But the Libs account isn’t run by a trained journalist, so why would there be any presumption of truth or fact-checking to their posts? Shouldn’t we be skeptical of everything a random person posts on the internet? I guess to me this is the problem—even someone like Nellie Bowles (who should know better) thinks of the Libs poster as a “journalist.” The site is definitely treated like a news source by some outlets. I feel like journalists are becoming ignorant of what actually constitutes a credible news source — which damages their own credibility (and that of the field).
(I haven’t listened to the podcast yet; I don’t know if they talk about this.)
I'm not sure I get the point of the prank, and then the subsequent reporting of the prank here.
The prank was partially inspired by what Jesse calls the pee pad video, which appears to be fake. So you sent something fake to a platform that has low verification standards, and then they posted it?
The person who runs it fucked up. I think the problem is that, say, teaching third graders about pronouns - that is fucked up. Being upset about it is not a moral panic.
Both conservatives and progressives are Batshit crezy and they are spurting each other on.
The lesson is that if the attorney general of Texas wants to protect kids his staff should ascertain all stories.
Non-political lessons on pronouns aren’t the thing being discussed. Read examples of how gender identity & pronouns are shown in these lessons. If it was all about parts of speech people would applaud the schools.
Here's why "teaching third graders about pronouns" – compelled speech – is evil: "consider this editorial from the LA Times about the Wi Spa affair, in which a “transwoman” (a man, in other words) stripped naked and went into the women’s section of a Korean spa, where many women and young girls were also entirely naked. According to eyewitness accounts, his penis was semi-erect as he lounged on the edge of a hot tub (he’s since been charged with indecent exposure). A woman complained to the reception staff, calling the man a man—which, incredibly, was regarded as a serious infraction.
This editorial doesn’t make a sensible argument, albeit couched in confusing language; it simply makes no sense. That’s clear when you edit it to replace gender-based pronouns by sex-based ones, and have the guts to state the consequences of what you’re advocating for:
“The rights of transgender people to act in accordance with their gender identity is fortunately gaining acceptance in many corners—including at the U.S. Supreme Court, which just last week handed a major victory to transgender students seeking to use the schools bathrooms of their choice,”
becomes:
“The rights of trans-identified people to force everyone else to pretend they are the sex they are not are being imposed by many authorities—including the U.S. Supreme Court, which just last week enabled students of one sex to force themselves into school bathrooms supposedly reserved for students of the other.”
Similarly,
“There is no doubt that Wi Spa did the right thing in defending the right of a transgender customer to be nude in the women’s area, even though the sight of male-appearing genitalia discomfited at least one female customer, who complained at the front desk,”
becomes:
“This paper applauds Wi Spa for siding with a man who committed indecent exposure in front of naked women and girls in a space supposedly reserved for women and girls, even though the sight of a man’s genitalia discomfited at least one of the women who had just been victimised by him.”
During the Satanic Panic people were jailed, some for decades, for implausible, seemingly impossible crimes. Despite years of investigating, the FBI was unable to find any evidence to support notion that a vast network of Satanists were abusing children & sacrificing newborns.
QAnon is an echo of the Satanic Panic, the idea that child trafficking is going on everywhere, that children are being held captive in underground bunkers.
That children are being taught unsubstantiated theories about gender and sexuality, that public schools are hiding pupils' social transitions from their parents, supplying them with clothes from a 'transition closet', that 13 year old children can obtain puberty blockers without parental consent in California--these are things which are happening, which are documented by many legitimate journalists.
LoT re-posts videos, she's curating the stuff, not making it up. Should she have questioned this submission, not posted it? Yes, she shouldn't have.
If my autistic daughter is seduced by the Trans Church cult at school and decides she’s a boy, it’s a violation of federal law for her teacher to tell me about it. Yes, I wish this was right wing propaganda BS.
I posted this on the episode thread but I’m copying it here:
“Also waiting to see how they respond. I’m glad they have help with research, but I signed up to hear J & K. There’s a big difference between what Lindsay & Pluckrose did with Cynical Theories -- showing how utterly captured some academic journals are by their own ideas -- & fooling a lady on Twitter that gives more attention to some foolish teachers seeking attention in TikTok. I think Trace put J & K in a bit of a bind, even though they didn’t know until afterwards, and I wonder if they felt like they had no choice but to react somewhat positively.
As a parent I think it’s kind of easy to take shots at LoTT, but there seems to be a clear intent coming from more people than is comfortable in public education. Parents are seen as an obstacle to be dealt with rather than as partners -- especially how some schools are hiding information about young people’s possible mental health matters when it comes to gender dysphoria - totally different than kids just being LGB bc they may end up on a path to medicalization. Parents seek out info at school board meetings for that and other matters relating to CRT -- and the Biden administration gets them likened to terrorists. I’m a pre-COVID homeschooler so this doesn’t affect me personally, but I can understand why people seek out LoTT when it seems like (some) schools are being opaque.
I was thinking about this after the LoTT episode recently when K was saying it was an opportunity for understanding why people like LoTT... which gave me flashbacks to after Trump was elected and the press was doing the “how could these people support that man” thing for months. It gives the impression that only yokels could possibly have reasons for following LoTT.”
Re: “grooming” I see people going along with redefinition of universal words like “man” and “woman” in the spirit of “language changes!” -- yet seem keen to ignore that the word “groomer,” when you pay attention to context, does not (for most people using it, as far as I can tell) mean “to make a child a potential victim” but to indoctrinate children at a young age to accept these incoherent theories while they’re in the magical thinking stage of development. It may not be about pedophilia but it’s still unethical.
Particularly after the actually true story they talked about teaching 2nd and 3rd graders about things like "two spirit" right before it, is it really that unbelievable that this would be in schools? It literally only takes one activist teacher for this to have been real.
The entire problem here is that satire truly is dead. If I had seen this, I would have believed its was entirely possible. Maybe out of context, but definitely possible.
