I never sold my soul

Projecting projection.

TiltedListener
Sep 4, 2018 · 16 min read

Quillette in their recent installment of I Was a Dickish Liberal So That’s What Liberals Are brings us “I Sold My Soul on Twitter. Now I’m Trying to Win It Back” by Jamie Kilstein.

Per usual, I’m going to go nearly line-by-line to refute three things:

  • Did you read the article?
  • You’re not arguing in good faith.
  • You’re taking my words out of context.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Let’s Start with an Agreement

Jamie begins by talking about the recent death of John McCain and gives him a well-stated eulogy as well as his thoughts to the McCain family.

He then quotes a shitty tweet in response to John’s death from a random Twitter account, followed up by:

But you wouldn’t know any of this from my left-wing Twitter feed, which looks like normal-human Twitter did the day U.S. soldiers killed Osama Bin Laden: Macabre celebration, and attacks on anyone who has anything nice to say about McCain. Dear lord, social media has turned us into terrible people.

When you read statements like these, always ask for specifics — what is the “left-wing Twitter feed”? Is it Obama? Is it a few assholes you know?

Perhaps I’m wrong, but I also don’t think there’s too many liberals making videos like these regarding John’s death:

While it’s true many people are solemn now, John had his faults. Some of those faults caused many deaths. Often what people are responding to is treating everyone who passes as a saint in their entirety, when that is clearly not the case.

Not everyone approaches that in a proper way or at the proper time. Legacy doesn’t get sealed in a day, so criticism can of legacy can wait a day minimum. Simply put — I understand the frustration on both sides, but Osama celebrations is not an adequate comparison.

It wasn’t that long ago that I would have done the same thing.

So it begins.

Twitter allows us all to rush to bad decisions and type them out for the world to see.

It can, but that’s not the intent or always the case. Let’s watch this argument build.

You tweet something about a dead man that you wouldn’t have had the guts to say to his face.

Do I? Pretty sure John would have never have met me, but yes, I would have said to his face something I have never tweeted, which was that this is not something to joke about:

It’s like the rush you get when, as a kid, you’d say a bad word out loud in public.

This is something that has been brought up before on Quillette. The idea that saying something on Twitter is a thrill. I don’t really get that. Perhaps I’m just from a different generation, but I do get the goal of describing the experience — people who mouth off on Twitter or whatever social media channel don’t really mean it, they’re disingenuous, and they’re responding emotionally, not intellectually, so whatever oppositional opinion they have doesn’t matter.

Furthermore, by identifying your opponents as such you can frame yourself as the genuine one forming their opinions purely out of observation and intellect.

Back in the day when I was (what grandly might be called) a Twitter activist

The hell is that? Someone who tweets a lot?

my life was falling apart. I never thought about the consequences of my Tweets.

I’m sorry to hear about where you were at in your life, but not thinking about consequences of tweets paints you as simply irresponsible. That has zero to do with your activism.

I never thought that my targets’ families might see what I’d written, or that they may lose their jobs, or that even though we had massive disagreements politically, that these people were still human beings with feelings.

Well again, that is just lack of basic human decency, not just Twitter decorum. Also, who did you get fired? The reason I ask is because a big thing on Quillette right now is to defend people like Toby Young and James Gunn about losing their jobs over tweets.

I’m guessing you didn’t get anyone fired, but you want to say that people shouldn’t ever be fired for tweets by painting yourself in a darker light, which I’m guessing will lighten by the end of the article. In other words — “Look, I was stupid and got people fired. That was wrong. Ergo, these other guys got fired Twitter stuff is unjust too.”

All I cared about was getting validation. All I cared about was getting to bask in the negative energy of someone else’s crappy life, so that I didn’t have to confront my own. My marriage is falling apart, but at least I’m not Justine Sacco! I haven’t called my Dad back in weeks, but John McCain’s a dead asshole!

That sounds more like a drinking problem than a Twitter problem.

Ninety percent of social media is projection.

Maybe for you, but where are you getting this figure? I’m not even asking for a study, but are all my friends sharing pictures of their kids at the beach projecting? Retweeting cat photos? I share out Washington DOT tweets for my friends and I don’t even drive. What is projecting about that?

And if someone died — for real Twitter addicts, that’s Asshole Christmas. If you could make a facile point that reinforced your team’s political stance on the day someone collapsed in front of his wife and kids — you were a true hero, the Twitter version of a captured pilot resisting torture in a POW camp.

Wow. Jamie, you just sound like a dick. To give Jamie the option to speak a little deeper on his perspective:

I recommend listening to Jamie explain himself more. Having had my own troubles with addiction, which made me a dick too, it sounds like Jamie you had an addiction. Believe you call it a “dopamine” hit, which whether it’s from the thrill of Twitter or from the bottle, yeah, it can add up.

