,
       | but it scares the bejeebers out of some people and we get
       | instagram drama and articles like this which I interpret as
       | another attempt at purity (trying to outsmart "wokeness").
       | 
       | It is going to take a while for society* to come to grips with
       | this new shift, because we're clearly not going back, but it
       | definitely is rough around the edges, IMHO, because we haven't
       | found the right vocabulary and framing. Unfortunately it is going
       | to require people to sit with feeling uneasy, and that is
       | something most people cannot tolerate.
        
         | teakettle42 wrote:
         | You fail to feel outraged by terrible behavior because it's
         | ostensibly in service of your ideological aims.
         | 
         | That says a lot about your ideology's consistency when it comes
         | to how we should behave individually, and treat others, now, in
         | our present.
        
         | Adraghast wrote:
         | White Fragility is an awful book. Even as baby's first guide to
         | thinking about how you treat POC, it's a net negative and that
         | role would be better filled by something like Ibram Kendi's
         | books. Still fluffy and lightweight, but at least not as
         | harmfully neurotic.
         | 
         | That being said, you've hit on the actual shortcoming of "woke
         | culture" these handwringing articles miss. It's admirable, not
         | outrageous, that white people becoming conscious of racism feel
         | compelled to do whatever they can about it. But most people (in
         | the US at least) are so depoliticized that their ability to
         | effect systemic change is virtually nil. The project of
         | rebuilding the necessary political capacity is hard, boring
         | work and we probably won't live long enough to see its fruits.
         | If you want gratification, making some rando on the internet
         | bend the knee is much easier.
         | 
         | One definitely gets the impression from critics like the author
         | that they're less interested in seeing that energy redirected
         | than in it dissipating entirely.
        
         | splitstud wrote:
         | Controlling thought by controlling speech is nothing new, and
         | it IS a historically ignored problem
        
         | overthemoon wrote:
         | I hear what you're saying, and I think it's true that some
         | people react with hostility when confronted with some of this
         | stuff, but separate from the actual values, this article
         | describes a destructive and unproductive social dynamic. I
         | think the most interesting bit is that the author describes
         | similar cannibalistic dynamics happening in neo-nazi
         | subcultures. Whether the values here are worthy is beside the
         | point.
         | 
         | Questioning the moral standing of those who would criticize the
         | dynamic itself isn't useful or worthwhile. It conflates
         | interpersonal confrontation (useful, good, corrective, it's how
         | we build each other up) with a zillion passersby hurling
         | invective at a guy who, in this case, found it so troubling to
         | have a mass of people condemn him on a moral spectrum that is
         | very dear to him that he ended up suicidal.
        
         | lliamander wrote:
         | > The entire article is based on online group dynamics over
         | people trying to figure out how to come to grips with
         | historically ignored problems.
         | 
         | You have to ignore quite a lot of history to come to the
         | conclusion that these problems were historically ignored.
         | 
         | > I fail to feel outraged by this process.
         | 
         | Maybe if you end up on the receiving end you'll feel
         | differently?
         | 
         | > Is "White Fragility" without criticism? Probably not, I think
         | it is a fantastic book, but it scares the bejeebers out of some
         | people and we get instagram drama and articles like this which
         | I interpret as another attempt at purity (trying to outsmart
         | "wokeness").
         | 
         | Robin D'Angelo has made some deranged, outlandish assertions,
         | and instead of defending them she simply follows up with more
         | outlandish assertions. I had the pleasure of having a non-white
         | person explain things about "white people" that she'd learned
         | from that book that were patently false.
        
         | itronitron wrote:
         | >> people trying to figure out how to come to grips with
         | historically ignored problems
         | 
         | I very much agree that many people have limited knowledge of
         | the history of the last six hundred years, but I believe that
         | sharing the cold hard facts from history (that aren't taught in
         | schools) has a better chance at opening up a person's viewpoint
         | rather than criticizing their behavior.
        