This really seemed like a pointless detour on the podcast, and pretty off brand. I'm really curious how they would have approached this if the producer of this hoax had been a conservative group trying to foment some shit, and not nominally attached to their brand.
The Democratic Party shouldn’t be basing their policies on a denial of reality. Seriously. Democrat for over twenty years but their detachment from objective truth & the unwillingness to engage the topic in a good faith way, because they’re beholden to the HRC, GLAAD, and the pharmaceutical industry dreaming of profits from lifelong patients-- I’m done.
To be fair, it was clear in the episode that Trace did this on his own, it had nothing to do with this podcast. They interviewed him, but did not have anything to do with planning or implementing the prank and mildly admonished him for it.
I agree that it's pretty odd to consider that account as journalism. While, yes, we should all be skeptical of everything on the internet, I think the point is that a lot of influential people, including institutional journalists are not exercising that skepticism towards content they want to believe is real.
>I feel like journalists are becoming ignorant of what actually constitutes a credible news source — which damages their own credibility (and that of the field).
I don't know what it means to be a "trained journalist", or how that would help here - the names of highly-paid professional reporters who fell for similar cons, or just outright lied to help their preferred faction, are legion.
I guess that’s one of my points … why should a Twitter account run by a (formerly anonymous) real estate agent with conservative views be expected to “fact check” their posts? Because the account is popular? Because it purports to be on a mission to expose actual liberal excesses? Those are good reasons to verify, but I don’t think one can expect them to do this out of some professional or ethical obligation. Doctors, journalists, engineers, etc. have some standards of ethics as professionals … random Twitter accounts do not. Ideally they would, but I don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation (unfortunately).
Because the mainstream press is studiously ignoring the legitimate craziness in public schools. That leaves the Rufos, Ngos, and LoTTs of the world to fill the reporting vacuum.
Then mainstream media complains that the reporting filling the vacuum is irresponsible.
Citation needed. Literally everything I've seen is running interference for public schools, like Michelle Goldberg putting out revisionist history about Randi Weingarten ostensibly fighting to keep schools open when in reality she fought to close them.
The mainstream press talking points on schools is "everything is fine and anyone who says otherwise is a hateful bigot"
Which then leaves a sizable vacuum for Rufo and LoTT to fill
One thing that was really unclear to me from the Podcast, the posts, and Jesse and Katie defending both, is that this was a thing Trace did for his audience and J&K are commenting about it. I thought it was a thing that happened and Barpod decided to promote or that Barpod sponsored the whole thing. The framing is super unclear. It makes Barpod less credible on LOTT especially when considering last week’s show and its unwillingness to discuss Taylor Lorenz. Why is this “internet bullshit” different than any other internet bullshit? It should be criticized just like any other not snickered at and boosted because J&K know the players on one side.
Doesn't having Blocked and Reported associated with a (furry!) hoax weaken Jesse and Katie's credibility as journalists? Sure I sound like a stick in the mud, but I think this is a mistake.
I agree, in all honesty, that given my employment it was a mistake. It was fun, don't get me wrong, but I didn't properly consider the extent to which my association with B&R would change the feel of the prank.
I found this whole thing an annoying exercise. Say what you will about LoTT, she at least makes motions towards acting in good faith, at least to a greater extent than many so-called journalists, and she ain’t one, though I do agree she’s influential.
Also, she didn’t say ban the gays from teaching. She said ban the gays (aka teachers) who have a special coming out day to their students, and I don’t think that’s too outrageous, especially when you consider the vast majority of teachers on TikTok who are posting this insane shit teach elementary school kids or young middle kids. Is it just me or did no one else have teachers growing up (I’m 36) who kept their personal lives outside of the classroom private? I guess I didn’t grow up a narcissist, so I see no reason why I, as a fellow fag, would ever need to come out to my students. I guess I’m old-fashioned.
I’m around your age and teachers would definitely mention their spouses or kids, but usually it didn’t interfere with class time at all. The teacher who spent an entire class period on his coming out, instead of just discussing it for a few minutes and moving on, and then talked about how he did that on a platform that’s basically public, showed a lack a judgment at least.
That’s interesting. Ours were very standoffish, which is kind of ironic because my high school class (if I had graduated) would only have been 37 ppl, so the town was so small we all knew each other’s business anyway. But yeah, they kept their personal life private. We could use more of that I think. :(
If you're concerned with acting in good faith, why are you rephrasing what she said to make it sound less awful? The quote was (IIRC, maybe I have a word wrong but I think this is close): "Any teacher who comes out to their students should be immediately fired". She didn't say "has a special coming out day".
And this specific teacher only confirmed they were gay after a student began the conversation, then (from what he said) let the conversation continue naturally from there. Maybe he should have shut it down quicker and his apparent glee was pretty cringe. Doesn't make what she said any less credibility destroying.
Fair point, I guess. I thought she was referring to a specific video I saw where the teacher came out that day as if anyone gave a fuck, or couldn’t take one look at him and know the dude’s a fag. But I think I know which one you are referring to, and that guy should be fired just for all the political shit. How I miss the king long ago, in the before times, when I didn’t know anything about my teachers. Millennials are the biggest narcissists around, until the Zoomers grow up anyway (but I’m hanging out with a lot of great zoomers every day at college and that actually gives me hope because they’re not terribly awful like I feared they would be before I retired and went back to school). And I would know, I am a millennial.
As a fellow traveler and dabbler in faggotry, I kind of lament how gay everything is now. The least interesting thing about me is my sexuality. Who gives a shit really. But I will need to see more evidence that she wants to ban the gays before I will assume I know everything about her from one tweet.
I blame the schools of ed more than "the narcissistic generation" or anything like that. College kids who want to be teachers come in pretty normal, Schools of Ed then teach them that they should try to use inclusive pedagogies (some of which is harmless, some of which is a naval gazing waste of time), that they have to entertain or pander to their students, that their students are incredibly fragile, and racial/gender identity is the most important thing about anyone.