However, Jamie’s personal situation and the attempt to cast entire political movements as co-equals in motivation is inaccurate. #MeToo and “I have a problem” are not the same thing.

Except your prison was your mother’s basement, or your half of a Brooklyn apartment covered with Cheetos.

So a person is either a man-child or a snob who is a slob? No other variants?

I’m only 36 years old, and so my memories of the pre-Internet world are dim. But it strikes me that when a public figure died 20 years ago, we didn’t run to the rooftops to scream stupid jokes about the guy. If, on the day of Nixon’s death, I’d have posted a note on a middle-school bulletin board declaring “#RememberWatergate Rot in Hell!” my classmates and teachers would have thought I was insane.

I mean you could have. Nixon went into hiding. We’re still making fun of him twenty-four years after his death. “Rot in Hell” is a bit much, but not all criticism is that harsh. I don’t think I’ve ever said those words about anyone period even in my own head. This isn’t the demon from The Exorcist we’re talking about when it comes to stupid jokes.

Fortunately, Troll Twitter doesn’t rule my life anymore: I largely gave it up in 2017, after my crowd turned on me in the aftermath of a public fight centred on my personal life.

Sounds like a good move, and to be clear, Jamie, your personal life is your own and doesn’t relate to this response.

It ended up being a great decision. I now follow liberals, conservatives, independents, UFC fighters and drunk comedians. I’m exposed to people outside of my bubble, some of whom follow me back — so I take a second to think before writing some mean bullshit just to fit in.

Sounds good. You could only be following cute cat accounts and I wouldn’t judge.

On Sunday, I saw Megan McCain’s tribute to her dad. The words “I love you forever my beloved father” made me break down in tears — this was for a father and a daughter whom I spent much of my career as a stand-up comedian and podcaster attacking.

There were a lot of great tributes. I can’t speak to your entire body of work, but I’d posit that some of your attacks were fair. Jamie, you could spend the rest of your life blindly attacking me and you’d probably be right in certain places. Course, I understand that there might be some points you’d retract. I’d say the same about half the things I’ve ever said.

I keep reminding myself that John McCain was a Republican who supported wars that led to thousands of innocent people losing their lives. But I also keep reminding myself that Democrats supported those same wars. Barack Obama called in countless drone strikes in the Middle East and Central Asia, and Bernie Sanders supports the NRA — the very same bullet points you see on the anti-McCain hate manifestos that have gone viral this week in my old circles.

Jamie — you’re spot on here.

But then, these hate spasms aren’t about policy or any actual analysis of McCain’s legacy. They’re about playing Twitter tough guy by spitting on a bogeyman’s casket.

See Jamie, you say such good stuff and then follow it up with this. It’s an effort to defame Twitter in its entirety.

See I couldn’t drink well, but I have no judgment when other people drink in front of me. I think wine helps make food taste amazing, beer on a hot day is refreshing, whiskey can give you that right level pep, and brandy on Christmas is near literature. But I, personally, overdid it. So Jamie, if you overdid it on Twitter, no big deal, this does not mean that others have the same issue you did.

To draw a comparison — some people do drink for the flavor, not for the buzz.

The lessons I’ve learned since my divorce from left-wing Twitter go beyond social media. I’m now skeptical of any ideology whose organizing principle is based on the practice of dividing the world between angels and villains.

Boy, when I read sentences like that, preceded by a sentence that does exactly that (“left-wing”), I can’t wait for the follow-up.

When I started to get invited on TV shows in 2012, I vowed I’d never do a right-wing station. “If FOX ever invites me on, you’ll see it on YouTube,” I’d say, “because I’ll be flipping over tables and smashing shit.” (For the record FOX, never invited me on.)

Okay — suppose I could say the same thing.

You don’t compromise with Nazis, I’d say. And I still believe that. Except that in those days, I’d declare — with a straight face — that Republicans such as John McCain weren’t much different from real historical Nazis.

Okay — you were wrong, but it didn’t mean John wasn’t advocating for a needless war. Again, I don’t know your whole corpus, but it sounds like you just lacked descriptive language, not that the criticism was unwarranted. If you’ve changed your mind and think John was perfect and the surge was warranted and bombing Iran is a good idea you can just say so.

Saying you said stupid stuff does not mean the core of your motivation doesn’t have merit, but rather how you expressed it was poor. So which is it — bomb Iran or that you should have chosen your words more carefully?

And you can still find plenty of people who think and Tweet this way on social media.

Dude, you can find anything on the Internet.

Just as hardcore Sean Hannity viewers assume that every liberal is a masked Antifa activist with a backpack full of Molotov cocktails, my original Twitter tribe was composed of liberals who assume all Republican voters to be racist rednecks who pawn food stamps to buy guns, and decorate their trailer home with tacky Christian gift-shop kitsch.

