This is going to start a bit navel-gaze-y, or least centered on the internet, which automatically makes it less relevant to real life. But I promise, I do have a larger point.
Over the weekend, a kerfuffle (still the greatest word in the English language) blew up on Bluesky, once of the replacement Twitters. The CEO of the firm behind both the application and the open protocol it runs upon posted an anodyne plea to bring the temperature down and they she wanted to create a social media site where that was possible. I user then asked her about banning a notorious anti-trans troll. And the CEO lost her mind.
She and the people who follow and work for her spent the weekend creating a waffles based attack on anyone who would question her response. A bit of internet lore — the waffles attack is a bad faith attempt to equate disagreement with the direction of the platform with the meme that people are jsut arguing about something that is not real. In the parlance of the original meme, someone says they like pancakes for breakfast and get attacked form hating waffles. And I cannot believe I just explained a meme. Regardless of my old man-hood, the CEO is making an obviously false comparison. In a discussion about how to make a social media site that is more welcoming, a conversation about banning bad faith actors or people who attack the existence of groups of people is perfectly on point. But what really strikes me is how childishly the CEO reacted.
The CEO created a meme designed to, in effect, lie about what was being discussed, personally attacked users of her platform, and apparently encouraged the spread of the meme. She acted like a child whose feelings had been hurt, rather than the CEO of a firm. She could have handled this like an adult. She could have said “I understand your point, but disagree for X reasons and we are not going to change.” It is unpleasant to be attacked online, but she did not have to lash out like a spoiled brat. She could have used her own site’s excellent blocking tools and never heard from those posters again. She could have tried to turn the temperature down instead of turning it up. But that would have required acting like an adult, something we don’t seem to do very much anymore.
Elon Musk called a man, an expert in the field under discussion, who disagreed about the effectiveness of his plan to rescue trapped children a pedophile. The Trump administration’s entire communication’s strategy is “owning” the libs for social media clout. Mark Zuckerberg is cos-playing a “real man” in public. Many of the venture capitalists who drive tech dollars treat any deviance from their vision with a temper tantrum. We have lost the ability, it seems, to model adulthood. Too many people in positions of power and responsibility act as if they have no responsibility to their employees, users, and fellow citizens to behave in a decent, responsible matter. And it shows in their behavior, and the grasping, destructive nature of their actions.
Most people know that there are times and places for certain behaviors. I am a much more irreverent person in my daily life than I am at work, for example. My job is to help people get the work done and I cannot do that if they are uncomfortable around me. No one would bring the problems, no one would trust me with the truth if they thought I didn’t respect them or if I blew up at the slightest issues. I owe them that level of maturity.
We used to, as a society, agree upon and understand this mutual responsibility. Yes, like all responsibilities, it could be abused and used to oppress. But the response to that is to work through the boundaries of the responsibility and make sure they are not being used that way. It is not to give up on the entire concept of mutual responsibility at the heart of adulthood.
You cannot be a good person if you refuse to admit to the responsibilities your position entails. And we cannot have a decent society if too many people act as if the role of society is to flatter their egos, not matter how they behave. We deserve better than to be ruled by people who have never escaped the curse of their teenage years.
Thanks for explaining what went down on Bluesky. I only became aware of the conflict after it was already well advanced, didn't understand the "waffles" part, and could only make out that by then it was a four-alarm piefight. :-) How discouraging.