February 19, 2010
-
What would you do if Xanga hosted Glenn Beck?
Let’s engage in a bit of a hypothetical. What if one day Xanga got a new fresh emerging voice by the name of Glenn Beck who was a rising star in popularity. What would you do?
Or maybe say you think Glenn Beck is a great guy, replace it then with someone who you think is a horrible demagogic vile monster spreading lies and filth and rewriting history for his own sick gain. Replace it with someone you think is a utter egomaniac with no sense of morality, no sense of restraint, and feels no qualms about inciting violence, encouraging hatred and racism and general viciousness to all who will listen to him. Replace it with someone who is a borderline paranoid schizophrenic who provokes emotions over reason, feeds off people’s fear and anger and plays on people’s sympathy for him and turns it around to direct it to serve his own sick selfish purposes.
And now imagine that person’s blog not only existed, but it was growing exponentially in popularity. Imagine it regularly found its way into the top blogs and was one of the most commented, most read, most subscribed to, most friended blogs on Xanga. Imagine his blogs started to be nominated to be featured all the time and occasionally were.
What would you do?
Do you try to ignore him? Do you pretend he doesn’t exist, justifying your actions by the fact that anything you DO say is likely to give the person a bigger audience and allow the person to reach more people. You know this person is a master at turning criticisms around to make it look like he or she was the victim and will cry crocodile tears at a moment’s notice to inspire the sympathy vote.
Do you just leave the blogging platform entirely? Quit Xanga. Make a conscientious decision to vote with your feet and go somewhere where not only you’ll be happier but where evil isn’t tolerated. And perhaps you figure that as many of you leave Xanga will lose money and become smaller and he’ll eventually lose popularity as a result.
Or do you stick with Xanga and try to respond to his posts openly? Do you comment? Do you pick a fight and write your own blogs, relying on your ability to crush his arguments with reasoning and taking faith in your fellow human beings to realize his stupidity and see the truth.
Or do you respond indirectly, writing posts to point out the larger context of the person’s writing. Do you try to show people what he’s doing and why he’s doing it? Do you perhaps even mock him and show what a silly little clown he is and express your incredulity that anyone takes him seriously?
Or maybe you go even further indirect and counter his posts by presenting the opposite facts without attribution. Just making sure the truth is out there so that his or her nonsense doesn’t stand alone. Do you try to make a popular competing blog that is factual and accurate that can compete on the same level as his?
Or maybe you just petition Xanga? Try to get the Xanga team to shutdown his corrupt, vile, and intolerable blog. Do you try to get enough other people to sign on to your campaign? Do you individually or collectively threaten to shutdown your blogs if he or she isn’t banned? Is that a violation of freedom of speech, not the amendment, but the principle? At what level would you start to think his rhetoric crossed the line and became equivalent to crying fire in a crowded theater? Would you feel yourself willing or able to make that decision? For that matter do you really think Xanga Team would listen? What if Xanga is making enormous amounts of ad money thanks to the growing popularity of this hateful blog?
OR do you try to use market forces to your advantage? Do you complain to the people who produce ads on his blog and try to encourage them to drop sponsorship of this blog on moral grounds. You have to figure some of the leaders of these companies will share your view and if you can get enough of your fellow bloggers who agree with you to complain, maybe the advertisers would see it as not worth the trouble and decide to go elsewhere. Would that be more or less an attack on his or her free speech rights?
I’m really curious. I’m not sure what anyone would or should do about it. If you do nothing know maybe you can see the writing on the wall. You can already see how this blogger is going to become more and more popular and be given a bigger and bigger megaphone. Soon he’ll have his own radio show. Soon after he’ll have his own television show. He’ll become the darling of the media too which whitewashes his sins and praises his clever entrepreneurship. Soon after it’ll be one of the most watched news shows in the country, and maybe even one day the WORLD. And who knows what could happen then. He could inspire a bloody violent revolution. He could legitimize lies to the point that they are believed all around the world. He could be elecetd the leader of a nation and act out his insane paranoid delusions on the people he is sworn to protect.
Is doing nothing REALLY an option? Or is it the only right thing to do? People have a right to express themselves even if the things they say are crazy, terrible, and wrong. We allow KKK members to march just like we do civil rights activists. But does the fact that CONGRESS shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech really mean that the people themselves should be left without recourse for combating to speech that they don’t think is right?
Let me know what your thoughts are.
Comments (9)
I would probably just ignore it. I lost faith in the power of one person to do anything a long time ago.
You could troll him right back, writing “WHITE PEOPLE ARE TEH SUCK!!!”
Wait, we’re talking about Glenn Beck. Yeah.
Counter the ideas, not the person. Posts that simply express one’s own view are always good. Glenn Beck doesn’t care what you think. But fight speech with speech, and let the best ideas win. Because the general public is listening even if Glenn Beck isn’t.
But there would be no point in leaving Xanga over it. There are Glenn Becks everywhere.