Some of them with their heads on their shoulders come out OK because they remember that their own experience bears no resemblance to what they are being told about students only a few years younger than them.
Why are schools of ed doing this? It's partly condescension of elites - A savior complex of over educated rich and mostly white teachers who haven't actually taught in a classroom for decades (self selected out, as they couldn't take actually working as teachers). To be fair NOTHING has worked to fix outcomes in the worst and most mismanaged public school districts so I think people educating teachers are sort of fumbling around for anything they can try. Unfortunately I don't think that teaching kids math is racist and literature is going to harm them is going to help kids do better at school.
Another oldie here, Gen X, New Englander - and my teachers weren’t open books like this. There is a generation of teachers that don’t understand how all of this oversharing (straight, too!) is too much. Classes aren’t that long. Get back to work. If test scores have gone up since my childhood than I wouldn’t question this, but they’re not.
I don’t really get why this Twitter lady LOTT has any obligation to verify anything? She’s not claiming to be a journalist is she? I mean it would be NICE if people didn’t retweet stuff they KNOW is false but it would be a full time job to verify everything you retweeted or found on another site. I think it’s an interesting experiment and helpful to teach people not to believe everything they see on the internet but do it to people claiming to be journalists! I don’t care if they’re left or right or preferably do it to BOTH. Putting some pressure on what so-called journalists are tweeting and “publishing” would be worthy of a Furry of your intellect and talent. Pee on them all!!! (or whatever you guys are into ;)
Yeah that’s my question too and the root of my irritation that he kept on after she didn’t just eat it up. I lost interest in the hubbub earlier so I’m glad you said this. :)
But whatever people can do whatever they want I guess, I just find it hilarious they people will aren’t journalists have to act journalismy, and how beautifully ironic it is that in a way, she did act journalismy, by posting fake news :D If that isn’t wonderful I don’t know what else is.
FWIW Trace, I respect you a lot! I thoroughly enjoy your writing (I have shared the anti-work write up a TON, even though that moment has passed) and I think the prank stuff is cool too. The world and the internet is a big place. If it wasn't you, it'd be someone else trolling LOTT or whatever. People want to keep their safe spaces (tm) pristine, but you, Katie, and Jesse are all just humans doing their thing. I know Jesse likes to keep His Brand (and I guess the pod's brand) strong (even though people are still sending him death threats) but it's honestly all water under the bridge. I hope you have an awesome day, Trace.
May 2, 2022·edited May 2, 2022Liked by TracingWoodgrains
I like you, I understand where you’re coming from, but I unequivocally think it was a mistake, and the reporting on it compounded it (although not doing so would have been problematic in another way). I’m guessing you got the message, I don’t want to pile on, but yeah.
I’m not that into pranks/hoaxes generally, it just doesn’t tell us much that a terrible dumb Twitter account is willing to publish made-up stuff, we already knew that.
[eta: if it makes you feel better, I also think that the Twitter trolling/satire that J/K engage in and discussed eg on Wednesday undermines the more interesting reporting that this podcast and they individually do. I just don’t think it’s possible to be a serious reporter and also post straight-faced satire, you have to pick.]
Okay you pranked LOTT. So what? Does this change the fact that she's surfaced countless authentic videos of teachers bragging about indoctrinating young children with gender identity ideology and other woke nonsense? It feels petty. Like she makes your side look bad, so you want to make her look stupid as payback.
Trace wrote rather a lot towards the end of the article explaining that his prank wasn't to "get back at her", and that both sides are easily taken in by unverified outrage bait. Trace even affirms that some of the real stuff that she posts is pretty egregious.
I don’t know that this wasn’t something this audience was already aware of, though. And in any case putting all the time and effort of this prank into something like getting to the bottom of the pee pad* story would have been a much more constructive way to explore the same point, IMO.
Someone who just wants to burn down the country with everyone else inside deserves to be taken down a notch. Good on the wooden furry for doing God's work.
As you’ve been saying to others (up & down this *whole* thread I might add) you haven’t made your case here. To compare The Grey Lady, the paper of record with a *twitter account* is precisely the problem with this entire discourse.
This could have just been a hilarious post without a thoughtful, well-argued analysis; I’m really glad it was both. Thanks for the laugh and the food for thought.
I also didn’t appreciate the prank, but at least this post wasn’t shit, I agree with Sarah, and he shows some intellectual humility and honesty in the way he framed this whole exercise, with the exception of that line about she wants to ban the gays from teaching.
In general I look at LOTT and think of the counterfactual. If a "Qanon of tik tok" blew up I don't think the doxing and pranking would be met with as much nuance. Except for barpodians who are a pretty thoughtful nuanced bunch :)
I'm surprised how much fight LoTT put up before biting. I figured they'd be the sort to fall for it as soon as they saw something ragebait-looking. At the end of the day, they did run a story from an evasive fellow who never quite provided proof with an ass-saving "allegedly" implying their own doubts, so they're not winning any journalism awards. The fact that they published a story they had such doubts about, if anything, reflects worse on them than mere credulity. Yet they still put vastly more effort into it than your average social media rage addict.
I’ll admit I’ve had some biases against furries for a long time. I was honestly really shocked that Katie and Jesse who wanted to publicly associate themselves with an out furry to begin with. But I am trying to keep an open mind and realize that maybe I’m the bigot and fake animal sex isn’t weird in a bad way.
That being said I don’t get the whole idea behind this. I’ve seen other real things on LOTT that are equally strange if not weirder being promoted to young children in schools. I bet I could fool Jesse, Katie and Trace about something fake if I really wanted to…. What’s the point?
I made the mistake of trying to explain the episode to my normie husband who has no time to follow this shit. Realized my mistake immediately after I had to explain the little I knew about furries.
Jesse says, in this episode: "The argument I'm going to make in my piece is that at root this shows deep contempt for readers. The idea that because readers see a photo of Chris Rufo that doesn't have like a swastika scrawled all over it, they're going to be like, oo, Rufo's a good guy."
