Comment by grahamburger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grahamburger | Hacker News Reader

For some context, in case, like me, you don't recognize the author by name:

> Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie... is a Nigerian writer whose works range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors [which] is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature", particularly in her second home, the United States. [1]

From the article (last paragraph) that I think sums it up nicely:

> I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own. The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie

> The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness.

Hallelujah!! Can't say enough about how much I agree with this, and given that the author is well-known I hope it gets a lot of press. One of the most bizarre effects of this in the past ~5 years is there are now certain words (and actually not even certain words, certain phonemes) that are simply deemed un-utterable. Never mind the context, never mind if your sentence is actually "<word> is incredibly offensive and should never be directed at another person", never mind if you're actually quoting from a legal document [1], the actual meaning doesn't matter, intent doesn't matter, all that matters is if the sound coming out of your mouth matches the list of forbidden sounds. 10 years ago I would have laughed it off if someone had suggested we would have gone this collectively nuts.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/nyregion/Rutgers-law-scho...

No, certain words and phonemes are not unutterable. Their utterance can be used as excuse to hurt you, or they can be celebrated, depending on whether you are in the good graces of the thuggish management class that has taken over so many of our institutions. So if you are Donald McNeil and these thugs decide they don’t like you, and quote someone else using a forbidden word, that can be used to fire you¹. The fact that other people are allowed to use the same word dozens of times in a single article shows that it is not the word itself that is prohibited.

[1] https://reason.com/2021/02/06/its-official-linguistic-intent...

One can surely make the case for certain morphemes being unutterable, but phonemes?

Perhaps I'm just whooshing on some hyperbole here, but it's hard to imagine something like /g/ being frowned upon.

> I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything

This is the proper response. I'm not sure why anyone is on Twitter. And if you are, you definitely shouldn't be using your real name.

The upside is de minimis, and the downside of a misconstrued opinion or a bad joke is "your life is basically ruined." Maybe not today or tomorrow -- maybe it'll happen 10 years from now when the Overton window shifts again.

People should be afraid of these platforms.

But if there is danger in a Twitter mob, that mob can savage you just as easily if you are not on the platform. It’ll just take you a little longer to find out about it.

But the metaphor still applies. If the mob doesn't necessarily know that you exist, can they attack you?

Some people on Twitter know about people who aren’t on Twitter, I’ve heard.

Interestingly, this empowers people who hold beliefs so deviant that they're universally subject to sanction.

They've already paid the reputation tax, and are now free to use the technology to its maximum benefit, when in earlier times they'd have been outsiders in their community struggling to find like minded allies through creepy newsletters or pamphlets

This would be true if the penalty were only reputation damage.

Instead, the penalty is censorship.

don't a lot of accounts get more reputation because they get banned? i've seen accounts literally have "banned at 75k followers" as a badge of honor

> What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness.

This behavior just popped up in a conversation recently.

Is there a word for this behavior?

Perhaps "Fake Altruism".

Virtue signaling.

This. Basically half of LinkedIn posts these days. "Here's this guy who spent 16 hours a day selling watermelon at a traffic light. I came in and helped him find a job and now he's a CEO of a Fortune 500 company and can feed his 12 kids. #bekind"

This might not be relevant to you, but in case my braindump may spark a serious conversation: //mere// virtue signaling is closer (but still not quite right). Part of the problem is that signaling (and, the more I look at this word, the more problematic it becomes, as I'm not sure what doesn't count in at least one's lightcone), virtuous or otherwise, need not be intended; agents can accidentally give away information. The virtuous agent may signal, and their signals may be both virtuous and appear otherwise to the vicious and virtuous alike. Part of the problem with the phrase "virtue signaling" is that there's a positivistic definition of the concept, but there are also justified manners in which to engage in that practice. Virtue signaling need not be fake or reduced to appearance (assuming we set aside the problem of representing a thing-in-itself). The virtuous agent may also perform or signal knowing they are signaling, and they may do so in virtue of performance. Maybe "Vicious Virtue-Signaling" is more appropriate. There are likely many attempts to label this thing we're worried about. This strikes me as the closest answer: when one aims to signal one's goodness in a deceptive manner that treats the other (including one's future self) as mere means, one has engaged in immoral or vicious virtue-signaling.

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