         | jrm4 wrote:
         | As a black person, I'll say this new crop of books like White
         | Fragility on one hand aren't great, and in the long run some
         | will probably seen as outright bad, but I'm still glad they
         | exist?
         | 
         | It's kind of an Overton Window thing for me. I'm just very used
         | to the 90's, where you couldn't even come close to saying
         | anything like this out loud in, e.g. an academic setting
         | because you know what you would set off.
         | 
         | I'm glad it's out there to at least be reckoned with as a
         | theory.
         | 
         | (Relatedly, this is why I have zero respect for the suggestion
         | that a new form of "censorship" is taking place when people
         | talk about e.g. "cancel culture" and whatnot. This has _always_
         | been around, the only thing that 's new is that it can now come
         | from e.g. both the left and the right)
        
         | jimbokun wrote:
         | > Unfortunately it is going to require people to sit with
         | feeling uneasy
         | 
         | People throw around this phrase, but it always strikes me as
         | nonsensical.
         | 
         | There's a lot of stupid opinions that can make people feel
         | uneasy, so unease is not some magic barometer of truth.
         | 
         | People are going to feel really uneasy if they are listening to
         | you defend your appreciation of child pornography, but that
         | doesn't mean you have struck upon some deep uncomfortable
         | truth.
        
           | gotaquestion wrote:
        
             | teakettle42 wrote:
             | [edit] Discarding the comment, because without the (now-
             | flagged) context of the parent, it was unclear and open to
             | misinterpretation.
        
             | deadbeeves wrote:
             | Stating that it's a comparison (which it's not) or that
             | it's frequent does not refute the counter-example. GP's
             | contention is "some things people say make others
             | uncomfortable, but not because they're true, thus the fact
             | that a statement makes people uncomfortable tells you
             | nothing about its truth value", and has provided an example
             | of such a thing.
        
       | unwind wrote:
       | Uh that sounded quite interesting, but it seems to bury the lede
       | from the title and go off on side-tracks right away. Didn't
       | finish it because I got ultra-distracted by the inline
       | recommendations of ... the same article.
       | 
       | It lists:
       | 
       | - BY THE SAME AUTHOR "How knitters got knotted in a purity
       | spiral" BY GAVIN HAYNES
       | 
       | - SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral"
       | BY GARETH ROBERTS
       | 
       | - SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral"
       | BY DOUGLAS MURRAY
       | 
       | - SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral"
       | BY ANTONIA SENIOR
       | 
       | - SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral"
       | BY TITANIA MCGRATH
       | 
       | - SUGGESTED READING "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral"
       | BY GILES FRASER
       | 
       | I can't even begin to guess how stuff like that happens, must be
       | some epic bug in their CMS, or some weird A/B attempt to ... fool
       | people into reading the same article many times? And where does
       | it get the author names, one wonders. AI-backed publishing system
       | gone crayzay?
        
         | bio_end_io_t wrote:
         | For what it's worth, clicking on any of those links brings you
         | back to the one by Gavin Haynes.
        
         | Traster wrote:
         | This is probably just a for loop where they've called for(it in
         | suggestions) print(title) rather than for(it in suggestions)
         | print(it.title).
        
       | Taywee wrote:
       | Previous discussion:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22240041
        
       | twofornone wrote:
        
         | bglazer wrote:
         | You're just arguing that dominant groups should never face
         | criticism or contend with outside perspectives?
         | 
         | Also, if an outside group wants to participate in an activity
         | then they should do it separately?
        
       | at_a_remove wrote:
       | I have been watching, with a mixture of sadness and
       | schadenfreude, an online community disintegrate in just this
       | manner, since right around the New Aetheism split. Boiling the
       | frog is the name of the game.
       | 
       | It plays out so predictably, too. First, they -- we -- came for
       | the fundamentalist conservatives, but I was not ... Then it was
       | the fiscal conservatives, then the moderates, the liberal guys
       | who didn't manage to seem vaguely embarrassed to be heterosexual,
       | and so on. They all get together and "discuss" things until
       | someone (or more than just one) leaves the site. Throw in a
       | unhealthy dose of "dogwhistle" paranoia and "everyone who
       | disagrees with me is a goosestepping fascist buying Nazi
       | memorabilia on the darkweb" disdain and, well, it's amazing to
       | watch.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Discussed at the time:
       | 
       |  _How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22240041 - Feb 2020 (235
       | comments)
        
       | themaninthedark wrote:
       | I can't recall when but I read an article(or post) about how the
       | focus of the knitting community was shifting to social justice,
       | much to the dismay of some of the participants as all they cared
       | about was knitting.
       | 
       | Some of the comments at the time seemed to think the only way to
       | save the community would be to reject the values being force onto
       | the community, it looks like that did not happen.
       | 
       | I don't think that rejection is necessity for a community to
       | survive but there needs to be a way that they can recenter. If
       | the community is supposed to be about knitting, than discussions
       | about race, sex, etc should not occur.
       | 
       | Perhaps is is enough to identify as a knitter, as opposed to a
       | bisexual knitter from SE Asia. All the other stuff is noise in
       | the SNR.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-05-09 23:01 UTC)