this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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All the time. ~~Discourse analysis ruined my life.~~
In special, the sort of doublespeak where someone lists something as a bonus of whatever the person defends, but as a malus for what he doesn't like. Often through different and partially overlapping words, such as one program being "traditional and tested" and another "archaic and outdated". Or one politician being "in sync with the voters" and another being "a demagogue".
However on the internet I feel like doublespeak is becoming less and less of a concern, because willingful stupidity is often more efficient, as it capitalises on Brandolini's Law.
Oh yeah, I hate that. I find it sad that there's a market for that kind of content. It's not the only way, you could just say the program is 15 years old, or the politician appeals to a much larger fraction of voters than whatever specific naive measure would suggest they should.
That requires us* to focus on the objective matters. We can't do that. We need to wallow in all that precious, oh so precious, subjectivity. But we can't show it, because then we can't claim "it's facts", and we're opening room for disagreement.
In other words this kind of doublespeak is backed by another type of doublespeak: disguising the subjective as objective. You see the same underlying phenomenon behind the usage of the word "toxic".
*by "we" I mean "people in general", not necessarily you and me.
I suspect a lot of people make the mistake of seeking out analysis, but not stopping to consider if they actually understand more after reading it, as well. They figure because they spent half an hour reading they must now be smarter, when that's not necessarily the case, and from a writer's perspective that gives an opportunity to make money by producing giant quantities of boilerplate text. Or at least did, before GPT and friends showed up.
Can you give an example? The first thing that comes to mind is "toxic masculinity", which is more of a "set expression", and then "toxicity" in online spaces which in context refers to an abundance of hostility or negative emotional content.
Yup. Or stopping to analyse the analysis, it isn't just because someone analysed it that it'll be necessarily worth a damn.
Similarities with "self-help" are not a mere coincidence.
Sure. Made up and a bit forced, but it should be typical enough to highlight what I mean:
Bob clearly doesn't like uncalled advice. That's fine for me, I don't like it either, and it would be also fine if Bob said "hey Alice, I don't like this, stahp". But that's still someone (a subject) not liking something - in other words a subjective matter. It's an opinion and it should be treated as such.
And, yet by labelling the behaviour "toxic", Bob makes it look like it's something about the object (the behaviour) thus objective, something intrinsically true, shielded against the criticism that an opinion would get. But it's still an opinion, so you can't even criticise it as a true/false statement - you can't "prove" an opinion.
Note that even the description that you've provided hints this duplicity: hostility is objective, but "negative emotional" is subjective.
(I didn't include "toxic masculinity" because I didn't really think about it. Plus as you said it's a fixed expression, those tend to vary in meaning too much from the component words. )
That's interesting. My first reaction was to think it's more the other way around. Hostility is based on intention which is in fact un-knowable unless you make assumptions about how patient an adversary is, whereas emotional content has simple litmus tests like looking at frequency of certain words. But, hostility can be seen as game theoretical and mathematical, whereas emotional content comes from an older part of our brain and is only partially shared between people, so I see what you mean. I guess sometimes more subjective things can actually be more measurable, counterintuitively.
I wonder if there's a good example of a space that's toxic, as measured by the effect on participant's mental health scores, but only to some participants. I'm conjecturing that there is not, that at least 80% of the population will experience it the same way, but I could be wrong. I suppose even a very stressful interaction could make someone feel less lonely.
Hostility is objective because it's behaviour. I were to punch or insult someone, and the definition of hostility includes those things (it should, right?), then I couldn't bullshit "it's a matter of opinion if I was hostile or not" - it's a fact. However the emotional impact of the punch/insult would depend on the target of that hostility.
Sometimes they do. Specially when it's for multiple subjects - human experiences don't overlap completely, but they do overlap a bit. But for that we need to acknowledge that they're subjective.
Spaces that target specific groups. Specially vulnerable groups based on sexuality, race, etc.
For example. If I were to crack gay jokes nonstop, most people would at most feel umconfortable... unless they're homo or bisexual, for them there's a heavy (and negative) emotional impact. Same deal with jokes targetting people based on race, gender, etc.