I agree with Jesse, but he does not go far enough. What really shows deep contempt for readers is when the journalist writes the entire piece (or does his/her entire job) from the perspective that there are "good" ideas and "bad" ideas, and the journalist alone knows which are which, and the journalist must "frame' the story to make sure that the reader 'gets it.' That is the true deep contempt, and we see it every day.
The tell should have been that any kid's homework FOLDER could look that pristine by April.
In all seriousness, I appreciate Trace's pointing out that hoaxes can dupe people of multiple ideological persuasions. As someone who's taught college composition classes in which I show students how to distinguish between good and bad sources, I've frequently been dismayed to see fellow composition teachers--mostly of a lefty political stripe--share obviously false stories that just happen to confirm their lefty beliefs. I think, in theory, those of us who teach students how to evaluate sources should do better than the average reader/viewer in the task of evaluation. Too often, we don't.
The pen scribbles were a really nice touch though. Two "is this pen working?"s, a "what colour is this highlighter?" and some bleed-throughs. Expertly done.
The fact that the response by LOTT, her accusers, her defenders, and online Super Sleuths was to engage in massive rationalizations in the direction of their pre-existing beliefs and desires tells us something much more interesting than the mere fact that LOTT fell for a con.
This tendency towards confirmation bias is just a general trait of how most human beings consume their information. Given that the Internet - and modern communications, generally - do not give us information in a way that accounts for this tendency, is it any surprise that everyone is freaking out about "disinformation" and "gaslighting"? It's not unlike being surprised that a three-toed tree sloth left in the middle of the Serengeti isn't doing so well - the environment and its capabilities are not matched. Fortunately, we're not like the sloths - we design and manipulate our environments to suit ourselves, so we don't have to just wait and hope to evolve faster reaction times and better land-based gaits than a crawl.
Trace, this is great. James Lindsay did excellent work by exposing how the poor review process for papers that align with prevailing values, so it's extremely disappointing that he has fallen captive to the same impulses he decried.
Some people on the internet get their kicks out of making up stuff, or badly representing stuff about groups they don't like, then post it as if this insane stuff is truly representative of that group. Similarly, Poe's law states that without a clear understanding of the author's intent, it's impossible to discern parody of extreme view from those who sincerely believe them.
Basically, there's a whole lot of BS on the internet, and a lot of people working to create parodies of their opponents. If something is so absurd and stupid that it makes you angry, it's a good bet that it's either fake, or not widely representative. (Though, of course, some real, insane, stuff, is widely believed).
How to you deal with this confusing morass of idiocy? You can unplug from the hate machine any time you want. If you can't do that entirely, try finding good journalists, including some that you don't usually agree with, but still practice good ethics.
Everyone is a dog on the internet (except Trace and the user, 37 cats in a trenchcoat)
And Nellie Bowles re the Google docs Big language Bro – neither Nellie nor Katie thought to mention how insane it is to suggest to not use the word "mother" because it "isn't 'inclusive' to all readers". WTF? Neither is "father"; does that come w/warning? I'll never be "black" or "hispanic" or "wealthy" or a "brother" or "uncle" for that matter, because I DON'T HAVE A PENIS (and won't grow one, even if I say I'm a MAN). Where do you draw the line at "inclusivity" warnings? Obviously AFTER caving in to all demands made by vagina-less lunatics, that's apparently where we draw the line. And "professional" journalists seem to be just fine with that.
“As the parent of a trans nonbinary child, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion I know the answer — though it’s no more heartening than it is sustainable. It revolves around the cis-heteronormative model, which exists at the intersection of colonialism, misogyny and white supremacy.”
She said her kid “came out” as trans non-binary at age 6. Kids that are old enough to believe in Santa have no idea what trans non-binary is, and most adults trying to explain it, when pressed, sound like they don’t either.
Also holding specific rage on this piece because the mom says the laws pushing back on the gender free-for-all going on are a “genocide.” When actual people are being killed in Ukraine because of their nationality.
It's disappointing that you guys think there's a net positive here. These screenshots will be shared for years, with no fact-checking. But I do appreciate the reflection and humility in this piece.
Interesting, but let's be honest, both the online Right and the online Left are eager to post anything that confirms their beliefs. Remember the clearly ludicrous story that gunshot victims in Oklahoma weren't being treated because of ivermectin overdoses? Rachel Maddow had that tweet up for weeks (maybe she still does). All the RussiaGate stories? My point being, this would be really easy to do to the online Right or the online Left.
But the Libs account isn’t run by a trained journalist, so why would there be any presumption of truth or fact-checking to their posts? Shouldn’t we be skeptical of everything a random person posts on the internet? I guess to me this is the problem—even someone like Nellie Bowles (who should know better) thinks of the Libs poster as a “journalist.” The site is definitely treated like a news source by some outlets. I feel like journalists are becoming ignorant of what actually constitutes a credible news source — which damages their own credibility (and that of the field).
(I haven’t listened to the podcast yet; I don’t know if they talk about this.)
I'm not sure I get the point of the prank, and then the subsequent reporting of the prank here.
The prank was partially inspired by what Jesse calls the pee pad video, which appears to be fake. So you sent something fake to a platform that has low verification standards, and then they posted it?
I was thinking the same thing. But also. This was ridiculous and clearly fake. And yet there are stories that are equally ridiculous but are real.
The person who runs it fucked up. I think the problem is that, say, teaching third graders about pronouns - that is fucked up. Being upset about it is not a moral panic.
Both conservatives and progressives are Batshit crezy and they are spurting each other on.
The lesson is that if the attorney general of Texas wants to protect kids his staff should ascertain all stories.
Non-political lessons on pronouns aren’t the thing being discussed. Read examples of how gender identity & pronouns are shown in these lessons. If it was all about parts of speech people would applaud the schools.
