Outrage Culture

I followed with interest the situation involving Josh Olin, former community manager at Turtle Rock Studios. I think it's an interesting instance of a phenomenon on the Internet.

We have to accept that people are irrational. By making comments that have a high likelihood of triggering emotions in other people, Josh Olin courted mass irrationality on himself, his work, his employers, his friends and family. He's right about an outrage culture existing, which demands that something be done.

I've got problems with this Internet trend. First of all, doing something isn't always the most advisable thing; especially when one doesn't have a clear idea if that thing to be done has an impact on the problem. At other times, doing nothing at all would be best - I am reminded of several examples, one of which came from my dentist. She said that one of her patients had a prior dentist who decided to drill holes into all of their teeth and put filling in them because it seemed to the latter that their was a risk for cavities. Said patient now has to pay astronomical bills because those fillings chip often.

My dentist when I was a child refused to drill into a molar of mine that had a black line on top of it, thinking that maybe it wasn't a cavity as would have been the most likely supposition. That tooth has been with me all my life and it has not developed anything at all. 

Or think about democratic countries where there is a chief of the executive branch of government; he has veto power, the ability to refuse to do something.

When people can't take the option to do nothing it's usually one of three things - either they are being kept by a threat of some kind from abstaining, or their emotions are stopping them from making the best choice, or they have some sort of self-centered bias that somehow makes them need to do something where in a more neutral situation they would do otherwise. Josh Olin's former company faced the first situation. The uproar would have been directed at them, and would have affected how their products fared in the future. They had to fire him because otherwise a lot of people would not have bought their wares anymore.

And this is where we see how the action produced from this outrage culture is a lot like bullying. I got this concept from Sgt. Rory Miller; in a protest there's always the implied threat that violence will start if the demands are not met. Others would argue that the threat of consequences keeps people honest - I would counter that it only makes us more cunning with our dishonesty.

For an example, let's look at this unfortunate situation. University student posts pictures of animal cruelty and gets expelled, then made to do community service. In any rational light the story should be done - kid learned a lesson and paid his debt to society. However, look at how thousands of people in the Facebook community still "refused to forgive" him. It's like high school where the cliques band together to ostracize the weird kid except now with the Internet there is no escape for the poor guy. The kid already paid his dues for the crimes he committed, and yet people are still not letting this go - a hallmark of bullying.

Second thing I have a problem with is how everyone keeps tying this to free speech. Josh Olin has said he was trying to inspire dialogue and his right to free speech was violated; his detractors say that the right to free speech only prevents government from persecuting someone for what they say and doesn't save anyone from the consequences (i.e., online threats and harassment) that would arise from his words.

(As an aside, I love how that argument frames the vitriol being rained down on Mr. Olin as somehow a logical occurrence of cause-and-effect; it's classic victim blaming right there. It's only natural that someone lose their livelihood, get death threats, be harassed, etc..) 

To that I want to say, that while it is true that the right to free speech pertains to prohibitions on government actions only, that kind of limitation was built in because monitoring and policing the statements of everyone in a country would have been impossible to implement in a fair and just manner. This does not mean that just because it isn't against the law it's not a bad thing to do. 

Like in my country right now there was a recently passed law prohibiting the production, sharing, distribution, and sale of compromising videos and photos of people who at the time of recording should have had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Before this, there was no such clear regulation that could be applied to these situations, and there was a huge bonanza of sex videos/voyeur videos being trafficked around; some of famous celebrities would even be the topic of news programs and talk shows. Said talk shows would even show these videos, with the naughty parts censored of course - but in a manner that still preserved the prurience of the content. D-list celebrities would even make one of these videos themselves to get some measure of relevance in the public eye. And some unscrupulous lovers would even record their trysts in order to blackmail their partners later on. Law or no law, these things people were doing were already bad. 

Same with the free press issue, just because no one's getting arrested doesn't mean all these people ganging up on him is acceptable. 

Also, speech comes with a hefty piece of responsibility; if you're putting yourself out there essentially you are implying that what you have to say matters, to the point that you are willing to cast attention to yourself and suffer the consequences of whatever opinion you are professing. Now what, if at all, are all of Mr. Josh Olin's detractors risking here? What are their stakes in this discussion? What do they lose - like, if they don't put Mr. Olin down do they have to be slaves at a plantation somewhere? 

Mr. Olin already paid a big price, while the great outrage machine will be moving on to another target, smug in their numbers and anonymity. That right there makes the trolls lose any credibility in my eyes. And I personally do not like being coerced into doing anything - when people try bullying tactics on me I choose to do the opposite of what they want. I would advise any such victim of outrage culture to do the same.