How Politics Tested Ravelry and the Crafting Community
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
> Cassidy has noticed a growing dynamic. “The knitting community has a big issue with people being very concerned that, if they don’t support a callout, they’ll be called out themselves,” she told me. “Not joining it seems scary to people.”
I really have to say, I think this is a bad article. Not because it is badly written, or because it is factually wrong. But because an unfamiliar reader would get the wrong impression about what is really going on.
Ravelry and the knitting community do have a big problem. But it is not primarily with political polarization per se. It's the community-oriented mindset that does not work at scale.
The knitting community is experiencing what we all will experience wherever this mindset becomes dominant: homogenization and the enforcement of conformity. We need distance and live-and-let-live in society. It's not a family.
In game theory the 'punish those that do not actively join in punishing outsiders' is a requirement for group stability, and it has been a staple tactic in every totalitarian regime.
Get rid of social media. Problem solved. It's putting too many people in proximity who otherwise should and would not be. The end result is always an angry mob.
What's in the news will be the topic of conversation in your community, but it does not lead thought in your community. It does not identify with anyone there.
Social media has replaced the community itself. It dictates who you speak to and how.
It is among the most insidious weapons that we've invented yet and it's aimed almost exclusively at civilians.
One of my overarching questions as I read was really, "How is it that people come to support these events?" The initial conditions seem to require the right mix of organization, discord, and chaos.
The notion that the question is one of scaling is interesting. It isn't the internet that drives the emergence of large-scale call-outs -- humans have been doing this throughout history. The scaling argument offers a possible framework, i.e., is there a critical scale at which a call-out becomes systemically harmful?
Even in technology focused circles I think you'd get the wrong impression about an entire industry if you just read social media.
I don't know how people get a good litmus test for what a community is up to but conflict breeds lots of activity, you're bound to see a lot of it if enough people participate... but it's hard to really understand what a 'community' is up to beyond that.
However, I want to ask how do we handle things that will always be viewed as political, such as trans or gay people? There is no non-political way to refer to a trans person- either you use a trans persons pronouns or you don't. And if you do either, you're making a political announcement in a group.
I'd say that if someone pointedly uses non-preferred pronouns, they're being a jerk and they're the one bringing politics into the space. But most of what we're seeing here is not that scenario.
If they happen to be trans, at least half of them?
"Live and let live" doesn't work when we have people trying to deprive us of rights, either with their vote or by doing things like traveling across the country to attack the federal capitol.
"Right to Travel", as in the right to move and relocate between states, is a well-established legal doctrine. Go live where it suits you. Don't force other people to live how it suits you.
> Don't force other people to live how it suits you.
That's exactly what I'm advocating for. "Live and let live" is something that has to actively be enforced.
For example: I live in Georgia and voted by mail. There are people in other states who are trying to pass federal laws that make it harder for me to vote by mail.
Another example: there are people trying to take away women's rights to reproductive care (and I'm talking about contraceptives too, not just abortion).
"Live and let live" implies a passive state, but it's actually a very active state. The constant and vigorous legal activity of the ACLU is proof of that.
Yes, obviously there are a minority of people in Oklahoma that are stifled by living there. That doesn't mean the solution to that problem is changing their laws. Orders of magnitude more money are spent to change those laws than is spent to simply help people relocate who could otherwise not afford it.
Instead of offering charity to solve a problem you're offering force (and a tyranny of the minority).
As far as mail in voting in your state goes, states have pretty much always set their own election rules. What's actually happening right now is the opposite of what you claim. The Federal government right now is trying to institute universal mail in voting and removing States' ability to set their own election laws.
To do the other things that you're talking about takes 38 out of 50 states to agree. It's a pretty high bar -- such that it's crossed fairly infrequently. And if it does so that might just be what's best for the country as a whole.
I live in New York and am fairly liberal, but this idea that we're going to make the whole country govern the same way is fucking batshit.
I have faith that at some point we'll shake off grifters and demagogues from politics and media and collectively come together and say "no more". Sames goes for social media. There is a growing concensus around the toxicity of these things and people walking away from it. Have hope.
> If it was still a [federal system] people across the country would have little effect on you since a weak federal government would be ineffective in enforcing their mandates if it was able to at all.
The US had a system like that early on and it failed.
If you split hairs like that democracy never really existed at a national level anywhere. Representative democracy is still democracy as far as I am concerned.
