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Comment on A rant on left-wing online infighting

marcela@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Weaponized sincerity is a term defined by Katherine Cross (“Log off”) as an online behavior opposite to trolling, and genuine in intent, but equally harmful as malicious trolling. The example she herself gives is about a woman who cooked a meal for her refugee neighbors or sth, and after a couple hours people were at each other throats, fighting about her infantilizing immigrants or not. It is ubiquitous in Lemmy and once you learn about it you can’t unsee it.

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marcela@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Extracts from Katherine Cross’s Log off: Why posting and politics almost never mix. Pasted verbatim.

It’s worth taking a second to define weaponized sincerity. Weaponized sincerity is where extreme takes are born. It’s a mode that deploys ever more esoteric manipulations of social justice concepts for the purpose of being edgy or controversial, while still earnestly pursuing some noble idea. It’s the 0-to-60-in-two-seconds-flat acceleration of an innocuous bit of posting into a mass callout. It’s being nebulously accused of being X-phobic or silencing Y-group or being imperialist when all you were doing was, for instance, delivering chili to your neighbours.

One evening in 2022, a relatively prominent lefty Twitter user posted the following:

several guys moved in next door, students I guess. and I’ve gotten two confused door-dash drivers for them in the last week, and their trash can was completely overflowing with pizza boxes. i don’t think they cook. i am feeling such a strange motherly urge to feed these boys… They’re incredibly quiet which is a real surprise. I dunno if they’re renting or what but I would like them to stick around. Maybe I will make a big pot of chili this weekend when it gets cooler.

This, somehow, ignited a firestorm. She was accused of coddling “manchildren,” of being “presumptuous” or otherwise rude, of ableism for ignoring potential allergies, and of being a white saviour.

“For the love of god, stop babying men. This is why they learn to take advantage of their wives” went one tweet, apparently blaming this woman for the endurance of sexism and unequal marriages. Another tweet read, in part, “The intent was good, right? No. It was presumptive and stereotypical [white people] shit.”

The harassment went on for days.

It was a flaming gout of internet rage that reached into the stratosphere of the mainstream press. Even the Washington Post reported on the controversy — and it got its money’s worth from the world’s most efficient content farm. The article wasn’t just a news report; it was an advice column. WaPo food reporter Emily Heil used the incident to ask etiquette experts for their opinions on how best to share food with strangers.

The social media food fight left us exhausted but also wondering: Have the rules for giving home-cooked foods changed? Does the simple act of baking a casserole or cookies for a stranger have to be so fraught? We asked two experts for guidance.

Imagine the horror of having such an innocuous post lead to three people you’ve never met dissecting your behaviour in the pages of a national newspaper.

In the event, the leftist in question delivered the chili, it was well-received, and the young men helped her fix a fence. Outside the swirling cyclone of Discourse, a rather ordinary and charming exchange took place. On Twitter, this pot of chili had to be saddled with the unbearable weight of some of the most important issues of our time. Even a Le Creuset can’t hold that.

But, worst of all, because most of the Washington Post’s newsroom is on Twitter, they made this sorry spectacle into everyone’s problem. Even New York City’s Fox affiliate got in on the action, with an article entitled “A Chili Controversy? Neighbor’s Good Deed Draws Online Outrage.” Their source was the Washington Post.

I’m talking as if weaponized sincerity was the opposite of shitposting, its natural enemy. And in one sense it is. But, like all true opposites, it’s also a twin. Weaponized sincerity is the horrible second helix that wraps around irony culture, feeding off it and nourishing it in equal measure.

BTW while looking for this I found out she also defines sincerity like this:

One of the things I really can’t forgive social media for is how deeply it has corroded our sense of sincerity, making it uncool to care.

The one rule, if you can call it that, is to not appear to take anything seriously. Sincerity is anathema to shitposting.

So, all in all, I can figure she draws a continuum from irony culture, like people “so deep in layers of irony they don’t know who they are anymore” to weaponized sincerity, like, people who will take everything literally to the exteme of its political and ideological severity. She seems to be placing “real” sincerity to a point closer to the center than its “weaponized” counterpart. But I am no expert, I just have seen this happening over lemmy and it clicked, so I think she is onto something.

Also a disclaimer, I am personally more on the weaponized sincerity side.

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Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I did a cursory search but couldn’t find too much on weaponized sincerity or Cross’ writings on that. The best I can make out from what you wrote, is that weaponized sincerity is someone’s act of goodwill getting contorted or (charitably) misinterpreted by others as an injustice upon them. You can tell me if I got it wrong.

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