Here's why "teaching third graders about pronouns" – compelled speech – is evil: "consider this editorial from the LA Times about the Wi Spa affair, in which a “transwoman” (a man, in other words) stripped naked and went into the women’s section of a Korean spa, where many women and young girls were also entirely naked. According to eyewitness accounts, his penis was semi-erect as he lounged on the edge of a hot tub (he’s since been charged with indecent exposure). A woman complained to the reception staff, calling the man a man—which, incredibly, was regarded as a serious infraction.
This editorial doesn’t make a sensible argument, albeit couched in confusing language; it simply makes no sense. That’s clear when you edit it to replace gender-based pronouns by sex-based ones, and have the guts to state the consequences of what you’re advocating for:
“The rights of transgender people to act in accordance with their gender identity is fortunately gaining acceptance in many corners—including at the U.S. Supreme Court, which just last week handed a major victory to transgender students seeking to use the schools bathrooms of their choice,”
becomes:
“The rights of trans-identified people to force everyone else to pretend they are the sex they are not are being imposed by many authorities—including the U.S. Supreme Court, which just last week enabled students of one sex to force themselves into school bathrooms supposedly reserved for students of the other.”
Similarly,
“There is no doubt that Wi Spa did the right thing in defending the right of a transgender customer to be nude in the women’s area, even though the sight of male-appearing genitalia discomfited at least one female customer, who complained at the front desk,”
becomes:
“This paper applauds Wi Spa for siding with a man who committed indecent exposure in front of naked women and girls in a space supposedly reserved for women and girls, even though the sight of a man’s genitalia discomfited at least one of the women who had just been victimised by him.”
https://www.thehelenjoyce.com/joyce-activated-issue-3/
During the Satanic Panic people were jailed, some for decades, for implausible, seemingly impossible crimes. Despite years of investigating, the FBI was unable to find any evidence to support notion that a vast network of Satanists were abusing children & sacrificing newborns.
QAnon is an echo of the Satanic Panic, the idea that child trafficking is going on everywhere, that children are being held captive in underground bunkers.
That children are being taught unsubstantiated theories about gender and sexuality, that public schools are hiding pupils' social transitions from their parents, supplying them with clothes from a 'transition closet', that 13 year old children can obtain puberty blockers without parental consent in California--these are things which are happening, which are documented by many legitimate journalists.
LoT re-posts videos, she's curating the stuff, not making it up. Should she have questioned this submission, not posted it? Yes, she shouldn't have.
If my autistic daughter is seduced by the Trans Church cult at school and decides she’s a boy, it’s a violation of federal law for her teacher to tell me about it. Yes, I wish this was right wing propaganda BS.
“Revealing a student’s transgender status to…PARENTS…may violate the federal educational privacy law…unless the student has given them permission to share it.” https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/ED-DCL-Fact-Sheet.pdf
I posted this on the episode thread but I’m copying it here:
“Also waiting to see how they respond. I’m glad they have help with research, but I signed up to hear J & K. There’s a big difference between what Lindsay & Pluckrose did with Cynical Theories -- showing how utterly captured some academic journals are by their own ideas -- & fooling a lady on Twitter that gives more attention to some foolish teachers seeking attention in TikTok. I think Trace put J & K in a bit of a bind, even though they didn’t know until afterwards, and I wonder if they felt like they had no choice but to react somewhat positively.
As a parent I think it’s kind of easy to take shots at LoTT, but there seems to be a clear intent coming from more people than is comfortable in public education. Parents are seen as an obstacle to be dealt with rather than as partners -- especially how some schools are hiding information about young people’s possible mental health matters when it comes to gender dysphoria - totally different than kids just being LGB bc they may end up on a path to medicalization. Parents seek out info at school board meetings for that and other matters relating to CRT -- and the Biden administration gets them likened to terrorists. I’m a pre-COVID homeschooler so this doesn’t affect me personally, but I can understand why people seek out LoTT when it seems like (some) schools are being opaque.
I was thinking about this after the LoTT episode recently when K was saying it was an opportunity for understanding why people like LoTT... which gave me flashbacks to after Trump was elected and the press was doing the “how could these people support that man” thing for months. It gives the impression that only yokels could possibly have reasons for following LoTT.”
Re: “grooming” I see people going along with redefinition of universal words like “man” and “woman” in the spirit of “language changes!” -- yet seem keen to ignore that the word “groomer,” when you pay attention to context, does not (for most people using it, as far as I can tell) mean “to make a child a potential victim” but to indoctrinate children at a young age to accept these incoherent theories while they’re in the magical thinking stage of development. It may not be about pedophilia but it’s still unethical.
Particularly after the actually true story they talked about teaching 2nd and 3rd graders about things like "two spirit" right before it, is it really that unbelievable that this would be in schools? It literally only takes one activist teacher for this to have been real.
The entire problem here is that satire truly is dead. If I had seen this, I would have believed its was entirely possible. Maybe out of context, but definitely possible.
This really seemed like a pointless detour on the podcast, and pretty off brand. I'm really curious how they would have approached this if the producer of this hoax had been a conservative group trying to foment some shit, and not nominally attached to their brand.
The Democratic Party shouldn’t be basing their policies on a denial of reality. Seriously. Democrat for over twenty years but their detachment from objective truth & the unwillingness to engage the topic in a good faith way, because they’re beholden to the HRC, GLAAD, and the pharmaceutical industry dreaming of profits from lifelong patients-- I’m done.
Specifically, they have called BARpod an “internet bullshit” podcast. This episode is perfectly in line with that description.
Except they are *contributing* to the bullshit with this stunt.
To be fair, it was clear in the episode that Trace did this on his own, it had nothing to do with this podcast. They interviewed him, but did not have anything to do with planning or implementing the prank and mildly admonished him for it.
Yes, but they come at it with experience as journalists. Is Trace trained in journalism, or just extremely online?
My thoughts exactly.
I agree that it's pretty odd to consider that account as journalism. While, yes, we should all be skeptical of everything on the internet, I think the point is that a lot of influential people, including institutional journalists are not exercising that skepticism towards content they want to believe is real.
>I feel like journalists are becoming ignorant of what actually constitutes a credible news source — which damages their own credibility (and that of the field).