My wife was a cheerful producer of original knitting patterns, free and commercial, for several years before this stuff started to happen. She just stopped talking about knitting online altogether, for a while. Now she's careful to only post knitting on Facebook to a limited audience.
Sadly, contemporary activists want politics to permeate through every aspect of society because they believe that's the best way to advance their agenda. Maybe they're right, because it forces people to tribalize and it makes the 'enemy' in the culture war easy to rally against.
I would allow the patterns because they are knitting related. I don't want to restrict any user's freedom to upload a pattern - even if it's political. And I don't want to restrict anyone else from downloading those patterns. I suppose my desire to let people share needlework patterns outweighs my desire to exclude politics. I'm more concerned about user behavior around political patterns rather than the political message of the patterns themselves. To this point, I would be weary about any user who starts to agitate and evangelize.
The key is how these users are behaving outside of those particular pattern pages. Are they intentionally trying to inject politics into other knitting discussions? Are they trying to recruit like minded people, or shaming other users who disagree? If so, that's when I would warn the user to stop, and then ban the user if they aren't making a sincere effort to be less contentious.
There's a spectrum here. I'm sure there are words baked into a knitting pattern you would find acceptable, and words you wouldn't. The place where you draw that line is a political decision.
And, lets be honest, we both know what online communities are like. If you draw no line at all you'll attract 100 awful people for every principled free speech activist. And if you draw a line, any kind of a line, a proportion of your userbase will spend their time tiptoeing up to it and rules lawyering it for fun. You can't avoid politics being an ongoing issue in any community.
So if the site is to allow arbitrary patterns—and that is its whole genesis—it will have to deal with political messages.
I got curious, never been a user of the site, so I went to the login screen, saw the "play" button in the corner, and pressed it.
The animation is nothing special, just using scaling I think to make baloons look like they are moving...
But whoa, how I felt sick looking at it. And I have no clue why, tested a couple more times, press play, get sick, stop animation, I feel fine... The contrast looks fine-ish to me, the drawings are fine, there is nothing flashing, yet as soon I see the baloons becoming big and small repeateadly, I get sick.
I am a designer, so now I am very, VERY curious about how that happened, I searched all over the place but no answers sadly.
Knitters often include political messages in their patterns. From rainbows to certain shades of purple to flags to actual text. So if the site is to allow arbitrary patterns—and that is its whole genesis—it will have to deal with political messages.
This isn’t even the old trope, “Everything is political.” This is people making political statements and propaganda via knitting.
Don’t be political is not a great option. The article even talks about the history of hidden messages in knitting. Getting rid of all or even most of it is not an option.
I like the model proposed. But... unherd. Read critically.
I'm not quite sure I understand. Are you saying this because UnHerd confirms your priors? Or is there some reason to demur on their credibility?
The theory's really attractive, I like the theory, but its starting point is to assume everyone acts in bad faith.
https://quillette.com/2019/02/17/a-witch-hunt-on-instagram/
https://quillette.com/2019/06/07/instagrams-diversity-wars-r...
https://quillette.com/2019/07/28/knittings-infinity-war-part...
Political activism is important. Stand up for what you believe in. But political activism does not mix with an inclusive, warm, welcoming hobby community. If you feel so strongly about your political beliefs that you can't let them rest even in your knitting club, then for the sake of the knitting club you're going to either have to turn it into a political knitting club or watch it fall apart. Maybe that's a sacrifice in pursuit of a greater cause.
I disagree. Just about anything else is more important and productive than political activism. Almost all political activism (in America at least) is either pointless group therapy (e.g. Women's March), astroturfing (e.g. the "election fortifiers") or actually destructive and thus evil (choose your own "mostly peaceful protestors").
Activists have a tendency to indulge a totalizing vision of their activism. Many of the most hard-core activists would see a request to tone down their activism as akin to being asked to remove their limbs. Activism has become the core identity of some of these people.
And if activists' goals are actually achieved, activists usually have trouble letting go of their crusades, and so invent new ones or just become pure grifters. I can see no other explanation for why the most progressive institutions in America, universities for instance, are among those most frequently labeled as bigoted, racist, white supremacist or otherwise "problematic."
Yes, highly contrarian take, but if we ended all political activism tomorrow, we'd be better off.
Dropping words like "evil" for any destructive activity is itself absurdly absolutist.
I mean, I do believe that politics should be extracted from parts of society so we can go back to some kind of harmony, much like we don't eat food or exercise or meditate 24/7. Politics and political consideration, however important, are exhausting and we can't go on thinking about it all day every day.
