The inescapable rise of moral superiority
thewalrus.ca
thewalrus.ca
>As cathartic as venting one’s outrage can be in the moment, it’s clear that moral grandstanding accomplishes very little beyond the fleeting satisfaction that it brings. Shaming people doesn’t seem to change their behaviour, and invoking mass shooting victims in an argument about hamburgers doesn’t move the needle on gun control. Social change doesn’t come from posting but from purposeful collective action: organizing, voting, protesting. At worst, the catharsis of grandstanding deludes us into thinking that virtuous online posturing is a meaningful form of solidarity and not a fruitless, ego-driven impulse. Tosi and Warmke argue that the purpose of recognizing moral grandstanding isn’t to get other people to knock it off; it’s to stop doing it yourself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism
Slacktivism is not going anywhere.
I have to disagree with this. Change happens because people want change. And they want change because they have been convinced of its benefits. Posting plays a role here.
Posting in sound bites?
I've read books that have influenced me. But tweets? Not really.
Contributing to a rational civil discussion? Maybe.
Flaming, downvoting, and “collectively bullying” someone with a different opinion to enforce an echo chamber? Not so much.
The latter just drives everyone who disagrees away so the likeminded can reinforce their beliefs, pat each other on the back, and feel good about themselves.
With right wing conspiracy movements, are they really converting anyone or just organising people who already lean in that direction and just need a rallying flag.
To go off on a tangent, I think a lot of people believe in conspiracy theories because they choose to. To quote Alan Moore,
“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”
I think we all do that to some extent, e.g. in relationships; see “positive illusions”.
I think we humans are simply unprepared for interacting with random strangers online. Our monkey brains did not evolve for that. In most social situations, our opinions are tempered by knowing the other person, or at least being in the same room with them. It's rare that you would say the same thing face-to-face with another person that you would say to them online.
Online, it's often a show where you're playing to an audience, instead of having a one-on-one conversation with another person. You're not actually talking to the person you're talking about. The incentives are to act, to create drama.
Oh, you see plenty of moral grandstanding on non-technical articles, too. It's just as likely to be some strange over-analyzed and unrealistic niche belief system as it is a platform plank of either of the two major American political parties.
As expected for a place which attracts engineers and the like, because one of their failure modes is assuming that they can engineer the entire world. Every major social problem has a "rational" engineering wrong explanation, because all people (including them) are only ever quasi-rational beings.
I think this is the most important part. It's not just online vs offline. Even how people converse in DMs differs from public postings (not as good as offline, but different than public online). Instead, many interactions are done with the intent to gather an audience that agrees with you, so you can beat down your opponent by what is essentially intimidation. Or at least make it fruitless for your opponent to even try to defend themselves.
But:
1. One side of the culture wars really likes to temporarily put on a cloak of neutrality in a way that pretends that only its opposition is making a moral claim. This sort of "remove moral stances from casual conversation" position can similarly position itself as being neutral while actually being a weapon pointed in one direction.
2. If society as a whole is perpetrating some continual harm of some form, saying "don't interrupt our discussion about X to complain about it!" is itself perpetuating that harm, and is an expression of entitlement. If in the 1960s a white person in the south said "don't derail this conversation about hamburgers to rant about how we need to end segregation!" then they were part of the problem. Similarly today, I think it's totally appropriate to mention in that hamburger discussion that (a) beef really does have a large carbon footprint (b) the amazon really is being cut down for meat production for example.
3. We _do_ all form our worldviews in part based on what we see others expressing. No one emerges from a cave having worked out how they view everything from first principles free from the influence of the people around them. All of this public discourse does have an impact. And though large societal changes do also require organized action, they are of course also preceded by discussion, some of it uncomfortable or perceived as "disruptive" by some, which prepares society for that change.
Is yelling in social media sound bites "discussion" though?
Recently I blocked an internet rando on social media who was arguing with me and ridiculously compared himself with Martin Luther King, because he was being "disruptive". It's true that advocates for social change are often viewed as disruptive, but the converse is not true: just being disruptive doesn't make you an effective advocate for social change. MLK spoke and wrote at length, eloquently. He wasn't writing "dunk" replies and quote tweets.
But also, MLK was part of a movement with a huge number of people, almost none of whom had his style. But the people who marched or sat at lunch counters or got beat up on bridges were still contributing something valuable in doing so even if they didn't write great letters from Birmingham jail or whatever.
Randomly flailing about, acting like an online vigilante, is extremely unlikely to be effective.
Just helps me to keep my head in a decent place, and helps to avoid the "putting a fire out with gasoline" thing that happens so often, with online communication.
She sneaked that one in though didn’t she.
At least your organized religions tended to have a nontrivial portion of their teachings about being generally nice to each other.
*Thank you. Apologies for not remembering whom. Excellent read. Eye-opening as someone educated in 90s public schools.
*https://www.amazon.com/Days-Rage-Underground-Forgotten-Revol...
The gluing together of all of these groups under one banner is exactly an attempt to use moral superiority to frame an argument - it removes the ability to actually discuss each case.
The answer, of course, is to stop eating meat because the factory farm industry is morally indefensible. (he said with some trace of irony, "expressing [...] dismay at the vast, cruel machinations of society.")
I understand the use of "every" is hyperbole, but that's not the only way online discussions terminate.
Sometimes they end in rational debate where the conflict is a matter of epistemology rather than morality.
You see this in all social networks where people with no common ground eventually cross each other. It feels like everything (even mundane routine stuff) will eventually reach someone who’s offended by that action alone.
In fact I feel like this is what killed Facebook and people who check Twitter replies admit they always leave the app feeling angry. At least with TikTok and Reels the comments are hidden by default, so you have to make an explicit action to see the angry comments yelling at each other.
Reddit doesn’t seem to have that problem except in the popular subreddits because the smaller communities settle for an opinion and downvote dissidents.
While they're working their employees to the bone, refusing raises, and pocketing all the profits to purchase more real estate and nicer cars, or to bribe people at the private school they send their kids to, they whitewash their actions by pretending they care about feminism, LGBTQ+ people, white privilege, and/or the environment.
The Rural crowd has a different form of virtue signaling but the richest among them are also hypocrites in their own way. Usually via saying they're Christian, going to church, and then doing nothing Christian in their day to day life.
It's hard to differentiate between someone pretending to be morally outraged or offended and someone who genuinely is. If one really likes to get attention, and light "fires" around them, there is no real downside to pretending to be deeply offended or morally outraged. Who is going to prove it wrong? But look at all excitement and fireworks it can cause.