Earworm of the Day: Dwight Twilley Band - I'm On Fire

Quoted: David Foster Wallace on living on the planet Trillaphon

Everything is sick and grotesque. And since your only acquaintance with the whole world is through parts of you – like your sense-organs and your mind, etc. – and since these parts are sick as hell, the whole world as you perceive it and know it and are in it comes at you through this filter of bad sickness and becomes bad. As everything becomes bad in you, all good goes out of the world like air out of a big broken balloon. There’s nothing in the world you know but horrible rotten smells, sad and grotesque and lurid pastel sights, raucous or deadly-sad sounds, intolerable open-ended situations lined on a continuum with just no end at all… Incredibly stupid, hopeless ideas. And just the way when you’re sick to your stomach you’re kind of scared that it might maybe never go away, The Bad Thing scares you the same way only worse, because the fear itself is filtered through the disease and becomes bigger and worse and hungrier than it started out. It tears you open and gets in there and squirms around. -- David Foster Wallace from The Planet Trillaphon

He was pretty young when he wrote this. The full story is in the anthology that was published after his death, or you can read it here. The genesis for the dark humor present in Infinite Jest is evident, and I’ve long said David Foster Wallace is one of most brilliant writers when it comes to articulating depression in all its grotesqueness and absurdity.

Is Twitter's New "Trust and Safety Council" Censorship?

Not in the legal sense, but there's enough valid criticism. Twitter is a private company. They can set rules for how people use the platform however they see fit, but that doesn't mean  people can't -- or shouldn't -- complain, and there are many valid criticisms of the new program. A big one is whose "safety" it's supposed to protect. Brendan O'Neill is suspicious:

Given the censorious instinct of some of the group’s Twitter has entrusted to devise its safety policy — the Internet Watch Foundation; the Safer Internet Centre; Feminist Frequency, which campaigns against rough, sexist speech online — we can be sure the final policy won’t be to allow people on Twitter to say whatever the hell they want and everyone else to engage with, ignore or block them as they see fit. No, we’re likely to see the development of tools that allow for the flagging and maybe even squishing of dodgy or just unpopular viewpoints.

Daniel Payne in the Federalist agrees that it sends a message that certain viewpoints will be unwelcome:

If Twitter is thus allowing liberal organizations to shape its “safety” policy with no conservative input whatsoever, we can expect the platform to become even less welcoming to conservatives. It is entirely conceivable that, within a few years’ time, Twitter will censure or block conservative voices while alleging they have made other users feel “unsafe.” This is already standard operating procedure on college campuses across the country, after all—and you can be sure that many graduates of those colleges will soon be working at Twitter.

I'm a liberal, and I agree with him. Frankly, I think liberals should agree that Twitter's new safety council could have dangerous consequences in the long run. And as a woman, I certainly don't feel safe when I have vet my own thoughts for ideological purity. There are enough places I no longer visit online because the rules are too strident, making carrying on an actual discussion stifling.

Video of the Day: Wendy McElroy and Jessica Valenti debate campus rape

Links & Bits: 2/12/16

In praise of freaks and weirdos

Where do draw the line between empathy and coddling?

Didn't get what you want? Boom, you're a victim!

Shelving: My Lie by Meredith Maran

"We were fighting every power struggle in history -- herstory. In our battle, the spoils went to the victim. The crown went to the queen of pain." -- Meredith Maran from My Lie.

Those old enough might remember the repressed memory phenomenon of the late-80s and early-90s. Adult women -- and it was almost entirely women -- "uncovered" in therapy memories of past childhood abuse, sometimes even bizarre, "ritualistic" abuse. (I wrote a paper for my Journo 101 class on the "satanic panic" scare. It seems quaint now.) It's ridiculous to consider how many otherwise reasonable women could have accused loved ones of abuse based on the flimsy claim of "repressed memories," but it did happen, and it draws some pretty interesting parallels to what's happening now with campus rape scares.

Meredith Maran was one of those women, and her grief and regret is palpable throughout My Lie. I really recommend this, particularly for anyone disturbed by the professional victim trope of which feminism is no stranger.

Katha Pollitt, who was interviewed for the book, places much of the blame on therapists and prosecutors:

Out of that sense of solidarity with victims came the idea that those who claimed victimization were always telling the truth -- believe the women, believe the children. What got left out is that some of the accusations were constructed -- by "recovered memory" therapists, and therapists assumed all kinds of problems were proof of molestation, and the police and prosecutors in the case of day-care panic cases.

She goes on to acknowledge the harm and casualty done by mass delusion, but says that a lot of good came of it: victims of actual abuse are not as afraid to come forward as they were in the past. I'm sorry, but I can't accept imprisoning innocent people for the greater good. (Maran herself said something similar in an interview in Salon.). And I fear it happening now, with irresponsible Rolling Stone story "A Rape on Campus," to art critics gushing over "The Mattress Girl." Even on a smaller scale, women redefining or feel forced to redefine sexual experiences as rape in the name of ideology. The biggest victim is still winning.

Video of the Day: Susan Sontag "Town Bloody Hall"