Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

An addendum to this thread: there are good alternatives to call-out culture, e.g. dynamics built around the principles in @slatestarcodex's comment policy → honesty + social gentleness. Incenting honesty ideally prevents gentle people becoming doormats. http://slatestarcodex.com/comments/ https://twitter.com/webdevMason/status/1019642201494585344 …

IMO, one of the worst aspects of call-out culture is that it incents "a thick skin," which often just means broadly deadening your sensitivity to the people around you. Not sure it's even possible to be less sensitive to social attack w/o becoming less sensitive to others' needs.

In a culture of honestly + social gentleness, a microaggression — understood more often as a micro-lack-of-understanding — might be dealt with privately, with something like, "That actually didn't feel great for me! I'd really like to talk to you about it..."

In a culture of honesty + social gentleness, the assumption is that misunderstanding or lack of familiarity is more likely the cause of social friction than hatred or bigotry, and so social rewards flow more often from information-sharing rather than norm-enforcement.

As much as I agree with you, I see two problems making progress on this issue. First, most people invested in call-out culture are already self-assured that there are no innocent aggressors. Second, this kind of talk is hard countered by the use of the accusation "Tone Policing."

Agree — I wouldn't recommend trying to reform a toxic culture. Just leave. Leave, and when you find a social space that's mostly got the right idea, do what you can to further improve & protect it with your own behavior.

Isn't that just creating bubbles to escape bubbles? To clarify, your solution is certainly sure to protect one's own sanity, but it feels like we need to try to find a way detoxify our social environment. Social climate change is upon us, if you'll forgive a mixed metaphor