I agree with your conclusion that politics is about convincing others. That takes more patience than many people seem to have, who are eager to tell the "non-woke" how wrong and bad they are if they don't immediately accept the new gospel.
America's political activists today seem to have zero skin in the game. It mostly seems like a status and power game more than an attempt to fix something. After all, if the problem was fixed, what would these activists organizations do day-to-day? Why would anyone donate to them?
Yawn.
>I can see no other explanation for why the most progressive institutions in America, universities for instance, are among those most frequently labeled as bigoted, racist, white supremacist or otherwise "problematic."
It's weird how you're pretending to make a statement about political activism in general, while only casting aspersions on progressive and leftist activism, using popular right-wing pejoratives ("mostly peaceful protestors") and even "election fortifiers" which is I believe a QAnon meme.
>Yes, highly contrarian take, but if we ended all political activism tomorrow, we'd be better off.
It isn't at all. Pretending to be apolitical while shitting on the left is so common it's practically banal around here.
> using popular right-wing pejoratives ("mostly peaceful protestors")[...]
The 06 January Capitol protestors were mostly peaceful, too. I chose an open-ended phrase open ended for a reason, notwithstanding the fact that many committed leftists I speak to seem unaware that riot police and tear gas were used against Capitol protestors just like the urban rioters last summer.[1]
Besides, the right is entirely disorganized and has essentially no activism to speak of. When the Buffalo guy was arrested, there was no bail fund to go get him out. He's rotting in a jail cell to this day.
It's a plain fact, regardless of position on the political spectrum, that the Right today is basically a joke.
> [...]and even "election fortifiers" which is I believe a QAnon meme.
Your belief is incorrect. I kindly ask you to retract your defamatory statement.
"Fortifying" was used in a Time Magazine article entitled "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election"[2]:
> That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.
> It isn't at all. Pretending to be apolitical while shitting on the left is so common it's practically banal around here.
I'm not sure where I pretended to be apolitical. I'm merely non-ideological, and thus reject political activism (of the contemporary American type).
And the idea that HN is some right-wing troll farm is laughably funny. If only you could see the downvotes.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trump-supporters-storm-...
One of the commands the various Critical Therories have is to find ‘X’ in everything and expose it. Don’t ask if ‘X’ happened but rather find how ‘X’ happened. ‘X’ can mean racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, etc. And often these terms, like racism, have been redefined to mean something different than what most people think.
So, you can’t just have a nice hobby community according to these therories. You absolutely must unmask the “problematics” in them or else you are perpetuating systemic racism or the patriarchy, or whatever. Any denial that ‘X’ was somehow present is further proof it did happen. Denial is further evidence of guilt. If you don’t join in on the pile-on then you will be cast out and accused of ‘X’ as well and at best have to find new friends and at worst having your livelihood destroyed. So there’s a lot of incentive to “do better”.
The disagreement is over whether it's a good thing (break a few eggs, make a better-society-overall omelette) or a bad thing (anyone can get canceled at any time, everyone divided).
This is true regardless of one's personal political affiliation.
I know at least a few people who think (not without justification) that American political conservatives generally want them and everyone like them dead and/or in some state of second-class citizenship.
On the flipside, I know a handful of conservatives who believe fervently that left-leaning political policy is going to destroy their and their families' livelihoods, leaving their children without the future that they've worked hard to build.
I don't see how anyone could be comfortable in a knitting club alongside someone who they see as a literal existential threat.
The corollary is that it's not realistic to expect hobby knitters to solve a set of radioactively toxic political problems. Not even locally.
Would your hypothetical knitting club allow all patterns? That's a political position. If not, would it allow a pattern with the word "VEGAN" baked into it? Yes or no, that's a political position too.
There's no flow through that paragraph that doesn't end in making a political choice. You can't avoid politics, you can only pretend to.
Not everyone has the luxury of being able to carry out their lives regardless of what happens in politics.
It's relatively easy to pass as any gender, age, race or whatever you want to. Yes, it will be more difficult if you call your account Transwomxn or request that people use xe/xir to refer to you, but if you're SarahKnitting, everybody will just assume you're Sarah and into knitting and will use she. At that point, it might be the right call by the community to not accomodate those that want to focus their membership on their political identity so they can provide a friendly community about knitting for the SarahKnittings of the internet.