Like I said, I suppose you can find anything on the Internet, but is that really even the correct stereotypes? Aren’t liberals the welfare queens using food stamps?

The thing with all this is that social media I would agree is dominated by progressives and you’re painting the whole space as toxic, meaning this is a veiled way of saying progressivism is toxic and people who hold to those ideas are inherently dishonest in holding them and are doing so out of a dopamine response rather than genuine rigor.

Therefore, because we see progressive beliefs dominate social media, we can dismiss them out of hand.

I helped perpetuate that.

Haven’t heard all your podcasts, so I’ll take your word. However, this discourse isn’t an improvement. “I sucked as a liberal therefore liberalism sucks” isn’t really a conclusion.

I didn’t care about learning what the other side had to say. And if I did, by chance, come across something thought provoking from a forbidden source, I wouldn’t bring it up in public for fear of getting called out.

Name it. You’re over all this at this point, right?

(Last month, film director Mark Duplass made the mistake of Tweeting out: “I don’t agree with [Ben Shapiro] on much, but he’s a genuine person who once helped me for no other reason than to be nice.” This single Tweet actually became a trending story on Twitter for a whole day, and Duplass was forced to apologize.)

Do not get Quillette and their parenthetical statements that are full sentences. Also starting sentences that are complete sentences with “And.” Anyhow.

Who forced Mark? No one. He made that call. Plenty of people stand by Ben and somehow they are able to go to the grocery store without being tarred and feathered. I’m sure Mark gets more criticism every day for Jeff, Who Lives at Home than he got total for that tweet.

The left takes joy in eating its own.

Let us return to a couple paragraphs above:

I’m now skeptical of any ideology whose organizing principle is based on the practice of dividing the world between angels and villains.

Eating your own is not a neutral statement. Hamsters and villains do that. Notice how we don’t follow up with something along the lines of “And the right does it too.”

And when someone suggests adding a conservative source to the communal reading list, things quickly become hysterical.

Such as what? When the hell did this “reading list” come about? Is this your personal reading club you’re referring to Jamie? What are we even talking about?

I know you just need a made up antagonist, but I’d take an anecdote at this point.

Jamie then links to and describes an interview with The Daily Wire.

Turns out their offices are in Los Angeles — not in the Idaho hinterlands, surrounded by barbed wire and armed militiamen.

Um, yeah. In fact, Ben Shapiro has been pretty clear about that. Noting both his history in LA, including his degree from UCLA, as well as his connections in Hollywood. Fox News is in downtown Manhattan.

This is an attempt to paint the assumptions of liberals. Jamie, you’re in entertainment and in politics, you know this stuff. What you’re doing is setting yourself up as the stereotypical liberal making obviously stupid statements in order to imply that that’s what liberals think.

This is what’s known as a caricature. Point being — you never thought that. You just want to make it look like as a post-liberal with the inside dirt, that that is what liberals / progressives / the Left indeed think.

And it says a lot about how brainwashed I was by stereotypes that I found myself surprised to see so many women and visible minorities casually strolling the hallways.

It sounds like you are either lying or a dumb ass. To the reader, it should make you pause on the veracity of Jamie’s currently held beliefs if he was this easily swayed previously.

Also, what hallways are we talking about?

In my ignorance, I’d once imagined these places to be a white-collar version of Triumph Of The Will.

Again, this just makes me doubt you all the more. I know what you want us to think — that because you held insincere leftist beliefs, therefore leftist beliefs are insincere overall.

In the next quote, Jamie references Michael Knowles who interviewed him at The Daily Wire.

I met Knowles while I was getting makeup done. He was warm and hilarious. In my former life, I’d never have pictured a Republican laughing at anything except the plight of the poor.

I’m sorry, but you being presumptuous does not make Knowles somehow have more validity.

Then his producer came in. His Latino female producer. I made direct eye contact in case she wanted to blink out some S.O.S kidnap code. But nothing. Just another goddamn nice, and funny, conservative.

Dressing yourself up as a prototypical liberal and then describing how you were racist does not mean left ideas induce those ideas. I can’t get employed at The Daily Wire, and then go on a coke bender whilst blaming the network’s ideology for my poor behavior.

At one point, someone brought in a gift from a fan to present to Knowles. Was it a hat emblazoned with the words “Grab ’em by the pussy?” The gun used in the Parkland massacre? Nope. It was a tasteful painting of him and his wife on their wedding day.

Conservatives aren’t pure evil (overlooking that the current Republican president said “Grab ’em by the pussy”) is not a reason to advocate for their beliefs. Like if my policy is “Don’t addict elementary students to meth,” I don’t get a pass on anything else I suggest because I don’t suggest the worst (keeping in mind that your example of bad behavior was said by the current Republican president supported by The Daily Wire).