You can shout that from the mountain top.
I don't know what it means to be a "trained journalist", or how that would help here - the names of highly-paid professional reporters who fell for similar cons, or just outright lied to help their preferred faction, are legion.
I guess that’s one of my points … why should a Twitter account run by a (formerly anonymous) real estate agent with conservative views be expected to “fact check” their posts? Because the account is popular? Because it purports to be on a mission to expose actual liberal excesses? Those are good reasons to verify, but I don’t think one can expect them to do this out of some professional or ethical obligation. Doctors, journalists, engineers, etc. have some standards of ethics as professionals … random Twitter accounts do not. Ideally they would, but I don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation (unfortunately).
Both.
Because the mainstream press is studiously ignoring the legitimate craziness in public schools. That leaves the Rufos, Ngos, and LoTTs of the world to fill the reporting vacuum.
Then mainstream media complains that the reporting filling the vacuum is irresponsible.
Same overall trend as BARPod has discussed here https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/pl3st2/patronsonly_episode_how_andy_ngo_literally/
Exactly. Step up to the plate and cover the issues without bias, and people won’t feel they need Rufo, NGO, or LoTT.
Citation needed. Literally everything I've seen is running interference for public schools, like Michelle Goldberg putting out revisionist history about Randi Weingarten ostensibly fighting to keep schools open when in reality she fought to close them.
The mainstream press talking points on schools is "everything is fine and anyone who says otherwise is a hateful bigot"
Which then leaves a sizable vacuum for Rufo and LoTT to fill
This particular case was mostly about LoTT but if you read the whole article there's a lot of gullibility out there.
So now instead of funding the interesting, thoughtful "deep dives" that Katie and Jesse do we're funding.... pranks? K.
One thing that was really unclear to me from the Podcast, the posts, and Jesse and Katie defending both, is that this was a thing Trace did for his audience and J&K are commenting about it. I thought it was a thing that happened and Barpod decided to promote or that Barpod sponsored the whole thing. The framing is super unclear. It makes Barpod less credible on LOTT especially when considering last week’s show and its unwillingness to discuss Taylor Lorenz. Why is this “internet bullshit” different than any other internet bullshit? It should be criticized just like any other not snickered at and boosted because J&K know the players on one side.
Doesn't having Blocked and Reported associated with a (furry!) hoax weaken Jesse and Katie's credibility as journalists? Sure I sound like a stick in the mud, but I think this is a mistake.
I agree, in all honesty, that given my employment it was a mistake. It was fun, don't get me wrong, but I didn't properly consider the extent to which my association with B&R would change the feel of the prank.
I found this whole thing an annoying exercise. Say what you will about LoTT, she at least makes motions towards acting in good faith, at least to a greater extent than many so-called journalists, and she ain’t one, though I do agree she’s influential.
Also, she didn’t say ban the gays from teaching. She said ban the gays (aka teachers) who have a special coming out day to their students, and I don’t think that’s too outrageous, especially when you consider the vast majority of teachers on TikTok who are posting this insane shit teach elementary school kids or young middle kids. Is it just me or did no one else have teachers growing up (I’m 36) who kept their personal lives outside of the classroom private? I guess I didn’t grow up a narcissist, so I see no reason why I, as a fellow fag, would ever need to come out to my students. I guess I’m old-fashioned.
I’m around your age and teachers would definitely mention their spouses or kids, but usually it didn’t interfere with class time at all. The teacher who spent an entire class period on his coming out, instead of just discussing it for a few minutes and moving on, and then talked about how he did that on a platform that’s basically public, showed a lack a judgment at least.
That’s interesting. Ours were very standoffish, which is kind of ironic because my high school class (if I had graduated) would only have been 37 ppl, so the town was so small we all knew each other’s business anyway. But yeah, they kept their personal life private. We could use more of that I think. :(
Mine were standoffish, too.
I knew nothing about any of my teachers personal lives. I’m with you, it’s narcissism.
If you're concerned with acting in good faith, why are you rephrasing what she said to make it sound less awful? The quote was (IIRC, maybe I have a word wrong but I think this is close): "Any teacher who comes out to their students should be immediately fired". She didn't say "has a special coming out day".
And this specific teacher only confirmed they were gay after a student began the conversation, then (from what he said) let the conversation continue naturally from there. Maybe he should have shut it down quicker and his apparent glee was pretty cringe. Doesn't make what she said any less credibility destroying.
Fair point, I guess. I thought she was referring to a specific video I saw where the teacher came out that day as if anyone gave a fuck, or couldn’t take one look at him and know the dude’s a fag. But I think I know which one you are referring to, and that guy should be fired just for all the political shit. How I miss the king long ago, in the before times, when I didn’t know anything about my teachers. Millennials are the biggest narcissists around, until the Zoomers grow up anyway (but I’m hanging out with a lot of great zoomers every day at college and that actually gives me hope because they’re not terribly awful like I feared they would be before I retired and went back to school). And I would know, I am a millennial.
As a fellow traveler and dabbler in faggotry, I kind of lament how gay everything is now. The least interesting thing about me is my sexuality. Who gives a shit really. But I will need to see more evidence that she wants to ban the gays before I will assume I know everything about her from one tweet.
I blame the schools of ed more than "the narcissistic generation" or anything like that. College kids who want to be teachers come in pretty normal, Schools of Ed then teach them that they should try to use inclusive pedagogies (some of which is harmless, some of which is a naval gazing waste of time), that they have to entertain or pander to their students, that their students are incredibly fragile, and racial/gender identity is the most important thing about anyone.
Some of them with their heads on their shoulders come out OK because they remember that their own experience bears no resemblance to what they are being told about students only a few years younger than them.
Why are schools of ed doing this? It's partly condescension of elites - A savior complex of over educated rich and mostly white teachers who haven't actually taught in a classroom for decades (self selected out, as they couldn't take actually working as teachers). To be fair NOTHING has worked to fix outcomes in the worst and most mismanaged public school districts so I think people educating teachers are sort of fumbling around for anything they can try. Unfortunately I don't think that teaching kids math is racist and literature is going to harm them is going to help kids do better at school.
