I don’t see it as a control mechanism so much as a status competition. By this, I mean that these messengers aren’t all cowed before some sort of hierarchy or censor who’s dictating what they’re allowed to tweet. Instead, they are all feeling out a way of speaking that makes them sound, and be seen as, Very Serious People.
I think “superweapon” is a misleading frame, because it suggests a level of mechanistic repeatability and knowing-what-you’re-doing that I don’t think is there.
The cluster of concepts I think is more relevant include egotism, narcissism, playacting, social dominance, gravitas, and machismo. The point is not to disrupt a specific line of thinking, not terminally. It’s not to reify one idea at the expense of another. Instead, the point is to curry favor with and be recognized by specific others by projecting confidence. Sure, that can squelch other people’s thinking by doing this, but I don’t think they care as much about that nearly as much as they care about being socially recognized and winning any direct social challenges.
Where I think this distinction between superweapon and social competition really matters is in how to respond. The superweapon frame suggests a more organized effort to put down contrary viewpoints. The social competition frames suggests more a bunch of scientists shouting into the void of twitter, where one more voice with a contrary view won’t elicit an organized effort at suppression.
The superweapon, to me, is the top-down censorship by moderators of these platforms. That is clearly engineered to suppress specific ideas and voices at the will of the bureaucracy.
I’m not on twitter, so my understanding of the online dynamic is limited. My views here are more informed by real-world relationships with scientist, doctors, and healthcare administrators. They’re just mostly trying to preserve their professional image with each other by sounding serious, when in fact they’re often as desperately confused as everybody else. They just have to find something to say that makes them sound authoritative and thoughtful. So they want to frame it in such a way that their opinion sounds like there’s more thought and support for it than there really is.
I don’t see it as a control mechanism so much as a status competition. By this, I mean that these messengers aren’t all cowed before some sort of hierarchy or censor who’s dictating what they’re allowed to tweet. Instead, they are all feeling out a way of speaking that makes them sound, and be seen as, Very Serious People.
I think “superweapon” is a misleading frame, because it suggests a level of mechanistic repeatability and knowing-what-you’re-doing that I don’t think is there.
The cluster of concepts I think is more relevant include egotism, narcissism, playacting, social dominance, gravitas, and machismo. The point is not to disrupt a specific line of thinking, not terminally. It’s not to reify one idea at the expense of another. Instead, the point is to curry favor with and be recognized by specific others by projecting confidence. Sure, that can squelch other people’s thinking by doing this, but I don’t think they care as much about that nearly as much as they care about being socially recognized and winning any direct social challenges.
Where I think this distinction between superweapon and social competition really matters is in how to respond. The superweapon frame suggests a more organized effort to put down contrary viewpoints. The social competition frames suggests more a bunch of scientists shouting into the void of twitter, where one more voice with a contrary view won’t elicit an organized effort at suppression.
The superweapon, to me, is the top-down censorship by moderators of these platforms. That is clearly engineered to suppress specific ideas and voices at the will of the bureaucracy.
I’m not on twitter, so my understanding of the online dynamic is limited. My views here are more informed by real-world relationships with scientist, doctors, and healthcare administrators. They’re just mostly trying to preserve their professional image with each other by sounding serious, when in fact they’re often as desperately confused as everybody else. They just have to find something to say that makes them sound authoritative and thoughtful. So they want to frame it in such a way that their opinion sounds like there’s more thought and support for it than there really is.