Then the producer walked out from behind a curtain, where she’d been pumping milk for their newborn baby. Turns out the party of family values occasionally attracts people who actually embrace family values.

So the left doesn’t breastfeed?

I know what many readers are thinking about me at this point: another liberal who gets mugged by reality and suddenly goes full-on conservative.

Unfortunately Jamie, it’s much worse. You are attempting to display yourself as the shittiest, racist, judgmental, xenophobic, but nonetheless idealized, liberal as possible so that the reader can say “that’s what liberals are.”

But the reality you need to get mugged with is that perhaps you were just an asshole. It really doesn’t have anything to do with liberalism.

Trust me, I wish I could do that: I’d have a nice book deal and daily hits with Tucker Carlson. But that’s not me. I’m still a liberal — someone from the left reaching out to people on both sides.

I’m a liberal. I don’t have any desire to ever speak with Tucker.

Just the other day, Knowles himself was tweeting something crazy about abortion — the very opposite of what I believe on the subject.

Link would be nice. Also just stating what your contradiction was.

Old Me would have thought — or at least Tweeted — that Knowles wants millions of women to die in alleys.

Now we get to catastrophize liberal responses.

New Me realizes that we are two adults who have a disagreement on the question of when human life begins — just as I’m hoping that a conservative who sees me Tweeting against military adventurism won’t conclude that I “hate freedom,” but rather will realize that we simply disagree on the extent to which military intervention can help make the world a safer (and freer) place.

Wow — these aren’t connected. Also, remember that these issues have consequences. We’re not arguing over federal monetary policy. Abortion and military “adventurism” are literally lives on the line. While you could say interest rates can have affects that are deleterious that could be lethal, abortion and drone strikes are pretty direct regarding the death issue.

Some of these issues aren’t “simple” disagreements.

It felt good.

Jamie describes that he had a positive experience with The Daily Wire, which okay.

None of this changes my belief that many prevailing views on the right are dangerous, the same word that many conservatives would apply to my own opinions.

Guess we’re agreed there.

But guess what happens if you don’t automatically assume the person who disagrees with you is an incipient genocidaire?

Again — that’s you, not everyone.

You find common ground, or at least make friends in the effort.

Except often times you don’t. If I’m debating evolution with someone and they say flat out it’s not real — there is no middle ground. There’s no half-evolution.

This argument that there’s always a common ground is flat not true. The request that people always find common ground usually comes from someone who wants the other side to cede ground. There is no 50% bombing of Iran. Or abortion is murder. Or global warming exists. Or traffic stops can kill you.

The request here is that we could all get along if you just agreed to a portion of what I say. If not, you’re the bad guy. If you live in that world, it’s a fantasy that you won’t have to face difficult choices on such matters.

At the very least, you hold your tongue in respectful silence as an 81-year-old man is laid to rest after a lifetime of service to his country.

Jamie, you realize you’re doing the same thing you’re criticizing, right? Maybe hold your tongue (you only had to wait a day), before using said passing to further your own points. You having been a jerk on Twitter doesn’t relate in the slightest to one tweet about John McCain.

In fact, you’re promoting it.

My Conclusion

While Mr. Kilstein has his own story, this approach is not unique. Quillette has done it many times before, notably with Toby Young and Barrett Wilson, where the key goal is to cast doubt. If Mr. Kilstein has the self-awareness and honesty to recognize his failures, surely others out there may be in similar situations.

Except Mr. Kilstein heavily exaggerates his perspective, perhaps for laughs or with some degree of guilt, but it’s hard to tell where or if that’s happening. While digital addiction and online harassment are an issue, they are not ubiquitous.

A common thread on Quillette is that there are online Twitter mobs who are simply getting caught up and not really considering the perspective they are taking. Using this Toby Young complained that he was unfairly fired and he knew that it was unfair because he used to be a part of said mobs. Mr. Young conveniently leaves out the tweets he got in trouble for and he deleted more tweets than even Donald Trump has tweeted period.

Sometimes the ire of social media is earned. Given how powerful the tool is for communication of the masses, it’s to those in power’s advantage to minimize Twitter or whichever platform is next. It’s better to consider Twitter a bunch of rabble-rousers rather than people with their own opinions developed from observation and exploration.

They’ll always be assholes on social media, but you can shift through them. The more you engage honestly with others, the more you read, the better you’ll get at it. Mr. Kilstein’s argument is that that’s all there is, so why bother? Using his own experience as the sacrificial lamb.

Ultimately, the attempt is not to attack a particular political discourse, but discourse itself.

Keep talking, keep writing, keep debating. The Internet is not only trolls. More to the point — why would you take advice from a self-admitted one?

TiltedListener

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My name is Corey. Developer. Ghost N' Goblins Champion 1989 - 1991, 1993

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