Another oldie here, Gen X, New Englander - and my teachers weren’t open books like this. There is a generation of teachers that don’t understand how all of this oversharing (straight, too!) is too much. Classes aren’t that long. Get back to work. If test scores have gone up since my childhood than I wouldn’t question this, but they’re not.
This is extremely bad faith take. It utterly ignores what she's doing. It utterly undercuts what journalists do.
Just admit you're a conservative.
I don’t really get why this Twitter lady LOTT has any obligation to verify anything? She’s not claiming to be a journalist is she? I mean it would be NICE if people didn’t retweet stuff they KNOW is false but it would be a full time job to verify everything you retweeted or found on another site. I think it’s an interesting experiment and helpful to teach people not to believe everything they see on the internet but do it to people claiming to be journalists! I don’t care if they’re left or right or preferably do it to BOTH. Putting some pressure on what so-called journalists are tweeting and “publishing” would be worthy of a Furry of your intellect and talent. Pee on them all!!! (or whatever you guys are into ;)
Yeah that’s my question too and the root of my irritation that he kept on after she didn’t just eat it up. I lost interest in the hubbub earlier so I’m glad you said this. :)
But whatever people can do whatever they want I guess, I just find it hilarious they people will aren’t journalists have to act journalismy, and how beautifully ironic it is that in a way, she did act journalismy, by posting fake news :D If that isn’t wonderful I don’t know what else is.
Now that you mention it you’re right, it’s the perfect circle of silly journalism not journalism crap fake news!
FWIW Trace, I respect you a lot! I thoroughly enjoy your writing (I have shared the anti-work write up a TON, even though that moment has passed) and I think the prank stuff is cool too. The world and the internet is a big place. If it wasn't you, it'd be someone else trolling LOTT or whatever. People want to keep their safe spaces (tm) pristine, but you, Katie, and Jesse are all just humans doing their thing. I know Jesse likes to keep His Brand (and I guess the pod's brand) strong (even though people are still sending him death threats) but it's honestly all water under the bridge. I hope you have an awesome day, Trace.
I like you, I understand where you’re coming from, but I unequivocally think it was a mistake, and the reporting on it compounded it (although not doing so would have been problematic in another way). I’m guessing you got the message, I don’t want to pile on, but yeah.
I’m not that into pranks/hoaxes generally, it just doesn’t tell us much that a terrible dumb Twitter account is willing to publish made-up stuff, we already knew that.
[eta: if it makes you feel better, I also think that the Twitter trolling/satire that J/K engage in and discussed eg on Wednesday undermines the more interesting reporting that this podcast and they individually do. I just don’t think it’s possible to be a serious reporter and also post straight-faced satire, you have to pick.]
Okay you pranked LOTT. So what? Does this change the fact that she's surfaced countless authentic videos of teachers bragging about indoctrinating young children with gender identity ideology and other woke nonsense? It feels petty. Like she makes your side look bad, so you want to make her look stupid as payback.
Trace wrote rather a lot towards the end of the article explaining that his prank wasn't to "get back at her", and that both sides are easily taken in by unverified outrage bait. Trace even affirms that some of the real stuff that she posts is pretty egregious.
I don’t know that this wasn’t something this audience was already aware of, though. And in any case putting all the time and effort of this prank into something like getting to the bottom of the pee pad* story would have been a much more constructive way to explore the same point, IMO.
*any and all puns intended
Someone who just wants to burn down the country with everyone else inside deserves to be taken down a notch. Good on the wooden furry for doing God's work.
As you’ve been saying to others (up & down this *whole* thread I might add) you haven’t made your case here. To compare The Grey Lady, the paper of record with a *twitter account* is precisely the problem with this entire discourse.
This could have just been a hilarious post without a thoughtful, well-argued analysis; I’m really glad it was both. Thanks for the laugh and the food for thought.
I'm not sure I really appreciated the prank. But then I didn't appreciate the similar prank for abortion bounty hunters a few months back.
However, the thoughtful conversation towards the end partially saved it for me and Traces humility on regretting the Austin bit.
I also didn’t appreciate the prank, but at least this post wasn’t shit, I agree with Sarah, and he shows some intellectual humility and honesty in the way he framed this whole exercise, with the exception of that line about she wants to ban the gays from teaching.
In general I look at LOTT and think of the counterfactual. If a "Qanon of tik tok" blew up I don't think the doxing and pranking would be met with as much nuance. Except for barpodians who are a pretty thoughtful nuanced bunch :)
100% agree!
I'm surprised how much fight LoTT put up before biting. I figured they'd be the sort to fall for it as soon as they saw something ragebait-looking. At the end of the day, they did run a story from an evasive fellow who never quite provided proof with an ass-saving "allegedly" implying their own doubts, so they're not winning any journalism awards. The fact that they published a story they had such doubts about, if anything, reflects worse on them than mere credulity. Yet they still put vastly more effort into it than your average social media rage addict.
Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by the attempts at verification also.
I’ll admit I’ve had some biases against furries for a long time. I was honestly really shocked that Katie and Jesse who wanted to publicly associate themselves with an out furry to begin with. But I am trying to keep an open mind and realize that maybe I’m the bigot and fake animal sex isn’t weird in a bad way.
That being said I don’t get the whole idea behind this. I’ve seen other real things on LOTT that are equally strange if not weirder being promoted to young children in schools. I bet I could fool Jesse, Katie and Trace about something fake if I really wanted to…. What’s the point?
I made the mistake of trying to explain the episode to my normie husband who has no time to follow this shit. Realized my mistake immediately after I had to explain the little I knew about furries.
The quizzical look on his face told me I’d taken him a bit too far into the world of internet bullshit.
I introduced my new fairly offline boyfriend to BARPod recently. Navigating this episode will be a big step in our relationship.