Contradict bullshit and grind it into the ground with sane argument wherever it takes root.
I have basically three phases of relationship with anyone I meet on Xanga.
In phase 1) I treat them as I would any other human being. I am as open and accepting as I can manage and work to correct them when they are in error. If they prove especially inflexible, I move to phase 2) In which I begin simply pointing and laughing but am increasingly sarcastic and abrasive in condemning their stupidity. I will either use more or less facts and references at this point, based on whether I think it would help (with Beck, it won’t.) If they continue to annoy me I move to phase 3) In which I un-friend them, un-subscribe from them, and generally ignore them. I don’t block people, but I may delete blog comments if I find them especially stupid.
I might occasionally use something they post as a launching point for a blog. More likely I didn’t read it, because they’re an idiot.
Ignoring someone isn’t actually doing nothing. For an attention-whore like Beck, it’s literally the worst thing you can do to them. It’s punative, not merely passive. So you ignore them, and you encourage your friends to do the same.
The problem with this entry (as I see it) is that, for Glenn Beck (or anyone else) to become that popular, it would mean that there are lots of Xangans who actually agree with what he is saying. Who are you to tell all of these other Xangans, “No, you can’t read this!”?
@chocolatescifi - lots and lots of people followed the KKK too. lots and lots of people agreed with the base philosophy of nazi germany which was the superiority of their nation and their people. Vast majorities of people agreed with the Catholic church when they were persecuting scientists or the puritan church when they executing women they deemed to be witches. Majorities in Uganda think it’s ok to do genocide against gays right now. Many people in Iraq think that if someone in their family engages in homosexual acts its a requirement of their honor to hunt that person down and kill them. All kinds of bad philosophies do in fact become really popular without being remotely true or reasonable or just. Usually they have a small grain of truth and are twisted by manipulative people to mean something different and repulsive.
It’s not that anyone has a right to silence anyone. It’s that certain kinds of speech are in fact very very dangerous, even when they are popular.
So the question is if no one has a right to do anything to combat that kind of speech, how does one prevent it from becoming popular to the point that it causes harm? On the other hand, if you allow people to intervene how do you know you’re silencing something that is wrong and not simply something you happen to dislike?
It’s definitely a tricky moral issue which is why I ran through a whole host of possible responses and tried to talk about the free speech implications as well as the moral implications.
My opinion is that if you think, if you’re sure that something someone is saying is really wrong, and by wrong I mean morally wrong not simply incorrect, and is dangerous then no matter how popular that person is you have some moral obligation to do what you can, within reason, to stop it. Indeed, the more popular the person, the stronger the obligation.
But even then I think some things are wrong. For example, if Xanga were to just randomly decide to pull the person’s account for no reason or because one person complained, I think THAT would be wrong. It’d be similar to if the federal government tried to stop a KKK march, which it has no right to do.
However if lots and lots and lots of people complained then I don’t think it would be nearly as wrong for Xanga to ban the account even if lots of other people liked it. Then I think it’s a business decision. It’s still a little sketchy, but all businesses in our current society restrict speech and expression of their employees for example and we don’t proclaim it to be a moral atrocity. Since simply removing someone’s ability to post on Xanga does not in actuality silence their ability to speak it merely removes one completely free outlet for their speech amongst many. If Xanga were the only blogging platform around then I’d be a lot more leery of anyone being censored from it. But the fact that it’s just one and not even a particularly popular one makes me think the moral implications of a ban on Xanga are not nearly that serious.
@BobRichter - I’ve generally gone from 1) to 3) in my interactions with people without stopping at 2. And I’m extremely reluctant to do 3). Usually I just do a partial 3) and just stop commenting and reading their blog but not outright unfriending them. The reason being, if I am worried about the misinformation someone is spreading I want to keep abreast of that misinformation so it can be countered.
I think the ignore approach only works to an extent. When lots of people do it, it tends to lead to a kind of disengagement problem. That is, people end up in their own individual enclaves of similar thinking people and are simply not exposed to alternative thoughts that might challenge their world view. I think that kind of closed off environment is where some of the most crazy and hateful ideas are bread unchallenged.
It’s not just about putting the truth out there. Sometimes it’s important to ensure that people are seeing the truth too, especially the kinds of people who are easily swayed by ideas that validate them or by aggressive authoritarian personalities.
@Carolina17 - why did you lose faith?
@TheModernBunny - the problem isn’t Glenn Beck. If he were talking a street corner I wouldn’t give a fuck who listened to him. It’s the millions of people who listen to him. Millions of people, some of whom agree with him, even when he says thing that are in direct contradiction to each other. Even when he completely rewrites history to declare false things true. Of course there are millions of people who strongly disagree with him and hate what he says too but right now it doesn’t seem like the truth is winning at all. Rather it seems like more and more faleshoods are becoming mainstream.
@nephyo - Well yeah. That’s why speech can only be fought with speech. If there’s only one POV out there, then naturally the public will eventually fall for it.