I’d hold off on the one about realistic infant dolls.
Jesse says, in this episode: "The argument I'm going to make in my piece is that at root this shows deep contempt for readers. The idea that because readers see a photo of Chris Rufo that doesn't have like a swastika scrawled all over it, they're going to be like, oo, Rufo's a good guy."
I agree with Jesse, but he does not go far enough. What really shows deep contempt for readers is when the journalist writes the entire piece (or does his/her entire job) from the perspective that there are "good" ideas and "bad" ideas, and the journalist alone knows which are which, and the journalist must "frame' the story to make sure that the reader 'gets it.' That is the true deep contempt, and we see it every day.
I thought this was where he was going when he started, but then he landed that there should be a show don't tell approach.
The tell should have been that any kid's homework FOLDER could look that pristine by April.
In all seriousness, I appreciate Trace's pointing out that hoaxes can dupe people of multiple ideological persuasions. As someone who's taught college composition classes in which I show students how to distinguish between good and bad sources, I've frequently been dismayed to see fellow composition teachers--mostly of a lefty political stripe--share obviously false stories that just happen to confirm their lefty beliefs. I think, in theory, those of us who teach students how to evaluate sources should do better than the average reader/viewer in the task of evaluation. Too often, we don't.
The pen scribbles were a really nice touch though. Two "is this pen working?"s, a "what colour is this highlighter?" and some bleed-throughs. Expertly done.
Yeah, a work of internet art. The papers themselves looked ALmost as bad as the ones I find in my kids' backpacks.
The fact that the response by LOTT, her accusers, her defenders, and online Super Sleuths was to engage in massive rationalizations in the direction of their pre-existing beliefs and desires tells us something much more interesting than the mere fact that LOTT fell for a con.
This tendency towards confirmation bias is just a general trait of how most human beings consume their information. Given that the Internet - and modern communications, generally - do not give us information in a way that accounts for this tendency, is it any surprise that everyone is freaking out about "disinformation" and "gaslighting"? It's not unlike being surprised that a three-toed tree sloth left in the middle of the Serengeti isn't doing so well - the environment and its capabilities are not matched. Fortunately, we're not like the sloths - we design and manipulate our environments to suit ourselves, so we don't have to just wait and hope to evolve faster reaction times and better land-based gaits than a crawl.
Internally, LoTT was clearly suspicious enough to probe for verification.
Not quite "too good to check" but at least "too good to not publish after the checks were inconclusive."
"Benefit of the doubt goes to the tipster", "friendliness = honesty", or some similar subconscious heuristic, probably.
>Marcie Bussey, Pisa Schill, Ardrahama.
The best parts of this story got censored.
I think it’s juvenile but I’ve been a wet blanket since I was a kid so 🤷🏻♀️
Wet blankets exist and our stories are valid.
That's some real inside baseball for this crowd
This post is fake, it doesn't mispronounce anyone's name
Trace, this is great. James Lindsay did excellent work by exposing how the poor review process for papers that align with prevailing values, so it's extremely disappointing that he has fallen captive to the same impulses he decried.
Some people on the internet get their kicks out of making up stuff, or badly representing stuff about groups they don't like, then post it as if this insane stuff is truly representative of that group. Similarly, Poe's law states that without a clear understanding of the author's intent, it's impossible to discern parody of extreme view from those who sincerely believe them.
Basically, there's a whole lot of BS on the internet, and a lot of people working to create parodies of their opponents. If something is so absurd and stupid that it makes you angry, it's a good bet that it's either fake, or not widely representative. (Though, of course, some real, insane, stuff, is widely believed).
How to you deal with this confusing morass of idiocy? You can unplug from the hate machine any time you want. If you can't do that entirely, try finding good journalists, including some that you don't usually agree with, but still practice good ethics.
Everyone is a dog on the internet (except Trace and the user, 37 cats in a trenchcoat)
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/on-the-internet-nobody-knows-youre-a-dog
Foiled again!
While the "Paper of Record" publishes op-eds with headlines like this:
"Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Will Hurt Teens Like Me"
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/12/opinion/florida-dont-say-gay-bill.html
And Nellie Bowles re the Google docs Big language Bro – neither Nellie nor Katie thought to mention how insane it is to suggest to not use the word "mother" because it "isn't 'inclusive' to all readers". WTF? Neither is "father"; does that come w/warning? I'll never be "black" or "hispanic" or "wealthy" or a "brother" or "uncle" for that matter, because I DON'T HAVE A PENIS (and won't grow one, even if I say I'm a MAN). Where do you draw the line at "inclusivity" warnings? Obviously AFTER caving in to all demands made by vagina-less lunatics, that's apparently where we draw the line. And "professional" journalists seem to be just fine with that.
Or WaPo publishing this word salad:
“As the parent of a trans nonbinary child, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion I know the answer — though it’s no more heartening than it is sustainable. It revolves around the cis-heteronormative model, which exists at the intersection of colonialism, misogyny and white supremacy.”
She said her kid “came out” as trans non-binary at age 6. Kids that are old enough to believe in Santa have no idea what trans non-binary is, and most adults trying to explain it, when pressed, sound like they don’t either.
Also holding specific rage on this piece because the mom says the laws pushing back on the gender free-for-all going on are a “genocide.” When actual people are being killed in Ukraine because of their nationality.
https://archive.ph/8AziD
Good read on the harms of using unsexed language to mothers and infants recently published:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgwh.2022.818856/full
It's disappointing that you guys think there's a net positive here. These screenshots will be shared for years, with no fact-checking. But I do appreciate the reflection and humility in this piece.
Interesting, but let's be honest, both the online Right and the online Left are eager to post anything that confirms their beliefs. Remember the clearly ludicrous story that gunshot victims in Oklahoma weren't being treated because of ivermectin overdoses? Rachel Maddow had that tweet up for weeks (maybe she still does). All the RussiaGate stories? My point being, this would be really easy to do to the online Right or the online Left.